Mardi Gras Date Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 11:36 AM PST Topic Beauty It's four p.m. on the outer edge of the city, my brother and I the only people on an abandoned bus that's riding in to the heart od downtown via Canal Street. We don't get very far, and the bus only picks up two more people before the bus driver leans just enough so everyone can catch those two fifths of his face in the mirror that involve an accusing eye and a talking mouth that says "end of the line." And we stand, pushing our way out through the doors and into the last hours of daylight, kicking and screaming at the last half a mile to walk into the fray and the other half a mile to walk through the fray to the real battlefield of maneuvering. It's six p.m. on a street where the only hour that matters is the midnight one. This is Bourbon street. Women on balconies throw beads to handsome beaus below for doing nothing; men throw beads to women on the balconies or on the ground for doing everything. Beads fall onto me from nowhere just walking along the street; impacting suprisingly painfully against my bones for the lightweight plastic they are fabricated from. Everyone is shouting here; everyone is pointing, gesturing, and trying to make eye contact with someone. The extrovert in my soul keeps shouting back at them, making extravagant gestures and pointing accusingly. The introvert that controls my body points to my chest in disbelief, and when no reaction comes walks on again hoping no one noticed the gestures. It's like the stock market still at seven, and eight, and nine, and ten, and eleven. The rising prices on beads the vendors place finally has a single necklace of them selling for 4 dollars. The deluxe beads, the big ones, the glowing ones, the ones with alternating light patterns and small bulbs and deluxe, custom made patterns sell one for ten or one for twenty, however. But those beads buy you the luxury of asking a woman to do anything short of sexual intercourse with you. Well, some of the cheap whores might actually give in for enough of them-- it's Mardi Gras after all. A wall of fanatic zealots have set up a small barrice just a block down from Canal and Bourbon, trying to stop people from going onward in to the heart of marketing territory. Drunken Philosophers stagger up to them and try to debate the smalll innaccuracies of the Bible with them in slurred, slow phrases, to which they reply loudly with sure remarks quickly and with large gestures in attempts to frighten and intimidate tall, staggering creatures that have imbibed the field spirit. It's 11:30 p.m. in a small bar a few blocks off of Bourbon street. On the upper floor of the bar a partially inebriated drag queen tells the dirty joke about little susy telling her teacher what her daddy did before he died... "Well, he turned blue and then he shit himself." and three people laugh and the drag queen goes on with his comedy like any good comedian playing down the fact that the joke did not go over so well. The other drag queen moments before did some lip-synching to Tina Turner; later on he'll do Cher singing "Walking in Memphis" dressed like Cher. I like the Cher performance more; he looks quite a bit like her in the outfit with the big headdress. We leave and return between his dances and miss some of the better ones in our hour space of absence. There's a woman at the bar from Dallas who I'm not quite clear on; but I'm sure my brother and sister are very clear on her. She's a nice lady; her daughter has gone cheerleader Christian and gives her severe talking-tos every time they meet which breaks her mother's heart. The owner and co-owner of the club arrive and leave and arrive again to take turns on their dwindling power to hold the upstairs opium den together and keep the revenue coming in, but they're both fading fast and sound like their throats were raped with steel wool and cotton balls. They've been working non-stop for days; increasingly more and more as Mardi Gras drew closer and finally pulling shifts that would cripple strong men in these late hours of the celebration. It's 12:20 p.m. in a town that shut down almost completely 17 minutes earlier. I watched the parade of Mardi Gras street cleaners and police stroll down Bourbon Street 18 minutes earlier, clearing the street itself for cleaning. The last, drunken phrases of whores reached my ears as they made slovenly deals with men too knockered to see what they were buying or smell it. We head back to the bar where the owner is on his last legs waiting for the co-owner to arrive to take his job from him before he collapses and drops the globe of the earth- his earth- like some Greek mortal tested by the gods, awaiting Mercury carrying Hercules with him on wings of light and speed to save him from mortal death and damnation. People start filling in the club, Psychics from the square who have had enough for the day and that week, revellers who have not gone to their hotels and collapsed, and the last stragglers of society. My brother and I sit down and play three quick games of chess; I lose all three times and we head off to escape. It's two a.m. in an empty city and I'm sitting in a small cafe named du Monde sipping the last few sips from a small paper cup of coke while my brother drinks the last of his coffee and we reminise over beigneit the evening. I've got 7 pounds of beads around my neck and my shoulders sting with pain; we talk about the thieving asshole who stole beads mid air from a poor middle-aged woman lifting her shirt. It seems odd to argue for the woman somehow, in the back of my mind, but my nagging morals let it go and admit that even a whore can be robbed and that is sad indeed. And Now it's 3:50 a.m. in a small house in the burbs; the cab ride over, showers taken and souls that have gone a long way collapsed in bed about to fall asleep remember a day that some will never forget and some may never repeat in their lives. Mardi Gras. I didn't even watch a single real parade. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=253