<TOY DOLLS> “Ach! Me back’s knackered!”

“Have you got a bad back?”

“Aye.”

“Well try some of this!”

“What is it?”

“It’s Fiery Jack!”

“Oh, go on then.” [pause] “ARRRRRRGHHHH!”

[singing]Fiery Jack! Fiery Jack! It’s red hot! On yer back! Fiery Jack! Fiery Jack! Believe me! It dooze that… </TOY DOLLS>

Greetings from the epicenter of pain. Here are two reasons why I don’t believe I will ever move away from New Orleans again. 1)Because it’s bloody New Orleans, ferchrissakes! 2)I never ever! wish to be faced with moving my heavy, heavy stuff again.

Been moving for over a week. Not a day has gone by that has not inflicted its own kind of cruelty upon my body and soul. And it’s not over yet! That god damned piano. That god-muthafuckin-damned piano. It is still sitting in the truck, mocking me.

Why oh why did I not take a fancy to the piccolo or pan pipes when I was 10?

But I have put the last two days (or last two weeks, for that matter) behind me, just for the moment. It is a lovely, somewhat crisp yet not too cold evening. I am sitting out on the high balcony looking out at the lovely Garden District homes around my house. A white cat (bad luck in the land of voodoo) zigzags across the street. The ceiling fan makes the light from the bedroom chandelier flicker on the ceiling of the balcony/gallery reminiscent of any Tennessee Williams play. My turn o’ the century dresser with the beveled mirror looks to be finally at home and in its element through the slats of the rickety old shutters standing sentinel on either side of the floor-to-ceiling window. I am smoking Camels and sipping a glass of Absente which is a very convincing knock-off of absinthe. The cat purrs as she pretzels about my legs. There is rich laughter from somewhere nearby. Sarah Vaughan croons smokey blues from the bedroom softly. The ubiquitous 14 foot ceilings of New Orleans give even a mundane drink on the balcony an air of grandiosity. Regal. Decadent. Aristocratic. Befitting a Marquis, to be sure.

This is so beautiful I could weep tears of joy.

Could be the cocktail though.

I just popped into the French Quarter to see Patti — her beautiful face was the elixir I required to end the day’s very real and very difficult devoirs of moving heavy, heavy stuff, tout seul.

Tomorrow afternoon, Melusine arrives in her new home, dragging two drugged cats from San Francisco. There is much to be done before her grand entrance. I don’t presume to set up our house going by my flights of fancy alone — that is a job for the two of us in tandem — but I do want her to know that it is a home upon first glance, and so many, many boxes must be incised, extricated and dispatched so the château doesn’t look quite so like a distribution house for Amazon Dot Com.

I am at once utterly at peace from the Green Fog of this remarkably good drink, and utterly in pain from my screaming muscles.

I wish I had someone in my bed to pet languidly for hours. Besides the silly cat, of course.

Funny Thing #1 about the new house I discovered this evening: Two of the upstairs bedrooms have remote control ceiling fans/lights. Which sounds unnecessary, but is actually kinda cool if you’re reading in bed and want to turn out the light without getting up, as I so often do.

The remotes both have alarmingly strong signals apparently, so when you’re in one room and hit a button, it takes effect both in that room and the other room, way down the hall.

Which means that the guest and the marquis must be on precisely the same sleeping schedule, for I have not yet discovered a manual override option. The remotes seem to be the only method of turning on or off the lights.

Why do I not have someone in my bed?

“You go to my head and you linger like a haunting refrain and I find you going round in my brain like the bubbles in a glass of champagne…”


Micha’s glass painting over the bed:
“Extra Thin Rolled Prophylactics — SPARES”
— it seemed an appropriate place to put it.


St. Francis on the mantle with collection of absinthe.
It is the absinthe that makes me think it is a good idea
to take pictures of my bedroom tonight
and post them on the internet.