The Holy Wiener

Growing up Southern Baptist, I learned that many activities that other kids engaged in were absolutely forbidden to me. My devout Christian mother made it a point to let me know that God did not approve of certain things, and if I wanted to stay in His good stead – and hers – then I would have to denounce all sinful behavior. And if I ever engaged in such behavior and God didn’t punish me directly, then she would handle the sentencing herself, usually in the form of a flyswatter or leather belt, along with a tongue lashing that rivaled Ralphie’s mom on “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie dropped the F-bomb as he helped his dad change the car’s flat tire.

No cuss words whatsoever were allowed in our household. I never bothered to even experiment with them when my mother was around, for I knew that hellfire and brimstone surely would rain down should such utterances leave my lips. My best friend and next-door-neighbor, Joey, used to cuss all the time. He introduced me to the colorful expletives that I one day would discover could spice up any story I told. But I never had the cojones to start using such language until I became a full-fledged adult, for fear that God Himself would send me to eternal damnation for such linguistic infractions.

On one occasion, though, I heard Joey use a word that I wasn’t sure would be classified as “cussing.” He told me it wasn’t a bad word, but of course, I felt that I needed to run it by my mother first just to be sure that I was staying within the bounds of good Christian behavior. Upon my inquiry, she was incredulous that my second-grade ears had been exposed to such filth. When she asked me where I had heard it, I told her that Joey had taught it to me.

My mother, concerned for the moral turpitude of children everywhere -- or at least along the stretch of Highway 50 that connected our Mississippi community to the Alabama state line-- promptly called Joey’s mother to inform her that he had been using such strong language. My mother knew that if I ever were caught using vulgar vocabulary around anyone else, she would appreciate a phone call alerting her so that she could deal with it accordingly. In turn, she also chose to return the favor by alerting anyone else’s parents to wayward behavior by their own children.

In this particular instance, however, there was one factor that my mother did not consider: Joey’s mom was Episcopalian. Since Joey was four years older than I was and, therefore, a twelve-year-old whose vocabulary naturally would include various four-letter words, his mother had no problem with the fact that he cussed. What she did have a problem with, however, was my mother’s attempt to tell her how to raise her son. Although I never heard the actual phone conversation, when my mother indicated her disgust at Joey’s word usage, Joey’s mom replied something to the effect of, “Go to hell, bitch!” Wisely, my mother didn’t see fit to correct Joey’s mom on her own language.

After that incident, I no longer was allowed to spend time with Joey until he promised my mother that he would not cuss around me. It seemed like years before he finally agreed to my mother’s requirements, but in actuality, it probably was just several months.

Aside from cussing, it was generally understood in our home and among the members of our church that imbibing alcohol of any sort or dancing of any nature was strictly forbidden. Additionally, when I was a youngster and was channel surfing on the radio in our family station wagon, as I settled onto a local rock ‘n roll station, my mother informed me that because rock music was the devil’s music, I should promptly change the dial. This made complete sense to me, seeing as my parents allowed the morality of my young soul to be shaped by the country music to which they often exposed me. Rock music certainly lacked the ordination of God the way that country music did, with its lyrics bemoaning some country crooner’s proclamation that there was a tear in his beer because his dear left him for another man, or how another singer drove to pick up his mama when she got out of prison for beating up the woman who stole her man. As one later country song so eloquently phrased it, “Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition!”

While my mother did not consider dancing itself to be an evil activity, she often scorned it when the pastor or youth minister at our church warned of its waywardness. While she claimed to have danced herself behind her own mother’s back when she was growing up, she did not want to obtain a sinful reputation with the church folk by allowing her children to engage in activity that did not conform to Baptist standards.

The irony of the whole prohibition on dancing was our church’s reasons for it. While dancing itself was not considered a sin, we were warned that engaging in it would lead to one of the worst sins of all: premarital sex. I recall one particularly confusing Wednesday night sermon at our church’s weekly youth group meeting where our youth minister informed us that it was impossible for a guy to dance with a girl and not have lustful thoughts run through his mind. At the time, I was in high school and had, by then, danced with plenty of girls, and I could not recall a single moment when I had felt tempted to start groping my dance partner. I never quite understood all this talk about sexual temptation, because I never seemed to have a problem with it. At least not with the girls, anyway.

Neither my youth minister nor my mother had the insight to know that dancing with girls presented no temptations to me whatsoever. I’m sure if they had any clue as to what actions caused my mind to run wild with wayward thoughts and get my hormones pumping, they’d have outlawed the group showers in which I participated right after P.E. class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon of my freshman year in high school. The whole purpose of my showering – or at least the guise I presented – was so that I would not smell when I went to biology class immediately afterward. It just so happened, though, that the best looking guys in my class also thought it necessary to shower right after P.E. Whether they were all showering for the same reasons I was I’ll never know, but the ironic thing is that showering with the other freshman guys caused me to work up more of a sweat than it did to alleviate it.

In addition to alcohol, lust, and rock music, my church eventually declared that the celebration of Halloween was a forbidden activity, all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Halloween, we were told, was a Satanic holiday, and not an occasion that we Christians should be observing. Of course, since the rest of the world’s children were dressing up in fun costumes and collecting enough candy to spike their blood sugar levels into oblivion, our church had to come up with some tastes-like-chicken activity to empower us with a sense of Christian equality on Halloween night. Thus, the idea was hatched that our church would sponsor a cookout for us kids, and it would be called the Holy Wiener Party.

While I’m sure the good church ladies thought that throwing a party whose named played off the word “Halloween” would give us an alternative to engaging in Satanic behavior, in reality, they trained us to become proseletyzing homosexuals.

In years previous, my parents had allowed me to dress up as superheroes and hobos, and they took me to local neighborhoods to go trick-or-treating. But in this particular year, because our church now declared any such activity to be a one-way ticket to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, my mother decided that I, as a fifth-grader, should participate in the Holy Wiener Party. I’m sure her decision was based partly on her desire to look like a good Christian mother to all of the other church parents, and partly so that she didn’t have to spend yet another Halloween trailing behind my younger sister and me as we rang doorbells and then fought over who got the most candy.

In preparation for the Holy Wiener Party, we were instructed to wear to the event costumes that were fashioned after Biblical characters. Coming up with a feasible costume took some creativity, as I knew I wouldn’t be able to find an outfit in the Halloween aisle at Wal-Mart. Cheap Batman, Spider-Man, and Wonder Woman costumes abounded plentifully at everyday low prices, but it was quite difficult to find a store that sold Jesus-sandals and a tunic.

My mother came up with the brilliant idea that I could dress as the Old Testament character of Joseph. As the story goes, Joseph was the youngest of many brothers, and he also was his father’s favorite. His father gave him a coat of many colors, so naturally, Joseph put on his own fashion show to flaunt not only the flamboyant coat, but also the fact that daddy liked him the best. As revenge, Joseph’s jealous siblings eventually sold him into slavery, took the coat and wiped lamb’s blood on it, and returned it to daddy to break the fabricated news that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. Even in Biblical times, the prettiest people had to suffer for also being the best dressed.

