oh yeah...

That trip to Hollister may very well be my last. Even though the problem was solved and I do like the shirts, I noticed on my way out that they were selling this shirt. In case you can't read it, it says "Yes I plan on wearing flip flops for the rest of my life."

Enough Said. Blech!

Resolution

I didn't want to write about this until I was sure of it's resolution. Now that it's come I can tell you the story. I wrote the other day about going clothes shopping at Lakeside Mall. My last stop was to Hollister where I purchased two shirts. Last night was my night off and I intended to go out wearing one of the new shirts, look hot and have my way with anyone I chose. Okay so I was at least going to look good when I went out. Having fed the dogs I got dressed to go out, slipping into my new western style snap button shirt, a style of shirt I have worn long before BrokeBack Mountain came out I might add. On a side note, since brokeback came out I have seen more fags in cowboy hats and western shirts than I could shake a sheep at and it's starting to get on my nerves. Anyway, I started to snap the shirt and felt something odd at my side. It was the ink security tag that the employees had left on the shirt. Now I can't wear the shirt, I'm not going to look hot and I won't have my way with anyone I choose. Great. Oh yeah, and I don't have the receipt. Great.

I called the Hollister store and spoke to the manager who told me, "sometimes people take clothes and try to bring them back." I assured the manager that when he saw me in person that he would realize I hadn't stolen the shirt. Going back to Hollister meant braving the traffic to Metarie once again, a feat not easily accomplished and then trying to enter the mall on a Saturday, again, quite a feat. The interstate wasn't too awfully bad and I found a parking space within the quarter mile. I was prepared for a fight, sure the manager would accuse me of thievery. The manager, Kevin, was very nice and he was actually wearing the same shirt I had purchased. He didn't argue with me, the tag was removed and all was right, save my previous night off being ruined. Right before I wrote this I re-read my post from the other day and noticed I had written that the boy ringing me up was obviously using all his brain power. How prophetic.

After Metarie I wound my way uptown to hit some of the stores up there like Turncoats and Metro Three. I bought a shirt that says "RENEW ORLEANS" that I like as well as some new underwear from Ginch Gonch. I got this pair today but plan to buy more if I like the fit.

Yesterday I was going through a box of paperwork that has collected over the last four months of "evacuation" time. Near the bottom of the box I found a note to myself to blog about something that happened while we were in Baton Rouge the first few days after the storm. The note simply says "KY - $8 Astroglide $6." At first I thought, what the hell is this about but then I realized where I had written the note. If I write something down to blog about it later it's usually because I am in a bar and think I won't be sober enough to remember later. There are only two gay bars in Baton Rouge, Georges and Splash. Splash is the young bar, the attitude bar, the pretty boy bar. I know saying pretty boy in Baton Rouge sounds a bit funny but there are a few attractive natives and LSU is there so it does have it's share of pretty boys. Splash Bar in Baton Rouge is not to be confused with SBNY, a wretched, wretched bar far worse than the worst of attitude filled small town bars, but it is filled with vapid pretty people. Splash used to be Icon and is where my former boyfriend Dallas worked and where he was shot by two armed assailants leaving the building one night. He survived and in fact has recently moved to New York City. Back to the note. The other bar in BR is Georges, a mixed crowd but probably a mid to late 30's average age if not a bit older. It's a small place, a rectangular bar with a small stage on one end and an adjoining room with a pool table wedged at an angle. Unlike Splash it's a pretty friendly place where people speak to you for no reason at all. Just inside the front door is a vending machine and this is where the story finally wraps up. Yes, KY -$8 and Astroglide $6 are items offered in the vending machine at Georges bar. I"m not sure why I thought it was so funny, the pub sells lube at the hit parade and at the mezz. Walgreens on Decauter sells various flavors of Wet right there by the counter, almost as if it would be an impulse buy. I guess the places to buy lubricants are fairly limited in Baton Rouge and hey, if there's a market there. Georges should probably be applauded for preventing many a night of spit-and-shove in the back seat of a car in their parking lot.

