The Farm Boy

A little story to break up the monotone.

So a farmer had a young daughter who was reaching the age of maturity who was showing a good deal of restlessness. The farmer was not ready to marry her off just yet, and besides there were no good candidates nearby. However, he feared for the safety of her immortal soul, and he also didn't want her or his reputation sullied by anyone discovering that this young lady was on the verge of becoming a sexual creature.

The girl's mother, God rest her soul, had been a sexual dynamo, the farmer remembered. It took most of the energy he had to keep her satisfied. For weeks the farmwork was left undone while he carried out his husbandly duties. He was constantly going to the doctor to get more vitamins and tonics - he never told the doctor what they were for, but he suspected the doctor knew.

And now the girl was showing signs of following in the mother's footsteps. How did he know? The walls in the house were thin. As she apparently explored her young sumptuous body at night, she made little cooing gasping and groaning sounds, and even if she put her hand over her mouth, the sounds still made their way to the ears of her father. Over time, she got better at pleasuring herself, and then the cooing gasping and groaning was followed by fast shallow breathing and then shrieking and crying. Then one night, the farmer heard a sound like an electric toothbrush, only it was long after the time when any toothbrushing would be done, and then the usual cooing and groaning, just a little louder than usual, and the shrieking and crying a little sooner and louder too.

During the day when his daughter was out of the house, the farmer paced the livingroom floor, perplexed and troubled. Since he would not be marrying her off any time soon, this self-pleasuring was going to keep on. And he had seen that she looked at people differently now than she used to - not just men, but everyone. It was as if her gaze was saying "oh my god, I have so much fun at night, you have no idea." It was only a matter of time before people started asking if his daughter was ok, just as a generation earlier, people had sometime come up to him and said, "um, is your wife ok?"

What could he do? He knew what the preacher would say: a regimen of prayer and beatings if she kept up the funny stuff at night. That just didn't sound to him like any kind of solution. But that didn't lessen his anxiety any that left untreated, his daughter was in trouble. He remembered how distraught his wife became when he didn't take care of her needs properly. He didn't want his baby girl to go through that.

The next time he was in the county store, he overheard someone talking about a crone who had settled nearby who was very wise, so he thought, "hmmm, maybe I could consult her." He discreetly asked for her whereabouts and planned a trip to meet the old lady.

The hut in the woods was sufficiently dilapidated. The wrinkled nearly blind creature dwelling inside probably had forgotten what a bath was. But when the farmer spoke her name, she brightened up and spoke out in a clear voice, "what do you need, friend?"

He could hardly tell her, but it seemed almost as if she knew before the words were out of her mouth. "This isn't the first time you've seen this kind of behavior, is it my friend?" So then he told her about his wife, and she nodded, listening to the story.

When he had finished talking, she sighed, cleared her throat, and said, "Neighbor, do you have any young men nearby who can be trusted?" The farmer said no quickly, but then realized that there was such a person, a youngster nearly the same age as his daughter who was working for the season at the farm next to his. This farm boy seemed intelligent, and his employers swore that he was very trustworthy and hardworking. He spoke up, and told the crone about this farm boy living so nearby.

She told him what he must do. The only way to restore this girl's virtue and keep her from getting in trouble, and imbuing her with quiet and seemliness was to satiate these desires welling up within her. He must discreetly invite the farm boy over and coax him into giving the daughter what she needed regularly until such time as she recovered her air of chastity.

The farmer scratched his head. He had never heard of such a thing. Actually encourage your own daughter to carry on with a near stranger under your own roof? Would it even work? Well, he was a man of ample imagination of breadth of vision. So he reasoned that as long as this arrangement was kept between the three of them, it could work.

He didn't waste any time getting the farm boy over to his house. He had told the boy's employers that he needed the boy to do some hedge trimming. The boy looked the daughter over as the father explained what he was proposing they do, and without a word of agreement or contradiction, stood up, took the girl by the hand, and led her upstairs to her room.

If the sounds coming out of her room used to keep the farmer awake, they were nothing compared to what he heard now. She screamed as if she was being murdered, for it seemed like hours on end. And then finally she screamed one more time, sighed, and it was over. Two minutes later, the farmer heard a soft knock on his door, and then the farm boy whispering, "it's done, sir. She's asleep now."