Since my family hovered somewhere in the sociosphere between “redneck” and “plain ol’ country folk,” we didn’t have the money to have some elaborate costume made for my appearance at the Holy Wiener Party. Instead, my mother suggested that we call upon Jessie, the elderly lady who worked for my father’s drycleaning shop doing alteration work. Jessie took scraps of cloth that she had lying around her sewing room, and she sewed together for me a coat of many colors. Quite frankly, it was one of the ugliest things I had ever seen. But, indeed, it was colorful in its own scary sort of way.

When I showed up to the party, the event itself was fairly uneventful. We showed off our costumes, played games, and roasted our wieners just as we would at any other cookout. But, of course, no church event would be complete without the requisite dose of proselytizing expected of us if we wished to keep our Southern Baptist membership active and in good standing. So, in order to give us children the sense that we weren’t being left out of the candy-collecting fun that our pagan counterparts enjoyed, our adult chaperones decided that we could, indeed, fill our sacks full of sugary sweets while at the same time filling the neighborhood homes full of Jesus’s love. Thus, they took us tract-or-treating.

It wasn’t until my years of higher education when I learned that the word “tract” typically referred to a plot of land. As I grew up going to Sunday School, memorizing verses of Scripture from the Holy Bible (King James Version only, please), and learning how to present the plan of salvation to wayward souls, our church armed us little soldiers-in-training with all of the necessary weapons for winning souls to Christ. Because the Bible itself could be a bit intimidating to non-church-goers and take years to read from cover-to-cover, we were permitted to use small pamphlets called “tracts” to spread the news of our Good Lord. These tracts typically were written with a few relevant Bible verses and some admonition to get your soul right by immediately inviting Jesus into your life before the gates of hell opened to swallow you whole and char you like a West Coast wildfire. Because of the urgent nature of salvation, tracts had to be direct and to the point; there was no time to mess around with the Lord-is-my-shepherd-I-shall-not-want messages that often lent themselves to the image of Jesus’s carrying a little lamb in His arms, a depiction most often found on the front of funeral parlor fans that advertised both God’s love and their mortuary services.

The building on the church grounds where our Sunday School classes were taught contained in the entryway a subdivided shelf full of numerous tracts that were free for our consumption. We were encouraged to take a few with us each time we passed by and distribute them wherever the good news needed to be heard. I occasionally would pick up one or two to read for my own enjoyment, but I never really understood how or to where I was supposed to distribute them. It seems that the number one spot I discovered other tracts that had been distributed always was on the tops of toilets in public restrooms, and, quite frankly, I was always confused as to how this type of product placement would result in a religious experience.

Throughout my formative years, I had heard miraculous stories of salvation and how Jesus could save a soul regardless of its geographic location, time of day, or what its owner was doing at the time. Souls who had once been wayward in their ways testified in church that they had accepted the good and merciful Savior while driving down the road in their automobiles, while reading the Gideon Bible that came as a value-added amenity in their $25.99-per-night double occupancy motel room, or while canning tomatoes in their kitchen on a hot August day. But never once, before or since, have I ever heard someone declare that he had invited Jesus into his heart while sitting on the toilet reading a tract. If and when such occasion ever happens, though, I can only imagine that the testimony will go something like this:

“Well, I was drivin’ down Highway 49 south of Jackson to go visit my old aunt Edna in the nursin’ home, and I pulled off Exit 197 at Larry’s Truck Stop so that I could take care of my personal business. I walked into the bathroom stall and forgot to bring my copy of Field & Stream wi’ me, but lo and behold some kind soul had left some lit-tra-chure behind for me to read. So I picked up that tract and began readin’ it, and then the Holy Spirit hit me like a brick! I dropped to my knees right then and there and asked forgiveness for all my sins and invited Jesus into my life. Of course, I had to hop back up on the pot and finish my business, because although the Lord had lifted the burden from my shoulders, there was still a great weight that my bowels needed to expel.”

So, to round out the full experience of our Holy Wiener party, the adults supervising us gave us each a handful of tracts and then marched us single file through the neighborhood to go tract-or-treating. Of course, for safety reasons, we only went to houses of people we knew, all of whom were, no doubt, already Christians and therefore probably did not need to read the tracts anyway. But, at our young ages, we could use all the practice we could get if we were to be effective warriors for Christ when we got older. We rang the doorbells of these friendly neighbors, yelled “Tract or treat!” to them, handed them a get-saved-or-else pamphlet, and then obligatorily they dropped candy into our bags before we made our way to the next house (for we all knew that while there was victory in Jesus, that night, the candy was the real triumph for us).

And so concluded our evening of hallowed Christian activities that paralleled our trick-or-treating contemporaries, providing us the peace of mind that we could enjoy our candy corn and caramel bites knowing that we were pleasing Jesus. Now, I can understand that our church parents must have thought that hosting an event on the church premises as an alternate way to celebrate Halloween was a noble thing. But I’ll never figure out for the life of me how my mother reasoned that dressing me up in pretty colors and sending me off to an event that paid homage to the Wiener would do anything but teach me how to revere, well, the Wiener.

Days of Our Wives

The sixth stop of my Southeastern road trip was the Katrina-ravaged coastal town of Gulfport, MS. My Aunt Teresa and Uncle Terry have lived there for years, and it had been quite a while since I had visited them.

Uncle Terry works at DuPont, and Aunt Tese always has been a stay-at-home mom, with a few occasional side jobs throughout the years. She’s the perfect homemaker, especially given that she can whip up a Southern dish that would make Emeril’s cooking look like an Oscar Mayer Lunchable.

Aunt Tese is the younger sister to my Aunt Linda, who lives in Mobile, AL, and who also has primarily been a wonderful homemaker while teaching piano lessons on the side. Her husband, Uncle Eric, works for Shell Oil. If Uncle Terry and Uncle Eric bring home the proverbial bacon, then Aunt Tese and Aunt Linda surely know how to cook it up like nobody’s business.

While my family members tend to brag incessantly about the triumphs which embellish the family name, often they keep quiet when it comes to gossip that might tarnish the Baptist reputation that our ancestors built so long ago. For example, one might often hear them brag to their friends, “This is my nephew, Ritchie . . . he’s a lawyer in Washington, DC.” However, they’d never utter something like, “This is my nephew, Ritchie . . . he likes to make out with dudes.”

Of course, although my family members don’t usually spread gossip about their own immediate family members, I can always count on one of my aunts to give me the lowdown on any of my cousins who are not their own offspring. Of course, a good housewife would never limit her gossip to just the family. If I want the dirt on anything scandalous going on in the world, all I have do is pick up the phone and dial one of the women in my family.

On this particular visit to see Aunt Tese, she suggested that we make the hour drive over to Mobile to visit Aunt Linda. Aunt Linda was in the hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery, and I agreed that a visit from her favorite sister and nephew is just what she needed to cheer her up. And since there was no Target in Gulfport, I asked Aunt Tese if we could stop at Wal-Mart before we left town so that we could put together a gift bag for Aunt Linda.