On to other news. This is really a "You Know You're Back in New Orleans" moment that happened to me on the way to work the other night. I was on the phone which is risky enough when you plan to do things like turn corners. Phone service here is pretty shoddy and you lose signals often. I was trying to stay towards the edge of the sidewalk to give myself a fairly good shot at keeping in range. Throwing caution to the wind I was also smoking a cigarette which makes you fair game to a myriad of people to ask you for one. Pointing to your phone as if to say "Hey I'm on the phone here, leave me alone" does not work. I was living on the edge here. There was a man coming towards me in a wheelchair, an older white haired man who had obviously had a stroke or some sort of palsy as one side of his face looked frozen. He was wheeling himself along haphazardly so I stepped into the street to give him plenty of room to pass. When he did he muttered out of one side of his frozen mouth "Fucking Faggot." It literally took me about five or ten paces to register what he had said. I turned, pausing the phone conversation, flicked my cigarette in his general direction and said "Fuck you, you crippled piece of shit," turned back around and continued my phone conversation. Now some may criticize my foul charges against a handicapped person, but in this case, what was good for the faggot was good for the cripple. I AM back in New Orleans.

Arriving at work I see our new dancer is working. The first night I saw him he was wearing socks with no shoes. These weren't just ordinary socks these were toesies, socks with the toes built in to them. Not just toesies, but multi colored striped toesies. Basically this was something that Pippi Longstocking would wear. He was wearing them again this night but with shoes this time. I assume someone had pointed out the endless stream of foul and fungus one might catch by not wearing foot protection. It's a shame that no-one points it out to the flip flop wearing community. New boy is dancing on my bar so I have a few moments to chat with him. He seems nice enough and he's cute but he's still new and probably hasn't loosened up enough for us to see the dark side. Almost all of them have a dark side. An indication of his darkness might be what I later find out to be his stage name, Fallen Angel. Seriously, Fallen Angel. This reminds me of a dancer who sob songed his way into a bartending position a few years ago; on his knees I've no doubt which was a bad position for him since it gave people a better view of his rapidly receding hairline. He was immediately nick-named "Flatliner" because his personality resembled the tell-tale flatline of a dead person. Never having bartended before he asked someone on his first day what was in a Tanqueray and Tonic. He also asked what was in a hot damn shot before he gave up risking our ridicule and started looking things up in a book. Then he made up his own shot book which he brought to work with him daily. It contained shots with names like "Angels Kiss" and "Devil's Punch." Most of these drinks contained ingredients we didn't even have. Mango juice, pomegranete syrup, things used to make foo foo drinks far away from the staple of bud light and vodka cranberries our customers demand. One of us, who shall remain nameless, but it wasn't me, stole the book. Many many bad rituals were perfomed on the book before it was returned, in a ziploc baggie, to it's owner. Keep in mind all of this happened in the space of two weeks. That is how long flatliner lasted before changing his mind about wanting to be a bartender. The phrase "We eat our young" comes to mind.

Later that night I happened to glance over at the door just in time to see what was probably the most ridiculous thing of all. A very large man came in wearing a light up belt buckle, the kind that you can program to say anything you want. What was his message? What was so important to this man that he had to spell it out, literally, for the world to see. It was his MySpace.com identity. BlahBlah@myspace.com. I felt sort of sickened but maybe he was meeting some fellow my-spacers or had a blind date with someone he met online and told them this was how they could identify him. Hopefully the other person ran when they saw what he was wearing. I have seen other people wear these and have cute little sayings on them. I think they are silly and it's not something I would buy but it was definitely cute when hot boy Mackie from Oz used to wear one backwards that said "Bottom." You could only see it when he was turned around and his beautiful ass was presenting itself towards you...ahh memories. I think he is in Dallas now gracing that, ahem, city with his hot...I should stop.

Last week I met two boys from Kentucky. They had the cutest little accents. We were talking and they told me the area they were from, a sort of remote part of the state. Later I was looking at one boys I.D. when I realized he's from Van Lear KY. Now that may not strike most of you out there but I immediately knew where he was talking about. It's a song lyric, "My daddy worked all night in the Van Lear coal mines." That's right, this young man lives a stones throw from Butcher Holler, birthplace of country music legend Loretta Lynn.

