Stepping Down

The King and Queen are back from their whirlwind trip to France, England, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, and Bulgaria. They have business interests in Moscow and Malaysia, too but there's only so much you can fit into one month.

The day they left me in charge they also instructed me to work with my managers and make the changes we had been arguing for and prove that they would work. We first renovated both bars with everything from Venetian plaster to new plants; if we weren't going to be the biggest gay bar in town, we would be the most elegant. We brought back the drag shows, put a new music system in place, and threw benefits. A whole new, younger crowd became regulars; 12 of these handsome young men we made members of The Palace 7th Gay Calvary with Captain Jeremy at their head. A more loyal Imperial Guard you could not find. And while the other businesses on Ocean Drive closed and boarded up, The Palace stayed open during hurricanes Katrina and Rita and threw lavish parties in defiance.

We revamped the entire menu and I browbeat the chef over and over with: Quality AND Cost Control. Ditmar browbeat the new bartenders with Quality AND Imagination. Boris browbeat the servers with Quality AND Efficiency. And it worked. In what is notoriously the worst month of the year, we made so much money that I still don't know what to do with. Other club owners continuously "stopped by" to see what was going on.

Strange to say, I will miss working 12 hours a day 7 days a week; I love this place and the staff that, gay and straight, are devoted to each other. But perhaps I can now devote some time to Alexis. The Countess has been without a Count for a long time; the endless tricks are boring when you realize that screwing someone you don't know is pointless. A human has to have a reason to come home or a desire to do so; every night I come home there is only one decision to be made: which bedroom will I sleep in tonight so that I might fool the ghost of loneliness.

I will leave The Palace at ten this morning, pick up KiKi, turn off my phone, and lounge by the pool. (Until, of course, I hear the gallop of The 7th and the particular way they can play a luring tune on a bugle.)

P.S. I've already received three calls from The 7th; I am not resigning, I'm just going back to being a simple, elegant Countess. Also, now that I have a new nemesis (Tom) to dwell on and plot against, I will now have the time to do a good job on both. Intrigue never takes a holiday at The Palace.