Aunt Tese mentioned that Aunt Linda liked Peppermint Patty and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup bite-size chocolates, so we each grabbed a bag of those sweet treats for her. We then proceeded to the magazine racks to pick out a couple items of reading material to keep Aunt Linda interested while she was bed ridden. Aunt Linda moved into a new house three years prior, and she still talks about how it’s not decorated to her liking. So, I suggested that we purchase a couple of house decorating magazines for her. We found one called Romantic Homes, so we agreed that she would enjoy such a literary delight.

After we had browsed most of the home décor glossies, my oh-so-Baptist Aunt Tese turned to me and matter-of-factly said, “You know, if it were me in the hospital, I’d just want some good ole fashioned smut to read. I mean, I’m dying to know about this supposed baby that Tom and Katie have had, and, -- Oh, look! Here they are, right on the cover of Us Weekly! Well, we’ll just have to get this one for your poor Aunt Linda!”

Well, I always like a good gossip mag, so I was game. In fact, I got so into it that I picked up an issue of People with Britney on the cover and threw it into the gift bag. I mean, I know most people don’t like Britney, but no one can argue that as bubble-gummy as the Southern sister is, she’s still got more cojones than Fabio does after a month of sexual abstinence.

When we had finished picking out our choice magazines to present to Aunt Linda as gifts of good tidings and well-being, Aunt Tese asked what else we should throw into the gift bag. My first response was, “Well, we’ve gotten her chocolate and magazines . . . what else could she possibly need?”

As we walked down the greeting card and party favor aisles, the gift ideas just kept flowing forth. While I grabbed a princess tiara and sparkling wand for Aunt Linda, Aunt Tese picked out a pair of pink-and-white pom-poms for her to attach to her walker. In the event that no one else in the hospital knew that Aunt Linda was royalty and the head cheerleader, they’d know it by the time we had arrived with our versions of frankincense and myrrh.

Aunt Tese and I arrived at the hospital in Mobile, AL, and we cheered on Aunt Linda as she put her physical therapist, Barry, in his place by stating that no, she would not be learning how to tie her own shoes using a grip extension rod because she had people to do that for her, namely her husband and oldest daughter, Erica. After several attempts, Barry finally rolled his eyes and gave up, at which time Aunt Tese and I crowned Aunt Linda with her tiara and celebrated the exertion of her queenly dominance. While Aunt Linda may have just been a patient at the hospital, it was quite clear that in her fiefdom, physical therapists were subordinate to her reign.

After Aunt Linda’s political coo had been established, Cousin Erica pushed her mother’s wheelchair upstairs while I ran to the vending machine to fetch some coffee for myself and a Diet Coke for Aunt Tese. Cousin Erica is a housewife herself, and a damned good one at that. The oldest of three children, she has two school age children of her own and lives in a large house with her husband right around the corner from Aunt Linda’s estate. While Uncle Eric worked during the day, Erica dutifully tended to Aunt Linda during her hospital recovery.

As we sat by the upstairs window staring out at the view of the cloudy sky, Aunt Linda proceeded to give me the grim details of how she had broken her hip and of the events that ensued as she called for an ambulance and made her way to the hospital for emergency surgery. As I sat with concern on my face, Aunt Tese and Cousin Erica had fetched the smutty magazines and were flipping through them, offering their opinions on Tom, Katie, Jessica, and Britney with reckless abandon.

“So, just where is this baby Suri? I’m beginning to wonder if she even exists!”

“Well, you know Tom is keeping Katie locked up in that house and won’t even let her leave to go out in public!”

“Would you just look at Jessica Simpson? I want to know how she lost all that weight for her role as Daisy Duke! I’d like to lose a few pounds myself. I can’t believe she looks that good after having two children!”

“Jessica hasn’t had two children! That’s Britney! She’s the one on the cover of this other magazine here! We don’t really like her, though, since she married what’s-his-face.”

I hadn’t heard such a flurry of gossip since my days as a nine-year-old when Mee Maw used to promptly call Aunt Diane – who was also her next-door neighbor – to discuss the facts that Marlena was possessed by demons, Bo really wasn’t coming back to Hope, Roman had been accused of shooting someone whose last name was Brady. Upon hearing such harrowing details, I would crawl under the dining room table and quiver in fear, believing that no one was safe in Mee Maw’s sleepy little community of Sumrall, MS. Because Mee Maw and Aunt Diane would discuss such details with the passion of a Harlequin novel, I had always assumed they were recounting the daily news report of their small community. It was only afterward that my innocent mind was set at ease when Mee Maw let me know that they were simply rehashing that day’s episode of Days of Our Lives.

Of course, no Southern housewife is content discussing the drama of other people’s lives. She has to convey the drama in her own life, with the ultimate goal being to out-dramatize anyone else who might be in the room.

And, without a doubt, what housewife could ever visit a hospital with hunky doctors and evil nurses running around and not have drama to share? This occasion was certainly no exception.

Aunt Linda told us of the dramatic events that had unfolded that very morning at the Mobile Infirmary General Hospital. Although she had been visited by all her children, it was Cousin Erica who typically stayed with her each day of her life there, since the hospital setting was another world and aroused passions in Aunt Linda that she simply couldn’t cope with on her own. As the world turned, Aunt Linda had been trapped in her room, helpless and defenseless, by Nurse Taylor. While Aunt Linda didn’t claim to be young, she certainly had been restless and was not going to stand to be treated that way by a hospital employee.

To fully appreciate a story spun by a Southern housewife, one has to understand the gravity of certain words that are used in telling the tale. One such word is the adjective that. It is always used derogatorily as a way to put distance between the storyteller and a character or object of ill repute.

Aunt Linda recounted the harrowing tale of how that Nurse Taylor had entered her room earlier that morning and had barked at her for not being ready for a physical therapy appointment she didn’t know she had in the first place. That Nurse Taylor had barged in and had tried to take her blood pressure while she was brushing her teeth, and then that Nurse Taylor proceeded to knock her lotions off the bathroom shelf.

Cousin Erica then picked up the story and continued with it seamlessly: "We don’t like that Nurse Taylor, who, by the way, we now call 'Miss Piggy' because she obviously has a weight problem. We do not talk to that Nurse Taylor, nor do we even make eye contact with that Nurse Taylor."

It was quite evident that Cousin Erica’s limitations on any contact made with that Nurse Taylor were not simple statements, but instead were a code of conduct to be followed by anyone making a social visit to Aunt Linda’s hospital room.

After one episode of Aunt Tese’s pulling that Nurse Taylor back into the hallway for a tongue-lashing after the wayward nurse had tried to take Aunt Linda’s vital signs while Aunt Linda was using the bedpan, we watched one TV episode of Paula Deen cooking some “chicken fried steak, y’all,” to settle us down before Aunt Tese and I hopped in the car and made our way back to Gulfport.

