In Which mrpeenee Shares

My new favorite pretend boyfriend, Denis Vega.  Or Vegas.  Apparently it depends on how much room they have in the text box.

Also, my ongoing well of angst, my house in New Orleans, aka The Reno that Wouldn’t Die

Word reaches us that now the project will not be finished until the end of April.  And that with the word “probably” ominously tucked onto the end of the prophesy.   As I told dear, dear Diane von Austinburg, let us look away from unhappy little face.  I’m going down at the end of March, although I’m sort of leery since every time I show up, the deadline slips back another month or so.

Is it any wonder I seek solace in the arms of porn?  Is it?

Also, if you haven’t been tuning into the marvelous tumblr Goldenfleecing, do so right away.  They’re having a special on redheads, a Gingerfest.

Boxing Day

Sorry I’ve been distracted, but I’ve been shipping off all kinds of goodies to New Orleans and my life has been an absolute whirl of packing tape and cartons and pissed off kitties who do not appreciate change, not one bit.

I have known for months and months that I would be sending all the furniture and knick knacks I’ve bought here so of course that meant I completely ignored packing until the night before the movers came calling to load up the Pod when I burst into a frenzy of relocation.

Have you heard of the wonders of the Pod?  The company drops off a shipping container in your driveway,  you stuff it full of your flotsam, and they pick it back up to ship it off to your destination.  It’s possible flying monkeys are involved.

Part of the thrill of dealing with the company is announcing that “the pod people are coming on Wednesday,” which sounds a lot like the vilains from some cheesy 50’s sci-fi flick are dropping by for drinks and a couple of hands of bridge.

Naturally, I have spent the last few days since the pod left bumping into things I meant to ship off in it.  Books.  Linens.  Speakers.  Cats that refuse to stop pissing in the corner because they’re mad that I shipped the bed I thought of as mine but turns out it’s “ours.”  Stuff.

In Which mrpeenee Returns

Cause mrpeenee likes to be stylin’ when he’s suffering through airport purgatory.

People of Earth, I know what very few posts I am able to scratch up here have lately turned into two flavors:

• I’m going to New Orleans
• I just got back from New Orleans.

This time I just skipped the “I’m going to New Orleans” part and I’m here to report I’m back.  Surely you missed me.  And was the old place charming as ever?  Why yes, yes it was.  Thanks for asking.  I had a great deal (possibly excessive) of deliciousness, including duck gumbo at a fancy place and shrimp remoulade at a decidedly not fancy place dear to my evil little heart.

I also got to hang out in a bar called Lafitte’s for their Tired Old Disco Night with Jason from Night is Half Gone.  Too fabulous, I only wish you could have been there.  The old darling really is charming, you know.  He assures us all the miscreants he teaches are wild for Beowulf this semester.  I’m skeptical, but he swears it.

He and I are were able to impress Secret Agent Fred with our in-depth knowledge of the song One Night in Bangkok.  I thought everyone knew it was from some odd Broadway musical named Chess about a real chess tournament held, logically, in Bangkok and written by the ABBA guys.  Didn’t you?

Fred brought along his boyfriend (yes, it’s true, he’s off the market.  Sorry.) who’s very fond of a snort or two so when Fred got bored standing around my house there watching me enthuse over drywall installation, I could send them off for drinkies and everyone was happy.

I particularly was happy because, at long last, drywall has been hung and you can now actually see the shape and size of the rooms.  Big, big yay.

before

After, with the new exterior paint and the dumpster box out front which has apparently become a neighborhood fixture.

The back rooms before all the walls were ripped out to make one huge ass room.

  

Huge ass room

Huge ass ceiling of huge ass room.  And get off that beam, I paid too much for you to use it as a catwalk.

New Orleans News. Also, I’m Not Dead

I’ve spent the last few days hovering on the edge of being sick; sort of feverish and queasy, wondering when the ebola was going to strike.  Turns out it was just a reaction to a flu shot I got last week, but that didn’t stop Saki from occasionally checking in to see if I was dead enough to eat.