Over the weekend Justin my Justin was in town. He's been living in NY since the storm. His mommas birthday (29 again! Happy Birthday Ann!) is Wednesday so he came in to see her. Justin and his momma and two sister and I all went out to lunch on Sunday afternoon. We wanted to eat at Asian Cajun but it was closed as was almost every other restaurant we went too until we ended up at Landry's seafood. Surprisingly it wasn't bad. The company was great and we all laughed and had a great time together. Ann is much closer to my age than I am to Justin so we have this strange friendly generational connection. It was a great time and I was so glad to have time to just sit down and talk without having to get somebody a drink.

Jeff and I went shopping yesterday at Lakeside mall. I wanted to look for some new pants and maybe a couple shirts. I found a shirt at the republic that I wanted but wasn't going to pay full retail. We hit a few other stores and bought a couple things at Gap and American Eagle. On the way out I said "I'm still thinking about that shirt at Banana" so Jeff went and bought it for me. We missed having christmas together so he bought it for me for my late christmas present. Just before the door I said I wanted to go into Hollister. Normally I hate their stores and their clothes but I did find two shirts that I liked, both of which were reasonably priced. Is Hollister the cheaper A&F or did I just get lucky? The one thing I couldn't figure out was how anyone was able to ring me up (and trust me it looked as if this kid was using every bit of his brain power) since no-one working in the store struck me as over the age of 14 years old. The Metarie schools have almost all re-opened. Before the comments start flowing, yes I did think one of them was very hot but hey I'm not a sicko, 14 is way to young for me.

It's back to work today but I'm only on four days this week so I have a chance to rest and catch up on other stuff that needs to get done around here. My backyard needs a lot of work and I need to catch up on phone calls, especially to Mattie. That's it, ciao for now.

Home...Homo on the Range

I do want to post an entry about the film Brokeback Mountain, but until I get to it, you can amuse yourself with this, we knew it was coming...

Uncle Tom and the Chocolate Factory

I knew this wouldn't take long

In the days following his MLK day speech, Uncle Tom Nagin, our wonderful mayor has been the butt of jokes nation wide. I don't see how, but some people may have missed the story. Here is the actual transcript of what Nagin said that has caused such a ruckus:

Dr. King, if he was here today, he would be talking to us about this problem, about the problem we have among ourselves. And as we think about rebuilding New Orleans, surely God is mad at America, he's sending hurricane after hurricane after hurricane and it's destroying and putting stress on this country. Surely he's not approving of us being in Iraq under false pretense. But surely he's upset at black America, also. We're not taking care of ourselves. We're not taking care of our women. And we're not taking care of our children when you have a community where 70 percent of its children are being born to one parent.

We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.
This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans. So before I get into too much more trouble, I'm just going to tell you in my closing conversation with Dr. King, he said, "I never worried about the good people -- or the bad people I should say -- who were doing all the violence during civil rights time.'' He said, "I worried about the good folks that didn't say anything or didn't do anything when they knew what they had to do.''

Personally I was appalled by his comments, appalled and angry. What are the five stages of grief? I am going to skip bargaining and acceptance and concentrate on anger and depression. How is our city to re-build with that man in office. I'm sure there will be a demand for his resignation from various groups and I would definately support such a notion. What is the Mayors role anyway? We are a federally occupied territory at this point and the Mayor hasn't enacted any laws. I have no idea if there is any way for New Orleans to recall an elected official, but at the very least we could all chip in and get Nagin a cat scan.

With the firestorm brewing, Nagin issued the following:

"I need to be more aware and sensitive of what I'm saying," the mayor said. "Anyone I've offended, I hope you forgive me."

Nice apology Uncle Tom.