After that dramatic episode of visiting Aunt Linda in the hospital, it became evident to me that while in other parts of the country, housewives may be desparate, this is not the case in the South. Here, our housewives are just downright rampaging.

All Shook Up

Dr. Gonads decided that for his summer vacation, he would fly down to Oxford, MS, to spend a week there with me. I knew this was an act of either great kindness or grave insanity, given that we had known each other for such a short period of time. Enthusiastically, he claimed that he wanted to visit the area of the country where I grew up because he was fond of me. So, of course, in order to test whether he was as giddy about me as he claimed, I decided to do everything I could to scare the living bejesus out of him in order to evaluate his sincerity. I fully expected that by the week’s end, he either would have already boarded an early flight back to DC or would have heeded the altar call and gotten saved, whichever one provided the quickest access to alcohol – communion, in-flight, or otherwise.

After spending a lovely Saturday evening with our friends Summer and JP at a Memphis Redbirds baseball game, the eager doctor and I made our way back to Oxford for the evening. However, I told him that I had a surprise for him, and instead of heading south on Highway 7 back to the hotel, I turned north and drove him to the sleepy little town of Holly Springs, MS.

In my opinion, although Holly Springs is a charming little place with an old fashioned town square, at night, there’s just something plain eerie about it. Maybe I only felt that way on this particular evening because I knew what was about to happen.

After having driven around the small town for several minutes while trying to get my bearings straight, I parked my car in front of an old, white, antebellum home just a couple of blocks from the town square. Guarding the front entrance to the house was a pair of lion statues lying on their bellies on either side of the porch steps. On their own, the two stone felines might have given the residence a stately air; but, considering that each sculpture was wrapped in blue tube lighting that spiraled around its torso, the house looked as if it might be a strip bar frequented by Siegfried & Roy. In fact, Dr. Gonads’s first reaction was that he thought I was taking him to a whorehouse.

I quickly assured the good doctor, though, that this was, in fact, not a whorehouse. It was Graceland, Too.

After we had knocked on the door several times to no avail, we finally heard movement in the house. I recognized the man who answered the door, as I had been to visit Graceland, Too, several years before. Paul McLeod is the owner and operator, and apparently, the biggest Elvis fan alive.

Mr. McLeod welcomed us into his home, as he does with anyone who knocks on his door on any day of the week, any hour of the day, and pays a five-dollar admission fee. Of course, after a person has visited three times, she becomes a lifetime member and doesn’t have to pay the five dollars for any future visits. Becoming a lifetime member is high up there on my list of things to accomplish before I die. That, and being a guest announcer at K-Mart during a Blue Light Special.

We soon found ourselves touring through each room on the lower level of the house, looking at album covers, magazines, and one gold lamẻ suit – just like Elvis’s -- in which McLeod will be buried upon his passing. As we made our way to the back room of the house, the Elvis aficionado started muttering something about Jailhouse Rock and his replica of the movie set. He then opened his back door, gave us his flashlight, and told us to go out in the backyard to see it. As he pointed toward the shed where a gold Cadillac was parked, we started walking as he also mentioned something about an electric chair.

As it was dark outside and our dentured docent spouted off about the photos he’d taken that captured the ghost of the King himself, I was a little queasy about proceeding through a junked-up backyard with nothing but a flashlight and a 160-pound homosexual Cuban doctor to protect me. I was even more concerned that McLeod himself refused to accompany us on our tour through the backyard. He simply stood on the back porch and coaxed us on by muttering, “Just a little further . . . Keep going . . . Thaaaat’s it, juuuuust a little further now!”

At any minute, I fully expected us to step on an “X” on the ground, triggering a steel cage to plummet from the sky, trapping us like caged chickens getting ready to be shipped to KFC. I had visions of McLeod then strapping us to toilet seats and doping us up in an effort to recreate that fatal night when the King overdosed and fell off his throne. I feared that we would be the final touch to McLeod’s masterpiece of re-enacting all things Elvis.

By the time I saw the back half of the gold Cadillac jutting out of the makeshift shed, I decided I’d seen enough and turned to go back. Not Dr. Gonads, though. The damned fool kept walking forward, complicit with McLeod’s instructions to just go a few more steps. When Dr. Gonads whispered to me to follow him, for reasons I still don’t understand, I complied. Once I reached the spot where he was standing beside the gold Cadillac, I muttered to him under my breath, “This is freakin’ me out!”

Just about that time, McLeod told us to shine our flashlight to the back of the shed. When Dr. Gonads did so, we both gasped in horror at the sight before us. All the way to the back was a life-sized electric chair, complete with one of those helmets that looked like it came from Frankenstein’s laboratory. As Gonads and I stood paralyzed in fear with our jaws open, McLeod shouted from the porch that the electric chair even had its own generator.

At that point, I turned and made a beeline back to the porch, for I knew that was the only escape route out of the house. I didn’t even look over my shoulder to see if Dr. Gonads was following me. I had already decided that if he wanted to stay behind and let McLeod turn him into a hunk a’ burnin love, then that was his business and I’d have no part of it.

We made it safely back to the porch, returned McLeod’s flashlight to him, and finished the tour of the house with wringing hands and sweat-laden eyebrows. Our tour was capped off with the intriguing information that one night around 4 a.m., some college co-ed who was dressed like Xena the Warrior Princess stripped buck naked on McLeod’s front porch, straddled one of the blue-lighted lions, and started riding it like a rodeo cowboy.

As I pondered this story and wondered whether that girl was my Xena look-alike friend Jeannie from Ole Miss, Dr. Gonads and I left the house and bolted toward the safety of my car. The last thing I remember was Dr. Gonads shouting into my ear, “That guy’s fuckin’ crazy!!”

Lest anyone should ever question whether Elvis really is still alive, I’m happy to say that he is alive and well in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Fancy Dancin'

My father and stepmother recently completed a ten-week ballroom dancing course at the local university. That my stepmother was interested in ballroom dancing came as no surprise to me, but I was astounded that she actually talked my father into taking the course with her. I’m sure such a feat involved some form of trickery, such as telling him that she had enrolled them in a course on modern blacksmithing techniques or appreciation of German yodeling.

Now that they have successfully completed the course, they both are very excited about furthering their ballroom dancing careers. In fact, had I not been late in arriving at their farm on Friday night, we would have ventured into Columbus to the weekly gathering of their ballroom dancing cohorts. While the course apparently had been conducted in a real live ballroom dance studio at the Mississippi University for Women and Smart Men, Too (no lie, that’s what the university’s administration called the school after the United States Supreme Court issued a coeducational mandate for public post-secondary schools in the early 90’s), the weekly gathering takes place in a storefront dance studio located directly across the street from the dry cleaning shop that Dad operates. While I’m tempted to ask Dad and Beverly how their storefront dancing is coming along, somehow I think they would take offense to such a watering down of the “ballroom dancing” classification.

Every week, Lydia, the proprietor of the storefront dancing studio, comes up with a theme for the Friday evening dance. The next week’s theme is “Sock Hop, and the following week will be “Enchanted Evening.”

