It’s remarkably difficult to find among my photos pictures of myself that neither include someone else nor involve at least partial nudity, but I was able to dig up a selection of entirely SFW examples from the past year or so. 

The picture I use as a profile on hookup apps, simple and unassuming with little that can be remarked on other than myself. I’ve been told that in my more quasi-aristocratic moments I can come off as cold and unapproachable, so here I’m surrounded by warm colors (that neither complement my disposition nor flatter my complexion, but still) with my characteristic wry half-smile I prefer whenever anyone insists that I smile for a picture. Also, I neglected to shave that morning, allowing for the faintest suggestion of what my facial hair might be for those into that sort of thing. It’s always a good idea to cover as many bases as possible, you know.

On the gallery of a small plantation house in St. Francisville, near the river in the Florida Parishes north of Lake Pontchartrain. This region is so named because it was not part of the Louisiana Purchase but instead the westernmost extent of the Florida panhandle at the time it was acquired by the US, giving it a slightly different history from the rest of the state. The Anglos (of which there are many) are especially a strange breed, not quite the standard Bible Belt rednecks who live in the northern part of the state but also not the insidiously adaptable Episcopalians and their ilk who shoved their way into New Orleans culture a century and a half ago. In any case, I don’t stand out much in a photo taken from this distance, but sometimes the environs are worth a look themselves.

Case in point – in the gardens of Houmas House, a plantation along the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The elegantly-arranged – and anachronistic, but it’s not as though I own the place, and in any case vast fields of sugarcane do not exactly draw the eye – parterres and paved walks are ironically contrasted with this bench sculpture of a homeless man, an artful reminder of poverty ever-present on the fringe of beauty.

…Oh, right. This is supposed to be about me. Moving on.

For a less flattering staged photo here is one from that same outing, in a carriage house converted into a large open dining room. This photo mostly shows off the size of the barbecued shrimp, here lifted from the dark roux that gives the dish most of its flavor. I assume I’m brandishing my knife like so because I was stopped in the middle of bringing it to my dish to cut off the head. Despite the name perhaps the only thing barbecued shrimp has in common with American barbecue is that it’s rather messy to eat, even more so than boiled crawfish although the mechanics – pinch the tail and suck – are similar.

On the subject of food, a scene from lunch at Commander’s Palace in the Garden District. We sat in the naturally-lit upstairs dining room, which overlooks the Lafayette Cemetery (I imagine some people might find that morbid). Founded in 1893 by the eponymous Anglo-Frenchman – yes, those exist, especially after the Civil War when the money started to dry up and we found ourselves for the first time on the outside looking in at what is deemed Society here – but since purchased by the prolific Brennan family of restaurateurs, Commander’s is one of the relatively uncommon locales outside the Vieux Carré where both Creoles and Anglos like to see and be seen.

From last winter, at the rooftop bar of the Pontchartrain Hotel on St. Charles Avenue, named the Tin Roof after the Tennessee Williams play. The balcony overlooks the skyscrapers of the American Section – so you might imagine why I chose to sit inside that and it looked like it was rather cold that evening. The drinks in front of me are grasshoppers, my favorite New Orleans original cocktail.

And finally for novelty purposes, a picture of me walking through some nondescript neighborhood in the middle of last winter, probably the most bundled up against the cold I’ll ever be here. It was likely around 5 degrees C/40 degrees F or some similar temperature that would get me immediately and justifiably mocked in Québec, but life in the subtropics does not adequately prepare you even for that so I believe I deserve to be excused.