Labor Day Weekend is almost here, and for many of us, that means Southern Decadence is ready to roar into New Orleans. As we all know, last year Hurricane Katrina roared in the week before the festival. Although the major events were canceled due to the disaster, a few intrepid souls still managed a parade through the French Quarter in defiance of the worst that Katrina, FEMA, and all levels of government had wrought in the city and throughout the Gulf Coast.

I urge you so very strongly to celebrate Decadence this year, wherever you are. You don’t have to go to New Orleans, although the folks there would love to see you. Hotel rooms are available, the bars are open, and all the men will be looking for you. Check out the official Southern Decadence web site for more information.

Why do I think Decadence is important? It’s our festival. It’s a celebration of sex, yes, and more. It’s a celebration of identity. And it’s a celebration of life, gay male happy balls-to-the-wall-having-fun life, in all its exuberance. Like us, New Orleans, bawdy, “sinful,” somehow not quite part of the quote-unquote “real America” will not be held down. We will come back. We will celebrate, as if our lives depend on it. We will rebuild. And we will live.

I was affected by Katrina, directly and indirectly. With my mother having grown up in Gulfport, Mississippi, I heard stories from her of the Gulf Coast and of New Orleans. Her grandfather was a greengrocer in the farmers’ market there. She and her cousin played in a school band in a Mardi Gras parade: She said her cousin had to use her drumsticks to beat away drunks. She and my father went to New Orleans on their honeymoon fifty-five years ago. Now the house she lived in as a child in Gulfport is simply gone: It made it through Camille in 1969, but not through Katrina.

More recently, my business associate and dear friend Keith lived in New Orleans for many years. At the time of the storm, he was traveling in South America and rushed to come home, making it as far as Miami before devastation hit. His technical administrator also lived nearby and was forced to evacuate. Back here, I was responsible for backing up his network of gay web sites, which at that time were hosted in Metairie just outside the city. The flood came, the power went out, the servers went down – it was a nightmare. It took over a week for me, almost single-handed, to get his business up and running again at a temporary location far from the Gulf Coast.

Just as things started to settle down – if you can call having a couple hundred thousand “guests” visiting us here in Southeast Texas – everything went crazy again when Rita knocked on our doors. My partner and I were forced to evacuate our home here in Galveston. When our San Antonio hotel reservations were unexpectedly cancelled due to overbooking, we were very fortunate to find last-minute shelter for us, our dogs, and our cat with some friends in Houston. Our luck expanded even more when the heart of the storm missed us. At Rita’s height, with sixty-five or seventy mile per hour winds blowing, a fire broke out in a structure just a block from our house. A blaze that could have taken up the entire neighborhood was miraculously extinguished with only two buildings destroyed and one other damaged.

So much was lost. I don’t need to describe the things that have been shown so many times in so many places. I do recommend the Spike Lee documentary on HBO, “When The Levees Broke.” Take a look at it, if it’s available to you. It made me both laugh and cry.

You see, I celebrate, just as one celebrates at a traditional New-Orleans style jazz funeral. It starts out mournful, yes, but eventually you get to that “second line” and the music goes uptempo. You sing. You dance. It’s time to live.

I feel so lucky to be here, even as I remember. My partner and I do have our home, when so very many still are doing without. Although his health is frail, we are together every day. My work, with so much freedom and flexibility, allows me to spend the maximum amount of time possible being with the ones I love. Three years ago we were in New Orleans for Southern Decadence. Because my partner couldn’t walk very well, we had to go slowly and spent a lot of time standing and taking in the sights, the sounds, and yes, the sensations…

I don’t know when we’ll make it back to the city – maybe when the hospitals are more completely back in business, maybe when we have a little more money to spare – but I want to be there again someday. In my mind, I’m there already

I received my shipment from the European supplier yesterday, and KIX, White Snow, Trance, Bronx, Zap, and Rock Hard are all in stock. When the mailman came to my door, I was “bowled over” in more than one way, because the package had a very distinct poppers aroma. I’m sure the mailman smelled it, too. Nothing seemed to have leaked from any of the bottles, but it was very noticeable.

It makes me wonder more and more about whether I’ll be able to continue to bring in these products from Europe. I will contact the vendor to ask them to make their packaging more air-tight. In the long run, as security concerns in the mail and on planes continue to rise, shipping these they way they do may not be feasible.

For my own customers, when I prepare your packages I take some extra steps to minimize any aroma escaping from the bottles. I tighten the caps. I double-bag the bottles in plastic zipper bags. The inner bag has some vermiculite in it, which is there to absorb liquid in case of breakage. The outer zipper bag is taped shut. Outside all of this is usually a poly bubble-wrap mailer, also taped shut. I use either surplus Styrofoam “peanuts” or newspaper for cushioning. In some cases – for example, when you order dildos or butt plugs – the poly mailer may be inside another Tyvek mailer or (if needed) a cardboard box.

For all orders, the bottles have several layers of plastic and wrapping, all intended to keep them safe.

This works out well. In the last three years, there’s only been two or three times when customers reported leakage or a really extreme odor when they received their package. If you are a customer and you have a problem like this, send me an email and let me know. I’ll do my best to fix it.

