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... Ceasefire: In Which Your Narrator Gets to the Heart of the Matter ...
Well, I'll bet you wanted to know just what Raphael and Fenton did to fuck up those goddamn Algerians. Me, too. But as with most things in New Orleans, we'll both just have to Wait.
My name is Carlton Fuller. I'm a homeless alcoholic here in the Crescent City, and I ran into the Dude who's Writing this Book at Angeli, his favorite restaurant, and told him that I'd used to be Padgett Powell until my drinking caught up with me. As such, I asked him could I take a chapter and give him the night off, in order to talk about what REALLY matters when it comes to New Orleans.
When you're by yourself, thinking about yourself being with someone in New Orleans, Who is it you Think About while you Get Off?
— Chances are, it's not who you're fucking. Unless you haven't fucked them in about 1,000 years, and then you're not REALLY fucking them, see? And chances are, though, it's somebody you HAVE known previously in the Biblical Sense, as we all draw upon Emotional Recall, or Sensory Recall or whateverthefuck, but not always! Me, for instance, I have never in my life Blown a Gasket all over Melanie Hassler, but I've fantasized about doing it, HERE, in New Orleans, more than one might imagine. Which is a bit embarrassing to mention, since Fenton Rochilieu's fucking her. Or at least that's what Frankie Minot said. But you believe him? Like Me, he's nothing but a goddamn Character. He doesn't really exist, other than the parts of him that are patterned after a dead theatre critic the Author used to Get Drunk with. It's like New Orleans, son. Nola doesn't really exist, either.
Goddamn, but we're halfway thru the month.
Now I'll wager to bet that whoever the Author puts on his Dedication page is not who he thinks about while he wails off, because (a), he's already fucking them or (b) he never THOUGHT about fucking them. Just looking over it briefly here, I don't much think he ever even conSIDered fucking most of the people on this Dedication Page. For instance, Andrei Codrescu. Hah! Or Carlos Carrasco. I know that dude, BTW. LOTS of people want to fuck a man like Carlos, but the Author ain't one of them! Let's see, uh, Damon Sauve. Shit, that sounds about as likely a Real Person as somebody named Kermit Broadmeyer. Just like the people I Myself think about, see? They bear no resemblance to persons Living or Dead. I made them all up.
Just like Myself.
But me, Carlton Fuller, who else do I think about when I think about getting off in New Or-Leans?
I think about fucking Bonnie, my ex-wife, in a honeymoon suite at the Parc St. Charles, by Lafayette Square. Or I imagine her fucking other men. Or I imagine her fucking Kristi, this chick we met that she wanted to fuck, this was shortly before our divorce (it wasn't WHY, though, obviously). Bonnie with her Leica on Royal Street, with her Pentax, telling me I get so HOT when I'm taking pictures of you, Bonnie grabbing my cock inside my pants, unsheathing her body, fingering her clit. Bonnie drunk, stoned, old, crying, helpless, alone. Getting fucked. Working Iberville Street, missing me.
What Whores we are when we try to Love Somebody.
Ah, and Who and What Else? I think of Melinda's legs, slender and taut, plie, en pointe, grand jete. Christine Frenzel, with her long blond hair and her body like Isadora Duncan. Erin Cavanaugh. She's hanging out on Decatur Street for all I'd know. Sandra Terry, lapdancing me in a bar somewhere on Magazine. Everyone finds themselves in New Orleans eventually.
The Author is eating Shrimp Fettuccini Alfredo and sipping a '98 Merlot.
Turn a second corner.
Catherine Elliott. Debby Steinwig, Juliet Sink, all the Sagittarian Jewish Chicks! Gwyn Terry, only because she was a Pisces. All my Loves are Pisces Chicks, when you get right down to it. Like Catherine, probably Susan Ferguson, Sandra was, so is Christine, and my dear sometime-friend Janice.
Christy Thompson, wherever she may be. Heather Ticheli, who's a Taurus and lives in Sweden. Even Laura.
And I Still Miss Someone. Sooner or later, you wake up with Yourself.
But let me tell you what. This is either off the Subject or VERY much ON it. Julian Smith, this psycho who lives on the Georgia Sea Islands, told me he lent a copy of The Moviegoer by Walker Percy to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in New Orleans when the Mob order to put the hit on JFK came thru. The order stemmed from a meeting at the New Orleans Athletic Club. Julian Smith got kept out of the Warren Commission reports by the skin of his dick. And he TOLD me all about it, God knows WHY. And the dude who nailed Kennedy lived here until not that very fucking long ago, until he Died, and no, it wasn't Julian Smith, Bless His Heart. But he pointed me in the right direction, and I looked in it, and I found it. Well, Goddamn.
And Melinda, and Catherine Elliott, and Bonnie and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, I Miss You. Shit,
I miss everyone I've ever known.
So HEY! Motherfucker. Who do YOU think about when YOU get off? I'll tell you what. Get an alias and send me their name and description to the address on the About the Author page, and THEIR ass will make a cameo appearance in the second half of Town Full of Hoors.
It's not that different from yours, but in New Orleans, we all wear Masks.
And you're close to the point where your own mask takes you over.
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