Oh My Nola

Travel Journal — New Orleans

 

3/7/20 — an investment in drunken foolery

            From the airplane’s window, I catch a glimpse of the sunset over Lake Ponchatrain. I board the E1 bus and begin planning what’s to come: drop off my bag, check-in, and go down to the French Quarter to find something to eat and drink. While I’m thinking, this older, bald man next to me on the bus is American-splaining each major American city to Korean tourists.

            I get to India House Hostel, and rather than wait in the line to check-in, I head towards the hostel bar and buy myself a $5 screwdriver. This, I think, sets the tone for the entire trip. I haven’t been in the city an hour yet, haven’t even checked in, but I have a drink in my hand while I take a look around the place. The place is, suitably, young and rebellious: The door to the common room is plastered with bumper stickers from every liberal presidential candidate since Carter, and broken skateboards decorate the patio. Swimming in the fishpond, keeping the goldfish company, are those tiny plastic sharks you see in over-priced novelty drinks. By now, I’m fantasizing about taking a permanent residency at the hostel — I could work the front desk for a few hours, earn money for more drinks, and spend the rest of the day lounging about.

            I take the streetcar down Canal Street. As we go down I make a game of guessing whether the trees lining the street are dressed in beads or Spanish moss. The streetcar’s path is cut short by barricade walls spilling out onto the road. Construction barriers surrounds a half-demolished hotel, where a broken and crumbled piece of crane is careening haphazardly over top of the roof. Later, I’d hear that there are two bodies still trapped inside the half-razed hotel.

            With the rest of our ride interrupted, I depart the car with Arkiem, who had boarded with me at the hostel. Arkiem is a Russian living in LA  who stopped here en route to Florida. Having been here the night before, he guides me as we circumnavigate the destruction/construction and make our way to Bourbon Street.

            I follow him to Bourbon Cowboy (which, with a name like that, there’s no need to describe the décor of the place). My stomach’s growling, so I break off from him and go to Remoulade. It’s the restaurant Anoud’s cheaper and more touristy cousin. When I’ve finished my jambalaya, I venture back to Bourbon Cowboy, hoping to find my sole friend in the city, Arkiem. He’s nowhere to be found.

            But I do see a mechanical bull in the back. I’ve always wanted to ride one of them, but hadn’t ever been to a dive bar that had one. Presently seated on the bull is a large woman, being slowly rocked back back-and-forth as her skirt rides up. It looks less like a roller coaster and more like a car going over speed pump. So I figure “I could do that”, and I give the operator five bucks and hop on. I realize now that the point of the mechanical bull is not a test of the physical strength and endurance, but instead, a vehicle to watch drunk women bounce about. My riding the bull is in the way of that, so the operator doubles the strength and intensity of the bull in hopes of replacing me with a bachelorette in a short jean skirt who is next in line.

            I try going one-handed and waving the other, but soon it’s clear both hands are necessary. I grip with my entire strength — the rope burn on my fingers will last until the next day. For several minutes I’m clinging to the side of this bull, pressing my thighs together with all my might. The crowd cheers for me after I finally fall and stand back up again, triumphant like a gymnast after their routine. It’s clear from the crowd’s reaction that I managed to stay on much longer than most of the guys they’d tried to buck off. I move on to the next bar to get a celebratory drink.

            I buy a $13-dollar hurricane (rookie mistake) while a cover band sings The Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” — an unofficial anthem of the night, considering I’ll hear it at two more bars, including a dueling piano bar, before the night is through.

            I walk in and out of every bar that catches my interest on Bourbon Street. Occasionally, beads cascade from balconies as women flash their breasts, which I had thought was only reserved for Mardi Gras. But on Bourbon Street, dumb tourists were doing it any time of the year. Does that count, as an all-year activity, if only tourists do it? (It kind of reminded me of when I went to Paris and much to my surprise I saw everyone wearing berets. I wasn’t sure if the French really wear berets or if tourists wear them thinking that is what the French wear.  It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

            At the end of the lively part of Bourbon Street, I double back, deciding that I too can be a drunk asshole and throw beads. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! I buy a small bag of beads for five dollars from a store that sold novelty T-shirts, that looked like the wearer was a naked woman.

            I take my beads to a balcony where a handful of men and women “Over the hill” are whooping and hollering and spinning their beads. I’m not so bold as to whoop and holler, but I did whirl my beads to attract attention; it’s probably the biggest display of toxic masculinity I’ve ever participated in. But in my defense, all the women that flash me do so of their own volition — I’m not shouting, like the others, “Show your titties” while pointing out specific busty spring breakers.

            I get bored of the old folks and move onto another bar with another balcony. This one a much younger crowd. The girl next to me yells insistently, “Show me your nipples” at any man who looks “fratty or daddy”. After some time, I grow restless again and continue back down Bourbon Street.

            I invest in my drunken foolery and buy a $20 bag of beads weighing 2 pounds altogether and a $10 “Fishbowl”. The Fishbowl is an entire 1-gallon plastic fishbowl filled with a mysterious punch of several liquors and some juices sold for the too-good-to-be-true price of $10. Truly the trashiest thing I’ve ever consumed. But as much as drinking in the streets is permitted, bringing outside drinks is frowned on. I’m torn between the cheaper booze I’ve got outside, and the balcony access inside. So I stuff the Fishbowl under my shirt. I imagine I am doing a pretty good job of it, because the bouncer of Bourbon Cowboy lets me back in. Later, though, I learn it’s not that I did a good job of concealing it, but actually, he recognized me from the mechanical bull, which I did do a good job at.

            With the plan a success, I drink from my Fishbowl on the balcony while throwing more and more beads. I pride myself on my investment, as not only do the beads get me a view of cleavage but a group of friends on the balcony. The group of frat bros around me take me in as one of their own and I dish out beads to them left and right.

            I make small talk with a girl standing next to me, also throwing beads. She’s come from a speech and debate competition out of state and took a pre-spring break detour in New Orleans on her return home. We talk for some time, and eventually find ourselves lip-locked, making out on the top floor of the bar. (Had I known the severity of the coronavirus I would’ve not participated in such a high-risk activity, but at the time the virus was just a problem for others elsewhere.) As things escalate, the bartender tells us to break it up. So we part ways.

