Tea With Satan

All this Hocus-Pocus talk and Hookers' Balls has gotten me in a tizzy. I have always felt that the only way to confront a problem is to address it directly or buy it.

So, I sent my liveried "part time hired help" to Satan's home to request a meeting. My card is taken and one returned; it is all singed around the edges (not something "good" families allow to happen). I show up at Satan's home in Coral Gables, a typical nasty mish-mash of bad taste given to over-the-top amenities.

Ding-Dong. The horned cameras are eyeing me, but I pretend not to notice. The door of imported (albeit expensive) Honduran wood opens and Satan says, "Welcome, Mrs. Astor. We have been waiting a long time for you." I ignore his forwardness and reply, "Mrs. Astor. THE Mrs. Astor. Charmed I'm sure." "Indeed," says Satan, "Won't you come in?"

The place is vulgar; Second French Empire furniture mixed with faux Biedermeier. I warily seat myself upon an imitation Napolean III settee and glare at a clock placed in the stomach of
of an ostrich. Portraits of monkeys in Imperial garb fill the room; I think I recognize an ancestor.

"The reason I called upon you, Mr. Satan--or is that Sir Satan," I state, "is to get all these crazy notions of witches and demons out of my head and put back the booze and boys."

He says, "It's Satan, not Sir Satan. And, the only thing I have to offer you is torment and pain; torment and pain the likes of which you will cry to heaven for relief."

"Oh," I thought, "He knows about Carlos from last night", but brush it aside. "Can you recommend a good gardener?", I ask, as fire and steam spews from this nostrils. (The hair there is a problem, too, but I look elsewhere.) "You take not seriously that which is before you", he looms.

Then, I thought: This Man is a Fool! Of course, I don't take' seriously that which is before me'. If I had ever done that, I'd have been dead twenty years ago. I picked up my gloves (singed) and said, "It's been a pleasure" and walked out that door, disappointed. And as I left the corroded gates to the estate, wild parrots flew over my head as they do every day I walk to work and I realized that the booze and boys never left me, I just had to get HOME.