In comments later Nagin tried to explain further by saying that you make a chocolate drink with a lot of chocolate and a little white milk. Perhaps he's going to make Mai Tai Mojitos later to accomadate the hispanic and asian communities that were and will again be a part of our city.
I would like to take this time to issue a public apology to all my readers, both here in New Orleans and around the country, for being a part of electing this idiotic man. I will admit that I voted for Nagin. 90% of white New Orleans voted for him. only 50% of black New Orleans. The majority of the city that has returned thus far is non-chocolate (with a lot of caramel as well.) It has been suggested that Nagin was trying to assure everyone who lived here prior to the hurricane that they could and should come back. I say no, not everyone is welcome back. If you are returning to New Orleans to live and work and be a part of the re-structuring of the city, then please, do come home. If the plan is to return to a life on the dole and living off the graces of others, then no, you're not welcome here. A federal judge has now foreced the city to have elections by April 29th, a mere month after Mardi Gras. There are a few candidates out there and I can assure you I will do anything I can to prevent another Nagin term.

A Week in Review

After a week I have had more of a chance to submerge myself into the city. I worked all weekend and it was very busy. Regular customers and old friends stopped by and more than once I heard the comment, "Oh Lawrence is here, now things seem more normal." My presence at my same position, singing along on Sunday nights must represent a sense of restoration to the days before the storm. I have some of the same markers. I used to buy breakfast at the Quarter Master on my way home. It's working on limited hours now and closes at night. The circle K around the corner from me is still closed. Canal place mall, including the Williams Sonoma and the only movie theatre in walking distance, is still closed but due to open in mid February. The noodle place across from Jackson Square is closed and will not re-open. Ali Baba and Dantes pizza are both still closed. Cats Meow, not on my list of places to go, but I am amazed that it's not open. The gay bars are all open, but not 24 hours. Good friends, Lafittes and even Oz all close up by around 3 am. 9th circle is open, though I'm not sure of their hours. VooDoo has re-opened but it sustained major damage. There is flooring but the whole place looks like hell. Their Wordster/Word Dojo machine is working though and I played the other night with T.Q. (the master of Dojo) and Jeremy. That was definitely something that made me think things are returning to our pre-K lives. Silly huh, a game, but it seems that everything that happens has some new meaning, some new representation.

On the other hand, Port of Call is open, I had dinner with friends Saturday night at Wasabi and dinner at Mona Lisa one night last week. Sunday I went by myself over to Angeli and had lunch. That trip taught me an important new lesson about NO. Avoid Decauter Street. I have always sort of disliked that area because it was full of slow moving big assed tourists on one end and street punks on the other. Now it's just street punks, big packs of them. In a discussion with a friend last night we concluded that these are super punks instead of our usual brand of punks. These people seem like they went to punk camp specializing in classes like "Begging: How to Look Menacing" and "Your Hair: How to make it look filthy." That lesson learned, there are many things that are now open, many things that aren't. A friend of mine, John, is now publishing a small paper called Quarter Crawl. It's basically a listing of what businesses are opening up along with a calendar of weekly events. There is a supplement as well called "Queer Crawl" which you can guess is the gay version of it's parent newspaper.

The other thing here; traffic. Now NO has always held it's own in the bad traffic department but now it's just out of control. The veterans, people who have been here for months, clued me in that you have to run errands outside of the quarter only between 9 and 11 am and 2 to 4 pm. My first trip out of the quarter took me to Petco uptown which was horrid. I got home and swore never to return to that section of town again except in the aforementioned hours. Wednesday I went to the grocery store next to the lakefront arena which required a drive through the totally destroyed Lakeview area. Four months have passed and the entire area is basically abandoned and destroyed. There is work happening but not a lot. All you have to do is drive a few blocks out of the quarter and the destruction starts, a sobering reminder of just how lucky we quarter rats were to not have met the same fate as the rest of the city.