            Around 3 AM, I miraculously guide myself back to the streetcar, skirting the construction on Bourbon and Canal, which is impressive because, not only had I just arrived in the city, but I am thoroughly piss-drunk. I halfheartedly smuggle the half-full fishbowl under my shirt as I ride the streetcar back to the hostel. I arrive back at the hostel at 4, hoarser than Secretariat from yelling over the noise on Bourbon Street.

3/8/20 —Pinch the tails, suck the heads.

 

            I wake up at what my body tells me is 10, but is 9 according to my phone. What I had gained in time difference from home, I’d lost in Daylight Savings Time. Meanwhile, I’m surprised to learn that I can talk at all, given how raspy my voice was the night before.

            I shower and walk a few blocks to Ruby Slippers for brunch. A friend had recommended the place, and it’s quite pleasant. I’m hoping a full breakfast can help me recover from my massive hangover. I order smoked salmon eggs benedict; it comes in two sandwiches and I’m full after just eating the first one. I bring the second along with me as I hop on a streetcar back to the French Quarter.

            I walk along the riverfront, then to Jackson Square, Congo Square, and finally the Louis Armstrong Park. By this point, I’ve rebuilt my appetite and I eat the rest of the egg sandwich beside Satchmo himself. 

I return to Jackson Square and peruse the art, glimpsing the buskers. Getting overheated, I buy a pass for the two State museums: The Cabildo and the Presbytère.

            In the Cabildo, I learn about Jean Lafitte and the changing map of the city. Having seen all the museum had to offer, I move onto the Presbytère. At the entrance of the Presbytère I am greeted by Fats Domino’s upturned piano, displayed as it was found after Katrina. That touching object sets the tone for the entire downstairs exhibit. I’m brought to tears listening to the testimonies of uncertainty and fear of those who were abruptly forced out of their homes as water consumed everything they had known. But the mood changes quickly as I head upstairs for the Mardi Gras exhibit. It makes my heart pound, just to think about witnessing that amount of mass excitement and exuberance.

            After completing the museums, I feel as though I am squandering a warm pleasant day being indoors, so I walk through the French Market. I’m traveling light, all of my clothes packed in a “personal item” bag for the plane, so I have no room to make any large purchases at the markets. I do however buy two small Chinese hand balls. I feel a twinge of guilt, though, going all of the way to Louisiana to buy something I could get in Chinatown, just blocks away from my apartment in Philadelphia.

            I wander some more, hoping to get lost on purpose, until I reach Café Beignet. I eat three beignets. (Hot take: there is nothing magical to them, but “when in Rome”.)

            I travel back to the waterfront: My plan is to take the ferry to Algiers (the town across the Mississippi) around 7 so I can see the sunset over New Orleans, but after a half-hour of waiting in line, the sun has already gone down, so I give up on the effort. I retreat back to the French Quarter and get a $20 glass of absinthe at Jean Laffite’s Old Absinthe House. I sit at the back bar and get my absinthe from the original water spigot that dates back to the war of 1812. My legs ache, and I get the sense that I’ve done everything there is to do in the French Quarter. In the past 24 hours, I feel as if I’ve walked the entire quarter and am already seeing all the same faces reappear on the streets.

            It’s Sunday, the day for the Maple Leaf’s weekly Crawfish boil. Taking the St. Charles streetcar to the Maple Leaf is exactly what I need. The houses I pass, during the hour-long ride to the bar, are in the southern gothic style, the spiky roofing, and intricate Victorian detailing that contribute to the city’s beauty and hauntedness. I arrive at just the right time — 9:40 pm. I grab a beer and get in position at the head of three plastic folding tables, just before it’s time to dump the four plastic tubs of gigantic crawfish boil pile.

            I begin talking to an older local, Ken, who teaches me how to pinch the tail and then suck the head. Once it begins, it’s almost over — a feeding frenzy like I’ve never seen. Within minutes every vegetable, sausage, and crawfish dumped onto the table had been snagged and gobbled; only a few people continue to scavenge the leftover shells for crawfish with large enough claws to eat. Just as fast as the food had come, the scraps are tossed, and the tables are cleared and removed so the band can start. I nurse my beer and listen as Sam Price and the True Believers play for Sam’s birthday bash.

3/9/20 — Three Martinis, turtle soup, and a new friend

            In the morning, I walk down to the French Quarter for breakfast at a restaurant off of Jackson Square called Stanley. I order a scrumptious po’boy eggs benedict, and eat until I can’t any longer.

            Initially, my plan is to the Backstreet Museum, but with more research, I discover it’s closed on Mondays. So instead, I take the St. Charles streetcar to the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. More food can’t hurt me, right? My appetite builds there as I learn about the founding of Popeyes, the Louisiana chicken chain, and the history of absinthe. I posed with the giant Golden King Baby they used to drop on new years.

            At around 2 in the afternoon, I head off for the Commander’s Palace — I’d made a reservation for 3:30 PM. When I get there, they refuse to seat me, on account of my pineapple romphim, which doesn’t comply with their dress code, until I agreed to change into my tie and buttoned shirt in the bathroom. I kill time by writing postcards in their courtyard, growing hungrier by the minute. Deliverance finally arrives in the form of a hostess ushering me to my table.

            The allure of the Commander’s Palace was the advertised 25¢ martinis, so, as soon as I’m seated, I order a Blue Martini. I sip the drink until my first dish arrives: “rich veal stock simmered slowly for 72 hours with minced snapping turtle, Holy Trinity & pressed hen’s eggs”. God, was it divine! Now I fear I’ll never look at turtles the same way ever again. Instead of seeing beautiful reptiles, I will only see fine delicacy. I imagine myself finding a turtle resting by a pond, having no choice but to lunge after it and cook it. All this is to say, turtle soup is life-changing.  When the waiter removes my bone-dry bowl, I order a second martini, the Cosmopolitan. The Cosmo serves as a great pallet cleanser.

            My second plate is quail, with “Broken Arrow Ranch stuffed with fire-roasted chili boudin, pickled pork choucroute, crystal pulp & sticky satsuma syrup”. Maybe I’m drunk off the second martini, but I can only laugh and cry tears of joy when I taste this dish. I must look quite silly to the other patrons, here I am, sitting alone, in my bowtie and sneakers, laughing and crying while trying food I can hardly afford. I don’t care. It’s delicious.

