i wish i could quit you, sugar ray May 21, 2006
But you’re back, baby. Just like a bad habit. You knew I couldn’t throw you out. Kiss me, you big lug. I’m a sucker for a hard case, and I always have been. Besides that, you make me laugh. I think we have seen each other at our worst now, Sugar Ray. Both of us up to my crinolines in god-knows-what. You losing your cotton-picking bald-headed mind. I was just about gone with the wind, but here I am. I guess we are both harder to kill than a cockroach, Ray. Maybe we were made for each other. Of course, none of it matters anymore, we’re in it together now. But before you start comparing yourself to Gandhi and Denzel Washington, I need to tell you something. You might want to stop smiling for this. I’ve done some thinking, and things are going to be a little different from now on. There is still time to back out if you want to, Ray. I have a feeling Oliver Thomas wouldn’t turn down a request to be my mayor. So here it is. Basically, Ray, I want to feel like myself again. I know a lot has happened, but a lot of people depend on me, and we can’t let them down.
First of all, I want a maid. And not a meter maid. I want all of Katrina’s left-over shit cleared out of my sight right now, Ray, like it should have been months ago. Do you know how much it hurts me to be reminded of her every day? I don’t want to see any of her cars, any of the appalling piles of trash she threw around, none of her crooked houses, looking like they’ve been re-decorated by a drunken circus-clown from hell. Ray, I’m no good at picking up after myself, you know that. I’ll be damned if I’ll be the one scrubbing off that witch’s bathtub rings! I know you have been too busy to take a look under my petticoats lately, baby, but I’m worried about my infrastructure. I’m afraid to let my dog drink the water around here after Miss Katrina’s extended bubblebath. I feel dirty, Ray. Who knows what I may have been exposed to? I might want a different garbage man, too. That fellow you signed the contract with last time seems to think he is doing me a favor when he picks up my trash.
Don’t give me that shit-eating grin, Ray, I’m not finished. I also want more money. I don’t care what you have to do to get it, just do it. I’m not talking about grandiose pyramid schemes where you and your friends use my family’s money to pay carpetbaggers to make off with the family silver. I’m talking about using your head, pretty boy. I’m tired of being taken advantage of. I’m glad you had sense enough to play kissy-face with your new buddy George Bush on TV. But let me warn you, Ray. I’ve been around a lot longer than you have. I’ve been a Democrat since Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson. I haven’t trusted a Republican since before The War of Northern Aggression, and neither should you. Those yankee white boys think they are playing you, Ray. When I look into those sexy eyes of yours, I wish I could tell if you know it. You say you are going to ask for more help in dealing with me, and that’s smart. You are going to need it.
But you seemed to have picked up a few political tricks since the last time you and I went round and round. I have to say I find it attractive, Ray. You fought hard to keep me, baby, and you fought a little dirty. You accused me of taking a stroll through the red-light district? Let’s talk about where you and Rob Couhig have been holding hands. It certainly wasn’t the first time the nice guy finished last with me, is it? What can I say? It takes a certain kind of mayor to keep a hot, sultry, mysterious, eccentric creole conquest like me under any kind of control. I wish you luck. But now that you’ve got me back, I’d like to see you use that big head of yours to give me the life I have worked hard for and that everyone knows I deserve.
And Ray, honey, we don’t communicate and that has to change. I don’t mean just when Katrina was in town. I mean every day. It’s ironic that you got your start in the communications business, baby, because you keep getting wrong numbers. I’m not your employee. You can’t just do things and not tell me. Everything you do affects me, like that whole trip to Disneyland with Kimberly Williamson Butler. People think they have the right to judge me. I know you don’t care what people think, but my reputation is important to me. I’ve made a lot of money off my image and I’ve worked hard to keep it. I want my mayor to make me feel so good, and so proud, that people take one look at me and say, “Katrina who?”
Ray, if we’re going to stay together, I think we need to start doing some of the things we used to do. Remember the things we did in the old days? Like taking a streetcar ride up St. Charles Avenue? Like having dinner at Commander’s and Mr. B’s? A Sazerac at the Fairmont? By the way, when did you go to Ruth’s Chris? Last time I looked, there were no steak houses on Broad Street.
Oh, and Ray, I’m not into all the self-righteousness. Last night when we talked you said my levees were going to be stronger than ever. Then, you said that God doesn’t want us to have another hurricane. Can I just say, as a three-hundred-year-old beauty who grew up next door to the Mississippi River, where I had to fight for everything I have ever had, God don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to me. A bunch of preachers may have helped to get us back together, Ray, but if you don’t take good care of me this summer, the devil is going to drive us apart for good.
- Posted in : main, new orleans
- Author : dangerblond
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