File under: “I’m Always the Last to Know”

Remember a couple of weeks ago at that press conference when a “reporter” asked W how he was planning to garner bipartisan support for Social Security reform when, as the reporter put it, Democrats had “divorced themselves from reality”? It made, like, national news because it was so obvious that this guy was a shill for the Bush administration? My gay-lover-on-the-DL Jon Stewart even did a piece on it? Remember?

Well, even if you don’t, several folks did, and luckily for us, they did some snooping. Turns out that until recently (May of 2003), this reporter, Jeff Gannon (née James Guckert), may have had a lucrative hobby as a male prostitute. I can only hope that his probings in the boudoir were more convincing than those of the press room.

And yes, I know that thanks to the boyfriend and his colleagues and every other media hound in the world, this is old, old news, but hey, ask anybody: I’m always late to the party.

UPDATE: Maureen Dowd has now joined the fray, as well as my hero, Frank Rich!

So, I think it was Freud who basically said that everything comes down to desire–desire propels us forward, makes us move, change, whatever. According to him, the process goes something like, we want X (food, sex, a complete set of lobby cards from Strait-Jacket), we get X, we’re fine for about five minutes, then we want Y (more food, more sex, a complete set of lobby cards from Imitation of Life).

I thought of that this weekend when I drove up to see my friend Lesley in Jackson, Mississippi–home base for my undergrad years. Now, I had some very good times in Jackson, and unlike some of my buddies, I wasn’t counting the days ’till I could sing “Jackson in my Rear View Mirror.” That said, I never really had an attachment to Jackson like the one I have to New Orleans. The affinity just wasn’t there. And that’s why I left: not to get away from something, but to get to something else.

There are parts of Jackson that I miss, though–the most obvious being its architecture. Jackson really started to hit its stride after the turn of the century, after the popularity of Victorian architecture had begun to wane. As a result, many of the homes there–the ones in the really interesting, green, walkable neighborhoods–are of the Arts & Crafts style: bungalows with intimate, woody living areas, like warm cocoons. Very Riven. It’s something we don’t often see here in New Orleans, where homes in much of Orleans parish (i.e. Orleans county) often date to 1900 or earlier.

Lesley’s pad definitely isn’t of the Arts & Crafts style–it was built in the late 1950s and looks like it might have been an early prototype for the Brady Bunch house. Still, on the inside it has many bungalow-esque qualities: lower ceilings, built-in fixtures (note the countertop and lighting fixture in her kitchen above), curious geometries, multiple levels. And as nice as our house in New Orleans is becoming after nearly five long years of renovations, it’s a little…austere? Simple? Something. I mean, I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and I don’t want to move back to J-town. I just forget what it’s like to be in those cozy spaces, you know? It’s an environment I enjoy but have forgotten.

We always want what we don’t have.

The worst part about Arthur Miller’s death is not that we’ve lost a great playwright or a rigorous intellectual or a uniquely American voice extolling the virtues of openness, discussion, and debate.

No, the worst part about Miller’s death is that theatergoers across the land will soon face an onslaught of “tribute” performances of The Crucible, After the Fall, and perhaps the worst play ever written, All My Sons, in which the central character must utter the title of the show in a hideous, theoretically climactic speech: “They were my sons. They were all my sons!”

God, just typing it makes me want to puke.

An Open Letter to the Editors of AARP.org

Dear Old People:

I know you’ve had a rough life. I know that when you were children, you had to walk to your little red schoolhouse in three feet of snow, uphill, both ways, in July. I know that you could go to the cinema with a nickel in your pocket and a ladyfriend on your polio-shriveled arm, buy candy, popcorn, and filet mignon for the both of you, and still walk out of the theater with change in your pocket. I know that you scrimped and saved so that your children and grandchildren wouldn’t have to grow up farming dirt and eating stray turnips. You’ve made your point: you need a break.

But jesusfreakingchrist, people, can’t you at least find a couple of decent writers for that abortion of a travel website you host? This pablum-filled article on New Orleans is littered with every lame cliche about the city we call home, not to mention some rather startling inaccuracies. Namely, the French Quarter’s architecture isn’t French, it’s Spanish. And for goddess’ sake, they’re called streetcars, not trolleys. And frankly, I think the use of “swimming” to describe the preponderance of live oaks in the Garden District not just odd, but overwrought.

It doesn’t sound to me like this schmuck even visited the city. No, it sounds to me like he sat at home on his lazy, wrinkled, 87-year-old ass and pieced together some info from other crappy travel sites and from conversations he had over lutfisk with a bunch of his pals from the First Lutheran Church of St. Paul who had a one-day stopover in New Orleans on a bus tour last spring. (Hey, if he can stereotype, so can I.) I understand that you need something simple and exciting and short for your increasingly senile readership, but goddamn, that’s just offensive.