            For my third, and final, drink (there’s a three-martini maximum), I get “Ray’s Melon Martini”, simultaneously sweet and tart in the way only a melon can be. My Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé arrives and the waiter pours a whiskey cream sauce on top. At that moment, I know if I were suddenly struck by lightning, I would die a very happy man.  If I ever find myself on death row, I’d like that meal to be my last. I’m half-tempted to come back tomorrow and do the whole thing over again, but I figure if I go that route, I’ll be bankrupt before leaving the city.

            I’m stuffed to the extreme. I walk around the Garden District, following the complimentary walking tour map the restaurant provides. If I’m honest, as I roam about, I’m still a bit sloshed from that third martini. I admire the architecture of the classic southern mansions, but as I look closely I notice the same styles and patterns repeat themselves on every home, and it doesn’t really matter to me if Brad Pitt owns the house.

            Now I face the same conundrum that summarizes the New Orleans experience: Since the music and entertainment don’t start until late at night, all other activities revolve around food and drink. So what does one do between meals? To entertain myself, I hop back onto the St. Charles streetcar, and get off again to walk through Audubon Park. Throughout the stroll, I see several turtles bathing in the sun beside the water features, and I wonder if each of them would taste as divine as the one I’d eaten only hours earlier. 

I mosey down the park till I reach its southernmost edge and continue south till I get to the Mississippi River.

            I plop myself down along the riverfront and stare at that great roaring river. I fantasize about taking a future canoe trip down the river. A modern Huckleberry Finn. One solitary pelican feeds along the river, and a man uses the water as a driving range, taking aim at the solitary pelican.

            Remarkably, I still have room for dinner, so I board the bus and head to Superior Oysters, making it just in time for their 75¢ oyster happy hour. I order two dozen and strike up a conversation with the man sitting alone next to me. He introduces himself as Henri (French pronunciation) and we chat about oysters, which leads us to the changes in the water, which he suspects are the long-lasting effects after the government-built levee system after the Great Flood in 1929.

            As we talk, I learn Henri is the sole employee of a non-profit organization whose mission is to acquire funds to build an improved highway to a power station at Bayou Lafourche (French for “the fork”). I inquire about his French name and he tells me his great grandfather emigrated from France to Louisiana. His grandfather enrolled in Tulane’s medical school and became a Bayou Doctor. He said in his youth he was often regaled with stories of how his grandfather would spend an entire day taking a boat to deliver a baby, only to be paid in the form of harvest from a Bayou farmer. His father, meanwhile, had a crawfish farm and a shrimp boat, but now has retired to operate a small subsistence farm. Henri gives me several recommendations for places to eat and drink during my stay, and the bartender chimes in and recommends the Marigny and Bywater neighborhood.

            I pose my conundrum to Henri about what to do between meals and before the entertainment will start. He advises that I do what I had already been doing, stroll around and take in the beautiful local architecture. One of Henri’s recommendations is Ferret (pronounced fur-ret) Street, and he says he’s headed there next, invites me to join him. I’m not entirely sure if this is a platonic offer — all I’m wearing is my pineapple onesie, and he did pat my arm several times during our conversation. He’d told me he had an ex-wife, but I know plenty of gay men who have ex-wives. My suspicion increases as he tells me we have to stop at his house first to “turn over the warsh”. It may have been his musical southern drawl, or the thrill of opportunity promised by the city, but for whatever reason, I hop in his car to go to his house.

            Henri is an air B&B host and he shows me with pride the renovations he made and his beloved garden in the back. Somehow I’d never seen broccoli growing in the ground before this point, and it strikes me as odd that the plant is so big, considering what little we eat of it. Afterwards, he drives us to a wine bar called Cure on Ferret Street. He’s a regular of the place and calls the bar manager by name as he orders. I, indecisive as always when at a bar, just go with what the lady next to me suggests, the “punch of the day”. Punch of the day seems to be a staple offered in most New Orleans bars, given that I order it in three different bars during my stay.

            As we drink, Henri describes the usual crowd he joins here: The group includes himself, a priest, two geologists, and a hippie FBI agent (or was it “A hippie, and a FBI agent?). I tell him it sounds like the setup for a joke. He also explains that there’s a couple, who reached an agreement with their respective spouses, that they are allowed to date each other only on Tuesdays, and only at this bar.

            Since my emotional journey through the Presbytère, I’ve wanted a more complete story of Katrina, so I ask him about his experience. He answers that at the time, he was the manager of a community center in the suburbs. After his wife and children were evacuated to live with extended family further from the city, he was told that the federal government had requisitioned the center. He was also informed that he was in charge of housing three busloads of impacted families from the Ninth Ward in the community center for 75 days and that he’d be finding jobs for the men and creating programming for the women. I was quite admired by Henri’s actions. His swift action and leadership. He told it so matter-of-factly as if it was just a natural thing for him to help others.

            We move down the street to Bar Francis, where he orders his second beer and I get a house cocktail called “Moshi Moshi”. As we nurse our drinks, I question him about the logistics of how Mardi Gras works. He says that each krewe has their own parade in the weeks before, and there’s preassigned schedules based on tradition. Due to limited police resources, only two parades can happen at the same time, but the parades are still packed in a highly coordinated schedule, where police go from one parade route to another. As he explains this, it sounds like the lead-up to Mardi Gras was bigger and more important than the day itself. On the day of, he gets up at 5 am and goes from house to house, eating and drinking, and there’s only one parade route, with Rex in the lead. After the parade, each krewe hosts an afterparty, called a “ball”, that must end that midnight, when it becomes Ash Wednesday. Henri doesn’t belong to a krewe, as membership dues are upwards of a thousand dollars. Still, he’s partial to the Krewe de Vieux, a political parody krewe, and the krewe of Ferret Street.