Every night after that, it was the same thing. The farmer took to sleeping on the livingroom couch because he thought the noise might be less acute, but it was still loud enough to keep him awake. The shy but gentle farm boy would report to the farmer before he left and walked back to the neighboring farm and his bed in their barn.

Several weeks went by, with the screams taking on a more tempered fashion. Now the farmer could make out his daughter saying things like, "more!" and "oh yes!" Not that he really wanted to make note of exactly what was going on. But he thought a certain amount of knowledge of what was taking place upstairs was important. He was after all doing this for her good, and needed to be sure that it was in fact helping her.

How was she during the day? Still licentious and loose and overly familiar with people, even overly physical with people? Well, maybe a little. She seemed to be making some progress toward being self-contained and proper. He hoped that wasn't just him wanting to see her that way. But he had to be honest. There were still moments when she stared at people as if she wanted to tear their clothes off and have them right then and there.

Weeks passed, with the sounds emerging from her throat during the nightly carryings-on still as lusty and loud as ever. As he lay wide awake on the couch, the farmer started wondering if this experiment was really so wise afterward. He had spent years satisfying his wife, her mother, for weeks or months at a time, thrashing and sucking and licking until he was sore and exhausted, and he didn't ever remember his wife growing less ardent in her desires for love. They did manage to keep the randiness between the four walls of their bedroom. But it never seemed to abate.

The next morning he thought he better pay a second trip to the crone. So he got on his horse and rode over to the wood where her hut lay. He hammered on her door for a good solid 5 minutes before her voice answered an invitation to enter. She sat in a shadowy corner and wouldn't meet his eyes. What he could make out seemed to indicate that she was more disheveled than last time, and had not as many wrinkles as before.

He explained to her how he was unsure that the cure was working. She hoarsely reassured him that he just needed to give the process more time. He tried to listen to the advice, but he was distracted by a growing suspicion. Something told him that he knew this crone. Something in her voice and the curve of her nose and her smell was familiar to him, he could swear. The more she talked, the more he felt he knew her somehow.

"More time, you've got to give it more time," she was saying and then she sneezed, and the farmer could've sworn her hair moved as if it had come loose from her head. "This boy is doing a wonderful job I'm guessing. You just let him work his magic a little while longer..."

The farmer reached forward, not really knowing what he expected to happen, and snatched her hair off her head, to discover that underneath that wig was none other than the farm boy himself. Realizing himself discovered, he jumped up, lunged past the farmer and ran out of the hut and into the woods. The farmer stood up and walked in the direction he'd run. He was less angry with the boy than he was disappointed that his problem being left unsolved.

"Oh well," he thought, "hopefully the farm boy will come back. I'll let him know there's no hard feelings. There's my daughter's well-being to consider here."

Paris memories, part two

So Sunday was Louvre and Pompidour Centre day. First we had that wonderful breakfast again. Then we had to stop at a pharmacy near the Arc de Triomphe - poor Therese was having trouble with a bad tooth, a lot of pain. So we decided we would take the Metro to the Arc, have a little photo op, go to the pharmacy, then walk to the Louvre.

It was fun walking down the Champs Elysees. The day was overcast but not too chilly. Just around the time we reached the Place de la Concorde, a little drizzle started. But we made it to the Louvre ok and entered by the Pont de Lyon courtesy of our Paris museum passes. From there it was a short walk to all the galleries of amazing Italian Renaissance paintings.

Of course, it was all Mona Lisa centered, but we managed to look at lots of other great stuff while the throngs were crushing to see La Gioconda. Titians, Tintorettos, etc., but we never did find the other Da Vinci's which are said to be overlooked by most museumgoers.

Our backs and my knee were bothering us and we were feeling ready for a break, so we traced our way toward the pyramid and a cafe. Two sandwiches, two bags of chips and two beverages was actually pretty reasonable, and Therese saved us a table while I waited in line to pay. The break revived us, and we decided to take some of the lovely over-the-counter pain-managing pills Therese had gotten at the pharmacy.

Next stop, the sculpture gardens in the Richelieu wing. We definitely felt the effects of the medication - we were relaxed, elated even, and had a wonderful time looking at the amazing sculptures. From there we made our way through the Napoleon apartments to Dutch early Baroque paintings. We finished up in a room of Rubens all celebrating a French royal personage - in each painting, she looked imposing, even larger, taller than all other people in the painting. Pretty amazing. And then a man from the Louvre came and told us the museum was closing.

