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.