            He tells me more about his job, and the interesting position it puts him in, as a political liberal who works closely with mostly conservative large oil companies. His position often makes him the liaison and mediator between local politicians and large oil companies. He takes a very pragmatic point of view. He only continues his pragmatism when I ask him about the removal of the Lee statue. His response is that, if the people want it removed, it should be removed, his only complaint was that it wasn’t put to a vote or petition of the people, a politician just had it removed quickly and discretely without the opinion of the constituents. Around 10 pm we part ways, him being an older man (50s, if I have to guess) so he can go to bed. He drops me off back at Canal Street.

            In my head, I’d planned to see a burlesque show while in New Orleans, but after three failed attempts to go to a reputable burlesque club, I give up and go to a strip club in the French Quarter. There’s no cover charge, but I do have to buy two drinks, so I take a couple of shitty watery beers for $10. I’ve never been to a strip club before, and I have to say, it was quite sad. Ciara and Saki dance topless on a pole while I sip my beers — the climax of the performance is when Ciara holds herself horizontally, clinging to the pole, and Saki stands on top of her in spiky heels. In the end, they scoop up their small haul of crumpled singles into a bucket and gather their discarded clothes.

            I leave, making my way back to Bourbon Street in order to find the famous/infamous trashy drink, The Hand Grenade. I tuck the drink into the waistband of my boxers, under my pineapple romper, and sneak up the stairs of Bourbon Cowboy once more to throw more beads.

            When I run out of beads, I take the streetcar back to my hostel. Having returned to the hostel, I play cards with fellow Hostelers Riley and Abbi; Riley’s a Canadian who’s taking a gap year from fire jumper school, and Abbi is a Brit spending some time in the US. At this point, I still haven’t taken advantage of the hostel’s pool, so I comply when Riley dares me to skinny dip. We fool swim frigid laps until the guy from the front desk, kindly kicked us out, in the most polite way you could ask naked people to get out of a pool.

3/10/20 — Gators, Racoons, and Hogs, Oh My!

            Yesterday morning I had booked a swamp tour through the hostel, and by 10 am today, I’m picked up by the bus for Cajun Encounters. I’m the first passenger. While the bus driver stops at every hotel in the city, I feel a sense of pride in having already walked all the streets that the bus was taking. I was covering ground.

            For the hour-and-a-half drive to the swamp, the driver polls the riders about which New Orleans experiences everyone had so far. “Yell out if you’ve eaten crawfish,” and such. I’m proud to yell out at nearly everything she mentions. But when she starts asking what drinks everyone’s tried — “Who’s had a Hurricane? Fishbowl? The punch of the Day? Hand Grenade?” — I’m a little embarrassed to be the only one who says yes to all of them.

            The swamp tour delivers everything that it promised. We see gators, raccoons, and feral pigs, all of which nudge right up alongside the boat as the guide offers them protein pellets. But as exciting as the “wildlife” is, I’m most interested in the houseboat communities that were set up on the river and only accessible by boat.

            The bus ride back from the tour drops me off at 3 pm near the Tremé, which is perfect. I’m dropped off blocks from the museum I meant to go to yesterday, the Backstreet Museum. In 1988 Sylvester Francis began to preserve and display used costumes from the Mardi Gras parades in his house. After years of accumulating 
“Mardi Gras Indian” costumes, he turned his house into a private museum, now known as the Backstreet Museum. The “Mardi Gras Indians” are a cultural staple of Mardi Gras in which African Americans parade in intricate, extravagant beaded costumes modeled after Native American traditional garments. ” costumes. It was so impressive to see these intricately beaded costumes.

 

            As I’m leaving the museum, I get a call from my friend who I met during my semester abroad, sailing in New Zealand. Unbeknownst to me, she’s now living in New Orleans and had seen some of the pictures I’d posted thus far on Instagram. She wants to know if I’m interested in meeting up, so we plan to meet on Frenchmen Street at 6 pm.

            I’m super hungry, so I walk about the Marigny and down Esplanade Ave to a tropical-themed bar called Port of Call, and I have the best baked potato I’ve ever had. While I’m at it, I order two house cocktails with tropical flower names. The second of the two I tote with me as I walk around, enjoying the architecture like Henri suggested. I end my walk at a restaurant called 30/90, so I can listen to music and eat two and a half dozen 50¢ happy-hour oysters till my friend arrives.

            We catch up with one another for a bit before we decide to go next to Bacchanal Wine Bar, where we snack on expensive cheese, listen to more music, and reminisce about our days sailing in New Zealand. She has a nice setup here — she works outdoors during the day, enjoys the city by night, and pays cheap rent for a house just blocks away from my hostel.

            Around 9 pm she tells me she’s tired and has to work tomorrow. Remembering that someone told me to check out the Spotted Cat Café, I go there next. I find a seat next to the bar and listen as a band plays classic jazz songs, and their own jazzy rendition of “If You Want To Be Happy”. The front-woman looks as if she’s stepped out of the 1920s, but made a pitstop to every tattoo and body piercing parlor in town first.

            As I sit, my legs jitter to the beat, as they are wont to do. I notice a young woman by the door, a violin case strung over her back, whose legs are just as jittery as mine. During the band’s break, I ask her if she would dance with me, and she agrees. So when the band comes back, playing a song I know, I offer her my hand. I’ve never been a particularly bad dancer, but, when doing partner dances, I find myself trapped by the burden and responsibility of leading. Typically after a couple spins and a few dips, I run out of special moves to do. I don’t know if it’s the music, the cocktail (a “Catnip”: rum, Coke, and a fireball), or the person I’m with, but this time, it’s the best partner dancing I’ve ever done. The two of us are as synchronous as two hands on the same person. I make the smallest shift in my weight, and she knows immediately what move to do based on my cue. Not only does nobody step on anyone’s toes, but we do footwork that I did not think was possible. Even though it’s already a lively beat, we manage to double-time our hopping about.

            When the song finishes and we part ways, a gaggle of 60-year-old women compliment me on our dancing. One woman asks how long we have been dancing together and is flabbergasted when I inform her I just met her minutes before. I ask the young woman for another dance, but she says she’s heading out after the set, and that the next song, their last one, will be a slow one that doesn’t make sense to dance to. When the set is over, one of the older ladies asks the young woman who she is. She introduces herself as Natasha, says she’s friends with the bassist’s wife, and that she’s a professional dancer, so I probably only shined because of her skill. (Ginger Rogers, you know, backward and in heels.)

