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Sunday, September 29, 2002
The Story of Last Night and How We Did It Up Good
as told by the ghost of Eudora Welty using considerable artistic license
So there I was, standing on the corner of St. Peter and Rampart Streets, just as common as you please, talking to my friend Jimmy-Jay-Jo-Bob, who we all just call Jim on account of saving time, when along comes the only Serbo-Ukranian princess I know, Dmitri, and a certain lady friend, Bettina, who I hadn't seen in some time. "Well y'all just pass me by like you don't even know me from Adam," I shouted, makin' Jim turn his head and swivel around like my cousin Eugene P. Saucier the Third when he's prancing around with his bb-gun like he's gonna drop everything and run off and join the army this very minute. Next thing I knew, Jim had disappeared inside some bar the looks of which I did not like and I was gallivanting down the banquette with Dmitri and Bettina, making sure to keep the pace slow enough so that none of us spilled anything from the plastic cups of alcohol we were carrying that would have gotten us arrested, fingerprinted, and locked up for years if we'd been anywhere else. Where are you going, Richard, Dmitri asks in this accent like you've never heard in all your born days, sounding for all the world like he still had sand from the Black Sea trapped between his cheek and gums. To a dyke rock show, I replied, as though it were something I do every single day of my natural life. We are going to see some friends at the Bombay Club, would you like to come, he asks, knowing perfectly well that I'm wearing sneakers and jeans not fit for a sharecropper and a sleeveless tank top to boot. No, I say, but if y'all come back after your drink, maybe we can head on up to Twi-Ro-Pa for some of that citified dancing music. An hour later, Ovary Action had finally gotten their act together and were halfway through their set--which should have been signed, sealed, and delivered an hour and a half before--when from out of the corner of my hazel eye that I probably got from my father's side of the family I saw a long-haired sodomite and his brunette lady companion burst through the door--Dmitri and Bettina had come back! We hugged and kissed as though we hadn't seen one another in years and then set about the task of starting this party right. By the time Bitch and Animal took to the stage, we were in a fine state of affairs. Dmitri was being reprimanded by an apparently insensitive, insecure, whiny little babydyke no bigger than a good-sized can of of Le Sueur peas, and Bettina was becoming acquainted with a very stylish, well-bred woman of apparent means and intellect who had recently hennaed her hair. Myself, I was ready to go. So! Down the stairs we tumbled, against Bettina's wishes, I think, and into my car, headed to Twi-Ro-Pa, when Dmitri burst into tears like some red-headed heathen just killed his favorite puppy. He said, I'm already feeling fragile, you know, because of this baseball thing (I didn't know what he was referring to and I didn't ever get around to asking, so I'm as mystified as you are), and then that stupid minimuffmuncher has the nerve to look at me while I'm having a good time at a dyke rock show and ask why I'm there, as if People With Penises (he says it like it's capitalized and all) can't enjoy womyn's music (I put in the "y" myself). Bettina and I tried desperately to console him as we sped back toward Dmitri's apartment so he could run in and grab more cash, which he apparently keeps hidden in his mattress, because he says that's what all good Europeans do. Eventually me, myself, and I managed to jam an American Spirit between his lips and lit it with my fifty-cent Cricket lighter and that seemed to set things right. Amen! To be quite honest, there's not a lot to say about the rest of the evening. Twi-Ro-Pa was fancy as always, looking and feeling more New York than New Orleans, with bass speakers that will knock you off your goddamn feet, may lighting strike me dead if I'm lying. The music started out great and we were dancing and Dmitri was buying drinks, which I forgot to thank him for and I'll have to do next time I see him, but then the DJ decided that "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" would be cute, and it was for a couple of minutes, but if you're listening Mr. DJ, half an hour of retro-emo-techno without a single New Beat diddy to liven things up makes people want to tie you up in a burlap bag and hurl you off the Pearl River bridge, on my grandmother's grave. But rather than risk prosecution, not to mention an hour's drive to the nearest Pearl River bridge, we departed, and the last I saw of Dmitri and Bettina, they were stumbling into Coop's for a late night snack. I swear to God!
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
You can tell who's never been through a hurricane before. They're the ones buying rolls and rolls of masking tape to make giant Xes on their windowpanes, theoretically to keep them from shattering in the wake of flying debris and high winds. But any fool can tell you, unless it's a category three or higher, there's no need to bother with all that--and even then, better to board up your windows than to tape 'em. Some folks are gonna have an awfully unpleasant time come Friday, scraping off all that tape goo. Me, I'd rather reglaze a window.
