mardi what?
it's just tuesday in most places
The only party I’m going to this week, is an online, pay-what-you-can drawing party. Join me!
I want to tell you how special Mardi Gras is, about the creativity, the opportunity to dance and release the tension of a year, to cleanse with music and parades and telling all your friends you love them, how it is a necessary part of a cycle, but I get sentimental. Instead you get this list.
ten things that really happened at mardi gras
The year I moved back, I dressed for an early morning in a metallic copper dress with a glowing light at my chest. It was still dark out, and I couldn’t find the parade, but as I drove I heard a ghostly echo of a band. I would stop and roll down my window, and hear nothing. I went home, drank hot cocoa, and slept a little more.
My first Mardi Gras, Jamie dressed as the Baby of the Future. One of the only people we knew with a cell phone, if you called him, he would tell you about the scene where ever he was. This seems less remarkable now that we all have cell phones, but in 2003, it was remarkable to be able to call someone and find out if they were at the better spot.
Before I understood this to be a panic attack, I went to the shopping cart derby at Krewe de Poo, which was much too loud and overwhelming. As I tried to escape the crowd, in distress, a friend on mushrooms mimiced my screams. Once away from the crowd, I found a kitten, and sat against a wall petting it for a long time.
Impulsively deciding to join my roommates at a parade instead of taking a break, Jaq waited for me as I dressed. It was pouring outside and we had a 5 mile bike ride, so I dressed in as little as possible (so it would dry quicker!). We made it before the parade started, and, having to pee, Jaq found an UNLOCKED port a potty in front of a house under construction.
In the years I avoided festivities, Dylan and I went to City Park and then drove to Plan B, the community bike shop where I volunteered, so I could fix a flat on my bike. We got stuck in midcity, in the traffic of floats trying to get back to the warehouses after a parade.
Drinking a bottle of unfiltered saki, stolen from a sushi restaurant where we were all about to be fired, I walked with a friend into the French Market as fog rolled in and I realized we lost the parade. Maybe the fog was metaphorical, the haze of unfiltered saki.
Remembering my bike was a mile away, Darrin offered to let me ride on the handlebars of his fixed speed bike, so I could retrieve mine. I brought the bike to Frenchmen St, where we were all hanging in the neutral ground nearby. The miracle: I left part of my costume in my basket for the next 24 hours, and when I finally returned, my costume was still there, and there was NO TRASH in my bike basket.
Over three parades one year I dressed for a funeral (death), fire, and a spoonbill phoenix.
As the punks played a show in the Rally’s parking lot, and then started a fire in the street on St. Claude, a few of us patiently waited in line for fries, even though the employees had closed the windows and gathered out of sight. We were very hungry.
Early in the morning on my last Mardi Gras, someone handed me a golden microphone, which I used to narrate the days events, interviewing Eli or whoever was nearby.
BONUS: 11. I was in Italy during Carnivale, and my university took a bus with students to Venice but I thought I was too cool or didn’t want to experience it like that, so I didn’t go at all.
Thank you for indulging me. I suspect there is a package of prints from my pal John at my mailbox, he prints a poster and throws every year and ships them to me. Now I’ll get back to work.
Still think Mardi Gras is just about drinking and boobs and beads…
It’s too late to send me King Cake, but there’s always next year.
Mardi Gras 1985. I lived in Houston and my boyfriend and I drove to New Orleans. We started out very early drinking beer and eating cold boiled shrimp. Somewhere along the way there was face painting. Charlie was carrying a ghetto blaster and his face was painted like a devil. It was a little bit cool that year, and he was wearing a big sweater. We watched parades and caught beads and drank more beer. Later in the crush of the crowd, someone asked me for a Tylenol and I unzipped my carefully secured purse to offer them relief. By the time we crossed the busy crush to get to the other side of the road we had been pickpocketed. For some reason – because I had secured the purse so well – my wallet and Charlie’s were inside. We had nothing! I found a payphone and called the police and they basically laughed. We walked around the corner and I bumped straight into my college boyfriend who I had dumped to be with Charlie! We asked him for some money and he happily loaned $100 to us. We were able to sleep in our car in the 24 hour parking lot and managed gas to get home to Houston! We had a lot of fun, but we also had a lot of anguish and I’ve never been back to New Orleans since.