Of course, my parents, being the weekend warriors that they are, feel the need to go all out for such social events. Any time punch and cookies are served at an event, there is always an occasion to impress. As such, my father and stepmother discussed the wardrobes they would wear to these up and coming occasions. Or, more accurately, my stepmother discussed what she would wear and how she would dress my father, while Dad just looked over at her and grimaced.

To the sock hop, Beverly has ordered a poodle skirt and saddle oxfords to wear. This surprised me, given that as we had previously been discussing new hairstyles for her, I mentioned that I liked her current hairstyle of shoulder-length locks, as it made her look younger. She had been quick to inform me that she would not be styling her hair in a manner that made her look like an old woman trying too hard to look young. When she then mentioned the garb she would be donning for the sock hop soiree, I said, “Beverly, I think that would be fabulous, because nothing screams that you’re acting your age like a grandmother who dresses up in poodle skirts and saddle oxfords!” She told me that the point was well taken but that she was wearing the damned poodle skirt anyway.

She then turned to the topic of dressing my father for the event. She said she wanted him to wear denim jeans rolled up at the ankles and a white t-shirt with a pack of cigarettes folded up in the sleeve. My father, a non-smoker, protested and said that he did not want to wear anything that doesn’t represent who he is. I said, “Dad, I absolutely think that you should wear something that represents yourself, but somehow, I just don’t think wearing a chicken leg rolled up in your sleeve will fit the mood.”

The conversation then turned to the attire they had picked out for the upcoming enchanted evening at the storefront dancing studio. Beverly had found a form-fitting, strapless, black evening gown at an antique store. When she tried it on and then proceeded to dance in the living room with my father, she became embarrassed as her cleavage kept falling out of the dresss. I simply responded by saying, “Beverly, three words: Double stick tape!”

While Beverly’s dress was absolutely stunning, she was having a difficult time piecing together my father’s wardrobe for the occasion. Of course, as the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of Ethelsville, it is imperative that their waltzing costumes match perfectly. Since Beverly had decided that she would wear a white scarf with her black dress, she concluded that my father needed to wear a black silk shirt with a white tie to complement her. Upon hearing of this, I felt it was my duty as the gay son to stick up for my father and protest such a horrid shirt-tie combination. When I pointed out the obvious – that the traditional color combo of white shirt and black tie would suffice – Beverly’s response was, “Oh, well, that’s wonderful . . . I never even thought of that!” If only the Queer Eye guys would come out with a few episodes aimed at the storefront dancing contingency, I think they will have covered all the bases in their quest of saving the world from fashion abuse. Why the Fab 5 keep their heroic efforts contained in the burroughs of New York when the good citizens of Ethelsville are desperate for their help is beyond me.

I’ve yet to see my dad and stepmom perform the fox trot, waltz, or rumba, but I cannot imagine it will be any less dangerous than the karate lessons in which Beverly now threatens to enroll them.

A Trip to the Big City

The fourth stop of my Southeastern tour was Ethelsville, AL, home of my father and stepmother. They live on a 40-acre farm, just outside of my hometown of Columbus, MS, and share the land with a beagle named Daisy, three great pyrenees dogs (Hansel, Heidi, and Hanson), a mule named Jenny, my stepsister, and some random cat that makes occasional appearances.

The farmhouse comes with all the comforts of modern living, including window unit air conditioners and running water. Reliable wireless communication has not yet made it to this farming community, and cable television and hi-speed internet are luxury items that are available only to those whose expendable income is gained from careers in medicine, law, or underground moonshine. In fact, just yesterday, I assisted my father in configuring his home computer to use dial-up internet service. Indeed, in this small community, it may be years before the most modern of advances sees the light of day.

You won’t find any restaurants, movie theaters, or even gas stations in Ethelsville, so any entertainment besides cow-tipping the neighbor’s prized Herefords must be found in a neighboring township. This is why on Saturday night I ventured into the “big city” with my dad and stepmom.

While Columbus is the closest town and only about twenty minutes away, my parents have decided that after living in its vicinity for the past thirty years, their tastes are far more cultured than its offerings can satisfy. Therefore, anytime they feel the need to pamper themselves or their out-of-town guests, they venture one hour east to Tuscaloosa, AL, home of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide and the nearest “Hot Right Now” Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

To make the trip, we piled Clampett-style into Daddy’s Dodge dually pickup truck, with Dad at the wheel, Beverly seated in the middle in front of the gear shift, and me on the passenger’s side, pulling out my mobile phone every five minutes hoping to God that I could pick up a tower signal in order make contact with anyone who considers “maters” to be two persons looking for love rather than two or more red vegetables plucked from the vine.

In order to get to Tuscaloosa, we had to pass through the Alabama towns of Reform and Gordo. As I was growing up, we used to make fun of the kids who lived in Reform and went to school there, laughing at them for having “Reform School” on their high school diplomas. Of course, those Reform school kids always had the last laugh on us, since they bypassed the formalities of secondary education in lieu of obtaining their DQ “Employee of the Month” certificates which their mamas proudly displayed on the family refrigerator. They may not have been able to properly spell the words that they plastered on the marquee outside the store advertising the latest Biggie Combo special or declaring, “Lordy, Lordy, Donna Jo is Fortey,” but they could mix up one mean Oreo Blizzard and had the hips to prove it, as they apparently took it upon themselves to taste-test their own concoctions.

Whenever I venture into a Saturday night with my father and stepmother, typically I can predict the chain of events, depending on the town where they will occur. If we do decide to spend the evening in Columbus, I know that more than likely we will eat sandwiches and chips at Profitt’s Porch and then spend the rest of the evening strolling around Lowe’s hardware super store, not because any home improvement items are needed, but because we are “just browsin’.”

In Tuscaloosa, the evening follows a similar pattern, although – since it is the “big city” – there are many more entertainment options from which to choose. After we enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Cypress Inn restaurant overlooking the Warrior River, we moseyed on over to the Shoe Station so that I could shop for a new pair of Crocs. To my horror, I had discovered earlier in the day that my father already owned a pair of Crocs. My parents always seem to take delight whenever I do, say, or purchase something that resembles themselves and therefore indicates that yes, indeed, I am their son. Such similarities scare me into thinking that I am becoming my parents, but by the time I’ve discovered them, it’s too late.

When I did not find the Crocs that I wanted at the Shoe Station, we then proceeded across the parking lot to engage in what apparently has become a staple of Richard and Beverly’s Saturday evenings in Tuscaloosa: drinking coffee at Books-A-Million (BAM).