We had thought we would take a break between the museums, but now we decided to go straight from one museum to the next. A short Metro ride and then a short walk found us in front of the original and quite unusual Pompidou Centre.

The current exhibition was all about different aspects of Women's art, with the focus on deconstruction. Some things were more successful than others, but all of it was intriguing. There were a couple outdoor sculpture areas we could see through large windows beyond which were amazing views of Paris - one direction was the Eiffel Tower, another the Sacre Cour.

The floor below that was of art from earlier in the 20th century. The highlight of that for me were the large-format paper-cutouts of Matisse - Oceania and two others whose name I forget.

We left the Pompidou Centre as it started to get dark. What a full day!

Monday we slept in and missed breakfast, so before we did any cultural stuff, we ate lunch, at the Brasserie Lipp in the 6th arrondisement, on St. Germain-des-Prez, across the street from the church of the same night. It was choucroutes and German beer for both of us - potato, sauerkraut and sausages and ham. It tasted like it was all boiled, while the other time I had that dish, it was baked in the oven. So this while equally delicious was a little lighter. A little spicy mustard and we were good.

Then it was across the street to the Church of St. German des Pres. This is a beautiful neighborhood sized church, of incredible antiquity - with big round Romanesque columns and early Gothic ornaments painted everywhere. Unfortunately, the church looks in a state of some disrepair, so it's kind of a sad place. You can't help wondering how glorious and amazing it would look with the rot and mildew wiped away and a new coat of paint. Nevertheless, we found lots to astound us - monuments to two Baroque French knights were pretty amazing, for example.

From there we walked to the Musee de Cluny, the national Medieval museum. For such a compact building, this had an incredibly vast collection of sculpture, stained glass and paintings and treasures from all over France and elsewhere. Therese was really impressed when we came across a couple pages from an antiphonary (I think 14th century) and I was able to translate the Latin text and then also sightread the chant music. She felt like she had her own private expert guide, and I felt very proud to be reminded of how much the Medieval period and its music means to me.

Next was my cigar lounge experience for the trip. On the internet, I'd discovered that the Hotel Lutetia converted an old kitchen into a smoking room, and our concierge has confirmed that it was the best place in Paris to smoke a cigar. We walked to the hotel, I asked at the desk for the smoking lounge, and they directed us to a small room next to the hotel's bar. The room was empty when we entered, and not more than a couple of people joined us while we were in there. I had the field of being buried somewhere where my cigar wouldn't bother anyone. But at least they have gone to the trouble of creating this room. Perhaps if we had been there when there were more people using it, it would've felt different.

Our last day in Paris the weather was once again a little overcast. Therese had decided we needed our Eiffel Tower photo-op, and I agreed. So we went over there and posed and an Asian man took our picture. From there, we took a train to the Musee d'Orsay. Apparently, they are renovating the museum, so that all the incredible Impressionist paintings are not where they normally would be. Even as it is, I was very impressed. I love Renoir's and Van Gogh's and Toulouse Lautrec's and it was great to see so many wonderful paintings I've never seen before, other than in books.

Then we ate lunch in the d'Orsays wonderful cafe. Wow, what a lovely huge room. Our last meal in Paris was perhaps a bit modest, but it was delicious and we enjoyed it quite a bit.

Then it was time to return to pick up our luggage and head to the airport. We both dozed in the taxi on the way, and then endured the long trip back to NY, wishing that the dream pulsing through our brains of this wonderful romantic place would never dim.

Paris, a few weeks after...

OK, so my life has been interesting enough. But that's no excuse for not keeping up! The main thing is I have a new fancy laptop and I will have a new fancy or not fancy roommate soon. But anyway, how was Paris? It was great. Let me tell you a little about it.

Therese knew that our late evening flight was going to be delayed, and unfortunately, she was right, so we didn't leave New York until nearly midnight on Thursday, and arrived at our hotel well into Friday afternoon. And true to form, I slept very little on the airplane, so I needed a nap if we were going to do anything on Friday.

While I slept, Therese got her nails done and talked to the concierge, and explored a little bit. So when I roused myself, she was all ready with a plan: a walk to a brasserie nearby where we would have dinner, followed by a walk through a small park and a bus and tram ride to Sacre Cour Cathedral and Montmartre.