            I leave the Spotted Cat and saunter up and down Frenchmen Street riding the high — or more literally, the drunk — of having a successful partner dance. I end up dancing with three more women in three different jazz bars that night. Drenched from the exercise, I take a lap around the block to cool down. While I’m cooling off, I receive a call from my parents, who tell me that my school is giving an additional week off of spring break, as they decide what to do with growing concerns of coronavirus. I’m thrilled, thinking maybe I’ll go on a camping adventure when I get home.

            Several drinks and several bars later I find the time to be almost 1 am, and I decide to head home. The problem with the Marigny is that there’s no direct streetcar line, and the next scheduled bus to take me back arrives at 2 am. After five failed attempts to unlock the rental-by-phone bikes, I figure I can take the hour-long walk back to the Canal streetcar.

            The streets are pretty silent on St. Charles, and it’s quite a lovely walk all alone on the warm night.

3/11/20 — Splish Splash and the Green Fairy strip show

            I wake up at 7 am because the man in the bunk next to me is snoring louder than the jet engine I flew in on. I thought for a second I was experiencing an earthquake. I force myself to try to sleep until 9 am when I determine that the snores are far too loud and I’m fighting a fruitless battle against a barrage on my ears.

            I take the Canal Street streetcar to Daisy Duke’s, have an egg sandwich that isn’t anything to write home about. I stroll down on Royal Street, eying hip cafés and inviting homes until I get to Crescent Park, where once again I’m entranced by the majesty of the Mississippi. 

I backtrack until I find a restaurant called The Country Club. I order crab beignets.

 I chat with my server, Jeremy, who happens to be a playwriting student, as am I, and I ask about New Orleans’ theatre scene. He recommends that I go see the same show Henri had mentioned, The Uninvited, a site-specific piece at the Gallier House.

            Meanwhile, I’d been drawn to The Country Club by the deal that with the purchase of a meal, you get discount admittance to their pool in the back. My friend had commented that her friends who’d been there described the place as a “near-orgy”. And with a recommendation like that, I had to check it out.

            Today’s a perfect day for the pool, the warmest day since I arrived. In the hot tub, I chat with a 38-year-old woman, going on and on incoherently about her ex, before I manage to pass her off to a younger woman, who was equally complaining about her exes. Foolishly, I hadn’t brought a towel, so I have to sun-dry. As I lay sunbathing, I look up and see a big cloud of pelicans — it’s beautiful. They glide gracefully in large and complex formations. I know Louisiana is called the Pelican State, but the only one I had seen thus far was the sad lone pelican on the banks of the Mississippi, that a man was using for golfing target practice.

            Bored with swimming, as soon as I’m dry, I depart and go to Studio Be. Studio Be is a warehouse turned art space by a former street artist, “Bmike” Odums. His artwork is very colorful, grand, and political. 

After seeing the entire studio, I walk back to Frenchmen Street and ate at Dat Dog, I had a beer and a gator sausage with bleu cheese, crawfish etouffee, and five other toppings of my choice.

            I walk around for a bit, along Crescent Park, back to The Country Club. I swim again for a while, still no sight of the “near-orgy” that I was promised. The only thing that I can think might resemble that description is the abundance of gay men in skimpy Speedo suits.

            I’m swimming laps when a large, older woman begins to chat my ear off. She says she hosts a radio show on WOOZ on Saturday nights. She rattles on about her favorite musicians. Describing in detail a Bob Dylan concert she once went to, and a few of her favorite conspiracy theories. Highlights include Jim Morrison faking his own death in collusion with the French government, and how Elvis was gay because he only had one wife. The DJ lady is nice and all, but she’s not the demographic I’m trying to talk to in a pool full of young people with drinks in their hands. I make some excuse and head out.

            I’m planning to go to burlesque bingo at the Saint Hotel. On my way back I stop at Frenchmen Street, where I happen to run into Riley, the guy at my hostel who I skinny-dipped with. I join him shopping in an outdoor art market; I buy a print of five monsters in a sailboat. Riley is with a posse of friends he made at the hostel, and he tells me about how they snuck onto the roof of an abandoned naval base to see the sunset, before being chased off by police.

            Throughout my time at the hostel, I’d kept running into Riley. I don’t understand him. Like me, he’d come here by himself so he could meet people. Yet he seems to have no interest in the city of New Orleans itself. When I talk to him, he has no idea about common places to go in New Orleans — he seems to spend his time drinking with people at the hostel. Different strokes, I guess. I realize I could learn a lesson from him, that maybe I don’t have to do everything in the city, just what feels good to do at the time. Yesterday I went across town to pay to go to a pool in the hopes of talking to fun drunk young people, but if I’d been him, I could have just gone to the hostel pool and gotten booze from the liqueur store down the block. Riley leaves Frenchmen Street without stopping in a single jazz club, so he can get drunk at the hostel. I walk on to the Saint Hotel.

            On arriving, I’m told that the burlesque bingo has been canceled over concerns of the coronavirus. The site-specific show, The Uninvited, is also canceled. But I’m not going to give up trying to see a burlesque show before I leave New Orleans, so I go to Mahogany Hall, back in the French Quarter on Chartres Street, which features the “Green Fairy Absinthe Burlesque Experience”. For $20, plus a $20 glass of absinthe, one woman takes a small group of customers into a back room for a private burlesque show. The clientele includes me, an old couple, a pair of sisters, and a woman with her sister and son. Not exactly a typical burlesque audience. It’s very family-oriented, which is telling of how tame the burlesque show was.

            After explaining that she created this experience after dropping out of a punk rock band, the young woman in green fairy wings strips to the live band in the other room playing “Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home”. It’s kind of odd that it’s such an intimate experience, that she told us her life story before stripping, and that there’s only eight of us. When she is just wearing panties and pasties, she walks us over to a small bar in the back where we are told to give her our pre-slouched Absinthe glasses.

            One by one, we’re given the option “right or left?”, and then she takes off the pasty of the corresponding nipple and pours the water on her nipple, over the sugar cube, and into the glass. After sluicing everyone’s absinthe, she tells us the history of the drink. How it was made it illegal by competing alcohol manufacturers based upon the misconception that wormwood was a hallucinogen.

