Stormed In

It wasn't yet a blurry night when we walked into Molly's, on Touluse Street off of Bourbon. We were just looking to have a drink or two and kill some time before heading into the Dungeon, next door.

It had been a good day. We'd had a great breakfast at a little place called the Coffee Pot, which was topped off by these little balls called callas cakes, a muffiny sort of thing made with rice and pecans and covered with powdered sugar. Then we went to Nicole's folks place in Baton Rouge and had a fantastic crawfish boil. They're monsters, but they're good little monsters! Then we did who knows what, eventually ending up at Molly's. For just a beer, and to stop and use the bathroom.

I'm not gonna kid you by saying anything about making a long story short -- this is a long story anyway. But I'll cut to the chase: We had more than a beer, or a couple of beers. We were having fun, and were in no hurry.

Somewhere along the line, Beth started talking to this guy named Tony, pictured below. Tony was a bartender at the Old Absinthe House, and he started suggesting drinks for Beth, which the bartender, Tom, happily made.

Here's what we know about Tony: He's a big sports fan, particularly of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He talked to me about the Eagles for quite a bit; I tried to hold up my half of the conversation, but luckily, he had opinions enough for both of us. He was in the Navy, and had at one point fallen seven stories off a ladder and survived. (Some rookie had climbed the latter with oily shoes.) He had, if I remember correctly, two years of physical therapy to recover from the fall, one of which was so painful that he had to spend the year in isolation. It was a hell of a story.

(Maybe I should mention here that later in the week we stopped in to the Old Absinthe looking for Tony, and a bartender told us he'd been working there for four years, and had never heard of a Tony there. So maybe Tony wasn't being entirely upfront with us.)

He also mentioned that one lasting effect of the accident was that when he was sitting, he was most comfortable crossing his legs, which caused him to be hit on my no end of gay men. He warned us against going much further up Bourbon -- a block or so away was the gay section. "There are dicks flying everywhere," he said. We'd alread walked through it on our way to Lafitte's Blacksmith Shoppe, and we'd noticed no such dicks, flying or otherwise. It was actually pretty tame there. Nonetheless, we all had a good time talking to Tony.

Soon, a friend from the Absinthe named joined us. (He's the guy behind my gigantic, shiny scalp in the picture below.) Tony started ordering shots. They were of this Italian liquer called Tuaca, which is a mix of vanilla and citus flavors. It's delicious. I can't stress that enough. Delicious. The shots are often combined with cream and called "Tiger's Milk," but Tony prefered to use Bailey's, calling it "Tony the Tiger's Milk." Whatever you call it, it was an incredible drink. I don't know how many we had, but we killed the bottle.

(Incidentally, Tony the Tiger's Milk was a good example of Tony's bartending philosophy: Never add something that'll cut the alcohol content when there's an alternative that won't. He also prefers adding Bacardi Limon to Coronas instead of a lime wedge. That's how serious he is about the philosophy.)

Jason, a waiter, had found a phone number of someone named Jennifer in his sugar caddy. He called the number, and tried to get her to come to the bar. Sadly, she preferred to meet at a bar down the street called the Roundup. It's apparently a popular transexual bar. And yes, Jennifer fit right in there.

Somewhere around this point, Tony walked outside, took a look at the sky, and noticed the storm was almost on us. (Oh, yeah, there was a big one in the forecast. I'm not gonna go back and foreshadow it now. This is long enough as it is. But at one point, Jay took off so as to not get caught in it, leaving four of us behind.) Tony came back and said "You've got about fifteen minutes to get back to your hotel. You're either in or you're out." I ordered another drink. We were in.

Okay, back to the plot. It's raining, and Jason is going to run out to the Roundup to meet Jennifer. Kathy and Beth are happy to go with him, and out the door they run into the rain with a guy we've never seen before. This makes no real sense, but Jason seems like a nice guy, and he wanted company.

A few minutes later, and they're back. Jason found her--Kathy says she had a blouse cut down to here, and a bra that came to here (a little above the neckline), drawing as much attention as possible to her hard-won boobs. Jennifer gave Jason a quick look and said "I've never seen you before," dismissing him. So back to Molly's they ran. Poor Jason.

We liked him anyway.

At some point, we'd killed the Tuaca, and Jason moved us on to Jaegermeister. It's not a liquor I particularly like, but we had become a drinking club of sorts, Tony, Jason and I, so I joined in. And joined in. And joined in. (How many is that, three?) And joined in and joined in and joined in. That should do it.

(Interesting side note. Jaegermeister makes you throw up black, by the way.)

Eventually, Tony and Jason left. Tom the bartender looked out the door, and realized Jason had left Tony holding himself up against a lamppost. A while later he was gone. (That's the reason we went looking for Tony at the Old Absinthe later on. We wanted to know if he survived.)

Tom decided to close up the bar. He called a cab for another couple, but they took off without it showing up, so he said the four of us could have it if it did. It never turned up. Tom suggested we could make it most of the way to our hotel under balconies and not get too wet.

We ordered four waters for the road to ward off the next day's hangover. (That worked!) I tried to give Tom a couple bucks as a tip, but he handed them back to me: "You've already taken care of me, believe me." What a guy.

Here's Tom. Lord knows how much I tipped the man.

Now, on our way back we managed to navigate under the balconies pretty well, and stayed fairly dry. I, however, was having trouble keeping my pants up. I was wearing shorts I'd bought the year before, and they were comfortable then. After a couple months of dieting, well...let's just say there were suspension problems.

At some point in the hotel lobby, just before stepping into the elevator, my will to hold my pants up just gave out. Well, I was still holding them up -- I was just holding them in my hand.

My finest moment.

Kathy took a picture of the clock to commemorate our night out, and to record how long we'd been out there doing Bacchus' work. Four oh eight a.m.


Sleep soundly, now.

Rob