Dinner was great. A "tresor" of seafood - 2 kinds of snails, 3 kinds of shrimp, half a crab, half a lobster, about 5 different kinds of oysters, and dipping sauces and bread, with some white wine to wash it all down. Wow.

Sacre Cour is amazing. First, it's up on this crazy hill, so steep you have to take a tram/elevator. Then it's this insanely huge white building looking kind of spooky at night with all the lights shining on it. We went inside and of course there was a mass going on - just about every church we went into had mass going on (hey wait, isn't France supposed to be a really secular country?).

Therese knew the neighborhood so we walked around a bit to a square filled with touristy restaurants with big terraces, and a handful of artists drawing people's portraits. On the way, we turned and off in the distance through the dark was the Eiffel Tower all ablaze - my first sighting!

So that was it for Friday - I was starting to get really sleepy again. But Saturday we were planning to do the Ile de la Cite - Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame and whatever else we stumbled on.

We rose Saturday morning feeling really hungry, went up to the Executive lounge (Therese is a Hilton Diamond level member, so she and by extension me get treated like kings and queens). But um, no room at the inn. However, they gave us coupons for the restaurant downstairs, and that turned out to be a better deal anyway, so we ate breakfast there the whole rest of our stay. Fresh fruit, juices, good bread, cold cuts, croissants in like 10 varieties, sausages, bacon, eggs (with milk, blech), baked beans, stewed tomatoes (you know, all that English breakfast stuff), salmon, mackeral, hard-boiled eggs, and on and on.

We took the Metro to the Tuileries, to discover that they were looking kinda sad - lots of dust and very little in the way of foliage. We walked from there alongside the Louvre down to the bank of the Seine and walked along the river until we got to the Pont Neuf. Pretty cool. Crossing the bridge, we arrived at a triangular plaza - I was thirsty, but the places facing this plaza would only let us sit down if we were going to buy lunch and it was too early for that for us. So we kept walking, around the side of the building in front of us (Palais de Justice?), and found a cafe where we could have a soda. Then we were ready to go into Saint-Chapelle.

Now, they are cleaning some of the windows. But still the upper chapel is breathtaking. Of course, it's kind of small and filled with people, sitting in the chairs rimming the room, and taking pictures. The attendant shushes people when it gets too loud, which I loved.

Below the upper chapel, the first room you see is, duh, the lower chapel, which is also a gift shop. What a setting for a gift shop! Some of the columns and other decorative elements need some sprucing up with paint, but even so this room is pretty spectacular too.

From there we crossed through the next huge plaza to the crypt for Notre Dame, which is really an archeological record of the oldest remnants of the island and Paris itself (since that is where the settlement began in pre-Roman times). Pretty interesting.

Then it was on to Notre Dame, and can I tell you, the clean up job they did has left the church looking gorgeous. Everything looks fresh, and even the details that are a little worn down still look nice and polished - so they look splendid, but also show their age - pretty cool.

The main thing that struck us inside the church was the decoration on the outside of the choir section. The right side was all Passion stuff, while the left side was scenes from Jesus life. Included in the latter was a curious depiction of Mary's cousin Elizabeth embracing Mary and putting her hand on Mary's belly as if to confirm that Mary is really pregnant. I've never seen anything like that. It was very intimate.

Once we finished with Notre Dame, we were feeling a little beat, and hungry. Therese managed to find a particular compact she was looking to buy for her daughter, and we crossed over the bridge onto the Left Bank. Lo and behold, there was an outdoor cafe we saw down a side street. So we stopped there - I had a charcuterie plate, and Therese had some kind of sandwich I think. Anyway, it was just the right amount of food.

We went back to our hotel room for what was supposed to be a brief nap, but which turned into a long nap. So we had to change our plans again a little bit - putting off the Pompidou Centre until the next day, and just going out for dinner.

But again, what a nice dinner. Leon de Bruxelles is the closest thing to fastfood in Paris (unless you go to McDonalds) - mussles and frites and Belgian beer. Yummy! Filling, tasty, and pretty cheap.

More in the next installment...

Are sunsets overrated?

