Oh boy, get ready for a doozy.
There are flowers everywhere.
There are even more flowers everywhere.
I was talking to Ed, who is my neighbor. He posed a hypothetical thought experiment to me. It is a question I have often pondered while staring at the cremation urns that are reverently stored on the top shelf over the bar at the Abbey on Lower Decatur Street.
New Orleans really is a different world from where you live. I honestly do not need to make anything up.
Ed went looking for me at Aunt Tiki’s the other night. He asked Boy George if I was around. She said no. She was not lying. I have not seen Boy George since she was playing the ukulele last weekend. Check the archives.
I am not going to the French Quarter at night until Hallowe’en is over. There will be too many drunken and boring tourists who I have no interest in talking to. I know that only boring people are bored, and I am usually neither bored nor boring, but I have no inner compulsion to offer directions to the best gumbo shop in New Orleans ad nauseam all evening.
I make recommendations for a living. I do not enjoy doing it on my off time to someone who cannot speak without slurring and is not going to remember what I said, anyway. These next two weeks are just a hiccup in my routine. After that, I am going to have lunch with someone I want to have lunch with. Stay tuned.
I sometimes take photos and I have no idea why when I look back at them. My grandfather was the same way.
When was the last time you went to somebody’s house for a slideshow of their vacation? People would project photos on a screen, just like the movies but the pictures did not move. The only sound was the narration and the conversation. It was like the future, only simpler.
This is the time and this is the record of the time.
Lest I digress further, Ed, my neighbor, peeked at me through a gap in the fence that separates our back yards. Another fence separates our front yards. Our two houses are about three feet apart at their most nudging corners. Ed and I are both urban gentlemen, though one of us better dressed than the other.
Everyone has their own style. Good fences make for good neighbors the way happiness loves company.
I need to hang a curtain over that gap in the fence. Our neighborhood is not zoned for peep shows. That would be in the 7th Ward, where the Showcase is, where those businessmen from the East want to open a cigar bar.
Ed and Mrs. Ed are entertaining company, poolside, in their back garden. I was not invited, a fact about which I am not complaining in the least. Ed learned long ago that I dislike meeting new people. I hobnob with strangers all day long. I do not enjoy doing it in my off time. I am perfectly content hearing them talk like a burbling brook in the background that I needn’t pay attention to, rather than engage with people I will never see again.
Ed and I both know that. Mrs. King does, too. I will always be happy to talk with you. What are friends for if not that?
When I am not working in my back garden, I sometimes smoke a pipe packed with a richly flavored tobacco smoking mixture blended for the evening. Eveningtide is a period of relation and leisure. I am a man of leisure. I smoke my pipe Lord-of-the-Rings-style, thinking deep thoughts, pondering the wheel of fortune, reciting bones-old poetry and plotting the demise of evil in the world.
Sometimes, a man needs a nightcap.
Ed smoked a side of brisket yesterday on his back porch. The smell wafted over the fence. Ed’s guests are going to be in for a treat.
Two days ago, Ed told me that he was going to be smoking brisket the next day. I snuck over and put Ex-Lax in his smoker in the dead of night, amongst the wood chips, before he got started. I was dressed in all black when I jumped the fence that separates our back yards. A grappling hook was involved. I was in full ninja mode. Do not tell anybody.
Everybody loves a practical joker. The Rhinestone Ninja does not cause trouble. He limits his activity to minor mischief.
It is two days later since I laced the wood chips with Ex-Lax. I will ask about how the brisket went over two days from now. The reason I am waiting two days in the future to ask about how the brisket went over is because I want to let events take their course.
Mr. and Mrs. Ed’s guests are from Texas. I saw one of the guests through the gap in the fence. I could tell by the cut of this guy’s jib that this is a guy who knows his way around a good brisket without mincing words.
It must be nice to have one’s own personal swimming pool like the Clampetts. I would not know. I dislike groundskeeping. This is why I let the chickens do the weeding. They destroy almost everything. Like Rome, chickens make a desert and they call it peace.
Okay, now I am going to talk about the Pervert. I like to keep things family-friendly above the paywall, and things may be getting a little blue behind the paywall, today of all days.
Longtime readers may remember why everyone knows he is a pervert. It is the reason they call the pervert, ‘The Pervert.’ It is not like a secret code. He has to be him. I will see you behind the paywall.
If the shoe fits, wear it.
I will briefly recap the story to get everyone up to speed.