            Once the event is over, I remember that I still have a large portion of my $20 worth of beads in my backpack with only two more nights before I leave. So I go back to Bourbon, buy another Fishbowl, and smuggle it into the balcony of one of the bars. There, I meet and befriend a few schools from a Kansas school who are on spring break. I share some of my beads with them, and we all fling them at strangers below. For the most part, it’s only men who flash their chests — the girls believe that it doesn’t cost them as much, socially, to go topless as the girls, so they try yelling at the boys to show their butts. I join in with him, yelling “Show us your bum bum!”

            One of the girls is a cheerleader and is on a mission to gain everything she can through sexual favors. Even though I’m perfectly fine sharing my beads and my Fishbowl with the girls (though, if I knew how bad the virus would be in NOLA, I would not have shared my drink), she insists that she flash me every time she takes a sip or a necklace. She negotiates and haggles with older men like a stockbroker: “If you want to see both nipples, I need two necklaces. If let me chug your drink I’ll keep my shirt up for ten seconds.” I think she’s equally drunk off the power as she is from the alcohol she’s consuming. She snipes out men in the bar and tries to get them to give her attention, and when they do, she gives them the cold shoulder and declares “I have a boyfriend!”, walking away.

            When the girl tries to flash the bartender in exchange for free drinks, they kick her out, and us by proxy. I then learn she’s 19, so we all try sneaking her into different bars with various techniques, ranging from distracting the bouncer to trying to hide her in the middle of our cluster and walking in a huddle.

            Wandering around for some time, looking for a place that wouldn’t card, the girls give up and decide to go back to their Air BnB, but they invite me to come along as well. It’s a nice place, and it’s a shame that the cheerleader barfs in their nice bathroom. I talk with the leader of the group on the couch about our concerns about this life-changing pandemic, until I fall asleep on the couch.

3/12/20 —one last big hurrah

            I wake up disoriented, not sure where I am. The girls are asleep, and I don’t feel like waiting for them for who-knows-how-long to wake up, so I leave a note, saying how much I enjoyed last night, and thanking them for letting me pass out on their couch. I also bequeath them the remainder of the beads I have with me, and I head out. I remember, during the Über ride to their place, that I had seen the route to my hostel, so I know I’m not far.

            But as soon as I start walking, I see Bayou St. John. I love to walk along the water of all sorts, and I’m in no rush to get back to the hostel, so I follow the bayou in the direction of the Museum of Art. I still have half of the Fishbowl from last night, so I try to do the hair-of-the-dog thing and finish it, but it’s just too revolting in the morning. I feel like such trash, drinking a half-gallon of the cheapest drink ever, strolling past these nice homes with children’s toys out front on a Thursday morning.

            I arrive at City Park and explore, but I’m too hungover to be in the mood for an art museum. So instead I go to the Café Du Monde at the park. I know Café Du Monde is the big “must do” in New Orleans, and if I want a more authentic experience, I should go to the main one near the French market, but the line has always been way too long. I’d planned to go after drinking, at like 3 am, since it’s open 24 hours, but my drunken adventures never landed me there.  So now here I am eating my beignet (which is just as fine as the one from Café Beignet), looking at the water feature, while a bunch of old folks disembark from their pre-packaged bus tour.

            Continuing to the hostel, my mom calls to express her concern about my flight back tomorrow, with all the craziness of the coronavirus. It seems so silly now in hindsight, but during my travels, the only time I’d be really concerned about the virus was at the airport. When I flew to New Orleans, I vigorously sprayed my hands with hand sanitizer, and wiped every surface with Clorox, but the virus was the last thing on my mind as I was dancing with, hugging, and kissing people. Little did I know how much of a hot spot the city would be. And two days ago I’d developed a cough, which I assume is allergies, exacerbated by continuous drinking. Now I’m thinking they might not let me on the plane for fear I’m infected.

            I straighten out some things at the hostel, like correcting the length of my stay and packing the majority of my belongings. It’s quite a hot day, and I worked up a sweat just walking over, so I take a refreshing dip in the pool, where once again I find Riley. We play catch in the pool with this bro-y kind of guy named Peter. I talk to him and his cohorts of spring breakers. The topic, naturally, turns to a mix of excitement for the extra week we have off, and the concerns of how fucked we’ll be if they cancel the rest of the semester or go online. I’m not sure how it comes about, but eventually, one of the girls in the group, Madison, says she’s going to cut Riley’s hair by the pool. I tell her if she wants the practice, she can cut my hair too. (I’m a firm believer in making impulsive bad decisions that aren’t permanent. So why not let an untrained stranger cut your hair with office scissors by a hostel pool? Life is short.)

            I had worked up an appetite swimming, so I take the streetcar up Canal Street to eat at Clesi’s. I eat outside: a half-dozen char-grilled oysters and two dozen boiled crawfish, which is so spicy it clears my sinuses nicely and gets me rid of my cough. Super delicious. After lunch, I ride the streetcar even further north, towards the end of the line. Then the 60 bus, up to see Lake Ponchatrain, the lake I saw the night I arrived. On the bus, an older lady named Adele chats with me, complimenting my romphim. She lives near the lake and recommends some restaurants there to check out, telling me where to get off and walk.

            I arrive at the lake. It’s pretty non-descript and featureless, with stepped concrete levees surrounding it. But it’s vast: No matter how hard you try, you are unable to see the other side. I see a single, lone sailboat out of the water; it’s the middle of a workday. Based on the nearby marina, I’m sure the lake is crowded with boats on a sunny Sunday.

            I get bored with the monotonous shoreline, so I head back and go to a restaurant whose happy hour Adele suggested to me, Landry’s. It’s 4:40 and they wouldn’t serve me their happy hour specials until 5, so I sit on the dock under the restaurant, held up on stilts, and I watch the sole sailboat. At 5, I order crawfish bread and crab balls for half-off the normal price. I’m sat next to an old couple that says nothing to nobody for the entire hour I’m there.

