The Marquis’Intimate Diary

SUNDAY, 8 OCTOBER, 2000, ???, NORTH CAROLINA
It’s 1:00am in the morning. I am sitting in a truck at a rest stop with the engine running long enough to heat up the cab again. It is about 2 degrees above freezing for some reason. I am somewhere along I-85 in northern North Carolina on my way to New Orleans with my entire house in the back of this truck and my cat sharing the cab with me. I just slept for two hours (well? It said “rest stop”!) before I started freezing. I cannot put my head on the seat when the engine is running because the vibrations from this mighty mammoth truck rattle my brain in my skull like a welfare woman throttling her five year old child in the PathMark grocery store.

I am high on diesel fumes.

Every other truck parking spot is taken with giant trucks humming away for the heat. I had no idea that sleeping at rest stops for three hours at a time was common practice with the Trucker Bob faction. Fascinating.

I just shiver-jogged my way over the hill to the toilets. Smiled at the guy in the foyer area. “Hey, how y’doin?” The man just stared back, glancing nervously around, perhaps looking for an exit. When I saw myself in the mirror, I understood why. Big puffy sleep eyes with aubergiene Vuitton handbags under each, hair previously in a bun, now in an exploded chicken coiffure. Lips, bloodless and invisible from sleeping in 34°f.

It’s important for a Marquis to look his best at all times.

I feel like if I write for a minute, I may be able to sleep some more.

Here’s what happened in the last couple of days:

Packed.

Packed some more.

Packed.

Christ why do I own so much shit? I mean, no, it’s not “shit.” It’s all very useful and/or singularly aesthetic, my belongings, but I had no idea how much I had accumulated. I’m not even a pack rat really. So how is it I filled a 24' truck all by my lonesome?

My soul will forever be in debt to the Gentleman Caller who has helped me all this week, and even moreso the last couple days loading the “two-people items” (couches, bookcases, piano, bed bits, etc.). Not to mention the other thousand little things he has helped with.

Last night we took a break to go have a drinky with Portia at Doobie’s. Quick drink: We, exhausted. She, going out for an evening of wholesome nightclubbing goodness.

I couldn’t really be very witty or charming at this meeting. I just kept staring blandly into her beautiful face and nodding along to whatever she was saying, trying hard to keep a smile on.

Eventually she left and I spent the next 20 minutes sobbing into my beer.

That represented (or so I hoped) the sum total of my catharsism, for I was beweeping the absence of Portia, the G.C., Doobie’s, my wonderful house, my wonderful city, and all my other friends whom I have left behind.

Had to make a retreat to the loo at one point when the sobs became audible. You know, that sound that sounds like you’re laughing, except your eyes are the Red Sea and your face is puffy and there are sebaceous rivulets of clear snot oozing down your face and coating your lips like a 70’s porn star?

That was me.

Went to bed early, exhausted from loading most of the truck.

Or so I thought “most” yesterday. Took another eight hours or so today with all the “last minute” items. Heh heh.

Oh, and I just have to mention that I have the hugest testicles in the world. If you were to throw them up into the sky, they would eclipse the moon and the sun. (That would also hurt though, so don’t, please.) I am such a big little man because I parallel-parked a truck that’s 32 feet, bonnet to boot, on an eensey-weensey urban Philly alleyway.

Not to mention navigating this bitch along crummy, fucked up Philly streets and through crowded highways out of town and safely (thus far) into North Carolina several hundred miles away.

That’s how enormous my cock is!

You can’t even begin to imagine…



MONDAY, 9 OCTOBER, 2000, ATHENS, GEORGIA
Truck n' Marquis n' Cat

Once again at lovely Lilith’s glorious country château in Georgia. Gee, seems like I was just here the other day or something.

During every move, you have to expect a casualty or two to some of your stuff. If there’s one great truth in life that I have learned, it is that.

I think I’ve found the casualty. A box of 80’s vinyl records proved to be too heavy for a particularly poorly paved and bouncy part of South Carolina, and it burst through a partical-board shelf of a cheap, ugly piece of furniture I picked up some place.

The weight of it also partially crushed a shitty old computer that I don’t care about anymore.

So if that’s the extent of the sacrifice necessary to appease the Moving Deities, I’m only too happy to make that offering.

Chili for din-din tonight, thank you Lilith, and an actual bed, thanks once more.

I look forward to getting to Louisiana tomorrow and just not going anywhere for a while!



Boo Boo Oh, wait, one more thing. Wanted to show you my boo boo.

It was one of those split-second decisions, carrying grandmother’s old statue of St. Francis as I began tripping down the stairs. “The Saint or the Skin? The Saint or the Skin?” The Skin, obviously, was sacrificed. Frank landed unscathed cradled in my arms like a really really heavy concrete precious baby.

I have an acquaintance who I believe collects scabs. This should hold pride of place in her library once it has ripened a bit.

I have never mailed a scab…