Home Is Where My Heart Is
HEARTBREAK, HOME AND HIP HOP: FINAL CHAPTER
Written by: Allison Gaines
As I left New York, I traveled down South, by bus, and I felt the temperature change that day, slowly shifting from the bitter cold, to warm and sunny. Every few hours, I took off an article of clothing, a scarf, a coat, a jacket, and a sweater. I adapted to my changing life and environment.
It was as if I felt all the seasons in one day, sitting by the window, wondering what type of experiences awaited me back home, in New Orleans. Sure, I had traveled to Chicago and Texas in the past, but each time I returned, homesick for gumbo, crawfish, and snowballs. In that respect, this time was no different.
When my mother, sister, and brother greeted me at the bus station, I soon felt dizzy from the heat, the hugs, and the kisses. It’s as if nothing changed at all, they didn’t look any different, and neither did the city.
Jackie seemed happy to be home too, and we decided to stay at his family’s home until we could get back on our feet. First things first, I needed to get my job in the FrenchQuarter back. Because I left in such a rush, however, I approached the task with cautiousness and humility.
As I peeked into the tiny restaurant that had been like a second home to me for years, I saw some old faces, but mostly new. My old boss, Saul, who had been cutting vegetables stopped what he was doing to greet me.
After washing his hands, he offered me a seat at the bar and gave me some pomegranate hummus to munch on. Then he asked, “Are you really back?” I nodded. This wasn’t our first rodeo. He already hired me back twice before, after I returned from an adventure in Chicago and Texas, never giving much notice, and never negotiating the terms of leaving.
“Look, I really need a job. I will do anything; wash dishes, help host, or whatever.” As I said, humility was key. “No, I need you to manage this bar and get it back into shape.” I smiled—yaaaaaaas! It felt good to be wanted. Here, at home, no one doubted my work ethic. It felt nice not to have to prove anything to anyone.
He instructed Pam, a White bartender, to add me to the schedule. She said, “but...but.” He interrupted her and repeated, “Add her to the schedule now.” So just like that, I was welcomed back into my family, my job. Back to the basics, I thought.
I knew that my relationship with Jackie wouldn’t last, but not for the reasons I thought when we had that argument on the rooftop in New York. It wasn’t because he was a rapper, though I was tired of playing second-fiddle to the industry. Sadly, we lost a friend that changed everything in our relationship. It all began that summer, only a few months after we returned from New York.
I planned a tubing trip with my work colleagues and joked that I don’t make a habit of going out of town with White people. In all seriousness, I had to ask them if they had my back if something went down. In the South, it’s dangerous to wander outside of the big city limits because unchecked raw racism seems to live behind every corner. In Louisiana, we are surrounded by Missippi and Texas—there is no escape from that ideology.
But, alas, you can’t go tubing in New Orleans, so the adventure required me to leave my safe zone. We had to travel to Covington, a mostly-White city just north of Orleans parish. I invited Jackie to join us on our journey.
We traveled six cars deep, and as they sped along on the Causway, I felt terrified the police would stop us. Their privilege shielded them from that fear. Their worst-case scenario was getting a ticket. I feared much worse. So as we road in Pam’s car with the windows down so she could smoke cigarettes, my heart raced.
We had fun that day, bonding in the summer sun. But even as a lifeguard, I felt staying with everyone wasn’t easy. The water wasn’t stagnant or mild like the Gulf of Mexico, it was wild, twisting and turning. We tied our tubes together and that gave me some reassurance, but at times we had to paddle so hard to avoid going down the wrong path. We stopped a few times at little strips of land along the way, eating snacks packed in plastic bags that also carried our phones. I felt sleepy afterward but everyone felt starved so we stopped at a restaurant. There, for the first time, I saw fireflies shining in the dark. It was moments like this that made me label them “my White family.”
And when we returned to New Orleans that night, Jackie and I told our Black friends in the music industry all about it, chuckling about the risks we took that day. Philly said, “ya’ll are wild for going somewhere alone with White people. But, that sounds fun.” He told us he didn’t know how to swim but wanted to learn.
Since I worked as a lifeguard for five years, I offered to teach him. He agreed to learn and we talked about taking a tubing trip with all our industry friends. Our plan made us giddy, thinking of all the splashing and laughing in our future. We made a toast, smoked a few, and played some cards.
Philly was a local Hip-Hop producer and father. The crew called him Philly Beamin. We knew each other for years, even before my relationship with Jackie. He was tall, kind, and such a smooth talker. Our friendships with each other were interwoven, folding into one another like hot fudge from the riverwalk.