I’m gonna let it pass this time, but if I ever hear of you encouraging people to call New Orleans “The Big Easy” again, I’m gonna hop in my car, drive straight to Des Moines or Terre Haute or wherever you fuckwads live, and cut your flaccid, flaccid penises right off.

Sincerely
The Sturtle

P.S. No, I’m neither a member of AARP nor a reader of your magazine. It was Tyler who brought your hideousness to my attention. You can thank him yourself.

P.P.S. Yes, I’m switching to decaf now.

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It was a long day capping off a short season. Yesterday, I got up at 6:00am to tidy in advance of the open house for our fellow St. Anne revelers, took the hounds on a nice, long walk, laced myself into costume, and as the parade was passing, locked up and began the march to Canal.

St. Anne took a different route this year, bypassing a large swath of Royal Street that usually wreaks havoc on the parade because of bottlenecking and huge crowds. Although I was skeptical at first, I have to say, it worked much, much better. We hit Canal Street just as Rex was arriving, had a small but frustrating confrontation with some tourist bitch/idiot, then after watching a dozen cracker-iffic floats (the themes of which were so completely obscure that they must have been designed to raise awareness of an as-yet-unannounced exhibition of seventh century Cambodian pottery at the New Orleans Museum of Art), we headed off to fagland.

We didn’t last long. Between the meager crowds (hotels were only at 80% occupancy), the minimal costuming in the gay quarter (attention, bignellymarys of the world: going shirtless with camo pants doesn’t count as a costume), my aching feet, and the fact that my yoga instructor has been kicking my ass lately, I was ready to go, and so was you-know-who.

The weather, which had cooperated for most of the day, finally let loose with a little rain as we neared the house, but nothing major. We got back, undressed, had a few people over for ziti (which I’d encouraged Jonno to make the night before, in anticipation of the need for hot, fattening food late on Fat Tuesday), and crashed. Pleasant and without incident: the way I like my Mardi Gras.

And yes, for the first time ever, I took pictures. I really enjoyed doing it, too. It’s enough to make me re-think my costume for next year to allow for more of it. (New shoes are at the top of the redesign list: five-inch-platforms make me wobble.)

Among the pics: the boyfriend, some killer jellyfish outfits, and Elizabeth, winning the prize of the day for her “barfly” outfit. Truly inspired.

So…tired…. Must…wash…off…glitter.

Pics tomorrow. Now, sleep. Sleep, poppies, sleep….

It’s almost over. One more low-key party tonight for Orpheus, then tomorrow morning’s open house for the Society of St. Anne, followed by a long but festive walk to Canal Street for the Rex and Zulu parades. After that, I’ll have a farewell-to-the-flesh cocktail at some local dive, unlace the knee-high boots, pin the wig and mantilla back on the styrofoam, and settle in for an evening of playing video games and watching the oh-so-WASPy, oh-so-creepy meeting of the courts of Rex and Comus that signals the official end of Carnival in New Orleans.

As exhausting as it sounds, there’s a certain pride many of us take in not just enduring the grueling Carnival season, but truly enjoying it. My pal Elizabeth summed the sentiment far better than I could in an email she sent out last night after a busy night of Bacchus parading and juking to the Go-Gos at House of Blues:

so it’s 2am mardi gras weekend and apparently there was a superbowl? but who cares because though i’ve been under the weather since friday, i rallied to haul myself down to the house of blues where i danced for 1 1/2 hours to the GO-GO’S!!!!

…my ears are ringing, my throat is hoarse and i still have a costume to construct tomorrow….but unlike many of you poor slobs, i have lundi gras off to recover and sew….

so drink up all you new england fans…i’m not jealous of you, even if my home team never makes it to the superbowl. it’s 74 degrees here, i’m off work till next monday and i’m sure my “barfly” costume is cooler than your painted hairy chest that you displayed on tv tonight for all of america to admire.

To the Mary from South Beach working out at the gym last night with his nellynelly friend in the teal bike shorts and matching tank: when you’re talking about the parade, it’s pronounced “HER-mees” (like “herpes”), not “er-MEZ” (like, well, Hermès).

Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay….

FIVE REASONS FRANK RICH SHOULD MARRY ME

1. I’d let him intellectually top me every day–twice daily on weekends.

2. I love to entertain guests, and my silver pattern is very stylish.

3. We both love theatre, secular humanism, and Jon Stewart (whom we might be able to cajole into a three-way).

4. Since the marriage wouldn’t be legally binding, he’d be able to return to his wife and kids if things didn’t, you know, work out.

5. My boyfriend could use some quiet time.

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Yours truly in haughty genderfuck operalady drag before last night’s St. Brigid Ball:

Yours truly completely schnockered on bourbon and cheap schnapps (is there any other kind?), stripped to a decade-old swimmer’s jock and some sock garters after last night’s St. Brigid Ball.