I’m pretty chill; smooth with the ladies, if you know what I mean. That is why they are so surprised when I make my move, slide in close, and just as things are looking good my body starts with the uncontrollable shake-shake-shakes! Then my right legs spins three times at an impossibly horrible angle. I bend at the waist until my chin slaps my knees, and when I straighten up the inertia of it takes me high, high in the air until I land and say to them, “Yo, it’s cool. Wanna grab some ice cream and amaretto? My treat.” You have to treat a lot when you do shit like that, if you wanna have lady friends, that is. Look, I get it.

Just the other night I ambled up next to this barroom beauty and was feeding her the business when I floated 3 feet up in the air, hovering there in front of her while my lower half spun round and round in complete circles, tightening my waist ever tighter and thinner like I was some kind of rubber band man. It was a tad embarrassing, but I thought I played it off well. ”What?“ I asked her. “You never had a guy get all twisted up over you?” I was still up there spinning at the waist when my left arm popped off and thudded to the floor. “Say, you wouldn’t mind giving me a hand with that, would you Babe?”

So when she jetted I made my way to the DJ booth where two hotties were throwin’ down on the dance floor. Two women dancing together never fails to get me up, so in I jumped.

I was really getting my groove on when my freaky showed up. It was full throttle this time. It was the shaky-shaking, the waist spinning, the legs whirling, the snap and jump… hey, I wish I knew what was coming next, but who really cares so long as it looks good on the dance floor? I was shaking the proverbial leg, and these chicks were digging it!

They took me home, where the action didn’t stop. They’d never seen moves like mine, and wanted to know what other moves I had hidden away. I told them I was as excited to find out as they were! They squealed as my head spun circles. One propped her fanny under my flailing hands, screaming with delight as they slapped away, while the other pulled my spinning head into her bosom, holding it up close as it whirled away.

But it was no use. A man cannot perform for any number of beautiful women when another has a hold of his heart, controlling his every move. And so it was with my lovely little Marie.

“Yes,” Marie had said to me earlier in the evening, she being way to smart to argue with a player like myself. “You can go out on the town. Have all the fun you want! What the hell? You are not tied to me. I will sit here and wait for you like a good girl. Sit, and wait, and play with my little friend.” As she stroked the doll’s hair I had purred like her kitten out into the Crescent City night. Hey, a man’s gotta be a man, and do man things.

But the game was up, the moon waxing low, so I made my way home, kick-skip, crack-a-whipping my way through the N’awlin’s night, heading home where I belonged, tucked in tight with my little hoodoo-voodoo queen.

”You’re home early.” She cooed as I slid into bed beside her, spooning up close.

“I’m just not my own man when you’re not around.”

”Yes,” she said. “I know.” And off to dream she drifted.

When I was in 5th grade, I began having really bad headaches that eventually progressed to full blown migraines a few years later. I suffered with them from the tender age of ten until I hit about fifty-five years of age. The pain they created was always concentrated in my right temple and could linger anywhere from an hour to three excruciatingly long days. Few were manageable while most were crippling and incapacitating in every conceivable way. Migraines are an illness that no one can visibly see, so during many of my attacks, especially in the earlier years - before more migraine awareness and treatment became more accessible - I would suffer the stares and judgments from others who were skeptical because there was no physical ailment that could be seen with the naked eye.

I vividly recall once when I was away from home and visiting a friend during my college years. I awoke very early in the morning with a severe migraine. I lay there in my bed and willed the penetrating pain in my right temple to subside but it was unrelenting, and instead became increasingly stronger and unbearable. As I tossed and turned in an effort to tame the pain in any possible way, a distinct image flashed through my mind: I was absolutely sure someone somewhere had a voodoo doll of me and was forcing a long needle in its right temple. My pain ridden body and mind insisted that there could be no explanation for the pain I was being forced to endure.

Needless to say, this imagery was something that followed me in subsequent years each time I had a migraine attack. I know it sounds silly, and I'm fairly certain that there was no one actually manipulating a voodoo doll of me, but still, when you're in the throes of so much pain, your mind often runs rampant with memories and visions of things you do not normally consider.

I am very thankful that I no longer suffer such horrific attacks now that I am much older. I am sure that anyone who suffers from a type of chronic pain can easily relate to the use of vivid imagery. Either way, the truth is that voodoo doll or no voodoo doll, migraines are an incredible evil all on their own.

When someone calls you "a doll"

it means you are their darling.

...But what if they had intended something else?

Perhaps it was because it did not look enough like her

or perhaps it was because

it did not look like what any girl would want to look like at all?

Was it intended to be a toy for keeping the children company

or a mantelpiece

for reminding them they would always be watched?

By then

things were far too gone for a proper introduction

yet far too close for comfort.

So there it remained

on the shelf

poked through by the curious gazes of passing children.