New Orleans – Day One (Saturday)
The road to New Orleans was paved with boredom and frequent bathroom stops. I should mention at this juncture that I have the bladder of a pregnant possum, i.e., small. I pee every hour, on the hour. If forced to "hold it," I revert to age 4 and begin a "pee-pee dance". It's just like it sounds: a lot of bouncing and general whining. By the time we entered Louisiana, I had peed on the side of the highway of no less than 3 states. You're welcome, truckers. There's your show.
We began a fun tradition of photo-ops with every state’s Welcome sign. As well as a freebie bathroom break for me, this also provided an opportunity for us to stretch our legs and get some antsy energy out.
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| Awakening the insect hellions. |
Speaking of ants. In Mississippi, we decided to mix up the standard “smile for the camera” routine and add some pizzazz to our pics. Allison suggested that we take a picture with all of us jumping in mid-air. Easier said than done, my friends. The ol’ time-delay function, which had allowed us to take full portraits of our whole crew, severely handicapped our jumping picture – to the tune of 6 to 8 unsuccessful shots of us in our landing stances, crouching less-than-gracefully on the shoulder of the interstate. Unbeknownst to us, a giant hill of biting ants has taken up residence directly under the Welcome to Mississippi sign. The little monsters rewarded us for our creative efforts with painful red bites all over our toes. I would like to point out that, though we all were bit, only Allison continued to bellyache about her ant bites well into the weekend. Big baby.
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| Get ready, New Orleans, the party has arrived! |
Our first view of Nola was... Repulsive. Repugnant. A rat's nest of shit and misery. Why does anyone live there? Katrina or no, I have never seen such a filthy, poorly-designed area in my life. Highways twist around on top of each other with no regard for the rules of physics. Even the highly-anticipated Superdome stands forlornly in a parking lot of rubble underneath a graffitti'd overpass. I seriously could spit--or pee--on it from the interstate.
So it was with great surprise that we drove into the French Quarter and discovered... jubilant drunkards! Clad in red dresses, they weaved their inebriated asses on, off, and through the streets. We later learned that a charity Red Dress Run had occurred earlier that day, but the welcome was priceless. Nothing like a little cross-dressing to lift a girl's spirits.
We checked into our room at the Historic French Quarter Inn and were floored. (Thank you, Mike Black, for treating us!) The hotel was built in the 1700s -- freaking gorgeous -- with a huge open-air courtyard in the center. Delicious. We set down our luggage and immediately began prettying up for a night on the town.
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| View from our room into the courtyard. |
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| The view into our presh hotel room. |
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| Lookin' good, girls! |
And what a night it was.
The French Quarter was crowded with people: from the aforementioned Red Dress Run, as well as artsy-fartsies celebrating Dirty Linen Night (New Orleans’ equivalent of First Friday in Raleigh, a night of art and alcohol). We giddily roamed the streets, Abita beers in hand. Sidebar: the single most awesome thing about Nola is the general encouragement of boozin’ on the go. In Austin, we would also learn that Louisiana supports open containers for car passengers as well. But at that point, it was too little, too late. The moral of that story: do your research.
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| Gettin' artsy. This is the culture we experienced before the, ahem, culture. |
As we wandered and/or weaved along, we encountered:
1. Gina the Fortune Teller. I will bear a set of fraternal twins. Also, I should beware a man with salt-and-pepper hair in November of this year.
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| "I see that you have a long life ahead of you." "I hope so, bitch, I'm only 25!" |
2. The most skeezy strip bar in all of the South. You may think you know sleeze. I am here to tell you that no, you do not. We (well, let’s be honest, this was all my idea) were lured by a hand-lettered sign reading “TITS AND WISKEY” – yes, whiskey was adorably misspelled – and no cover charge. If an establishment is brazen enough to advertise their services in this manner, I feel that it deserves my dolla dolla bills y’all.
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| Yep. We actually walked in here. And walked out with zero STDs. Win. |
Upon entrance to this brothel, I mean strip bar, we sat our pretty little selves down in the front row and watched a procession of awkward, pot-bellied ladies dry-hump the stage. And then, a woman whom I can only describe as the stereotypical brothel madame approached us and forced my head into her cleavage. Yes. That happened. My face was raped. It was a non-consensual motorboat. Fortunately for her, I was 5’s of beers down and just laughed. But really! Women should be more careful where they smoosh their titties.
While Stacey sneakily took photos of these shenanigans on her phone, and Allison tried to melt into the floor, I struck up a rousing conversation with another stripper, Tina. We chit-chatted about babies and how hard it is to make a living for a few minutes, until I finished my beer and we headed out. Sweet thing, I hope she makes it through nursing school…
3. Once we extricated ourselves from the love den, we found ourselves in the middle of a parade down Royal Street. People played all manner of instruments (including a tie constructed with washboard metal) and frolicked in whatever fashions they found in the Laundromat lost-and-found: one man sported jorts as well as a womens nightgown, while another wore a red silk dressing gown and a black beret. We danced. It was amazing.
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| Please note the outfits. |
4. We found a fancy lingerie store (aptly named “Oh!”) and, as I rifled through their sale racks, we found an enormous display of old-school ladies’ hats. It’s simple math. Drunk girls + fancy hats = FASHION SHOW!! Stacey found an equestrian hat and insisted it was somehow Irish: “Top o’ the mornin’!” Like I said. Drunk. On an unrelated note, we had taken a mere 10 self-portraits before we were kindly asked to make our purchases and GTFO. Bastards. I got some super cute panties though, cha-ching!
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| Beautiful! Work it! |
5. Gay bars. Our main purpose in out-on-the-town-ing was to sample some of the legen…. wait for it…. dary gay bars in Nola. Through some act of God, we actually found The Corner Pocket and sashayed in the doorway like we owned the place. … Only to be prompted shooed out for “lack of penis”. Stacey even tried to tell the bouncer that I was a lesbian (thanks, Stace), but to no avail. No penis, no party.
Subsequent gay bars were equally discriminating. Not that I blame them. To be honest, the LGBTQ community deals with enough shit on a daily basis. If they want an LGBTQ-only bar, let them have it! Rock on.
6. Banned from the cool bars, we had to settle for clubs that accepted straighties. Moments after we found a hetero-bar, a tiny leprechaun of a Guido came up to dance. And by “dance”, I mean “assaulted us with his pint-sized peenie and tried to pass it off as the bump-and-grind.” In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t told him to eff off so quickly. Stacey’s been itching to mace somebody and, after he humped my calf for an entire Chris Brown song, I think homeboy was asking for it.
Events transpiring after about 2am are hazy, so I won’t bother lying to you. If you’re curious, I’m sure Stacey drunk-tweeted additional details.
Don’t worry, Dad. We all ended up safe in our beds with our purses, phones, and no boys. No harm, no foul.
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