About Me
Our Cajun drummer and I knew a lot of bartenders in and around the French Quarter. We had been drinking on discounted tabs for almost twenty four hours that evening. The 'night out on the town' had turned to 'dawn of the dead' on Decatur street.
As night became day we grew tired and stumbled through the dimming sky, I thought about how good it would feel to pass out, to push my face deep into a pillow and sleep the next few days away. My legs were half asleep, numb and stupid from having dangled on barstools. Still, somehow they dragged me homeward, and Andrepont was staggering along as well.
John Diamond, our landlord, who lived on the other side of the duplex looked amused as we approached the old creole home in the heart of the Bywater neighborhood. When he saw us approaching he ran inside for a moment.Upon return he was holding a French looking bottle of what looked like Brandy. The label looked like it was hand written with a caligraphy pen. I can assure you that he told us in great detail about the type of booze it was, where it was from, how old it was... but the details are blurred. What I do remember is the emphasis he gave to that bottle. It was not just any old corner store rotgut. He had wiped the dust off of something special for us.
I'll never forget the first sip and how smooth it was. I think I said something about it tasting like water. I had become so saturated with liquor, I estimate that the brandy felt the burn of me more than I felt the burn of it.
I remember little of that evening after that sip. I was already in that fragile state where sleep deprivation combined with excessive cigarette smoking and heavy drinking had left me teetering on the edge of wakeful consciousness. Reflecting back on that time, little vague windows of memory do pop up here and there. I was blacked out most all of the time, but with rare little splashes of a sort of 'water in the face' that would somehow induce the temporary clarity necessary to have a moment which could be registered in the mind and therefore remembered later. Amidst the swirling streetlights and senseless song of inebriated fools, the honking horns of passing cars cannot always awaken those who dare to scuba dive into the debths of extreme intoxication. Consequently, the recollections I do have of the rest of that night are not coming from a reliable source. So I'll relay the testimony of the nearest half-sober witness: Chantry Land, my girlfriend of that time, is sure that the following events transpired after we finished that bottle.
Reportedly Andrepont and I were capsized in the mud in the back of the house for some time before I somehow squirmed across the yard and managed to wedge myself behind the hot water heater, which was located just outside of the back door of the house. Perhaps feeling somewhat responsible for my condition, John wriggled me free somehow, scooped me up in his arms and carried me into the house.
Something about being cradled like that combined with the delirium of my drunken state caused me to urinate as freely as a newborn infant, but John Diamond did not let me drop. The warm fluid began to spread through my pants and into the fabric of his shirt. Good ole crack smoking John Diamond continued to carry me all the way to my bed, where my blankets, sheets and mattress finished the job of soaking up my piss.
"I peed upon the wrong John with my long johns on."
