Just got back home (San Francisco) earlier this evening from visiting and frolicking with Melusine and the Marquis in New Orleans. I’d been there for two and a half weeks. Like usual -- when visiting those two in that city -- I find I need to recover from my so-called “vacation.”
Visiting the co-editors is all running about, perching on barstools all around town, aspirins, Emer-gen-C packets mixed with cocktails, being dragged around to other barstools, finding the weirdest things the next day written in the ubiquitous notebook, ruining shoes on uneven pavement, and laughing way too much with Melusine and the Marquis like in the old days -- all to exhiliration and exhaustion.
So, really, going there to see them no way qualifies as a vacation. It’s a Survivor Urban Adventure, where you might eat bugs (crawfish = mudbugs), drink from streams (of beer taps), are given tasking challenges (e.g., challenges such as the Duo Bourbon Street Hop, Skip, and Jump Over Challenge, which entails avoiding Bourbon Street at all costs in the prime of the evening and then in the morning avoiding stepping in vomit and other malodorous debris on Bourbon Street before the shopkeeps have a chance to wash the sidewalks down; the Eyeliner Challenge -- see how many minutes it takes for freshly applied eyeliner to slide down one’s face in the heat; or perhaps, the “It’s Time for Shots” call by bartender friends [truly, an immunity challenge, if ever there was one.].)
Now, you may ask why I’m using “Survivor” as a metaphor here. Blame Melusine. She has this thing for trash TV, and she loves the irreality shows. She made me watch an episode of “Survivor” earlier this week before we went out to face our own challenges in the neverending “Urban Survivor - New Orleans.” Worse, though, she’d come home from work at lunch and if I was there (and I often was, hiding out from the noonday sun), she’d make me watch “Elimidate” and “Fifth Wheel” and some other hideous dating shows -- which I’d never watched before -- and I got sucked in because they’re like watching a car wreck. She’s always loved doing this to me. She says she knows I’ll watch them now at home. I say I will not. They wouldn’t be AT ALL the same without her very important asides and commentary ....
Although watching trash with Melusine is always entertaining (even if slightly painful, depending on how horrid the show chosen truly is) .... that pasttime was a minor fraction of what I spent time doing. What was the main thing I spent time doing? Hmm. Obviously, drinking. (Obviously, because it was after all me, them, and there.)
And. Melusine happens to live in the Quarter above a bar. As I was staying with Melusine most of the time I was there, I was instructed to introduce myself to the bartenders at the bar downstairs so they knew it was copasetic that I had the keys to get in upstairs. And -- when you introduce yourself to bartenders and then say hello as you pass in and out of the place during the day, you end up getting .... drinks.
Just to be sociable, ya know. And New Orleans is sociable.
Ya know.
Speaking of the downstairs bar, the first person, in fact, I happened to encounter upon exiting the taxi when I arrived in town this visit was the fabulous Sonya as she was bartending. She greeted me enthusiastically when I said I was Melusine’s old friend Bat, the houseguest Melusine had informed (warned? promised?) the bar about. Sonya said “I knew the minute I saw you get out of the taxi that you had to be Melusine’s friend.”
Hmm. Must have been the Sepulchritude taint. More telling than stigmata on a balmy day.
____
Shall try to recount a few tidbits or highlights from the trip in the next couple of days after I’ve had a little time recompose or reorient myself a bit ...
And dry out. Just a tad.
Hmm. Emer-gen-C Raspberry. That'll do for now.
Okay, I promised a few highlights from my recent trip.
(Please read no further or avert your eyes if you're allergic to vacation snaps or slides or prattlings ... !)
If you read either Melusine’s or the Marquis’s LiveJournals, you can often read of the various events and club nights they both speak of and attend (or, in the Marquis’s case, sometimes work at), so for the two weeks I was there, I was usually somewhere in the backdrop of any that they mention during that period.
But here are a few of the more notable bits.
The ”I, Claudius Drinking Game” nights were especially amusing. You can see the Marquis’ mention of it for more of an explanation of what that was all about as well as Jonno’s, (whom I had the pleasure of meeting as the event had been moved from the Shim Sham to Jonno's.) So, the event at Jonno’s was attended by a more intimate group, about 10-20 enthusiasts, many of whom were theatre people then involved in a stage presentation of a play called "I Suddenly Know What You Did Last Summer" that the Shim Sham Club was running for a few weeks in wacky homage to Tennessee Williams' week. (I got to see this play one of the nights I was there -- funny funny! Triumphant overacting.)
Playing the "I, Claudius Drinking Game" with a bunch of twisted theatre people was most fun, and as the two Tuesdays I was there spanned the Caligula and Messalina episodes -- definitely the most rambunctious of episodes -- it was especially delicious. Everyone roared and drank up at the infamous "Not My Head" scene! Then we reversed it to the beginning of that scene and savored it again.
Punk Rock Karaoke at the Shim Sham Club, which I went to both Wednesdays I was there, was adorable, just adorable.
Oh, yeah, mustn’t forget to mention the night the Marquis, bartending at Lounge Lizards, got us (me, Melusine, Sonya, and Lucy) drunk, and we decided then to meander off and all go get tattoos like we were drunken sailors. Yup.
Thus, my new tattoo (and permanent souvenir of the trip)
Unfortunately, the day before my last full day there, we had one major trauma of a day when upon waking up one morning, we discovered that Melusine’s 18-year-old cat Sophie had died in the night. She hadn’t been sick so apparently she had just arranged herself in the middle of the floor and died peaceably of old age. Still, it was understandably very upsetting -- for Melusine especially. A toast to you, dear Soph.
Saturday, early morning, I needed to leave for the airport at 6 am. So, as the bar downstairs from Melusine’s closes at 6 am, we told a few people to meet us there around 4 or 5 for my sendoff party. I actually was sensible (for once) and took a few hour nap from being out the evening before until 4:30 am when the Marquis called us from downstairs to say “Where are you? What are you doing sleeping? Come down here now.”
This we did.
They insisted on wanting to take a picture of me right after I’d just woken up and my hair was still wet. Digital cameras can be a menace. I protested, so here’s the Marquis trying to help by covering up my damp bangs.
Also from that morning, a picture of Melusine at the bar’s jukebox:
St Paul Arts & Press, a fine arts journal (and more), just published a little stream-of-bar-consciousness piece I recently wrote called Winter's Last Dregs in a Cup.
The piece is a little tidbit I wrote while just in New Orleans.