This was all shortly after Secret Agent Fred and I returned from New Orleans where Fred entertained the hotel staff by raiding the self service bar in the lobby and then settling in to take a nap on the couch there despite the staff’s efforts to shoo him off to his room   They seemed fairly amused by the whole thing in describing it to me the next day, which says a lot about both Fred’s charm and their pleasure in watching me squirm as they dragged out each mortifying detail.  All of which I repeated to Fred, except for the parts I exaggerated.  And the ones I just made completely up.

I also was able to check in on the progress of the renovation of my house there which was terribly gratifying.  I was especially please with the big back room.  I took the back two rooms on each side of the double and combined all four into one ginormous room and then put in a wall of windows across the back to see the garden, which currently is a mud and mildew pit, but one day soon will be full of Camellias and elephant ears and crape myrtle and other old timey New Orleans garden stalwarts.

before

Currently, complete with riff raft.

Again, before.  Who knew what horrors lay beneath those innocent looking dirty walls and cheap tile?

Windows.  Lots of Windows.

Nuns in the News

And yet another clip.  I seem to be turning into a lesser Redundant Variety Hour.  This one comes to us from the our dear Sister Mary Legs in the Air, who’s running the reno in New Orleans for me.   Sister got his name initially because of his fondness for all things religious, but specifically Catholic.  Sort of a passion for the Passion.  Natch, his contribution turns out to be a rocktastic nun.  Irene Cara, Bride of Christ.

Bitch nails those power notes.  Dancing in Oxfords.  Religious ecstasy in the audience.  Safety Gay monks stripping down to pastel clam diggers.  Everything you want except for dumping a bucket of water over her.  She’s a maniac.  Do you think this is a standard for Italian drag queens now?

Sister is much in the mrpeenee news this week because Secret Agent Fred and I  leave Thursday morning for New Orleans to check in on what shenanigans the crew has gotten up to lately while putting my house there back together.  With any luck I will return with photos of the lovely electrician, Marty.  Or maybe his name is Marti.  Could be.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/N011JCY5bL4&source=uds

Sell it, sister.

In Which Cash is Dropped

Crepe myrtles, one of my favorite Southern flowers, in bloom

Attention, People of Earth:

So anyway, I got a charming postcard from an old friend (isn’t that quaint?)  which reminded me I needed to attend to my own quaint writing medium and now here we all are.  Welcome back.

New Orleans?  Fabulous, darlings.  I swept through thrift stores,  junk malls, and Good Antique Shoppes with equal abandon, flinging the bucks like a drunk sailor in a cathouse.  mrpeenee’s credit card has a new, possibly permanent dent in it, but it was worth it.

I found a beautiful big dining table with a huge dark green marble top, a pair of charming antique armchairs, reupholstered in a lovely grey and white stripe,  a couple of chest of drawers, a very pretty chandelier that will be much improved by having some of its fussier crystals removed, lamps and a vase.  I also met with the cabinet maker who’s doing the kitchen and picked out the marble and tiles for the baths and the kitchen and the bricks for the patio.

Also, I got to see for the first time the couch I bought online.    Sweet.

Ooh, also, a lovely little drop leaf desk.  We must have seen fifty of them, or more.  Where on earth could they all have come from suddenly?

Chandelier in a box.  I rather like the minimalist implications, but I think I might hang it without the cardboard, what the hell.

My talent for arbitrary decisions stood me in good stead; I chose the bricks in under five minutes.  It probably took us longer to park.  I just don’t see the point of dithering, especially over something like patio flooring.  I’ve discovered it seems so overwhelming when you’re standing in the middle of eleventy million options, but then once they’re installed you never critically look at them again.  After all, they’re just bricks, or light fixtures, or faucets.  You see something you like, take it.  Perfection is not achievable, says the buddha.  Or mrpeenee.  One of us, anyway.

Quiet, please.  Can’t you see tattoo buddha is taking a nap?

But that’s only in person. I came home to nail down the bathtubs and sinks and stoves and whatnot online and once again the internet with its vast universe of choices reduced me to a blob of indecision.  Until, that is, I recalled how effective cutting myself off from porn until I at least picked out a goddam tub had been.

