Aliases and Exile

Greetings to those out there on social media who may have been aware that I was a blogger for NAM-BLO-MO last November and it had never really taken hold of me,  I enjoyed the chance to get to write about my time rambling around the good ol’ U-S-of-A, but now I find myself in a very different sort of discovery. I will get into a few things like the fact I will be testing out a new webpage which will be taking the reigns of my blog here just so i can test the new things that are out there and see if i can clean ‘r up a lil’ bit!

https://livinggamblinramblin.wordpress.com/This has been a journey of self discovery and of self exile as one Don Patron had put it, while I had coincidentally enough met him while I was going through some very painful struggles with Christopher and the subsequent ending of our relationship together.

Let me first tell you that living in New Orleans can be extremely easy.  Especially for a gay man who is good looking.  I had the opportunity (and often took advantage of it) to just go out to the bars with only five dollars in my pockets, only to dance and sing the night away while mingling with locals and tourists alike who would keep my happily toasting my bourbon (and paying for it) with them the whole night.  On many such occasions I have met some of the lowest people I will have ever encountered in my life but on the other hand I can proudly say I have met some of the most driven, beautify, experienced, traveled and interesting people in this city.  But it begs the question why I left my home to live semi- on the streets.

Since here I have been treated as a hustler on the streets, i guess many are quick to call me a whore.  Someone who might suck dick for money.  Well, while that is unfortunately (and fortunately) not the case I got a lot of attention around the Quarter.  This may have been because of the clothes I wore, because I was always seen at night, because the actual populace of this city is small but greatly obscured by the hustling and bustling of the tourism that parades merrily up and down the streets

I lived this way because I had to leave the home that I shared with Christopher.  It was only a stone’s throw from the Quarter, but as i have learned to appreciate recently, it is away enough from the French Quarter to make one appreciate the noise in a neighborhood that doesn’t look like it should be so noisy.

I must say I did very little but talk to a guy named Paul, shed a few tears pack a bag and walk out to the only place that I knew to goto:  The Courtyard Gallery on Decatur Street — just right across the street from Margarita-ville and the old French Market along the Mississippi.  And as it was agreed upon by both Don and myself, is that every important hero in any story goes through a self-imposed exile where they take what they can get both the good and the bad– which only helps you in better recognizing what the good and the bad are,  It also made me appreciate more for what I really needed and what I simply wanted in both my daily life here and my previous life in general,

Now, now, readers I hope you don;t upset yourselves about the lack of imagry on this post.  I simply wanted to let you know that I am going to start writing about how I have been living and why this is not really becoming of someone my age, but it is, very much so, a coming-of-age.

Since coming here, i have been kicked out of numerous bars, thrown into the New Orleans Parish Prison twice, assisted in getting a claims suit again the prison filed.  I have lived with some of the finest people for short periods of time, cooked with arguably one of the best chefs in the country, broken up bar fights, been propositioned to go away to live as a kept man on the beach of Fort Lauderdale in a condo of my own, witness the ebbs and flows of many a once successful but stagnantly slumped here.  I have a tale to tell that is absolutely amazing and in it, I always know that the fates have one helluva sense of humor.