            When it’s time to leave, I wait at the bus stop for the 60. The RTA app says it’ll be an hour, so I go down the block to my second option, the 40. The app says an hour wait for that one too. So, I decide to go down Canal Boulevard for an hour in the baking sun, and listen to a podcast novel called “The French Quarter Hustle”. To add salt in the wound, as I walk, the 60 bus passes me twice, but I’m in between stops and can’t run up to catch it.

            I take the streetcar back to the hostel, which I’m looking forward to, to cool off in the pool. I run into Madison, who’s just cut Riley’s hair, and I’m just in time. I sit on a cooler on the pool deck while she trims my hair. I don’t consider myself a romantic, but there’s something really nice about feeling her soft hand on my cheek as she cuts my hair with her other hand. I make her laugh with my usual far-fetched lies and dumb haircut choices I’ve made in the past. “I used to have a tellum,” I say. “It’s a mullet, but backwards. Party upfront and business in the back.” I get her number and ask what she’s doing later that night. She tells me that she, her friend Kaylyn, and some others are going bar-hopping in the French Quarter. She has to pick up some birthday supplies for a friend, and I should text her when I’m down there.

            I have time to kill before I’m scheduled to see a friend’s friend play at the Mahogany Hall, so I go to the liquor store and mix myself the drink from the Spotted Cat: rum, Coke, Fireball. I bring it with me to the hostel pool, rewarding myself with a sip after every lap I swim, till 8:30. I bring the remainder of my drink with me, in the Coke bottle, as I ride the streetcar to Mahogany Hall, arriving just in time to introduce myself to my family friend’s friend, Dee, aka “Lips” and her band “The Trips”. She tells me she worked with my family friend at the same bookstore where my mom would later work, in College Park, MD. After some time, she moved down to Texas and then to New Orleans “just for the hell of it”.

            It’s time for the band to start playing, so I settle in my seat with absinthe in my hand. Dee has wrinkles and grey hair and based on the timeline she gave me, that puts her older than my parents who are 63, but “Lips” was as spry as could be as she and her two-person band rocked about. After her first set, she buys me a Hurricane, and we talk about DC and our common friend. The bartender joins in the conversation because there weren’t many people in the bar, and he had also spent a lot of time in the DC area. During her second set, I nurse the Hurricane. I even dance in front of the stage during a song called “The Mardi Gras Twist”. I buy an absinthe spoon from the bar for $6, with Van Gogh on it, hoping to pick up an absinthe habit when I get home. As the green fairy from the night previously explained, absinthe gets you drunk a bit differently than other alcohol.

            When her second set is over, I lap around the block to finish the “Coke”  I’d smuggled in, rather than pay for another. I come back, go to the bathroom to pee with my romphim around my ankles. I’m a bit more than tipsy. I feel like I have to fart, so I let it rip, but the smallest pellet of shit pops out and lands on my romphim. To make things even worse, that’s exactly when my nose decides to suddenly start bleeding. (It’s never a good thing when you’re naked in a new town and two of your orifices are leaking.)

            It’s time to call it quits, so I clean myself and my romphim off, with toilet paper, as best as I can, and make my exit. Back at the hostel, I’m thinking about calling it a night. But fuck that! It’s my last night here. I’m going to party until the break of dawn. I shower and change, and go back down to Bourbon Street, to the “Boot Scootin’ Rodeo” balcony, to toss the last of my beads. No need to bring them on the airplane. I throw them out willy-nilly to anyone, flashing or not. I get bored with that quickly. I text Madison to see where she is, but I get no response.

            Down Bourbon Street, looking for fun to kick up, who else do I run into? Riley, as well as Madison, Kaylin, Peter, and their posse of spring breakers. We duck into a club, full of other spring breakers and blasting music targeting our demographic of spring breakers, hits from the early aughts. Madison tells me her phone died, but she’s glad she ran into me. I had been so fascinated with Madison earlier that I hadn’t noticed Kaylyn, who’s equally pretty. I ask Kaylyn if she wants to dance, and she gets visibly excited. We do our best club dancing.  Asking Kaylyn to dance ended up for the best, because as we’re dancing to LMFAO, I look over and see Riley making out with Madison.

            One dance turns into more. I offer to split the remainder of my “not-just-Coke Coke” in the middle of the crowd, so the bouncer doesn’t see us with outside drinks. We dance with just each other, and we dance with the whole group. At one point the whole club is participating in some dance move that Kaylyn and I made up. Sometimes she goes back to Madison, and I join Riley and Peter in that huddle-jump dance that college boys do. But she always comes back to dance with me. I’m not sure if she wants me to kiss her or not — she gets close to me, touches my chest or grinds on me, but when I start to lean in, she switches to another dance move. When in doubt, play it safe. I decide not to try.

            After an hour of sweaty club dancing and singing “Hey Ya!” and “Shut Up and Dance” at the tops of our lungs, Riley and Madison and another pair go back to the hostel. Kaylyn, Peter, another couple, and I move on to a club with a courtyard in the back, playing Latin music. The others aren’t big on Latin music, but Kaylin is, so I dance with her. I use everything I can remember from the four meetings I attended of the salsa club at my school, and the quinceñera I went to in high school. I’m definitely one of the least talented dancers here, but I do well considering I’m the only white guy dancing. I don’t step on any toes, keep a good rhythm, and even pull off a few tricks like a handstand and jumping over my own leg. Kaylyn is impressed, and I feel like hot shit. With my hands on her hips, it’s getting steamy. We’re overheated, so we all roam down the street, where the couple had left and was replaced by another two girls, Asia and Brittany, who Peter and Kaylyn knew from the hostel. Wandering around, Kaylyn mentions she wants to go to a strip club, and everyone else in the group is game, so long as there is no cover. But none of them know any strip clubs to go to, so I confess that I had been to one earlier. I tell them it’s trashy, but there’s no cover, and they tell me to lead the way. I feel like a stumbling millennial Moses, leading horny spring-breaker Israelites to the promised land of girls named after alcoholic beverages, wearing nothing but G-strings and platform heels.

            The bouncer, who looks like a Renaissance fair-magician-reject, harasses us at the door. “There’s no cover charge, so don’t treat me like a bitch and give me a fucking tip.” For his intimidation methods, I crumple up two singles, trying to make it like it was more money, as I put it in his tip jar, on behalf of the group. There is a drink minimum, so I get the same 2-beers-for-$10 that I had last time, and give one to Kaylyn. I dish out my singles to each performer, and hand a few to Kaylyn to give out because she doesn’t have any small bills.

