Repentor Parish

[Mike Handley]

Lust hung in the night air like cigarette smoke in a pool hall.

The young woman, fleshy assets barely hidden by geometric shapes, squatted in the doorway, spread her legs and tugged suggestively at the sequined triangle covering her ware. She’d locked eyes with a trio of men frozen in the middle of the street, neither she nor they aware that a couple of gangly 12-year-olds were struck mute during the auction.

Midway down that same block, a goateed man in a silk shirt rose from his stool and promised, “Ladies get in free,” while the stockinged legs of a mannequin on a swing shot through the opened upper half of a large window, almost in sync to the pulsating pole music inside.

Across Rue Bourbon and on the diagonal corner, Michelangelo’s David and his other brother David gyrated on countertops that seemed to float in a testosterone sea of dollar bills and taxidermy eyes.

Earlier that day, when many of these green-door establishments were closed and savvy dancers were sleeping (maybe alone, or maybe not), fat men with bad hair -- wearing “Repent or Perish” T-shirts -- wove around the empty beer kegs in search of sidewalk sinners.

[Mike Handley]

Thanks, folks. Believe me, writing these tidbits from our New Orleans gathering is loads of fun. I'm now two in, and I haven't used but a tiny bit of the fodder I sponged.

[Jamie Hogan]

I'm with Gita, taxidermy eyes is top shelf stuff. I'll wait a little while before I poach that, promise.

You guys are killing me with these love notes to your gathering. Every one I've read has been outstanding.

[bolton carley]

your first line is definitely a great hook! love the eyes, too. quite a scene!

[Brittany]

oh the legs in the window... hahaha! lordy, lordy the memories. this is cool I echo what was written below.

[jkdavies]

damn... we hoped you didn't remember David, well at least Sandra did... I went for Goliath instead ;)

[Michael Brown]

Oh yeah! Sandra and Julia will have some catching up to do. The stories are coming forth fast and furiously. Styles are percolating with daubs of new color. What a little moonlight(ing) can do! Nice work here, Mike. Looking forward to more 'Cajun cooking.

[Glen Green]

"testosterone sea of dollar bills and taxidermy eyes" - that's a fine damn line. Love the play on words in the title.

[Gita]

[For if two lie together they can have heat. How can one be warm alone?]

[Gita]

I dearly love "taxidermy eyes."
I saw the guys who were out there tryingto keep us from sinning. Since I neither drank nor partook of pleasures of the flesh duringthat stroll, I wondered what they would have said to me if I had stopped for a lecture. I myself might have quoted scripture back at them: Ecclesiastes 4: 11, I think!