And it’s a good thing naked muscly men are such an effective driver for me since renovation on the house has suddenly shifted into some kind of warp speed.  When I left there, all the interior walls had been ripped out and the floors in the bathrooms were nonexistent.  Now word reaches us framing has finished and walls are going up.  Hoo hoo!  Walls!  Floors! All kinds of cool house stuff.

Reporting Live, and Bleeding, from New Orleans.

Why on earth am I back in New Orleans in July?  Mostly to show solidarity with Sister Mary Legs in the Air who is drilling down through the house renovation, but mostly because I need to pick out some windows and other detritus at the architectural salvage place.  I also want to take another run at antiques and, as always, I want some shrimp.

I got in late last night and somehow found myself up awake and at ’em early this morning, which is so very not my style.  Since I needed supplies, I wound up hanging around outside the Walgreen’s for them to open along with a most colorful gang of lowlifes.  It was like being on set at Warner’s between takes of some not-very-successful Bogart film.

Speaking of Not Our Sort At All, I flew Delta here and if you were wondering on which airlines people board without wearing their shoes (perhaps they didn’t understand they could put them back on after security, perhaps they just didn’t want to, perhaps they don’t have any.  Who knows) I have the answer for you.

And now my thumb has started bleeding mysteriously, like some stigmata.  I went over to the front desk for a bandaid and it’s telling that I stay here so much, I knew where they were when the clerk didn’t.

The temps and humidity combine to produce an ambience similar to a pot of water right before it boils.  Dear god, it’s good to be home.

In Which mrpeenee is Forced into a Decision

I’m still struggling with picking out fixtures for the house in New Orleans.  Selecting bathtubs and whatnot was a chore I knocked out in an afternoon when I redid the bathrooms here at Chez peenee, so why it’s taking me more than three months to grind these out truly baffles me.  My talents at procrastination just seem to have developed, I suppose.

I did manage to scrape together a frantic few, so I could get the specs off to Sister Mary Legs in the Air, who’s been very patiently putting up with my doddering all this time. I motivated myself by prohibiting porn until I had made some decisions.  That’s right: I have moved from nagging myself to punishing myself.  Oy.

Items I snagged included sconces.  I like this one very much, plus I was thrilled by its description:

“Ostentatiously crisp white shades rise from a sparkling chrome bar in an effortless statement of both class and gentility”

cause I am all about ostentatious gentility.  I sort of love the passion whoever wrote this brings to modifiers for modifying’s sake, although understanding what those big words actually meant would probably have helped.

So now I get to hoist back up on the porn train.  What am I watching these days, you ask?  Oh, just a little something called momronboyz.com.  Rosy cheeked, smooth skinned lads in white shirts and ties  and very odd underwear being molested.  What could be better?

Potty Mouth

In buying my house in New Orleans, I merrily believed the most taxing decisions would involve decorating conundrums like paint colors and such.   I overlooked the fact that in ripping out everything from the kitchens to the electric sockets, someone (that would be me) would have to pick out new ones to replace all that.

I’ve spent the whole evening looking at bathtubs and then, just for laughs, toilets.  I’m sure I don’t have to explain to anyone living in this consumers’ paradise, choice really isn’t a problem.  It’s narrowing things down that’s the bitch.  All I want is a potty that transports the poo out of the house.  A built-in nightlight is not something I had me heart set on.  Even when I cleared the list of lights and surround sound and “cleansing devices” (oh dear.  Oh very dear.) I wound up with a considerable table of comparisons most of which seem identical.

The search engine on the Lowe’s store page asks “What are you looking for?’  I understand they’re trying to be helpful, but I was so frustrated by that time, I took it as a more philosophical question and decided if their page wanted to know why I was bothering to look, maybe it was time to go to bed.

Free to a Good Home, One Secret Agent

Sister Mary Legs in the Air, Magda and me at the sketchy remains of my house in New Orleans, largely held together by blue tape. Had I known what lay ahead of me just a few short hours later, I would have taken the chance to bury Fred in the backyard, dead or not.

