Further Defined

Here's a word I could easily guess at incorrectly.  Barmecidal.

It feels like it could be something that you drink at a bar for medicinal purposes.  It might mean you've been standing at the bar so long that you are slowly killing yourself.  It could mean somebody has been sitting in your corner spot at the bar for so long that it is absolutely within reason to consider homicide to reclaim the prized red stools. 
Or at least manslaughter.    

But it probably means you've been at the bar for so long, too long, that your capacity to estimate the amount of cash you actually have in your pocket is highly distorted, which is why it seems like a good idea, at the time, to buy another round of patxaran. Ya falta menos.

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Last Call

The saddest time of the night, if you can remember it.

Getting Oystered

November is a month with an r, which means it is safe to eat oysters, unless of course you are eating them anywhere near Dee Dee Sue and me, because they make us very feisty. Or perhaps it's the champagne that necessarily accompanies these mollusky meals that brings out the fresh and fickle characteristics that we harbor deeply. Or the consummate waiter, Frank, from the Le Grand Colbert whose enchanting service makes us feel more hedonistic than usual.

Dee Dee Sue usually takes her annual leave during the heart of the r-season, so our oyster fests are limited to early autumn and late spring. But this year, she's returned to Paris in a nearly-winter month, gracing us with her presence in order to take delivery of a new über-bed being installed in her refurbished apartment.

Oysters are an epicurean preference of mine, though I make it a practice not to eat them in places that are too far from the sea, and to consume these delicacies only from September to April. Do you know why oysters can make you sick? It's their libido. They get frisky as the summer approaches, and milkier and murkier, less tasty and a bit off.

So this genital-like jewel that is lauded as an aphrodisiac takes possession of its pheromones and sets out about a seduction of its own, leaving the rest of us whoozy and very much not in the mood if we don't heed the essential safe-sex oyster rule: Never without an R.

Nothing Dee Dee Sue has to worry about. November is the perfect month to reassemble her boudoir. Oysters may be useful.

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Quatro and Cinco de Mayo

In honor of Dee Dee Sue's birthday (yesterday) and the calendar-count-down day of the 5th of May (today), I considered letting the shoes out of the bag.

Their original sin: a week of slogging through July streets too disgusting to describe (and yet we do it every year) and in the haste of departure, bagged so as not to contaminate the rest of the contents in my suitcase. Once home, the thought of letting them out of the bag was too dirty a task to face (tomorrow was a word I whispered to no-one).

The bag slowly made its way to the back of my closet. But as another season of stomping in the gray filth with white pants approaches, I'm called, faintly, from behind the winter boots now tossed on top. Pulled from behind a long winter of heavy footwear, the bag sees the light of day. But can I open it?

Even the Cinco de Mayo doesn't give me the courage. Perhaps tomorrow. Or else the 6th of June.
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Can do

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot do." (Walter Bagehot, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist in the mid-1800s)

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

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