As fate or poor luck would have it, Jackie, Philly, and our friends never did take that trip together.
That next Sunday, while I was working, Philly and a few of our friends decided to go tubing. When I saw the pictures of them on Instagram, I smiled. Summer fun had such an intoxicating glow but, what happened next devastated me, Jackie, and our community.
When Philly went tubing in the Amite River that day, there were not enough life-vests to go around. But instead of retreating, he felt everything would be alright. He never knew how consequential that decision would be. According to our friends who joined him, the choppy waters caused him to fall through the tube an hour into the trip, and our friends, some of them lifeguards I knew, were helpless to save him. Our friend, Fe, tried to save his life, but he didn’t know how to swim either and died alongside him.
"He was hip-hop's Marvin Gaye," said White's best friend, Denzel Holliday who performs under the name "Jakie Skellz (NOLA)."
After Philly’s death, I felt blameworthy for not warning him how dangerous tubing could be for those who don’t know how to swim. Maybe I should have told him how close our friend Pasta came to drowning that day. My boss Saul had to straddle a tree branch and pull him out of the river. Maybe my story of how fun it was encouraged him to make a dangerous choice. None of them went tubing before—I felt survivor’s guilt.
I couldn’t really accept that there was nothing my old friends could have done to save his life. And I couldn’t forgive myself for not doing something more to prevent this tragedy from happening. As a lifeguard, I felt angry, disappointed, and bitter. No one ever died on my watch and even though I wasn’t there that day, I felt there, in a way. But despite the pain I felt, Jackie took his death the hardest. He stopped eating and taking care of himself. Joy became an afterthought.
All of my disdain for dating a rapper got put on hold as the inner caregiver took the reigns over my life. A few years back, I lost my good friend to gun violence, but this was different. It wasn’t hatred that killed Philly, it was more complicated than that.
After the funeral and subsequent memorial, it became clear that these events only served to deepen Jackie’s grief and he stopped making music. That was a red flag for me. But taking care of him became exceedingly difficult and I saw how an event like this can shift someone’s perspective on a dime. If I could kiss the pain away, I would, but just like my friends who watched Philly pass on, I couldn’t do anything to comfort him.
One night, he woke up screaming and took my dog Amigo outside, who I never saw again. I felt terrified because while his behavior became increasingly erratic, this was new. I paced back and forth, turning on the lights, waiting for him to return.
A few moments later, I got a call from the police who found him, naked a few blocks down. They said they had no intent on arresting them and planned to take him to the hospital. I wondered what happened to him, assuming someone tried to hurt him. When I arrived, he averted my eyes and wouldn’t tell me what happened.
Then, he flirted with a male nurse, which simultaneously broke my heart and made me feel concerned. I apologized to him, on behalf of Jackie, and I became more and more puzzled. What is going on, I wondered? Clearly, our relationship was now over, but it’s as if there was no official end date. I just realized that the Jackie I knew was no longer there.
They scanned his body and found nothing physiologically wrong, so as a psychology student, I knew that meant the problem was psychological but I still felt in denial. I advocated for them to release him and when they did, they gave him a diagnosis—schizophrenia. After that day, I dropped the romantic aspect of our life and became his friend. But over time, his behavior became more dangerous, and I had to end the relationship. He even flirted with some of his industry friends, which at the time was very taboo. I tried to give him guidance about meeting men, but he seemed oblivious to the rules of decorum.
Ending the relationship with Jackie wasn’t easy. I wanted us to be that fun couple that met in the Dragon’s Den, had the same friends, and loved the same anime cartoons. But our trip to New York and Philly’s death changed everything for me, for him, and our friends. It’s as if his passing caused a cosmic shift, one we could never wholeheartedly recover from. After Jackie, I embraced single life for a while, working on formalizing my divorce and finding a reasonably priced home to rent.
Before taking these adventures out of town, I always felt that I was missing out on something. In New Orleans, I was a big fish in a small pond. Sure I knew lots of people, but it wasn’t a huge place, so it felt only natural that so many of us knew one another. I felt that leaving would test whether or not I could become bigger than where I came from. But coming home made me realize that despite the complexities of home, the tragedies, the breakups, the makeups, home really is where my heart is, and no matter where I go, New Orleans will always be that home for me.
I’m so grateful for the opportunities I got, the people I met along the way, the rappers I dated, and the growth I experienced. And the best part is, I have a feeling the best is yet to come.