Gentlemen prefer New Orleans

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend.  Ladies speak highly of pearls as well.  Gentlemen prefer New Orleans.

No matter his vice of choice or his fancy, a gentleman prefers New Orleans.  Redheads, blondes, brunettes... coquettes, matrons, schoolmarms... librarians, debutantes, shop clerks, attorneys... dark, light, pale, dusky... calloused, polished, silky, hearty, demure, boisterous, shy or crafty... blue-eyed, green-eyed, gray-eyed, brown-eyed, doe-eyed, flinty-eyed... soft or coarse... dull or sharp... no matter his choice of vice or fancy, a gentleman prefers New Orleans.  

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but New Orleans, a city that glitters and sparkles during all hours of every given day, is full of Gulf oysters plump with pillows of succulent and slippery meat.  A man may talk to a woman’s cleavage rather than look her full in the face.  The hand is quicker than the eye and beauty is both fleeting and permanent.  Look around.

Serpentine New Orleans winds along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.  It spreads inland along tortuous blocks sandwiched between dry ridges and moist canals, levees and sink holes... the lay of the land is less solid than it seems.  A day in New Orleans has made sinners out of nuns and it has made saints out of sportsmen.  A gambling man bets his life when he sets foot on New Orleans’s pavement.  Watch your step.  There are potholes and hurdles along the walkways that parallel New Orleans’ neutral grounds.

Baubles and bangles and buckles and beads catch the sun’s rays as it sets behind the East Bank.  No deposit is safe.  Shifting soils continually settle and resettle.  A visitor to New Orleans never knows where he or she stands.  A citizen feels more confident while being just as lost in the moment.  New Orleans is an continuously unfolding present.  There is never more than the weight of the past and future balanced on the fulcrum of this second.  There is never less than the chance to lose oneself in the parade that is New Orleans.  

Ladies love New Orleans.  Gentlemen prefer it.