Bourbon Street on a Saturday night is ridiculous. But when you add the upcomiong Fat Tuesday into the mix, and a fine medley of crazy results. For someone foreign to Louisiana, the exchange of bright beads with partial nudity is lewd, crude, and downright intriguing. Before I left for LSU, my mom had given me a hug and told me to have fun. "When in Rome, do what the Romans do, babe," she said.
So I decided I had some exploring to do.
Born in Massachusetts and raised a Texas girl, I took in the festivities through unbiased and sober eyes. The masked men on the floats terrified me. I watched my friends willingly get pelted with beads, and finally my turn came around. A grotesquely fat man in a Joker outfit planted a five pound bag of beads on my face.
On my face, for crying out loud.
I could have sworn he was aiming. After being helped up and wiping the beer-thickened mud off my jeans, the beads kept coming. Not only that, but my feet hurt from standing and my ears were throbbing from all the drunken screams when Kid Rock rolled by. Please.
Or maybe I'm just a bad sport. Maybe.
When the Endymion parade was over, my friends had the brilliant idea to trek over to Bourbon Street. Two words: body paint. On overweight women, on men in thongs. It was gloriously disgusting, but all "part of the experience." I was promised me a beignet trip on the way out of the French quarter, so I decided to tag along. But the line was too long at Cafe du Monde. Instead of beignets, I was condemned to hell 15 times over by the radical Christians screaming around Jackson Square, and took refuge in what turned out to be "The most visited gay bar in New Orleans!" We walked back down Bourbon to get pelted with more beads, tops flying up in a rhythmic stream of grivoiserie. Well, at least the gay-bar had clean restrooms.
Next year I'm going to Canada instead.
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