politricks and other distractions

Testifying

I've posted this photo before, but it deserves repeating. It's of happier Mardi Gras times past.

New Orleans has two big major holidays a year: Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest. Of the two, Mardi Gras is the darker. French for "Fat Tuesday," the day before Catholic's Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, Mardi Gras' slogan is: Laissez les bonnes temps roulez! (Let the good times roll!)

The colors of the festival -- purple, yellow and green -- are usually only seen together in bruises. Bruises like those you get when you get so drunk you fall down in the gutter on Chartres Street one night. The smell of college kids' vomit will waft up to you at times like that, but luckily, you won't remember it the next day.

While you're in that darkened, drunken state, you'll see things you never thought you'd see humans do: mostly sexually. People kiss and suck and fondle and fuck right there in damn front of you. There's a wildness in peoples' eyes at times like that that it's hard to forget.

New Orleans is the place you go to get lost. It's where Lee Harvey Oswald ran and was found. You go there to hide, to change your name, your life, your lifestyle, your sexuality, your gender, your religion and on and on. I ran there to ease a broken heart and write. Instead, I fell in love and learned to bartend. The only time I wrote was when he came to pick me up on dates. I always made sure I was at the typewriter, tapping away... for the first few dates anyway. He soon learned who I really was - a much less disciplined person than that and way too young to be a good writer.

The problem with New Orleans is -- should I be saying "was?" -- that there were no rules, no guideposts to measure your journey by, especially on Mardi Gras. You could get your hands on whatever you wanted there, but would you be ready for it when you got it?

Mardi Gras is your last free out for sin. Lent is all about absolution. Like a smoker trying to quit and overdosing on cigs that last night, any sinner can go anywhere on Mardi Gras and be forgiven in the next light of day.

That's a dangerous thing to offer sinners like us.

posted by dcnative @ 8:54 PM