The scene: mrpeene’s tasteful French Quarter hotel room, 4:30 AM as he bustles about, preparing to depart for San Francisco, becoming increasingly edgy as his calls to Secret Agent Fred go into voicemail, an exercise with Fred which is absolutely pointless.  One might as well write notes, seal them in old bourbon bottles and throw them in the Mississippi.

Finally, short lived relief as Fred calls in..  Short-lived because Fred’s contribution is nothing short of gibberish.  I could swear the phrase “argle bargle” is mixed in with the rest.

mrpeenee: “Queen, where are you, I know you are not packed, the car is waiting downstairs and we have to go.”

Secret Agent Fred: “aq;fhpovxcmsurg;dsajhfpentmbvhsd;dfhs,mfvhsf,snf.    Argle Bargle.”

mrpeenee, his voice raising with his blood pressure: “What?  Bitch what are trying to say, where are you?  This is the time I really am going to kill you and leave your body behind.”

Secret Agent Fred: “aq;fhpovxcmsurg;dsajhfpentmbvhsd;dfhs,mfvhsf,snf.”  and then, possibly, ” I’m right outside the hotel.”

mrpeenee, knowing full well better than to take this at face value, goes out on the balcony and sees no one resembling, even slightly, Fred. “Queen, I don’t know where the fuck you think you are, but it is not outside the hotel.  You get here NOW or I’m leaving you behind.”

Just then, I hear Fred’s dulcet tones coming into range and, sure enough, there he comes, shambling up Chartres street, still babbling into his phone.  At that point. I leave off talking into the phone and just start screaming threats and slurs down at him.  Fred is completely oblivious to many things, including the fact I am standing twenty feet from him so he stays on his phone.  Kids these days and their darn gizmos.  Despite the early hour on our very quiet street there are a great many onlookers taking this all in as some kind of colorful New Orleans street theater, like something out of Tennessee Williams.

Secret Agent Fred: “Drop a quarter in it, bitch”  I admit it, a phrase that has certain insouciant charm, but is not helping anything.

I run downstairs and grab Fred, still blabbering into his phone, and drag him past various street vagrants, neighbors, the house porter and the car driver, whom I assure, “We’ll be right back.”  He seems unimpressed.

Also unimpressed is the hotel night manager who only asks “Are you checking out?”  No, fathead, we’re rehearsing for the Golden Girls reunion.

In Fred’s room. I order him to take a quick shower.  He refuses and I explain he smells like he’s been rolling on the floor of a not very nice bar, a point which seems all too possible.  I finally yank his shirt off, give up on his pants since his belt seems to be welded shut and just give him a once over with a wash cloth and cold water, just to be mean.

As I frantically pack his suitcase and scream at him to get his goddamn clothes on, Fred takes the opportunity to critique my packing style by pulling out everything I’m able to stuff in, announcing “I want to wear that.”

I honestly have no idea how I got him out the hotel and into the car, but finally, we are on our way and Fred entertains our long-suffering driver and me with the details of his evening’s divertissements.  Choice snippets of my replies to this follow:

“You got punched in the face AGAIN?”

“Why would (our friend ) Levee hit a woman?”

“MUSHROOMS?  When the fuck did you have time to eat mushrooms?  How can you be tripping?  We have to get through security and on the plane in less than an hour.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh”

The last thing our driver said to me, as he bid us adieu, not doubt glad to be rid of us?  “He is never getting on that plane.”  Believe me, this was not news to me.

Amazingly we did, in no short thanks to my constantly hissing “Zip it” to Fred, who wanted to befriend every authority figure we encountered.  I can only assume the goons at the New Orleans airport have all seen plenty worse in their time.

God, they assure us, is a mill who may grind slow, but grinds incredibly fine and Fred got ground as finely as possible since airlines had cancelled our flight and wound us up hanging around the Dallas airport for SIX HOURS during which Fred mostly moaned and whimpered and I clarified that it was exactly what deserved.

When finally, finally, we got home Fred allowed as he thought he would stay home the next time I went to New Orleans.  “Who invited you?” was all I said.

Truly, it’s a good thing I love the old thing because I can’t tell you how many times drowning him in some mens room toilet seemed like a sensible idea.  It’s so nice to be home.