6
... In Which Frankie Minot Goes Out to Hustle Some Chicken ...
I never pay for eet. And if there's one thing I can't stand, eet's a DRUNK TRICK.
Eet's been said that in conversation, every "I" save for of course the personal pronoun is pronounced as a long, hard "E" by me. Well, so BE ET! I've lived in this town for thirty years, and I was even known to be associated with some of Mr. Tennessee Williams's circles, when he lived on Dauphine Street, in the Quarter. Picked me up MANY a boy at HIS soirees, too. Not that I needed THAT old faggot's help.
But last Thursday night, I was relaxing in my parlor with my friend Lucretia, drinking a bit of whisky, and along about eleven I said, "Come on, Dear, let us to the Queer Bar!" So we walked down the Street to the Double Play, which is where I met Cricket. He was nineteen or so, and a real SOUTHERN boy, from Mississippi, eet seemed, and I scornfully asked him home, and when he quoted me a price I told him, "I never pay for EET!"
Yet somehow he ended up back at my Quarters, and after drinking a gluttonous amount of burgundy, I had him, just before he nodded out. Then the next morning the boy had the auDAcity to ask me for fifty dollars! "Boy," I told him, "I've already paid you. IN . . . grapes." And when I finally had the telephone in my hand, threatening to call the Police, I was still enough of a gentleman to give the little slut a Benson & Hedges on his way out the door. God knows who these little butt-hustlers think they are.
So eet was a Monday, my day to write my Theatre Column for the Times-Picayune, and incidentally, eet has come to my attention that Raphael Fleetwhite, that Boil on the Ass of Humanity, has called me a Pimp. Which is like Noel Coward calling say, Joe DiMaggio a Faggot. FLEETWHITE is the pimp. And he ain't a good one.
But I love a well-played musical even more than I love Eartha Kitt, Mahler, Kirsten Flagstad in Wagner with Melchior or lovely Ladies of the Stage like Lillian Gish or Dame Sybil Thorndike. And when I heard eet was to be Anything Goes!, and that David Batewood, marvellous actor that he is (and person, too) was to sing, I wrote the review on my old Olympia without even ever having had to go see the thing. He's sung eet at my Sunday Night gatherings enough to convince me.
And that Monday night I was once again to Entertain, and of course I had to prepare. SO many errands to run though, Dear GOD, to the wine store, to get food for my dachshund, and to my tobacconist's, and I must get my hot water turned back on soon, finally, as the Fall had begun to nip at the tip of my nose, and the water's no longer warm in the pipes.
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