This picture was taken over five years ago (I know, I haven't aged a bit. Call it dumb luck, call it the blood of virgins, whatever). I had just come back from a three hour drive after staying up for two days after working an eight hour shift after writing a term paper. And all of that without cocaine, or meth, or magic fairy dust that flits me off to Never Never Land. I don't think I've ever been that exhausted.

Except perhaps right about now.

It's been, yet again, well over a month since I've last posted on this blog. How stupid of me. Why even carve out your own little piece of the internet if you aren't going to use it? Well, let's see kiddos:

[ 1 ]

I work four days a week as a bartender in a 24-hour St Claude bar. If you don't know anything about New Orleans, let's just say that St Claude, and the surrounding neighborhood, is home to sleazy prostitutes, crackheads, and demanding dickwads who don't know how to leave a tip. Sure, we get our fair share of artists, interesting characters (remind me to tell you about Sir Leningrad), fellow service industry slaves, dancers, swingers, preachers, refined call girls, rambling packs of fetishists, travelers, anarchists, scholars, and all around fun people. But when you work the graveyard shift like me, more often than not, you're going to deal with crackheads.

If I were paid a dollar for the amount of times I've been proposed to, propositioned (was offered $100 just to take my shirt off, once; an all expenses trip overseas to let this bloke to put his face in my cunt), cat-called, offered drugs, got in a fight, kicked someone out, or played match-maker to a hook-up just to get some douche bag to leave me alone, I'd pay for a fucking Ivy League education within a month.

For now, I'll deal with the crumpled bra-dollars and the paltry cigarette cellophane as a tip.

[ 2 ]

I'm typically performing in two different shows each week, sometimes three. One show is on Bourbon Street, the other on Rampart. Both bars have their ups and their downs; on Bourbon, there's a bigger crowd, which is always fun: on Rampart, I never have to worry about appeasing anyone.

I'm still becoming accustomed to queer women's society here in New Orleans. It's far different than any other I've seen -- the gay bars here in NOLA are, of course, overwhelmingly geared toward gay men. It's been like that in every place I've ever been. But the gay women here in NOLA don't seem to really have a presence of their own, though there are some women trying to carve out a place for a queer women's culture. There are three different drag king troupes in this town (which, trust me, is a lot), but no real feeling of community. Everyone fights, everyone's a rival, an everyone's got to sign their allegiance somewhere. It's silly, and I'm not really sure how to deal with it, so I don't, and I stay out of it. Hence the Rampart show: I'm the first king to perform with them, and I can't say that I'm not proud of it, because I damned well am, but it's not a king thing -- it's a queen show that just so happened to let me hop on board.

Aside from those two main points, there are a million other things in my day to day life that drag me away from coming to this blog, but I intend to put a stop to that. I might not post every day, or every other day, but I'm going to make it a point to come back here. Treat it like meditation, maybe.

'Cause hell, I've got to do something other than sling drinks, scheme, and prance about on stage. At least every once in a while.