It seems like Prince must have had the gift of prophecy when his band sang in 1999, “Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?” Today our transportation security people are asking the same thing, and in response, have banned virtually all liquids, gels, and creams from aircraft carry-on luggage.

In addition to the obvious meaning and effect for every air traveler, our customers no doubt have some unique concerns. Specifically, don’t take poppers or lubes in your carry-ons. If you do, you’ll have to surrender them at the security checkpoint. And — since poppers are flammable — you might have some explaining to do.

You can still take your lube in your checked baggage. And, as far as I know (and I don’t have any reliable information) you can still take your poppers in your checked baggage, too. Be aware that poppers are nitrate-based. This means that they have similarities to other members of the nitrate family which are considered suspicious. Nitroglycerin is one example, and ammonium nitrate is another. It seems unlikely that poppers will be a problem for you when you travel, but the world is always changing. It may be that eventually we’ll see the deployment of equipment which can “sniff out” the presence of nitrates or other substances of interest in checked baggage and air cargo. If and when that happens, you may want to leave your poppers at home.

For me, I’m watching one of those “breaking news” stories today at Houston’s Bush Incontinental Airport. They say that odors were coming from a “suspicious package,” and that it sickened three workers. A HAZMAT team has been called in to check it out, but further details are not available. It has me on edge because I’m expecting a shipment of KIX and other aromas from my European vendor. I wonder if my package is “the one.” Maybe a bottle broke. Maybe everyone’s a little paranoid today. Maybe anything…

Be that as it may… If you have concerns about taking your poppers and lube on a plane, and if you’re travelling to a place where you don’t know where to buy them, let me help you out. You can place your order here on GayHankies.com and I can ship to you at your destination. If you’re staying at a hotel, for example, use your name plus “Hotel Guest” as the ship-to name and use the hotel name and address as the ship-to address. That way, you can forget about the worry and hassle of getting this through airport security. It’s especially handy if you’re not checking a bag. After all, you can always pick up more toothpaste and shampoo when you get where you’re going, but I’ve never seen a drugstore that carries Rush or Jungle Juice.

Down the road, as security measures inevitably tighten, I know that I may have to change the way I do business, too. I may have to change from shipping by Priority Mail to using UPS Ground or FedEx Ground. That would be both more expensive for all of us, and less accomodating for the many customers who use a P. O. Box. It may also be (perish the thought) that we’ll have to stop bringing in the European products which have been so popular. Whatever happens, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Stay tuned.

Really. Sometimes I do wonder, though, just how they found the web site and what they think of it.

A case in point: A few days ago I had a message from a new customer who included a comment in his order to the effect that he didn’t want anything “gay” to appear in his credit card charges. He said (paraphasing), “I’m not queer, I just like poppers.” Hey, you don’t have to be gay to shop here, I’ll sell to anyone. And for that matter, shopping at a gay-owned business does not make you gay. There’s a couple of customers (do you know who you are? would you like a blow job? maybe a nice long fuck?) who I’d love to meet sometime, but that’s neither here nor there.

I’m tempted to write, “I love my straight customers: Straight to bed.” But no, seriously, say what you want about yourself. I’m happy to help you out.

The thing to remember is whoever you are, I’m not going to out you to your mailman or to the computer that prints your credit card statements. The packages I send don’t have rainbow logos and pink triangles or “GAY!” written all over them. The return address uses the name of my company, as does the credit-card processing. And the company name means little to anyone: BANNEL LLC, named after a dog who used to live with us. Other ventures also come under BANNEL, including my web programming and consulting work.

I’m still wondering what might go through the mind of a straight man who is reading the description of all the hanky-code meanings, or some of the other items on this site. Maybe he’s curious. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe someday I’ll find out.

Located here on Galveston Island, this time of year we have an acute interest in the weather. Specifically, an acute interest in hurricanes…

Some of you will remember when I had to close down last year so that we could evacuate for Hurricane Rita. Although that storm spared our Island, GayHankies.com was closed for several weeks until I could reorganize things enough to re-open.

Now Chris, a tropical storm, is out there somewhere near Puerto Rico or Hispaniola. Although it is weakening, the storm is expected to hit the Gulf of Mexico early next week after it crosses over Cuba. At that time, it might strengthen again, or weaken. It might come this way, or turn north or south. It’s really too early to tell.

Unfortunately, it’s not too early for us to make plans. If the storm comes here, our local weatherman says it would be the middle of next week. My partner and I have already made a hotel reservation on the Mainland in case we must evacuate. Last year, we waited too long to do this and our reservation was cancelled because of overbooking. We were very fortunate to find last-minute shelter with some good friends in Houston, but this year we’re planning ahead.

If this is a smaller storm, we would probably stay home and ride it out. The house might have some damage, but our garage is built to the latest building code and rated to withstand strong hurricane-force winds. Since we are behind the Seawall, a the storm surge from a small storm would not affect us. And even if the power goes out, we have a generator and a good stash of supplies.

Either way, if this storm — or another storm — comes here, GayHankies.com will shut down for awhile. If we do, I’ll post a notice on the web site before signing off.