Well, I checked the weather forecast for Paris for the time we are going to be there, and it is mostly clouds with temperatures in the 60s. So it looks like we might not see any of those famous Paris sunsets over the Seine. But I'm sure we will find plenty other things to fire our romantic imagination and get us in the mood if that's where we want to be.

Final preparations are underway for me: laundry tonight, filling in some of the last gaps in the itinerary, that kind of thing. When I left my office this afternoon, I could feel it: I'm already on vacation. I can do anything I can imagine or nothing. I can sleep in all my clothes and spend the day mostly naked. I can read books or stare at the ceiling. I can contemplate the universe or the hairs in my nose.

And for me, the challenge is to try to rearrange my sleep cycle a little bit. See, when I take airplane flights to Europe, I can never sleep. I'm too excited, and also, I'm used to being up way past midnight anyway, so if the plane lands at 7am in France, to my body that would normally be about the time I would want to sleep.

The websites I read about how to sleep on planes all said, don't take drugs. Instead, get up as early as you can, have a full long day before you get to the airport, so that by the time you are on the plane, you'll be ready to sleep. Which means for me to get up at 6am tomorrow and be up all day, without a nap, until my 9:45p departure from JFK airport. We'll see how it works.

I just get so excited when I'm traveling. It's just the most fun thing to discover new countries and cultures and see history right in front of you. Even after I get to Europe, I sometimes have some trouble sleeping. Like the last time I went to Spain. I didn't get to my hotel until like 1pm, on pretty much no sleep, and it was hot, and my room wasn't ready. So I dropped off my luggage, went for a walk, bought a cold drink from a cart, sat down in the shade and immediately passed out. I woke up an hour later, went back to the hotel, checked into my room, unpacked a little, and passed out again, this time for a few hours.

Finally, I woke in the evening, took a nice shower, put on some clean clothes and went out to search for food. Some take-away from a kebab place, procured, it was back to my room to watch, what else, the US Open tennis tournament for a few hours, then a movie. Then I couldn't get to sleep. So I read a book, finally going to bed around 5am Madrid time, and by the next day, I was finally on a somewhat normal sleep schedule.

The difference this time is that I'm traveling with someone. So hopefully whatever happens with my sleep won't bother her too much. But I think that will work out ok. Therese doesn't sleep too much, so I bet she'll be doing some reading and exploring while I snooze, whatever time it is that I end up snoozing.

And the most important thing is to be on vacation, and do somewhere between everything and nothing, enjoying each other's company while we do it. For what else would be the point of traveling with somebody, especially someone you love, other than to share whatever you end up doing with each other. It could be peeling a grape or getting lost, but sharing it with another makes it special.

In the midst of life is death

In just a couple of days I am leaving for a trip to Paris for 5 days with my girlfriend Therese. Part of the reason I am posting is to get back into the swing of posting, with the idea that I will do some blogging while I am on vacation, to let you know about the adventures we are having in France.

But I also in the middle of all this excitement acknowledge that I am also feeling a great deal of sadness these days, as a roommate of mine goes through her last days after undergoing treatment for breast cancer for about a year. Her West Coast family members are here in New York with her in the hospital, and the end is near. She is a very private person and for a long time she expressed to me that she preferred I not share her struggle with people. But at this point, I feel it is doing a disservice to her not to say something about her since she is important to me.

We have never been very close friends. She has rubbed me (and my other roommate) the wrong way on a regular basis during the time we have shared an apartment. She is very proud and a bit of a control freak, so that attempts to reach out to her and give her a hand with things were often rebuffed. She would love to tell us at great length about the dramas going on in her life, and it wasn't always clear whether she cared very much what was going on in our lives.

Nevertheless, she is a very intelligent person, a person with many interests similar to my own. At one time we used to watch episodes of Battlestar Gallactica, a tv science fiction series, together, for example. After she displayed some jealousy toward me when I started dating somebody, I rooted for her to find a boyfriend. She is definitely someone like many New Yorkers who needs a sounding board, someone she can share with all the little things going on in her life, and it seemed like that has often been lacking.

So when she became ill, I was rooting for her very hard, and I was happy to lend a sympathetic ear to her and listen to the trials and tribulations of negotiating the minefield of health care and hospitals and doctors. And for a long time, she seemed to be almost holding her own - if she was slipping, it was so gradual as to be almost undetectible.