I faintly recall going through the Books-A-Million routine with my parents previously, but doing it all over again made for a new experience for me. I suppose that the Joe Muggs coffee counter in BAM is the only place in Tuscaloosa that my parents know of that serves coffee, for this is the compelling reason that we visit this corporate cornucopia of all things literary. Dad and I ordered coffee and lemon bars, and Beverly got a mixed drink of sweet tea and peach syrup. As I am currently reading a Faulkner classic, I brought it inside with me so that I could continue it as I sipped on dark roast. However, after we had gotten our beverages and found a seat in the café area, Beverly got up from the table, went to the magazine section, and came back with three magazines each for my father and herself. Apparently, the Saturday-night-in-Tuscaloosa-Books-A-Million routine does not involve browsing for or purchasing books at all, but it does involve borrowing magazines to peruse until the coffee and tea are gone. Dad read a Smithsonian magazine and I slogged through Faulkner while Beverly oohed and aahhhed over 537 of the newest and hottest of Hollywood hairstyles. When she stated that she wanted to cut her hair short and spiky, dye it red, and ride around on a Harley after my father was dead and gone, it occurred to me that I had never before considered my stepmother to have lesbian tendencies. I guess once you reach the twilight years, you’re willing to try just about anything.

After we finished our round of brewed mocha and borrowed magazines, we then headed up the hill in the distance so that I could experience the new Woods & Water superstore. Woods & Water basically is a small chain of stores whose target market is local citizens who chew Skoal and order sofa cushions and throw pillows made of Mossy Oak patterns. Again, we went into Woods & Water just to browse, but I did find the pair of Crocs I wanted, as well as some Carhartt pants. I’ve always wanted a pair of Carhartts but never have owned any, so I figured now was the time to increase my butch factor by purchasing some. I cannot wait until I go back to DC and wear them out to the local fru-fru gay bar. I can just see the nelly queens turning their noses up at them, saying that I look like a redneck, while the truly appreciative gays will look at me and say, “Oh, my, he’s SO butch!” I’ll have to figure out the entire ensemble, though; I do have a fabulous pink polo shirt that I think will go great with them.

As we left Woods & Water, we stopped in its parking lot to take in the panoramic view of Tuscaloosa, with its city lights aglow in the early evening. This view was the climax of our night, for we then piled back into the dually truck and headed back to Ethelsville, as our wild Saturday night was now complete.

'Til the Cows Come

The other evening, Lindsay and I were sitting on the front porch of the home where she and Whit recently moved after their wedding. It's a charming farm house that was built in the 1830's, and the front porch offers a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the not-too-far distance.

Whenever Lindsay and I discuss anything, it typically revolves around the topics of Whit's losing his cell phone, Southern literature, or any recently-discovered dessert that contains Oreo cookies as an ingredient. On this particular occasion, however, I wasn't prepared for Lindsay's interest in her newest pastime.

Across the road from the house and only several feet away are some rolling hills at the base of the mountains. Lindsay informed me that on these grassy knolls, the local neighborhood cattle do roam. And copulate. And, apparently, both of these activities intrigue Lindsay to the point that she will arrive home from work eager to engage in the front-porch voyeurism of Grade-A beef in action. Most women I know rush home from work to catch up on their tapings of that afternoon's episode of "Days of Our Lives," but Lindsay finds the plotlines more exciting when a Holstein named Bessie gets caught in the act of traipsing around another bull's onion grass patch.

Apparently, the mounting activities of cattle is a fascinating sight to watch. For Whit's sake, I'm just glad that Lindsay discovered this form of an animal's expression after she married Whit. Among men, it is quite a common hope that women do not view the arousal of horses, bulls, or donkeys or watch the movie "Boogie Nights" until after the women have had the opportunity to understand that no matter how generous God was in handing out reproductive organs to us, we men will never compare in size to the aforementioned male characters who play the roles therein.

As Lindsay proceeded to explain the act of one cow mounting another, my first question was, "You mean two cows were doin' it?" To my relief, she clarified by saying that when she said the word cows, she really meant one cow and one bull. While I believe that cattle should enjoy the same openmindedness toward their sexuality that humans should be afforded, my initial thought was that if I wanted to see two heifers getting it on, I could attend gay pride weekend and go to any tent jointly sponsored by Home Depot and Dippin' Dots.

Lindsay proceeded to describe the throes of ecstasy that the heifer evinces after she has been mounted by her horned suitor. Apparently, despite the fact that any man with bull-like proportions of reproductive equipment could easily induce in his partner the permanent need for leg braces to assist in walking afterward, the heifer is seemingly unfazed by the procreative act. She turns her head to one side, looks over her shoulder to be sure he is still there, and then proceeds to yawn several times until he has decided that he is satisfied. They then each smoke a cigarette and go back to chewing cud and filing their hooves. I'm told that this sort of behavior also is common to human couples who have been together for at least ten years.

Why our parents and middle school health teachers teach us about the birds and the bees, I'll never know. Perhaps it's because the nervous flittering of each of those species is to make us believe there is actually more excitement to sex than there really is. If those same educators would just whip out a drawing of Bessie and Floyd, perhaps we'd all realize that contentment can come from the stability being grounded and from sharing the same stomping grounds of those we love.

Morphin' the Endorphins

The third stop of my sojourn through sweet tea country was Black Mountain, NC. I previously have lived in Black Mountain, and many of my beloved friends still live here. Whenever I visit, I typically stay with my buddies Whit and Lindsay.

My last trip to this region was just one month ago when I attended their wedding. Often times I fear that when my friends get married, they will assume the stereotypical personalities of the "old married couple" by turning down a night of beer and billiards in order to stay home to watch reruns of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "America's Funniest Home Videos." Not Whit and Lindsay, though.

They are two of the most active people I know. While I appreciate that they are always up for a night at the local pub or a day on the lake, I often wonder whether they are candidates for an appropriate 12-step program. While some junkies get their fixes from snorting lines of white powder off mirrored tables or from injecting needles into their blue-veined forearms, Whit and Lindsay have an obsession with forcing their bodies to endure 26.2 mile runs while ingesting curious substances called "Goo" and "Power Gel." And, at any given moment when they're really flying high, they might throw in a mile-swim or a 10-mile bike ride if they start feeling chills or convulsions due to withdrawal.

As Lindsay recently relayed to me that she soon will participate in a swim-bike-run morning binge with her mother and older sister, I realized that the insanity isn't just limited to Whit and Lindsay. They're all crazy. While this will be Lindsay's mother's first triple-threat combo, I can just see her becoming sucked into this dark world of carbo-loading and overpronation-correcting shoe inserts. And it could be worse than any of us realize: If she gets hooked, this elementary schoolteacher may delve into dealing and start distributing orange-flavored Gatorade powder packets out of the trunk of her car to impressionable second graders during recess.

With the wide-eyed wonder of a Bengal tiger salivating over a rump steak, Lindsay further explained to me that she is planning a binge several months into the future. As her voice accelerated and rose in pitch, she slurred her words and broke into a cold sweat when she described a gathering in the woods of other hardcore junkies. This mishmash of likeminded endorphin seekers is called the Shut-In Ridge Trail Race, an 18-mile, uphill trail run. My response to Lindsay's stream of altered consciousness was equally wide-eyed as I simply stared at her with open jaw and uttered, "Who are you people?!"

