Since moving to New Orleans, I have been experiencing the Mississippi Spillway which stretches for hundreds of miles and is Louisiana, as the vulva of the country. At the risk of essentializing “The Vagina”, I feel I must invoke the metaphor to write about this fucking oil catastrophe. 

If you’ve never been “here”, let me give you sense of what it feels like. 

Moisture is essential; water is life, and it gives birth to culture. Everything from fishing to food to song and dance springs forth from the flow.  The fragrant air is intoxicating, but if contaminated, sickening.  The Mississippi River is a passageway through which life flows in and out.  The marshes and grasslands offer protection and are continuously and painfully stripped away by the hot wax of oil and greed.   New Orleans is Louisiana’s clit, the tip and visible erotic pleasure-center where everyone who comes experiences ecstasy while the miles of nerve endings stretch out in every direction giving the entire continent pulses of pleasure and abandon.  It is incredibly vulnerable.  But that vulnerability is not natural; it’s the result of constant assault—a human made, cultural, material and social assault.  It has always been, and even in the face of a “man”-made vulnerability, continues to be defiant, resilient, and oh so politicized. 

BP and the rest of the oil industry are the johns and the federal government is the pimp.  Federal, state, and local politicians pimp us out to put money and power in their own pockets while, by paying the right price, Big Oil gets to take what it wants and needs.  And they-the pimp and the johns, do so with absolutely no regard for the needs or well-being of the body they use.  The body—the living environment, including the people—is, however, a breathing entity.  And though it appears as if it is just an object to be used, the people know what they are doing.  They strike a bargain that, for the moment, benefits themselves but sacrifices the rest.  You give me jobs, and I’ll give you whatever you want. 

Invoking the vulva as metaphor suggests there is something feminine or female about this place and that masculine or male power is the problem.  But don’t let that confuse the issue.  This is about class and economics. 

Profit for a few has been put ahead of the well-being of the rest of us and now, a global corporation threatens the survival of all who depend on, live in, or breathe the air and drink the waters of the Mississippi Spillway and the Gulf of Mexico.  BP, the rest of Big Oil, and the politicians who reap a modicum of power and money from their coffers don’t give a damn about those of us who live here.  Some fear you, my dear reader, don’t either.  To paraphrase the words of Spud McConnell on local radio station WWL, Louisiana is the poor, ugly cousin of the rest of the country.  They don’t give a damn.  When the oil hits the Texas and Miami, the rest of the country will take notice. 

But there is a part of me who doesn’t believe that.  I saw citizens from around the world come to our aid after Hurricane Katrina.  I saw the tears of compassion and felt the helping hands of people from every state and many countries.  I believe that the people give a damn; the pimp and the johns don’t. 

America, the Mississippi Spillway is your body.  This is your beautiful, vulnerable, life-giving opening.  Don’t let them in.  Don’t let them continue to use you.  Don’t think this doesn’t affect you.  You are being fucked.  Now what are you going to do about it?