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
This morning the sky is the same color it was 28 years ago, on my first day of elementary school: dark and gray and green and stormy.
The first thing I learned that day, in that--I kid you not--little red schoolhouse, was that when it rains while the sun is shining, the devil is beating his wife. This was not idle playground gossip, it was presented by the teacher as fact. Even though my familiy attended a fairly fundamentalist Southern Baptist church, I'd never heard that before. And I remember thinking, "Well, that's a bunch of horseshit. Does she really expect us to buy that?"
I like it when the weather's like this because the world look so unusual, especially the insides of places. They look different, lit up by lamps instead of sunlight at nine in the morning.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
 On the subject of stereotypes, there's another one that's starting to piss me off: the idea that Southern families are all a bunch of wacky, wild, irreverent, outspoken, good-time guys and gals. I mean, I've spent nearly all my life south of the Mason-Dixon, and I'm here to tell you, I've never met a Southern family remotely like the ones depicted on the small screen, the big screen, or in print. Now, that's not to say we don't have our fair share of "characters" (I promise, we do), nor to say that the South doesn't have a unique set of social customs (hello? monster trucks?). It's just that...well, I'm starting to feel guilty. Folks come to visit, and they're expecting everyone to be all Greater Tuna and crap, and I have to break it to them that we're just as dull and boring as, say, anyone from Vancouver. So for any of you planning to travel down this way, I suggest you spend your time flipping through the generic, inoffensive pages of Southern Living and avoid anything that reeks of ya-ya (with two very notable exceptions).
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Just to be different, I'll take Furio over Ralphie.
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Name That Film
"The children are having sex, Beth is pregnant, and I narrowly escaped an assassination attempt: will you please do something?"
"Delicious, delicious...oh, how boring."
"I could never take lightly the idea that people were making love without me."
In some ways, I hate to write about New Orleans. I mean, yes, it's a beautiful city with its own unique vibe, and I love it. It's just that, when you start discussing New Orleans, and you're writing for people who don't live here, you invariably end up perpetuating the city's stereotypes: vampires, Mardi Gras, shabby gentility, pervasive decadence. Sure, there's a shred of truth to each of those, but to tout them as gospel...well, that requires some serious fabrication.
There is, however, one cliche of the city that I can't begin to deny: the idea of New Orleans as an underdeveloped city-state, a piece of the Third World plucked from thousands of miles away and set down at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Last night, for example, I was walking the dogs, and I heard a hum--a loud, electric hum, like fifty households going simultaneously dark. It's a distinctive sound, one I barely knew before I moved here. Over the past decade or so, I've become accustomed to it, and last night my involuntary response was to look up, off to the horizon in the direction of the noise, and as expected, I saw the blue-green glow of a second transformer shorting out. Five or ten seconds later, its own hum sounded.
There was no storm last night. It wasn't particularly hot. Unless a cat with a deathwish found its way into a substation (which has happened before), I can't imagine why the power might have gone out. But honestly, I didn't even ponder the question. Like so many people in so many places around the world with spotty utilities and corrupt politicians, I've learned to just accept things as they happen and to be happy when they return to normal.
Sometimes it bothers Jonno, the way things are here. And I see his point: you can't depend on much in New Orleans. Sometimes even the bars close during high-category hurricanes. It is not a city for the impatient.
Okay, I admit it: I'm officially a bore. The only revelations I have these days come when I'm walking the dogs.
Thursday, September 12, 2002
He's back.
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
. . .
Saturday, September 07, 2002
   So, Southern Decadence is officially over--and I don't mean "over" as in, "Whew, I'm so glad that exam is over, I'm gonna smoke crack for a solid week!" Nor do I mean "over" as in NYC drag lingo "ovah," as in "over the top," as in "Darling, your face may look like Christina Aguilera dragged you from her bumper for miles and miles, stopped, hurled you into one of her Puerto Rican ravines, smeared bacon on your face and threw you to the alligators, then took out her own personal ugly stick and beat you with it, but that gown, lady, is fucking OVAH! I must have it...." No, dears, I mean "over" as in Valley Girl lingo, as in "This party is so totally over that I think someone must have, like, spiked the punch with Demerol." On behalf of New Orleans' glbt community, I'd like to thank the sprawling metropolis of Houstonatlantadallas for sending every single shirt-phobic, ghb-philic fudgepacker within its city limits to the Crescent City this Labor Day weekend. Each of these pansies has worked diligently to ensure that the party is truly unbearable. If any of these nancy boys would like to rent a house for Decadences yet to come, I'm happy to offer mine for an exorbitant fee.
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