Scorching Both Ends of the Candle in the Crescent City

I used to know my limits. I somehow forgot them on that long dirty highway. It gives you enough time to hallucinate as you dart through the swamps. Some AM station rattling off voodoo-cajun-french-creole-fair.

There are two types of drugs that you should never find yourself tackling in New Orleans. Watch Easy Rider and that'll tell you one of them. Ask me, and I can tell you the other.

Ah, we were killin' old lovers and stuffin' em in boxes. Boxes of booze and pain killers. Driving insanity across state lines. Creole spice and ethanol grade bloody marys. Old world hotels and beautiful dentists on leave from Paraguay. Dilapidated lofts and plant-adorned balconies. Young and hypnotic. Old and mysterious.

Professional sports team owners and young chaps from the South with their Alabama-slide haircuts...they all look the same. Arm and arm with their girlfriends...they all look the same. Drinking for free is always the way to do it, no matter the company you find yourself in. A clever story, a welcome smile, and a helpful accent are useful tools.

I turned down an interview that probably would've been a bad move anyways. My buddy dodges texts that he don't care to read from a girl that he don't care to read. The other scouts the landscape because he doesn't sleep as much. He eats in bed for the nuclear day. Buying art, chasing people, young South American dentists. Buying drinks. Rod Stewart sings and tells me my fortunes...gulps big purple drinks at Phat Tuesdays. Dirty canastas now have my cell phone number and call it when they wanna warm up to something visceral. We're in pictures of people we don't know. We're in pictures we'll hang on our own walls.

New Orleans is the last great city of Old America.