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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The Corner One

It won't be empty for long, that coveted corner stool.

Dee Dee Sue is coming back to town. She's swinging in on Saturday, and it seems that activity at the office might finally start picking up.

She arrives like the migrating birds. A sign that summer is coming. The days begin to last longer. It's time to drink rosé at lunch. The bar smells of the crushed mint of a Mohito. Your liver gets exercised after a long, lonely winter.

There are sunny, silly months ahead.
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