The road to recovery will be tough for Lindsay and Whit and their family, but I feel confident that they can do it by having a friend like me around to support them. I'll start writing their recovery plan today, but first I've got to head to the kitchen to prepare a big bowl of Moose Tracks ice cream and then race back to the sofa so that I don't miss Oprah. Then I'll start helping them recover, but only if there are no Golden Girls reruns on Lifetime and/or there are uneaten Oreos that I find beneath the sofa cushions.

Paging Dr. Gonads

The day before I left for my month-long tour of the Southeast, I had arranged a coffee date with a Washington-based doctor. As this was a first date for us, I fully expected that we would take an hour or so to exchange vital statistics and small talk over cafe lattes and then promise to email each other at some future point in time. As it turned out, we had an intriguing conversation as we exchanged personal stories of interest and dysfunction, and so we arranged to meet later in the week after I had begun my road trip.

Dr. Gomez is of Cuban descent, but his family moved to the United States when he was two years old. Although he speaks fluent Spanish, as a result of growing up in Atlanta, GA, one can trace a bit of Southern drawl in his voice whenever he speaks English. I'm sure in most situations, his diction is more refined and polished, but whenever he is around me, I think I must draw out his Southern pronunciations because of my own backwoods twang. I would never have guessed that Dr. Gomez was otherwise Cuban had he not told me, and as such, I said that I thought his name really wasn't Gomez and that he really wasn't from Cuba. Instead, I deduced that he really was a native of Atlanta and that his true name is Gomer, as in Pyle, as in, "Shazaam!"

Dr. Gomez told me the story of how he previously practiced medicine in the outer fringes of Appalachia, and often times he treated patients whose educational backgrounds probably had not included instruction in any rudimentary level of Spanish vocabulary. One such patient apparently encountered problems pronouncing the name "Gomez," so she instead called him by the name of "Dr. Gonads." I decided that the name "Dr. Gonads" was much more descriptive and fun to say than "Gomer," so I've taken to calling him that any time I address him or describe him to my friends.

Dr. Gonads drove down to Lexington to visit me before I left that charming small town, and we spent a wonderful evening together walking down Main Street, eating Italian food, and slurping ice cream out of homemade waffle cones. The next morning as we were leaving town, he suggested that I follow him out to the interstate, as I was unfamiliar with which direction I should drive to get there. After we pulled out of the parking lot and were only a few hundred feet away from the bed & breakfast where we had stayed the previous night, Dr. Gonads pulled his car over to the side of the street, directly in front of the town cemetary. I pulled my car in behind his, imagining that he had forgotten to tell me something important and wanted to do so before we parted ways.

He got out of his car and approached mine, and he asked me to humor him by coming sit in the passenger seat of his vehicle. I did so, and he immediately started playing a song that he had loaded into his stereo system. I did not immediately recognize the artist or the song, so he informed me that the singer was Neil Diamond. As we continued to listen, I finally recognized the song as "Red, Red Wine." Of course, I furthered the romantic mood as I blurted out, "I didn't know this song was a remake!" As there is just enough of an age difference between us to say that I am not well-versed in any Neil Diamond trivia, Dr. Gonads just rolled his eyes at me and my lack of 70's pop culture. In turn, as I swiveled my head to the right to take in the aging tombstones of the cemetary, I began laughing hysterically. When he asked what was so funny, I remarked that this was perhaps one of the most romantic settings I had ever encountered: Sitting next to a cemetary, listening to Neil Diamond perform "Red, Red Wine" at 10:30 in the morning.

As Dr. Gonads shooed me and my sarcasm out of his car, he kissed me and promised to call, despite the fact that I had killed the moment that he had attempted tenderly to create. As I thought about the situation, though, I recalled that living in a small Southern town often forces people to create their own entertainment and special moments due to lack of big-city resources. For, I'm sure, this was not the first time that a budding romance had been explored in a deserted cemetary with a Neil Diamond serenade or the mention of red wine before noon.

Suth'un Hospitality

The second stop on my Southeastern tour was in Lexington, VA, home of Washington & Lee University. My friend Kate works there, so I stopped in to crash on her couch and get a taste of the Old South tradition.

Kate is the quintessential Southern woman. Raised in Charlotte, NC, Kate attended college in South Carolina, pledged a sorority, and then promptly landed a job at Washington & Lee after graduation. She's a sweet, cute blonde who wears sweet, cute sun dresses and talks in a sweet, cute voice. What I appreciate about her, though, is that behind that sweet, cute demeanor, she can channel a scathing commentary that would put Joan Rivers to shame ("Well, I guess her dress is cute, if you're into the Frumpty Dumpty look.").

As soon as I arrived in town, Kate suggested that we eat dinner at the Bistro Cafe on Main Street. I started to tell her it didn't matter to me where we ate, as long as there were . . . But Kate finished my thought before I could even get it out of my mouth: "Oh, we're going to the Old Southern Inn after dinner for mint juleps!"

My heart melted, as I realized that Kate and I were more spiritually connected than I had ever realized. There was no way I could visit Lexington, VA, and not have mint juleps, but Kate had already covered this necessity in her plans for the evening. The Bistro served shrimp and grits, and the Old Southern Inn concocted mint juleps stronger than American Idol's ratings; the only thing that could have made the night more perfect was if Dolly Parton had happened to stop by to give an impromptu concert on the lawn in front of Washinton & Lee's president's house.

Upon arriving at the Old Southern Inn and three mint juleps later, Kate and I had discussed our hopeful love lives and had planned our entire familial futures in the event that our current love interests don't pan out. In our utopian world, she and I will marry, live in a yellow turn-of-the-century front-porched house in downtown Lexington, and will give birth to beautiful, blonde children who will wear smocked clothing made by Kate herself. I will open a small law practice in town, and most of my job duties will involve drafting old-money wills and inviting local judges to my office for late-afternoon political discussions over five-card draw, Kentucky bourbon, and Monte Cristo #2 cigars.

I do declare, the Suth'un life is the way to go.

The Italian South

Sarah and I decided to meet for lunch in Charlottesville. She asked where I wanted to go, and I informed her there was only one choice for me: The Expresso Italian Villa.

I discovered the Expresso Italian Villa last year during the weekend that Sarah and Brent were married. My friend Ted and I decided the morning before the wedding to grab some breakfast, so we proceeded to the local IHOP, that bastion of batter and blueberry syrup. We were remiss, though, in showing up to IHOP on a Saturday morning without having called ahead to make a reservation with the maitre'd. When we were informed that there would be a forty-five minute wait just to be seated, we decided to proceed elsewhere.

As we drove south along Highway 29, we discovered a small, non-descript restaurant building with window signage that informed us we could order not only gyros, pizza, and spaghetti, but also barbecue and pancakes. For two simple guys like Ted and me who always seek ways to become more cultured, it was a no-brainer that we should stop in and experience a little taste of Italy, for nothing screams "Buen Provecho!" like pulled-pork barbecue and maple walnut pancakes.

