Mardi Gras Week, 2021

 This Foul Year of Our Lord, 2021. 

Mardi Gras week, New Orleans. It was cold, dismal, the kind of unique misery that comes from being a waterlogged ghost town that should have been bustling. In normal years this would be an adventurous, wild week, of smoking joints on Decatur offered by random helpful tourists, sitting in the back of the streetcar with a half-empty paper cup of cheap alcopop from a gas station on Canal like you're the king of the world. No drunken dozing by a tree in the middle of the neutral ground on Esplanade this year, though, or leaving Cheers in Fat City to wander around Lakeside Mall in a half-sloshed, rambling gait and annoying Macy's customers before the Metairie parades go marching down Severn Avenue. No patented Bourbon Street Strut followed by 3$ beers and a pool game in a leather bar off St. Anne surrounded by questionably dressed men and tvs with all porn. 

No, this time it was quiet, sedate, even bizarre, and not in the fun way. I'd left the Northshore for New Orleans on Tuesday, bundled into some quirky little extended stay motel off of Clearview that was a bed, a fridge, and a stovetop and not much else. But hey, it was a room and it was cheap, and that was the important thing. My first fellow traveller and part-time lover, a well-built, quiet guy I will henceforth refer to as Jake, arrived from Louisville soon after me, my second by the name of Ivan, Ivy for short, arriving the next day from Charleston. It was a lot colder than usual for this time of year at the time, but I thought nothing of it and just advised packing warm. 

Thursday was the day things really got started. Ivy wanted to see the Aquarium, so we, naturally, did what I normally do to get downtown from Metairie- took the bus from Clearview Mall downtown. This, however, was a mistake. Bundled up in a trenchcoat and jeans, we stood at that bus stop for about thirty minutes, staring up at the rapidly-darkening sky next to a stressed-looking Hispanic mother with her toddler and a bundle of groceries. Neither of us seemed to have any idea when the bus was supposed to show up, phone apps aside, and the sky was getting more menacing. By the time the bus actually arrived, it was starting to rain properly, and we were more than annoyed when the rain became a fucking great deluge, drenching us when we were eventually dropped off on the usual spot on the corner of Canal and Elk Place by the Joy Theatre. Cold, wet, and thoroughly annoyed, we practically scurried down the street into a tiny little gyro place off of Canal and Roosevelt, passing the fenced-off remnants of the Hard Rock in the meantime that are somehow still there. 

Naturally, our annoyance turned into a bit of mild horror as the sidewalk started practically flooding, the owner putting up plywood and sandbags against the doors not long after we'd walked in. "Always floods on this side," he said, shaking his head. "Other side of Canal is usually fine." It was initially my intention to catch the streetcar on the other side of the construction work on the gritty mess of rubble that used to be the Hard Rock Hotel, but after walking some ways and dipping into the lobby of the Sazerac Bar to dry off, we figured this would not be the best idea. After some angry deliberating due to Lyft being an asshole and making us have to keep moving since we were in close proximity to Bourbon Street, I finally just called an uber to pick us up and take us right to Aquarium.

Things went smoothly from there, the rain easing up once we got there. I'd been to the Audobon Aquarium multiple times before, but it was fun to watch my companions' reactions, especially Ivy. The giant turtles and sharks in the Gulf section was particularly interesting, as usual. But soon enough we were through it, and on our way back to our motel, the red streetcar rumbling along Canal marking the end of another day. 

Friday we did nothing but recuperate from the misery of Thursday, spending most of the evening in Joe's Caddy Corner, a dingy little dive bar of the Metairie Bar Complex that was the only one of them open. My usual spot, Pair of Dice, was closed due to the plague, naturally, so Joe's was a fitting substitute, and more importantly, it had food. 

Saturday we actually went into the city properly this time, and though it was cool, it wasn't rainy and there were actually people about, showing glimpses of how downtown is normally supposed to be. It was still weird beyond all imagining for New Orleans, though. Few street musicians, no clubs open, even the usual street preachers in front of the Cathedral seemed much fewer. It was not quite a ghost town, not like the last time I dropped into the city in September, nor were there the unconscious-or-dead bodies of random homeless men abandoned by a dark corner of the Esplanade end of Bourbon Street.

 We ate lunch at Felix's Oyster House off of Iberville- naturally, we ordered the oysters rockefeller. I'm not an oysters fan, but that's the one way I can eat them easily. Then we went on a cheerful little jaunt around the Quarter, making the loop down a mainly-shuttered Bourbon, up and down Esplanade, then back down Royal to pop into the antique stores I usually like to look at. Thankfully, it was all corpse-free this time- or maybe NOPD was a lot better at cleaning them up this time, one can never know. 

Sunday we went into the city for food again, Thai this time, at an out-of-the-way little place called Sukho Thai off of Frenchmen Street that most wouldn't know was there unless they looked for it beforehand, in the section where people actually live and don't just wander about in a daze looking for a taxi. Very good curry, by the way. I'd recommend their yellow curry especially. It was cold but not too cold yet as we left, and I had hoped we'd be able to go back into the city the next couple days. Boy, was I wrong.

The next several days were spent bundled up in bed and hardly daring to leave the room except for food, an arctic storm having reared its ugly head and crashed the party like an angry goose flying through a window. It was fucking cold, and when I say fucking cold, I mean the roads were iced, the roofs were iced, the ditches were iced. Every goddamn thing was covered in ice, and if the temperatures alone weren't bad enough, the wind was like Chicago in November. The only thing to do was order food, drink what was left of our booze supply supplemented with weed and vape juice, and keep the hotel room heater on full blast, praying we didn't get a blackout. The only special thing we really did was order a Rouses king cake on Mardi Gras day, after deliberating whether to buy a 25$ kingcake off Doordash and eventually going "fuck that" since we were low on funds. Laissez les bon temps roulez, until you run out of money, as my dad always put it. 

Friday I finally got home, the weather having cleared up almost like magic, and as I sat on the patio of my usual watering hole back home, nursing a beer and waiting for my usual friends to arrive, I kept looking up at the sky suspiciously, wondering if the blizzard would be back again. But it didn't, mercifully, and I was left in peace to contemplate all the good and bad things of the week. 

Despite all the shitty weather and basically everything being closed due to plague, I did have a good week. I had my lovers with me, and that was the important thing. It had been more than six months since I'd seen both of them due to the pandemic, Covid screwing almost every single meetup I could possibly have planned, every travel opportunity like conventions and festivals. I missed the comfortable domesticity of it all, the smell of cooking sliders on a hotel stovetop, giggly, crossfaded snuggling under the sheets while smelling like rum, the casual intimacy of just being able to be near someone you're not related to without a mask and six-feet distance, terrified you- or them- might be carrying the disease that has basically driven half the population into being lonely recluses, the other half into aggressive apathy, and killed off so many older people. It wasn't ideal, but it's what I got, and honestly? I was happy for it, and hopeful that, the next time we meet, in the Crescent City, it will be as it should have been, and as it should be.