Live from New Orleans

Have you missed me? The correct answer is a resounding, YES!

Tim and I are not willing to pay our hotel another $20 a day so that we can have wireless, when the City of New Orleans offers it free. However, we haven’t been able to get access from inside the hotel. I’m playing hooky from Saints & Sinners to get ONLINE from CC’s Coffeehouse on the corner of Royal and St. Philip. Because if I’d gone much longer without Internet access and LiveJournal I might have had to be hospitalized. Tim, who’s being more responsible and attending a panel, may bring his laptop and join me later.

As always, I’ve fallen in love with New Orleans. You don’t have to be a big party girl to succumb to the city’s countless charms. But it does help to be staying in a fabulous hotel–well, minus the Internet issue and the post-prom teens who turned Tim into the Terrifying Monster from the Land of I-Want-To-Sleep.

Last night we went to a little soiree in a fabulous apartment with a view, two wonderful hosts, and a small group of GLBT publishing’s finest and funnest. In fact, the evening was so nice that Tim and I didn’t mind that we had to practically crawl on all fours to the door so we wouldn’t pass out when we looked down from the outdoor walkway. There’s something really comforting about having a friend and writing partner with whom one can share neuroses like fear of heights.

I’d like to say the less literal high point of the trip was the grits from the Clover Grill, but I got there too late and had to settle for hash browns. Anyway, it would be a lie, no matter how terrific the grits, because OMG, I’ve met David and Shannon and Lisa and Marika and gotten to hang out with Mark again (GREAT master class with author Jim Grimsley, sitting on the front row with Mark like teacher’s pets/acolytes). Whatever expectations I had before meeting D/S/L/M and reuniting with Mark have not been met–they’ve been exceeded. Later tonight after beignets and cafe au lait at the Cafe Du Monde, I’ll get my dog fix when we meet Marika’s handsome Dash.

On the way to CC’s, I saw a little boy sitting in the lotus position on top of his father’s parked car, looking very Buddhalike. A woman waiting on a stoop asked if he could tell her future, and he said, “Yes. Work. Work. Work. And more work.” While the woman laughed, his father sighed and said, “Same future as me.” It’s hard to think about working as I sit at my corner window and watch pretty girls in straw hats and white linen dresses walk by, men holding hands with their boyfriends, and people just inhaling the magic of the Quarter.

But I do need to get some work done. There’ll be lots of photos and other such things to come. For now, I just wanted to check in, read some of your journals/blogs, and say again that Paul J. Willis knows how to host a literary festival and that Greg Herren is one super friend for all he’s done–even above and beyond helping us find THE SOURCE of BBQ Fritos. Those of you who aren’t here? The Crescent City beckons with a whisper of Next year.

Oh. And David and Shannon may even sober up eventually. 😉

Yesterday’s breakfast in Jackson Square Park, where my conversation with an elderly black man made me nostalgic for days of old. Until his cell phone rang and he had to leave, but he gave me his Times Picayune newspaper first. New world meets old world…

Looking in a window and thinking of Audrey Hepburn looking in a window…

Painting in the window of the Rodrique Gallery.

Flowers for tomorrow for all you mothers.