            At one point the man next her stuffs a bill into the dancer’s G-string. Kaylyn informs the man that that breaks the club’s “don’t touch the performers” rule. The man replies, “My fiancé’s a stripper and people touch her all the time.  You’re allowed to put bills in their panties.”

            “I don’t care about your fiancé being a stripper,” Kaylyn retorts. “You don’t touch the women.”

            “You don’t care about me fiancé? I care about my fiancé. Fuck you,” and he gets in her face and yells at her.

            Before I can intervene, the bouncer removes the man and his friends. Kaylyn is reduced to tears, sobbing, “I was only trying to help the women.” I try to cheer her up as best as I can. I tell her how much I admire her for standing up for what she believes in, and how awful that man is. I try to divert her mind off of the situation by revealing how I shat my onesie earlier that night. It definitely kills all chance of me kissing her, but it does seem to make her smile. She gives a small chuckle.

            It’s hard to stay in the mood of the strip club after that, and the club is closing anyway. It’s 5 am, so Asia, Brittany, Peter, Kaylyn, and I all head back to the hostel. Having been in the city the longest of everyone in the group, I once more assume the role of Moses as I maneuver the drunk Israelites around the construction, to the Canal streetcar. Kaylyn still seems shaken from being yelled at, so I offer her a piggyback ride, and use my zany antics to lighten the mood.

            On Canal Street, there’s a statue of a fisherman. Brittany is convinced it’s one of those men who pretend to be a statue for tips, but after walking past it for a week, I knew it wasn’t. I bet her a dollar it was a statue. We shake hands on it, and I confidently walk up and grab its crotch. With no reaction from the statue, I’m only proved right. If I was wrong, I’d have lost more than a dollar. My five-day unlimited bus pass on the RTA app had expired days ago, but I had screenshotted it and used the screenshot to get on the streetcar.

            Before reaching the hostel, we spot a McDonald’s and decide we’re hungry, so we get off the streetcar. The sign says it’s open 24/7, but the door is locked, so we try the drive-through, which they are operating out of. Looking back I don’t know if that’s just their late-night policy, or a preemptive coronavirus precaution. Either way, they refuse to serve people not in a car. Drunkenly, we figure if we assemble ourselves in a two-by-two fashion, and I mime a steering wheel, we could fool them. Alas, it was to no avail. However, there’s a Burger King a block down, so we take our business elsewhere. Their doors are open.

            Because it’s 6 am, and they won’t serve us burgers because it’s technically breakfast time, I order “breakfast patties” which are basically cheeseburgers on biscuits. One by one, each of us uses the bathroom while we wait for our order. We’re totally loud and belligerent, and I’m so sorry for the poor employees who have to deal with us. Asia comments that the bathroom smells like “bum piss” which offends Kaylyn. “Why would someone’s pee smell different if they have a home or not?” It’s endearing how she takes on the problems of the world, and stands up for those she thinks are defenseless or in need of a protector.

            We exchange our contact information as I Moses everyone back to the hostel, and we disband or loopy crew to go to bed. I wake up three hours later and leave the hostel. My cough came back, so I try to ingest as much cough suppressant as possible so I’m let on the plane. I learn how to use the Chinese handballs I bought at the market while I wait for my flight, thrice delayed, to take me home.

Epilogue.

When I arrived in DC, my parents asked me what I did on my trip. I just simply responded, “I ate and drank like one does in New Orleans”. After leaving the airport, we watched the last live theater performance we would see before the government-mandated quarantine to stay home.

            New Orleans proved to be one of the “hot zones” for the pandemic: Many blame all the people coming into the city for Mardi Gras. It had been the 10^th Of March, when I was on the bus from Cajun Encounters, that I heard on the radio that the first documented case of Covid-19 had appeared in New Orleans. It was no longer an issue faced by people across the globe; it had arrived.

            I always hated how early my spring break was, compared to my friends at other schools, because I wasn’t able to spend it with them. But this year it probably saved my life, or at least saved my trip. The trip would have been impossible the following week. On March 11^th the theatre and the burlesque shows were canceled due to virus concerns. If I’d stayed there any longer, all the restaurants would have closed, and my hostel would have made me leave. My friend from New Zealand had to move back to North Carolina after she began working from home, shortly after I left. Lips had her last gig the night after I saw her. The girls from Kansas has a running Snapchat streak going with me ever since.

            At home, I looked over my expenses. Hostel, airfare, food, drinks, tips, and everything else totaled about $900 for five days. And it was worth every penny. I still stand by every dollar I spent. I paid the bare minimum of required expenses like airfare and lodging. With the exception of the Burger King, all the food I purchased was an experience, not an expense. I don’t mind paying for an experience, especially one I can’t get anywhere else. Also, because I was immediately quarantined when I got home, I haven’t spent a dime since.

            I knew I had to make this spring break special because it was my last. Last year, I had to work during my spring break, and the year before I just went to my parents’ house. I always nursed the fantasy of spring-breakers having a Bacchanalian festival on beaches with fellow coeds, but I knew that that would get boring even faster than it takes to get a sunburn. This trip was the special trip I needed, filled with its share of carnal pleasures, with a light mix of culture and the finer things in life.

            When I was there it felt like, when I wasn’t eating or drinking, I had so much time to kill. Reflecting on my trip, I’m surprised by how much I did in one day. At lunch, I’d be writing in my small travel journal about not knowing what to do that day, and by the time I went to bed, I’d be laughing at the irony, knowing all the neighborhoods and misadventures I’d have been through not long after.

            Telling people that I travel on my own, they’re always surprised. I reply that you meet more people when you travel alone. You’re more approachable, and more open to meeting new people, not just staying with the people came with.

            In New Orleans I met a lot of great people, locals and travelers alike. Gracious locals who were more than willing to share their city with me like Ken, Henri, Jeremy, Sarah, and Lips. Tourists who shared my excitement and pursuit of the fun and adventure like Riley, Caitlin, Savanah, Madison, Kaylyn. I’m thankful for all the outstanding people I met.