Circe Read Free

and watch Pria talk about the most inane bullshit with everyone in the world. My brothers noticed my mood and they swooped in to save me from myself. My brothers took me to New Orleans.
    I’m one of three boys. It is a common misconception that all Southerners are stupid white trash who can’t do much of anything well. This isn’t true. In my family, there are many well-educated and successful men and women. Unfortunately, my brothers had nothing in common with these men and women. They embodied the Southern Stereotype. They weren’t successful and they aren’t educated. Jeremy, my older brother, works for Alabama Power and Jeff, my younger brother, moves from job to job. Neither of them had ever left the small town we had grew up in. They liked Gulf Shores. They liked the blue water and the warm sand. Mostly they liked to drink and watch the sun rise and fall on the ocean. I always wanted more than this, as had our parents. I had worked hard to erase my Southern accent and to talk "proper" as my brothers said. I had also worked hard to become everything my father wanted of me. I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps.
    My brothers and I went to New Orleans as we always did. We had always lived only two hours from New Orleans, and the culture that built our area wasn’t so different from the culture that had shaped New Orleans. Not that we had ever cared about that. Mostly we went to drink on Bourbon Street and watch the pretty girls lift up their shirts for anybody who offered them a strand of fifty-cent plastic beads.
    Jeremy and Jeff got a room at the Days Inn on the edge of Canal Street and the inter-state. We didn’t stay in that room for more than ten minutes. We tossed our stuff on the grayed comforter and disappeared into the chaos. At first, we just wandered. We talked and watched. We didn’t want to pick a bar too quickly.
    "I'm amazed Pria let you come," Jeremy said with his heavy Alabama drawl.
    "Pria would have taken me to a strip joint herself for bringing her back to Mobile."
    "Still. She has got to know that all we’re gonna do is go from one tittie bar to the next."
    I laughed. "No one told me that we were goin' to tittie bars."
    "You've been married too long," Jeff responded.
    "Long enough to know I'm not going to watch a bunch of fat or skanky underage girls rub all over a filthy pole."
    "I didn't think there was anything else to do in New Orleans," Jeremy laughed.
    "Hey, now. Don't forget the chain of Voodoo shops and Karaoke bars," Jeff said.
    "Look y’all, that girl over there is showing her tits right now. Isn't that enough? We'll go sit at Cats' Meow with some beads and watch the pretty sorority girls lift up their shirts. You know I won't be able to go home to Pria if I walk into one of those strip joints. It's not like y’all aren't married men. What are Carrie and Brooke gonna say?" My Southern accent was already rediscovering itself again. My brothers had that effect on me.
    "We don't have the pussy-whipped relationship with our wives like you do with yours. Brooke doesn't tell me where I can go and I don't have to tell her every time I take a leak," Jeff said.
    "Y’all are a little too close," Jeremy added.
    "What does that mean?"
    "It means Pria has your balls in a little jar beside the bed. Hell, we all know you hate it here. You always hated Alabama. You could be at one of the best programs in the country, but instead you're here and she's got your dick in her hand."
    "I don't even need to answer that. I did not come here to get lectured on what a healthy relationship is by two guys whose wives come over to my house to bitch incessantly about them. At least my wife is happy. And I promise you that happiness results in me having a lot more fun with my nights than y’all have wandering around at night looking for sleazy strip joints."
    Jeff shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette, "You got a good point. And Pria is hot."
    I smiled broadly. "None of these women even hold a