a year older, absolutely no wiser

But it's not like that's a bad thing, right?

I had a freaking scream in New Orleans, in spite of the fact that I was feeling a bit too sick for any kind of boozy fun on that sacred day of days. My beloved cohort and inviter-of-me-to-Nawlins was even sicker, so we vowed to raincheck the shit out of some partying. It was pretty incredible to be back in that town, which I really feel like is this other fucking world that sparked so much of my imagination and development and dreams and lust right after I turned 21. In some ways, I really wasn't sure I was going to feel the same way about it. Not because of the hurricane, but because I couldn't help but wonder if I hadn't been crazy about the city per se, but rather just enamoured with my old fuckbuddy who I used to hang out with when I was there.

Luckily, the magic persisted, I didn't even really want to see him (not that he was in town, I think) and it still acts as a rather powerful sexual locus for me, which is also fucking awesome (as it were). Seriously, only in New Orleans do people tell me I'm cute and hit on me and this was perhaps the most intense example of said particular phenomenon.

But first, let's talk about the holiday. So, my friend Mary (my aforementioned beloved cohort) invited me to spend the holiday with her family, which I was excited about because I LOVE her mom (funny damn woman, Ph. D. in British Lit and obsessed with Jack the Ripper) and her mom's girlfriend, whom I had stayed with for one fucking night a day or so after Christmas before I relocated to the pad of ye old fuckbuddy.

Anyway, this trip allowed me to witness the elaborate and entertaining dysfunction of her family. There was yelling, drinking, embarassment, certainty that I was going to watch someone die on Christmas, outrageous claims of the world's largest animal being a 'whale shark,' upsetting Christmas annecdotes...in short, it rocked. I'm always jealous of families that are so expressive, even if their problems seem to be without end - I'm so sick of passive aggressive shit, and I really never see anyone in my extended family, so it's fun to see both elements and not have to deal with the repercussions of either.

Anyway, on Christmas night, Mary, her cousin and I went out to the French Quarter and passed through a few of her favorite dive spots and my old Quarter fave The Abbey. We took turns hitting up the legendary jukeboxes of New Orleans, partook of some delightful free cookies and chatted with some cool girl at the Abbey about her incredible red and green rice krispie treats. Mary was lucky enough to receive the world's worst yet most topical pickup line ever: "I've got a FEMA trailer with your name on it," which was followed up with, "And my zebra sheets survived the flood." Hee-larious, I wrote it down on a cocktail napkin and stuffed it in my pocket so I might enjoy it later in life.

What was really surprising about the whole evening was that it managed to not feel depressing. A few days earlier, the mayor finally suspended the 2-6 am curfew, so I think a lot of people were celebrating that, as well as the end of the irritants and obligations of Christmas. There were a lot of people out, which I thought was awesome. So when Mary and her cousin wanted to head home at the modest hour of 1:30 (amateurs!), I decided to drop them off and head back out the Quarter by myself, which is honestly a very 50/50 proposition: usually I hate hanging out at bars by myself, but Nawlins has this unbelievable conviviality that makes meeting people very easy and fun a great deal of the time. Anyway, this time things didn't go so hot, and I almost headed home but decided to make one last stop.

On this stop, I met a very cute, charming, smart boy who was all up in my business, slathered me with compliments, told me I was an incredible kisser (that one IS true), begged me to let him take me out to dinner the next day...and promptly did not call me. I got really pissed off, but then remembered that game playing is the name of the, er, game. Whatever. I got a little flustered over it, followed by an impossible and seemingly endless quest to get from point A to point B the following day, which lead me to absolutely demand to get seriously drunk.

So, in the midst of mixing beers, shots and Mind Erasers with absolutely no regard for my body, this very hot boy in our drinking posse starts hitting on me. Now, when I meet attractive but evidently stupid gay boys, I don't really make an effort to talk to them that much, because I know that they're stupid and almost guarantee they're not interested in me. As far as I can tell, we didn't really talk that much, but I suppose that as the night continued I lost any sense of what was actually happening (mind erasers...so well named). Anyway, I ran into an old Nawlins acquaintance who used to be the fuckbuddy's roomie, and suddenly this boy in our boozing posse (let's call him Matthew, as it's his name) siddles up to me and tells me that I need to come home with him.

Later on, I realized that he was probably freaked out that I was 'talking' to another male who was not him, and felt like he needed to make his move rather immediately. So, this kid was on the dumb side, but I had to take some naked pictures of him, just because he is so much hotter than any of my other conquests. And even though he was dumb, he was far from the dumbest of the conquests, so not all is lost.

Anyway, very much fun had, and I feel that my adventures in New Orleans jolted me out of my head and sleazed out my soul enough to set me off the the exact right foot for being 24 in the year 2006. It's a little freaky for me to have my birthday so near New Years, just because there's barely time to get used to being another irrelevant digit older before we're talking about a whole new year on deck to piss away.