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November 16, 2004
Leave Your Clothes at the Border
They say, "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but I'm here to tell you your clothes stay in New Orleans. It's not an officially endorsed message from the New Orleans tourism machine, but trust me, it's true.
I headed down to New Orleans (from Chicago) a couple times one summer: Memorial Day and Labor Day. I found, to my pleasure, that the spirit of Mardi Gras is exploited by the business community and the debauchery continues with only slightly less crowded streets.
On Memorial Day I headed to the Big Easy with two friends, one male, one female. Being in college we opted for a room in the less than glamorous, but entirely affordable, East New Orleans. We stayed in something called the Family Inn, a hotel that was seemingly untouched by skilled labor (save the addition of bullet proof glass) since the mid-seventies, or whenever it was that orange and brown were the only two colors with which hotels were outfitted. The trip from the Family Inn to the French Quarter is short enough, the three of us had to finish the bottle of MD 20/20 in the parking lot before heading down to Bourbon St.
We walked the street with drinks until we got a mental map of the place and we found a convenience/liquor store that sold bottles of booze.
See, there's two schools when it comes to drinking in bars.
1 The school that claims drinking at home or alone is an indication of alcoholism. I know a guy that graduated from that school. After graduation he moved into an apartment upstairs from a bar.
2 The school my dad went to. The "why drink in a bar when you can go to the store and buy a bottle for less and get totally smashed?" school. Like father like son, as they say.
We walked around passed the bottle of cheap store-bought booze passing the kids tap dancing and twirling bicycle tires on their heads until the breasts started popping out.
Then we goaded our female companion to show hers. She did. Over and over. She earned so many beads they covered her chest. I pressured her into going topless, covered by the Mr T-like amount of neckware.
Around that time our male companion started getting jealous he wasn't getting any beads, so he went to the end of Bourbon St to get some. (If you've been to New Orleans you know the end I'm talking about...) He started flashing the guys in the bars to no avail. He said some of the guys even demanded he pay them with beads after having seen what he had to show them.
While he was busy doing that the girl I was with put her shirt back on and we went around, most likely drinking even more.
That's when we were propositioned by a couple of parking garage employees. Apparently they were in town for a parking garage manager's conference (really, how hard can it be?) and were both married, but not to each other. The female admired my friend's daring topless stunt, and the guy, well he made it very clear that all four of us should head back to his hotel room so he could have sex with all of us. We declined, only his original partner accompanied him from that point on.
After that we paid and earned some beads for a couple hours without our friend. We were about to give up on him when he approached us and said, "Have you guys seen my underwear?"
Your underwear? Why would we have seen your underwear?
I lost it. I don't know where it went.
I'm not sure how he could have lost his underwear, he wasn't sure how he did, but we all agreed it was time to head back to the Family Inn.
The next morning we left New Orleans, without the underwear.
The same group went down to New Orleans again on Labor Day, but we were supposed to meet some other people who had reserved a couple rooms again at the Family Inn.
When we got there our friends hadn't shown up and we couldn't get a room because there was some hip hop family convention and all the rooms were full. So we waited by the pool.
After a couple hours of waiting in the hot sun I decided it was time for a bottle of grape MD 20/20. Then two.
Our friends finally showed up in the late afternoon and wanted to start drinking. So we out to the liquor store down past the old oil tanks and campgrounds and got beer, vodka, and a bottle of Night Train for me (What can I say, I'm a sucker for fortified wine).
The several bottles of grain-neutral-spirits-fortified wine and dehydration caused by hours in the hot sun mixed in just the right amounts.
I got naked.
I ran around the balcony of the hotel, across the parking lot and jumped into the pool
For some reason this upset the family oriented hip hop fanatics and they complained to the management loudly enough to be heard through the bullet proof glass.
The management searched the hotel for the "naked white kid." I don't think I was too hard for them to find.
And there I was, naked, without shelter in New Orleans.
Posted by calculatoronfire at November 16, 2004 09:19 PM