Recently that all changed. She came home from a trip to the hospital a different person. I hoped that my sense that she was spiralling downward was wrong. But sure enough, things were not going well. And now, it is just a matter of time.

There are all the logistics to eventually grapple with - paying the rent and utilities, applying the security or returning it to a family member, clearing out her belongings, eventually thinking about getting a new roommate in. All those things I will deal with when I return from my trip. Everything will be sorted out in time.

One last point. I thought of an ironic coincidence or parallel. Four years ago, my cat Hobbs was deathly ill and ended up dying less than a week before I left for a vacation to the Southwest U.S. with a previous girlfriend. He struggled for a long while with illness, but in his last week all of a sudden his body was riddled with cancer.

Here again, I am going away, carrying with me the sadness of knowing someone who is at the end, who took a dramatic downturn. Until a week or so ago, she was telling me about optimistic diagnoses, about further treatments that were expected to turn the tide for her. Now her body is so riddled with cancer there is nothing to be done.

It's a cliche, life being a miracle. Something that can be snatched from us in a moment. Every moment a gift. It feels idiotic to even bring up these cliches at a time like this. But the older you get, the more you see all the people who mean something to you, all the things that mean something to you, disappearing. And our own bodies grow frail and begin to fail us. So I for one will celebrate life while it remains the arena in which I operate, knowing that one day things will be different. Or to quote Walt Whitman, "the powerful play [still] goes on, and [I] may [yet] contribute a verse."

The fitfalls of exercising the analytic mind

One night recently I was coming home rather late, and I entered my street and was immediately met by a large crowd of 20-something caucasian men and women. Many were talking to each other, a couple were smoking cigarettes.

I found myself inclined to make sense of this. Could they be a group of friends out for a stroll? Unlikely, since there were probably 15 of them. Could they have all left a party on my street and be on their way to the subway to go home. Probably a more likely scenario.

And I detected in myself the impulse to take a rather harsh view of this group of people. I though something like, "hmmm, young poseurs all impressed with themselves, thinking they're cool because they're going out to swank parties on a Saturday night and living in New York City and such."

But I caught myself making that assessment, and I countered it by thinking, "you know I really don't know anything about any of these people. They have just as much right to live in New York City and enjoy everything the City has to offer as I do!"

It's typical of us intellectual sorts to make snap judgments, often very judgmental and cynical, like I did just then. We are encouraged to do that when we are in college. He who cannot come up with a pithy snide remark about something they've just observed and enunciate their observation in a few seconds is likely to not get ahead in school, and later on to be considered boring and possibly even stupid.

But as I have grown older and learned to appreciate things in a different way than when I was a 20-something, I have grown suspicious of that impulse to put things in boxes.

I remember, for example, being a music student in college, and sometimes going to concerts with our professors, and feeling annoyed to have to be on my toes and give short but well-though out reactions to the music we had just heard. Being able to make comments like that meant that I had to listen in a different way, searching for features that I could describe later on. For me, it pretty much ruined my experience of the music. I wanted to let the music wash over me, get into my bones, stimulate my emotions, to become personal for me. Analyzing it so I could impress the professor afterward kept the music at a distance, reduced it to parts and features rather than a whole experience full of touching moments.

And I guess therein lies my objection to the analytical way of approaching getting to know things and people. It keeps those people and things at a distance, and how can you really speak about something intelligently from a distance? How can I have anything meaningful to say about a person, unless I have surrendered myself to getting to know them, listened carefully to what they have had to say, unless I have grown to care for them?

We all of us don't really get to know that many people in a deep meaningful way in our lifetimes. And yet we feel entitled to assess many people who we really truly know very little about. I think that's unfortunate. I think there is very little that is as satisfying as getting to know a person. Treating them as if they are the most interesting person in the world, asking probing questions and really listening to their answers with interest and curiousity, not snapping to judgments but withholding judgment, taking the time to give them the respect and consideration they deserve. We usually do this only with our romantic partners, and a few friends, and maybe a close family member. But most often, we convince ourselves that we know somebody before we have really done the work (and play) necessary to really get to know them.

I'm sure I will never stop using this brain of mine, trying to make quick assessments of what I see around me. But I will also be increasingly skeptical of the results of my assessment. There are few people who are not deserving of the time and effort it takes to really get to know them. The only sad thing is that our time on earth is so short that, even if we work very hard doing that, we will only get to know a handful of people in that deep, satisfying, loving way.