Sunday night I went to see a show Jeff has been playing for at Le Chat Noir. It was Ricky Grahams one man show "I'm still here, Me!" The show was really good, Ricky is one of my favorite performers, full of comedy timing and NO references, many that I didn't even get as they reflect a time period before I arrived in town. The show started with Ricky wearing a straw hat with a house on top of it, the now familiar blue roof and marking tag from the cadaver search. His opening number is a reworking of the old song fever but changed now to "FEMA." The show was a mixture of funny re-workings of songs, comedy bits and some serious notes. Last year I saw a show starring Ricky called "Club Toot Sweet on Bourbon Street." It was a show about a period during the late 40's and early 50's when the French quarter had become a neglected place, full of burlesque shows and strip clubs. There were famous performers but Bourbon street was being turned over to decay. Ricky performed one of the songs from that show in this new one. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house at it's conclusion and even Ricky looked teary. It's called Miss Bourbon Street and the lyrics have a reflection on what's happened here over the last few months and how we all feel about the city:

Step right up

and see Miss Bourbon Street

She's the good time dame

all the people want to meet.

All made up

and ready for the night.

Some don't like her ways

but that don't phase Miss Bourbon Street

Some may state the lady's out of date

and lately she's looking past her prime.

She spends more time with drinking

to keep herself from thinking.

The world may pass her by

and that would be a crime.

Step right up

and say she's looking sweet.

She could use a friendly word

Miss Bourbon Street.

People say she's seen better days.

She may be a little down at heel.

But she's a part of the city

that's the heart of the city

and underneath it all

This Doll's New Orleans for real.

So

Step right up

and get yourself a seat.

Her final show is under way.

Things keep changing come what may

and soon may come the day

she's obsolete.

So give her painted cheek a kiss

'cause if it ever came to this.

She's want you to know you'd really miss

Bourbon Street.

30 hours....

I have been back in New Orleans for 30 hours now.

Rolling into the city last night was a strange experience. Both sides of the twinspan bridge had collapsed during the storm but I knew one side was restored and I could come in from the east. Once you get past the cones and barricades and the seven miles of bridge you find yourself in Slidell and the rest of New Orleans east. It was nighttime so it may have taken a few extra minutes for me to realize that it was very dark. No power has been restored to these areas at all and save the occasional street light or small (travel, not FEMA) trailer, there was only darkness. It was a feeling that overtook me as I made my way past the now defunct Six Flaggs and all the way to the Vieux Carre exit. The exit becomes a T at the bottom of the ramp, facing a welfare project. Now abandoned, it added to my feelings of disbelief. I made my way to my apartment through stop signs rather than stop lights.

Dogs are excitable. When you haven't seen them for two months they are extra excitable. I was worried for a hot minute that they wouldn't remember me, but they did and nearly knocked me down with their playfullness. Jeff was probably as glad to see me as I was to see him. We just sat for a few minutes soaking in the moment and then we unloaded the car and he went off to find a parking space. After he came back we talked for a bit and then he headed to bed and I headed out to see what was going on in the quarter.

The quarter is somehat messy. There is limited trash pick-up but my bar is open and running and probably the only gay bar to be able to keep a crowd. Tonight I saw a ton of old friends which made me very happy.

Last night everyone was asking me, "are you glad to be back?" and I didn't know the answer. I still don't reall know if I am happy overall, but if you break it down then yes I am happy to be here. I walked my dogs, I had drinks with some friends and dinner with another. Jeff had been telling me that he had painted our house so I was worried about the outcome. I must say, it all looks great. Even the orange bathroom is good. The banana trees are growing back. There are very few lights ( traffic or otherwise) on St. Charles avenue. Some of my favorite places are still closed. There is a general apathy in the people. I drove uptown to a pet store to get food for the dogs and it was a nightmare of traffic and HORRID drivers. When I left for the bar there were three National Guardsmen with M16s standing in the doorway to Cossimos watching the game on an overhead TV. The bar was fun, again, I saw old friends and felt very welcomed by the people I came across. I walked home with three other friends who offered (and I declined) to smoke a joint with me. They still smoked and I walked along with them until it was my street to turn to go home. Lawbreakers, guilt by association but part of the bohemian (Read: not stinking dirty rotten hippes) atmosphere that was the New Orleans I remember.

Am I glad to be home...yes in many ways I am, but I was and am still sad to have left Indianapolis and all I knew there.

30 hours and counting...

Law