As a side note, I find it amusing that the Villa is named "EXpresso" instead of "ESpresso," so as not to confuse any fellow culturemongers who might stop in for a tasty macchiato only to be told that, "No sir, we do not sell macchi-autos, or any other autos for that matter."

The Expresso Italian Villa also plays all 80's music, all the time, and why wouldn't it? There is no doubt that 80's pop music played an integral part in the development of Italian cuisine during that decade. Forget Pavarotti or Domingo; nothing aids digestion of a spare ribs gyro topped with Cool Whip and strawberries like Soft Cell's "Tainted Love." If only I'd remembered to wear my parachute pants!

Well, back to the story at hand. I arrived for lunch at the restaurant before Sarah did. When I ordered a Diet Coke, my waitress, Sherry (real sweet girl), informed me that they only served Pepsi products. As she ran down the list of alternative beverages that I could order instead, she apparently saw my forehead wrinkle as I considered ordering the sweet tea.

Now, you must understand that I am nothing short of a sweet tea snob. If I order sweet tea at a restaurant and it doesn't measure up to my standards of syrupy consistency, I will send it back and order another beverage. Well, Sherry, being the Southern soul sister that she is, read my mind and quickly said, "Oh, it's GOOD sweet tea! I'll bring you some, and you can tell me how it is."

Well, sure enough, Sherry delivered me a large, ice cold glass of sweet tea and waited for my response as I gave it the old taste test. The tea was good; not phenomenal, but good. And being the true Southerner I am, I minded my manners and exclaimed to her, "Oh, my . . . it's delicious," exaggerating the truth for the sake of chivalry.

A large grin sprawled across Sherry's face, and God love her, she did what any Southern woman would be obliged to do: she gave me the lowdown on where else to find good sweet tea in Charlottesville. As it turns out, there's only one other eating establishment with tea worthy of being mentioned in that college town: McDonald's. And, said Sherry, their sweet tea is currently on sale for only 99 cents!

I did not have the time to venture to McDonald's in Charlottesville during my short stay there, but I'll just have to take Sherry's word for it that old Ronald McDonald's sweet tea is fit for a Southern gent. I just hope it's not as fruity as he is.

Seersuckered Once Again

Although I pride myself on being a Southern gentleman, I am ashamed to admit that I do not own, nor have I ever owned, a seersucker suit. Yes, I know, revoke my membership from the Extraordinary League of Southern Gentlemen and exile me to Staten Island, because I certainly deserve it for this ghastly infraction.

To my defense, while I am Southern, I also am gay. This combination of memberships in two very cutthroat cultures provides a dilemma for a man who truly desires to own a seersucker suit but cannot ever seem to find one with trousers that have no pleats. While in lifetimes past I have worn pleated trousers, I simply cannnot bring myself to do so any longer. Such a sartorial sin would undoubtedly cause me to be banished from the cocktail party invitation lists of all three of my friends in the greater Washington, DC, area.

As if not owning a seersucker suit is shame enough, my friend Sarah has one-upped me.

The first stop of my cornbread-and-collard greens road trip was Charlottesville, VA, home of the University of Virginia (UVA). Prospective students of UVA are not granted admission to the university unless they own a bow-tie, a Gayle Pittman pottery set, or their daddies made a large contribution to the UVA Alumni Association with funds earmarked for the "hospitality committee" (whose members go by the names of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, and George Dickel).

My friend Sarah is from small-town North Carolina and has the accent to prove it. She is intellectual but doesn't flaunt it. Instead, she uses her cunning to maneuver her way around social situations that would put Jackie-O to shame (and certainly, Jackie-O -- God rest her soul -- couldn't bake a sweet potato casserole if she tried). Sarah is one of the only persons I know of who can negotiate her way around a room dressed in a pair of high heels, denim jeans, string of pearls, and a leftover sorority t-shirt that reads "My Phi Mu little sister can kick your trashy Alpha Gamma Delta little sister's ass," all while swilling her third apple martini as she repeats gossip she learned within the first fifteen minutes of the church ice cream social. The fact that apple martinis are not served at church ice cream socials in the South is completely beyond the point. The girl is talented and resourceful -- what can I say?

Sarah married her summer camp sweetheart, Brent, a year ago, and this past Monday, I arrived at their apartment in Charlottesville. When I showed up to their front door with my clothes drenched, I'm sure they were quite put off that I had just come from being Baptized and had not invited them to watch. However, before they had the chance to verbally chastise me for such an act of snobbery, I quickly assured them that, in fact, I was only drenched in sweat from my drive from DC to Virginia. (The air conditioning in my car doesn't work very well, and instead of paying the money to have it repaired, I instead have opted for driving with the windows down and the sunroof open in literal 100-degree weather. If I'm going to fully get back in touch with my Southern roots this month, then I may as well have the sweat to prove it.)

When I arrived at their lovely marital abode, Sarah played the role of the Southern hostess completely by the book: She promptly offered me an ice-cold can of Miller Lite. Since I had just come off of a three-day-and-night binge of post-bar-exam celebration, I politely declined the beer for the time being. I did, however, make a note of appreciation in my head that the Miller Lite was the only non-organic product in Sarah and Brent's refrigerator. Like any Southern princess would do, Sarah knows to eat Whole Foods products during the day so she can enjoy the wheat-and-barley products at night and on the weekends.

Sarah and Brent rent a roomy, three-bedroom apartment just north of Charlottesvile, so when I visited, they offered me a choice of which guest room I wanted. I opted for the room with the smaller bed for two reasons: 1)It had a box fan blowing at full speed (to cool me down and lull me to sleep), and 2)It had a SEERSUCKER comforter!!

The girl has a seersucker comforter. She has out-Southerned me once again. Fear not, though; I will completely out-casserole her at the next church picnic. Or, in the alternative, I will simply "borrow" her casserole dish beforehand and "forget" to give it back to her before the church picnic, forcing her to have to rush out in a last-minute panic and buy one of those aluminum casserole pans so that it looks like she just went out and bought her casserole at the S & S Cafeteria.

And this is why Sarah and I are friends; all's fair in love and civil war.

Introduction

I've wanted to create a blog for some time now, and now I am taking the opportunity to actually go through with it. I currently live in Washington, DC, have just finished taking the New York bar exam, and am now on a month-long road trip throughout the Southeast before I head back to the "big city" to begin working again. So, I thought that blogging about my experiences on this road trip would be a good way to initiate my first blog.

A little bit about me: I grew up in Mississippi, went to college and law school there, spent about a year-and-a-half in North Carolina after law school, and then moved up to the Washington, DC/Baltimore area. In other words, the majority of my life has been spent in the South. There are certain prejudicial, stigmatizing ideas that I've tried to shed as I've become more educated about the world in general. However, there are also some very rich, cultural components of the South that I love and will always embrace. This blog is an attempt to write about those very things.

You will find that this blog is lighthearted in nature, and in many cases, I will poke fun at my at myself, my heritage, and yes, even my beloved friends. Hope you enjoy it!

Ritchie