All good things must come to an end: Saturday, March 20 in Miami

So Friday night after Ade and Anthony dropped me off at the hotel, I decided to go for a walk. I wanted to get a soft drink or two, and maybe a snack or two, and also to see the Ocean Drive scene. So I set out and took a nice long walk, ending up at the Walgreens where I bought some Vitamin Water, Oreos with Double Stuff and Vanilla Zingers.

I surfed the tv for a passable channel, popped open a drink and the Oreos, and after eating a couple of cookies, I promptly started feeling sick. Funky throat, inflamed synuses, achy body. It was crazy - just like someone had flipped a switch from "healthy" to "ill." Apparently running myself ragged, smoking and drinking every day, had finally taken its toll on me, but that second Oreo cookie was the straw that broke the camel's back. Amazing!

Of course I immediately put the cookies aside, drank a vitamin C drink, and then sucked down like two Vitamin Waters as well as some Advil. Surely, I could nip this thing in the bud! But even after a long deep sleep, I still felt sick when I woke up in the morning. In fact, I felt worse. Noooooo! I didn't want to go back to New York sick! Oh drat.

Well, one thing was for sure. I still wanted to go with Ade and Anthony to Cuenca's in the evening for their CAO event party. I wouldn't smoke, I would stay outside the shop in the fresh air, not drink any alcohol, and it would be fine! Until they called me to come pick me up, I would be able to just lay in bed all day, rest, take more advil, and hopefully that would make me ALL better. Yeah right.

After an afternoon of lying around watching bad tv and eating leftovers from my hotel room fridge, and drinking more vitamin waters, I did in fact feel a little better, well enough to at least go out. I had like no energy and my throat was funky but I had a little bit of an appetite and I could talk without pain. So when Ade called me to say he and Anthony were on the way to pick me up, I was ready.

Of course with it being Saturday night, there was hideous traffic in South Beach. It took at least half an hour just for us to go from 15th Street to 5th street. OMG, hideous. Once we got onto the causeway leading over to downtown Miami, things got better. After that, it was simple. Up 95 to exit 20, Hollywood Blvd., then down Hollywood Blvd. to 20th avenue, then a right and a left and Cuenca Cigars was on our right. Hooray! It was buzzing there, with lots of people sitting at sidewalk tables in front of the cigar shop.

First order of business for me was to find something to eat. All they had in the shop was a couple pieces of cold pizza. Ade went for the pizza, while I opted for Thai food from across the street and Anthony went to pick up a burger. The seafood soup and Pad Thai with tofu I had was just the right thing, soothing to my throat and body.

Next up, was I actually going to buy some CAO? Originally, the event was supposed to be for La Traviata, but the CAO rep called in sick, so Ana and Miguel had expanded it to include all CAO. Ade and I zeroed in on the CAO Champions collection, a zippered travel humidor filled with ten highly-rated CAO cigars in it, plus a free sampler that came with it. Ade was interested in the cigars, and I wanted the humidor. It was a deal!

And I decided to smoke after all, against my better judgment. A Macanudo 1968 Gigante. I only got about a third of the way through it, but that was enough. My Florida smoking was done. Final tally: something like 30 cigars in 17 days, with only one day off from smoking that whole time. Crazy. Most I've ever smoked, and probably ever will again. Not like I was forcing myself to do it - I enjoyed most of the cigars - but that just isn't me. Once a week or so is plenty for me.

So we hung out, talked with Anthony, Kat and a bunch of other regulars who were there. Then it was time for the raffle. And what do you know? I won an oval black CAO ashtray! Really sexy shiny one. Cool!

And that was about it! Anthony and Ade drove me back to South Beach. We got off at the Walgreens and I bought some more soft drinks. I was leaving in the morning so I didn't want to stay up late. I said goodbye and went home to bed. The next morning was a warm sunny one. I packed in no time, got my taxi and was off for home. An airplane and a taxi later, I was back sitting in this very chair, at my laptop, catching up on my emails. Here I am now nearly two weeks later still catching up! I still have some cigars to give to Sandi from Berta Bravo and Maria Martin. I'll probably never catch up. The only thing to do is to go back to Tampa, Miami or both? Well which? Do I have to make up my mind?