The seven deadly sins — wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony — are just a few words that can describe the last six months of my life.

You may remember hearing the exploits of my partner in crime, Victor Dooley, in previous stories. Up until this month, he was living across the hall from me on the second floor of an old-school, New Orleans-style mansion in the middle of the Irish Channel.

The apartment’s 200-square-foot balcony looks out at our most faithful haunt, Parasol’s Restaurant and Bar. The space served as the epicenter of our “Guinness Good Times” and “Jameson Dreams.”

Some stories we may never recall from that balcony and inside that bar, but I’ll never forget the feeling of seeing the huge empty apartment that was once filled with friends, furniture, laughter, debauchery, drugs, alcohol, random women … now empty. It was like a swift kick to the nuts: The dream that we lived and survived for six months was over.

Sloth

It would be easy to say that we hung around and smoked weed all day … because we did. But, as I tend bar four nights a week and Dooley gets off of his hospital management job at midnight, we had some very late nights and early mornings along with all of our friends from the bar.

Most nights, Vic and I met up at the bar, where he was usually waiting for me with our habitual Pabst Blue Ribbon, Smithwick’s, and two shots of Jameson. We’d bullsh—t with the regular crowd and bartenders and occasionally pick fights with the drunken stragglers that stumbled in nightly.

For the past six months, Dooley’s balcony served as the V.I.P. section of the bar…

Wrath

One Friday night, the party moved from Parasol’s to the balcony.

Our five-foot-tall Cuban landlord with a fuse even shorter than him came in the front door (unannounced). He marched through the apartment and out onto the balcony, screaming, “Do you realize everyone on this street could call the police on you? This has been going on since 1:30. That is quite enough.”

His voice began to tremble as he repeated in his heavy Cuban accent, “1:30, Victor. 1:30! There is such a thing as a noise ordinance, you know?”

He and Dooley had a staredown for a good ten seconds before he retired back downstairs.

Greed and Pride

The outlandish “rules and guidelines” established by the landlord were a bit out of hand.

At one point, Dooley was asked to take his shoes off when he came home from work. Apparently, his heavy footsteps were waking up the girl downstairs.

Vic Dooley, being the guy he is, actually threw a stomp-the-floor party that night. We called it “Minotaur Stomp Fest 2010” and had people over almost every night thereafter until he was finally forced out.

Lust and Envy

By Vic Dooley

When Valentine doesn’t recall a situation quite clearly, chances are I’ve either heard about it or lived it with him. So it’s only natural for him to use me to jog his memory.

Six months prior to my move to the balcony apartment, a young couple from Arizona moved into my old place, down the street. The girl was a short, cute Mexi-melt with an ass like dat and thighs like whoa. She played roller derby for a hobby and flirted from hello. And the guy was a roller derby ref and otherwise forgettable, if it hadn’t been for this story…

On a random night, my old neighbor Butch Berger, who lives in the other side of the camelback double from the couple, invited me and the couple out. But she came alone.

We had few beers here and there throughout NOLA, and by the time Tyler Durden found his way out of me, Butch and his brother had set in their minds that she was a swinger. After she asked me to punch her in the face and I had obliged, she tried to kiss me in front of everyone at the bar.

That’s when Butch figured it was a good time to leave, and just like that, the Berger boys dropped like flies.

We wound up at my place. I was a drunken-ass clown for a minute, until she said, “If you think I’m gonna f—k you to a Montel Williams infomercial … then you’re absolutely right!”

We f—ked.

Gluttony

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Creator of Studio 54 Steve Rubell once used that quote to describe his place. This mantra was my undoing with the landlord.

Along with our crazy little friend Stephanie (the landlord’s stepdaughter who lived upstairs with us and threw a f—kin’ on each of us periodically), we celebrated the best Saints season of our lives.

10 N. O.: People started shooting fireworks in the street.

11 N. O.: We added to the fireworks display with bottle rockets and Roman candles.

12 N. O.: The neighborhood musicians offered up some harmony to complement the fireworks.

13 N. O. was truly wild. The dyke bartender who usually loves us was wrecked far more than usual and more than everyone else in the bar. She smacked the f—k out of Valentine for throwing up two split fingers and doing the pussy-licking tongue flick.

We had a few unforgettable parties and shared multiple meals with Caprice, the blonde French neighbor. For a while, we were in a jambalaya phase that lasted for about three months. I experimented with different sausages from LaPlace and other assorted Cajun meats, including but not limited to alligator.

But nothing to date has compared to the gluttony observed on St. Patrick’s Day: my momma’s red beans, my friend E.J.’s hog’s head cheese, a keg of green beer, sh—tloads of assorted liquor, drugs and women, both straight and otherwise … It was a truly unbelievable time.

The last six months with Dooley were great. We’ve had so many crazy times, it would be impossible to try to squeeze them into one article.

Now he’s gone, evicted. But the good news is he moved right back into his old apartment four blocks down.