Queenie

Coincidence is a wonderful thing, serendipitous convergence beautiful. Thus it was Tuesday. Queenie had read my post on breakfast with Sonny Perdue, and knew I would be in Atlanta, and as she was traveling to the ATL for job interviews she dropped me an e-mail, and suggested we meet for dinner.

I accepted with a modicum of reserve (great haste, actually) and so she set the thing: a beer in Virginia-Highlands at Moe's and Joe's, and dinner across the street at the Highland Tap. I was already impressed, because, although we have e-mailed, I'd never met Queenie, and the V-H suggestion was brilliant. I used to live two miles from the Highlands, and it was great stomping grounds, but that was a quarter century ago, and so I arrived and vainly searched for landmarks. The Eating Place? Gone. The Dessert Place? Gone. But there was Moe's and Joe's with it's distinctive Pabst Blue Ribbon sign. When the Holocaust comes, and when nuclear winter subsides, the only survivors will be cockroaches and Moe's and Joe's.

I approached, querelous, not knowing what, or whom, to expect inside. Courage, Velociman. That's what Dan Rather told me. Courage.

I needn't have been concerned, of course. In her sense of depraved humour, Queenie had also sent email invites to a few mutual chums, so she was easy to recognize. There, ensconsed on bar stools, were Queenie, Kelley, and Key. It was a conflation of Hefner's Grotto and Pancho's Happy Bottom Riding Club at Muroc Field, for those of The Right Stuff bent.

I wasn't expecting Kelley and Key, so this was the bitch. Listen:

These are three incredibly beautiful, sexy women. To escort any one of them to dinner makes one a stud hoss of incalculable game. To escort all three to dinner made me feel like Marcus Aurelius, with laurel wreath upon my head, and Nubian in tow holding my grapes. Or Huggy Bear. Although it was quite obvious I was the kept person here. The boy toy.

Queenie? Dying to know, aren't you? Raven hair, heart-shattering green eyes. Think Wonder Woman meets Xena Warrior Princess meets Lara Croft meets Scarlett O'Hara's eighteen-inch waist. Good lord. The V Man obviously likes the V shape, and Queenie has the V down. I don't know how that tiny waist supports those, ah, healthy assets. Sir Isaac Newton would be flummoxed.

Anyhow, the Tap. Awesome. Huge bloody steaks washed down with Merlot (and Grey Goose for me, of course). Piping hot coffee for dessert.

Queenie rules. Kelley and Key are not what one would call inhibited lassies, they are freaking goddesses, but good christ.

She never divulged her former blog, I did not ask. I don't want to know. I had to vanish at eleven, because I had to be up at six to see the governor, and I wear that sense of responsibility with shame, because I'm thinking they slathered the town red after I booked, and broke many hearts. I'm also thinking the ATL will never be the same. Olympics? Super Bowl? Pshaw. These girls were seismic. I felt tectonic plates shift as I was going to bed.

Bonus? Queenie gave me a brief access to her site. "Keep it fresh, boy," she said. "I'll be up here a few days. And, hey: don't fuck it up. Mr. MacFarland strops his straight razor every day, and he hasn't had a suitable victim in weeks."

Which is to say I hang my hide on the line here, posting this, and I may be alto in the Vienna Boys Choir tomorrow. Anyone have a safe house?