Hey, Hey, Mardi Gras!

We're feeling the draw again. New Orleans is calling. At first it was a low moan, seductive and enticing. In the past few days it's become a siren's wail, urgent, insistent, unrelenting.

Mardi Gras isn't for another four months, but figuring out whether we're going has become an urgent matter to us.

I blame HBO, the US television company. Specifically, I blame "Treme" (pronounced Tre-May). We just finished watching the first series on DVD, a birthday gift from a Texan friend. The show itself is a slow burner, character driven. New Orleans, "Nawlins" is the true star of the show. A downtrodden but gracious Southern Lady, her petticoats muddy but her head held high.

The TV series follows the lives of a handful of Katrina survivors, struggling to rebuild their lives, their homes. We relate, in a way. Just months before the storm, we had our wedding there, in the heart of the French Quarter. It was appropriate. She had always been our spiritual home, somewhere that healed our souls. Watching the waters rise was heartbreaking. Counting the human cost in the weeks and months that followed was worse. Knowing that one of the truly unique places on the face of the planet might wither and die was a crushing burden to live with.

And yet we didn't return immediately. We didn't want to accept that the reality could match the images plastered across the internet, broadcast on every news channel. If we stayed away, we could imagine that She was still perfect in her imperfections. We made a pact to return for Mardi Gras 2010. We made it to 2009 before the pull became too strong. It was a good year. The Mardi Gras magic was still there.

Last night we stood in our flat. The remodel is progressing, but at a snail's pace. It feels like we've been homeless for months. Perhaps we're feeling echoes of Katrina. The place smells damp from wet plaster, there's carnage everywhere, the new staircase lies awkwardly on it's side, as if washed away by the tide. Chaos rules. I want to be home again, but for now, there is no such place.

I am so not...

...getting up at 8:00am tomorrow.

Just saying.

The Open Road

I will always remember the night I proposed to my husband. It was years before the Civil Partnership bill was passed. We had no legal way to cement our relationship. In a moment of clarity, I realised that meeting this man had changed the course of my life, forever. I didn't have a ring. I hadn't prepared a speech. We were on a triple seven, flying home from Kansas City. 35,000 feet beneath us, the lights of New York City sparkled.

I got down on one knee, blocking the aisle, and took his hand in mine.

We landed in London at 7:00am, made our way through customs and immigration, then home, tired but happy. It was a new day, a new chapter in our lives. That day, the world would become a new place, more than we could have imagined. It was September 11, 2001.

Earlier this year, a young friend of ours, a native New Yorker, met and fell in love with a girl. It's been a rare privilege to have witnessed their feelings for each other blossom and grow over the weeks and months. At times, I've felt like an older brother to the boy, at times a father figure. When he announced that he'd proposed and she responded yes, I couldn't have been happier.

They've asked me read at their wedding. My choice of material seems obvious to me: an excerpt from a Walt Whitman poem that we used in our own ceremony.

Song of the Open Road (Excerpt)

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

Listen! I will be honest with you;
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you:

Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe - I have tried it - my own feet have tried it well - be not detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Displaced

It's easy to feel displaced when you are.

Our home is being remodelled. The works were scheduled to finish tomorrow. That deadline is blown, most likely by three or four weeks. There was no way we could have lived on site during the build. The place was gutted, completely.

We had offers: friends who wanted to put us up in their homes, on their sofas, in some cases in their beds. To give ourselves some sense of stability, we opted to rent a small room in a shared house. We're in our 40's, living with strangers for the first time since university. It's not easy. You never know when there's going to be a key in the door.

"Yeah, harder, yeah, c'mon, oh God! YES! Shit! Shit, shit, shit! Someone's coming!"

And it's not us.

Adult men need regular sex. Adult gay men especially. I'm walking like John Wayne. A time bomb, ready to explode.