I sat on Ernest “Papa” Hemingway’s lap at the bullfighting arena in Ronda, Spain, and I sat on his lap again at his writing studio in Key West, where I almost got to sneak a feel of his…writing desk.

The tour guide came back from his lunch break five minutes early, so I had to scram or go to jail, but, I went all the way with William Faulkner: I slept with “Bill” in his bed at Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans. While he certainly was a wonderful lover, what kind of an upstanding, lowdown Yankee would I be if I didn’t kiss and tell? And I gotta tell y’all, this particular literary giant was surprisingly small! At 5’5”, my guy, Bill, has constructed sentences far longer than his stature. I am no Serena Williams by any stretch of the imagination – I am fine boned and measure right around “Billy’s” (a shared pitcher of martinis breeds familiarity) height – but my feet dangled over William Faulkner’s “Play Mobile” inspired cot to the point where I could have flipped that man over with my toes as though I were King Kong with a spatula at “Waffle House.”

Too bad neither “Rooms-to-Go” nor “Ikea” had been invented when my Bill, quite likely a side-sleeper favoring the fetal position, and as fine a patriotic Southern son as he was a Southern writer, tried to do his duty by enlisting as a pilot in the American army but failed to meet the height requirement. Had he have been able to uncurl in bed, stretching out fully, he may have been able to add an inch or two. Instead, he felt compelled to speak with a phony British accent in order to trick the Canadian Royal Air Force into letting him fly one of their planes. What a shame this couldn’t have happened today: We could have deported the William we have no use for – druggy, pseudo-actor William Baldwin – and as an incentive bonus, tossed in his 3 exemplary brothers to sweeten the pot. Five minutes of Alec Baldwin on their soil, Canada would have inherited one big fat anger management problem, while we would have gotten to keep the good William right here in America where he belongs, bless his little Nobel Prize winning heart. (Refresh my memory: Did a Canadian ever win a Nobel Prize for Literature? Other than 1976, when American writer, Saul Bellow, whose Jewish immigrant parents were forced to make a quick birthing stop in Quebec so they could down-load little Saulie before hightailing it to Chicago for the rest of the Laureate’s incredibly long American writing life?)

I was telling the truth when I said I sat on Papa’s lap and slept with my guy, Billy. I wish they could have been there in person by jumping over the ant hill hurdle of having been deceased for nearly 45 years … but anyone sight-seeing in Spain during its off season may absorb a potent Hemingway vibe by sitting on it in Ronda’s bull fighting arena. And Joe, the kind proprietor of Faulkner House Books at 624 Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans, turned his back for a few minutes so that I could crawl into bed with my guy, Bill. If you’re thinking of taking a trip to Pirate’s Alley, by all means, please DO NOT mention my name! I think I broke a Faulkner box spring or two in the “Play Mobile” cot I had no business romping on in the first place.

Maybe it was the hallucinogenic state of being in spontaneous diabetes after this Yankee experienced her initiation into the sorority of true Southern Iced Tea drinkers – one tall glass of pure sugar poured over ice, with a spot of tea (maybe) – that precipitated the reincarnation of Papa and Bill for one last early evening stroll here on Earth, with me, down the moon-lit and magnolia streets of the best kept secret in the world – Oxford, Miss. But there we were, Papa on one arm, my Billy on the other, as we headed for Courthouse Square. Bookstores remain dominant fixtures on The Square in this city of 19,000, as are “Ole Miss” T-shirts and warning signs reading, “If you are on your cell phone, you are not on line.” It is unseasonably hot, that extraordinary night, but the historic words of an invisible mystery guest resonate: “Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.”

Papa, Billy and I know that anyone can pass the Bar Exam in Oxford, so we take the darned test by counting the number of bars we can pass on any given block and stop to have a drink inside each and every one of them. Suddenly, Papa will preach, “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut!” Billy and I offer to drop Papa off zt an A. A. meeting, but there aren’t any within thousands of miles of the nearest town. Papa’s idea of the nearest town is Havana, Cuba. He calms down, and drinks up, when he hears my Billy retort, “My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.” Billy did not intend for the folks in LA – “Lower Alabama” – to take him literally by doing all four at the same time! And in a public swimming pool, no less!

The Faulkner descendants – and they all are in Oxford – refuse to use a laser pointer, nor any other weapon (unless it is one of mass destruction), to identify Lower Alabama, a place they would rather not acknowledge as having the Southern right to exist, other than as a legitimate competitor for Los Angeles, another place on this planet that does not have the right to exist. I, “Cranky Yankee,” am on my knees in gratitude that both L.A.s exist: It makes me feel safer after having been born in NYC. Our mystery guest interjects the following: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

Shaken, but not stirred, Billy, Papa and I comment upon the extraordinary greenery dorning Oxford, even during the unseasonable heat. Then we hear the voice again: “Golf is a good walk, spoiled.” We are feeling high on sugar on ice and far too many martinis on the rocks, but we think we are capable of writing the next best American novel. Or play. Or essay. Or poem. In no particular order of importance. We are about to shout it out to our invisible guest, when we hear the voice say, “Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

Papa feels sick and wants to go home to “Ketchup,” Idaho. Billy feels sick, too, but he’s feeling his oats because he won the Nobel Prize in 1949, even though I filled him in on an ego altering truth: He, William Faulkner, won in ’49, but received his award in ’50 because the Swedish Prize Committee could not reach a final decision on time. Who was one of the nominees that nail-biting year? None other than Ernest Hemingway! My Papa and my Billy are going at each other for a change! Just as they are about to do bodily harm, and lick their wounds in the morning, our mystery guest says, “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” There is a new love in my life. I send Papa and Billy home in taxi headed for Havana.

If the name of our extraordinary mystery guest, Mark “Sammy” Twain, continues to elude The Swedish Committee of Alfred Nobel fame, then they will continue to bite the hand of the picket fence that not only “taints” them, but “paints” them as the politically biased, derailed railroaders they are. Even the most neglected Mississippi steam boat has the dignity to keep moving forward on more than hot air. This is Mark Twain’s year for a rare posthumous Nobel Prize in Literature. Papa, and my Billy, would raise their glasses, if they could.

Shalom, y’all!

“A person who won’t read, is no better off than a person who can’t read.” Samuel Clemens.