Mardi Gras Mambo Read Free Page B

gone over it again and again in my head. Sure, there were things that could have been done differently, but there was always a sense of the inevitable. It had to happen. Maybe I was getting too complacent with my life and the Goddess wanted to shake things up for me a bit. Maybe it was a life lesson she felt I needed to learn. And, ultimately, I did learn a lot from the whole mess. Maybe a bit more than I think I needed to learn, but you never get to make those choices.
    And maybe it was just the Mardi Gras mambo getting into our heads and our lives with a gleeful laugh. Mardi Gras is never what you expect, and this last Carnival was nothing like anything I’d ever imagined to experience.
    And despite everything, even now, I can hear the music playing in my head, and I can’t help but smile about it all.
    But from now on, I will always take the Mardi Gras mambo a bit more seriously. . . .

CHAPTER ONE
    Nine of Cups
    a love of sensual pleasures
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Mardi Gras is not for the timid. It chews timid people up and spits them out without a second thought.
    I’m probably overstating the obvious here. When people think Mardi Gras and Are Not From Here, they think about drinking and naked breasts bouncing and utter licentiousness—what the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah must have been like before fire and brimstone rained destruction down on those godless cities of the plain. Certainly there are some Christians who make that analogy, and desperate to save the city and its sinners from that same dreadful fate, they preach from the street corners through megaphones, screaming at the revelers to repent and find room for Jesus in their hearts rather than room for liquor in their livers. No one listens, of course—they just throw beads at them or bow their heads in respect as they walk past. Mardi Gras is a time for frivolity, for letting go of the daily inhibitions that keep people from behaving like, well, uncivilized animals. It’s called farewell to the flesh , the last chance to sin before Lent, and in New Orleans, we like to do things right. I guess it’s all about excess, really. A local performer, who calls herself the world’s only “female female impersonator,” often claims during her stage shows that the city motto should be “anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.”
    Of course, the actual city motto isn’t that much different, really: Laissez le bon temps roule. (Let the good times roll.)
    Carnival is all about more: more people, alcohol, sex, fun, dancing, nakedness—more of everything. It’s a time when anything goes—well, everything except sobriety. Fat Tuesday is a holiday throughout the state. Any business that doesn’t involve serving food or liquor comes to pretty much a complete halt in the days leading up to this final magic day. Mardi Gras is tied to Lent, after all, forty days of piety and prayer leading up to Easter. So, everyone has to get all the fun and frivolity out of their systems before Ash Wednesday. And going forty days without fun and frivolity in New Orleans—well, is it any wonder that Carnival is a nonstop, citywide drunken orgy that lasts up to ten days? We take our fun and frivolity seriously here, and it has to be as much fun as possible to make the somber nature of Lent even more symbolic.
    Of course, that’s just the story we tell People Not From Here. Nobody really takes Lent as seriously as Carnival. The truly devout will give up something—chocolate, maybe cigarettes, some little sinful indulgence like that—but very few people actually give up liquor or sex for Lent. That just ain’t gonna happen, folks. Chocolate is one thing, but liquor? Perish the thought. But for most People Not From Here, New Orleans and Mardi Gras are irrevocably linked in their minds—and everyone has his or her own opinion of what Mardi Gras means. For me, it’s lots of pretty-boy tourists with little