N is NOT for NOOKIE!

 “The weakling and the neurotic attached to his neurosis are not anxious to turn a powerful searchlight upon the dark corners of their psychology.”

 - Sigmund Freud

I was beginning to think that the ghost of Mark Twain was turning Freud's ghost permanently grey.

Freud leaned back in his chair, sighing, 

"We now will see what first occurs to you, Roland, when you hear the Letter N."

Mark leaned towards me and loudly whispered, "Say Nookie.'"

Freud shot bolt upright in his leather chair.  

"No, not Nookie, you jackdaw!"

He closed his eyes and muttered to himself, 

"The weakling or the neurotic attached to his neurosis is not anxious 

 to turn such a powerful searchlight as free association upon the dark corners of his psychology.” 

Mark snorted, 

"Just because no one understands what you say doesn't mean you're a genius, Saw-Brains."

Mark winked at me.  "When we get to S, say Schlomo."

Freud flinched and Mark chuckled, 

"That's Saw-Brains' real middle name.  In fact, his true first name is ...."

I shook my head sadly, 

"Is his own affair, right?  You're too good a man to hurt another for a laugh."

Mark frowned, "You talking about the same man I used to see in the mirror?"

"New Orleans," I said quickly.  "That's what I thought of first when you said N, Doctor."

{Steamboat at New Orleans circa 1890}

 Mark chuckled, acting as if he were the subject  of the Free Association.

"I remember New Orleans well.  Beautiful city.  But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water.

 Neither can they conveniently have cellars or graves, the town being built upon 'made ground'; 

so they do without both, and few of the living complain, and none of the others."

He stroked his mustache. 

 "Ah, yes, I remember that lovely cabaret singer.  I told her: 

'We can’t be lovers, my dear, because we both have mustaches. But since you’re a lady, and I’m a gentleman, I’ll shave mine off.'”

Mark gazed off into the shadows.

"It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh;

 and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans."

Freud said between clenched teeth, 

"I am not interested in the least in your puerile recollections!"

He turned to me.  "What occurs to you in thinking of New Orleans?"

"Memories of its streets right after Katrina when the power went down, civilization died, and the predators came out.  

Me hugging a rocking mother holding her dead child as we waited for an ambulance ... it never came."

Neither Freud nor Twain had any words for that.  I could no longer speak.

Some memories wither speech.