Howdy from Nawlins. I was going to say I’ve finally caught up on my rest after the nightmarish trip down here from Iowa City but I don’t think I’ll really be able to catch up on my rest this entire book tour. Book tours, I was warned by friends who have experienced them, are grueling. But it’s always been one of my dreams to be able to complain about a book tour at some point in my life - so I ain’t going to complain about being able to complain about this one. Aaahh - there’s an epiphanic koan (to mix my religious vocabularies) to commence the day in this most Catholic of southern cities: Complaint as Blessing.

A couple of days ago now I went out to the Jefferson Parish Library in Metairie to do a reading and signing. The library is quite beautiful and we had a good crowd. Jim Davis from the library - a better-looking Shelby Foote - introduced me. He’s got one of those southern accents so thick and deeply rooted in the region one expects to see moss hanging from it. I was so moved to meet several people who had already read my book and were touched by it in specific ways because it spoke to them about their own lives in the south. It’s been a humbling experience - I do mean that: I am humbled - when people come up to me at these readings to speak so intimately to me about their own lives and struggles and how they too have emotionally survived. My readers - a new term in my life that is another blessing, sure not complaining about that one - are a new source of inspiration and solace to me. I didn’t know when I started writing this book how much it would be a bridge for us all to reach out to each other - reader to writer, writer to reader, stranger to stranger, white folks to black folks, black folks to whites, family member to estranged family member, friend to friend, reader to potential reader, straight to gay, conservative Christian to Christians not so conservative …. Shit, I’ll stop the litany. I’m beginning to sound kind of corny. But I am kind of corny - always have been - beneath this urbane guise of mine. My old friend Andrew Sullivan (see my blog links over there) told a writer from Bookslut.com who just interviewed me for its April postings that beneath my urbane exterior, I’m “a Flannery O’Connor on acid,” that I’m a “one-off,” which in his British parlance and own one-offness is a compliment. I think part of that is my ability, still, to claim my corniness after living in a land of avenues and numbered streets where corniness is scorned. It’s something else I’m just not ashamed of.

After the reading at the library I went and had a delicious dinner at Meaux Bar on 932 Rampart Street in the French Quarter. The place is owned by a couple of buddies from New York who moved down to New Orleans a few years ago, Matthew and Jim. It’s a really cool restaurant with really cute waiters - hell, Matthew and Jim are really cute themselves. So if you want to see sexy guys and gals at other tables and flirt with the staff, head over to Meaux Bar when you’re in New Orleans. Matthew is the chef there and the food is great. They even have valet parking.

Yesterday I got up early and caught the train to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where my nephew Jake goes to school at the University of Southern Mississippi. When Jake came up for my book party in New York a few weeks ago, he couldn’t believe I hadn’t booked Hattiesburg on my trip because down a couple of blocks from his loft is a great place called Main Street Books run by a lovely couple, Diane and Jerry Shephard. I had St. Martins look into it as an adjunct to my New Orleans stop and I’m glad I did. We had a great turn out and I sold over 50 books there after my reading. It’s a beautiful store in downtown Hattiesburg. If you’re ever passing through that part of Mississippi, check it out. (There’s also a great little cafe in town down by the railroad tracks called SouthBound, owned and run by Chris Hackbarth, an ex-model who somehow landed in Hattiesburg. Chris is even from Iowa City, so we had fun talking about my stop there. Check out Chris’s bagels, so to speak, if you’re ever in Hattiesburg after buying a book from Diane.)

The range of people in my audience at Main Street Books surprised me - though I don’t know why I continue to be surprised by this tour. Each day brings new and welcome ones. We had a middle-aged preppy man-and-wife from Laurel. Gay men of a certain age from around southern Mississippi. Mothers and their children. And cool college students - some straight, some gay - from several of the colleges from around the area. I do think Mississippi Sissy, despite that second word in its title, can be a cross-over kind of book. And the audience in Hattiesburg helped prove that to me.

Finally, seeing some of those Mississippi college kids around the streets in Hattiesburg as well as the ones that came in to the store to buy my book, made me think of that Mississippi college kid I write about back in the 1970s in the last chapters of my book, the one that got in that Ryder truck and drove to New York City when he was 19. I hate writing about myself in the third person but looking back at that kid from the perspective of a 51 year old almost makes me seem like a different person in my own eyes and yet I know the basis of who I am today sitting here in this hotel room blogging was being formed then by the people who knew and loved me. One of those people, as you know if you’ve read the book already, is Carl Davis. A nice result of writing the book has been getting back in contact with Carl after all these years. Late last night, after Jake drove me back down to New Orleans, I signed on to my email and found this image from Carl. It is a photograph of me from those days in Mississippi when we first knew each other. For those of you who have complained that there are no pictures in the book, here’s one of me that Carl took when I was 18 or 19. My dear friend Peter Staley, the builder of this site as well as his own - aidsmeds.com (see links to the side) - said I should post it. I always do what Peter says. So here it is. It is the face I can’t help but see in the young people who come to meet me at my readings, a face I no longer see in the mirror but one that will always stare back at me from the past I’ve tried to conjur again in my book, a past that is now speaking through all our broken panes.

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