Monte

I can see why so many evangelists blamed the people of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina; it really is a Sin City—but boy was it fun!

James and I arrived on a Friday afternoon, and the plane ride was so short, it was hard to believe we were in a different state. Our hotel, the Chateau Lemoyne, was located in the heart of the French Quarter only one block away from the infamous Bourbon Street. As we stepped outside the hotel to take our first walk around the area, James took a deep breath and said, “Ah! The smell of Bourbon Street: piss and beer!”

So it’s not the cleanest or freshest smelling city, but it is one of the oldest cities in the country, and after walking around awhile, I realized that the streets smelled no different than the streets of Brooklyn. In fact, the smell of rotting garbage and decay, as sad as it may sound, was sweetly reminiscent of my childhood.

Once you get past the smell and have the chance to walk around and meet the people and feast on the cuisine and experience the sights and scenery, you realize that, despite some of its shortcomings, New Orleans is a very culturally rich and beautiful city.

With that in mind, James and I got absolutely shit-faced that Friday night. I’ve never been drunk before, and I didn’t intentionally plan to get drunk, but I don’t necessarily regret the experience.

First we ate dinner: a heaping platter of clams, shrimp, muscles, fish, and french fries. Did I mention the food in New Orleans is absolutely delicious?! After dinner, right as the sun began to go down, we began our walk down Burboun Street. One of the things I liked about the French Quarter was how all of the shops, restaurants, and bars keep their doors open so people are free to roam in and out.

At the first bar we stopped at, I bought a hurricane which, according to James, is a concoction of fruit juice and every type of alcohol under the sun. Along with that I ordered a “blowjob”—a banana-flavored shot. After we spent a couple of hours walking around, we decided to settle in at one of two gay bars at the end of Bourbon Street. There I ordered three vodkas with cranberry juice. Tasty. After standing around for awhile, we decided to try the other gay bar across the street which featured two male dancers dancing on the bar in their underwear. I think this is the point where I began to get drunk. I ordered two more vodkas with cranberry juice, and at some point in the evening, I stuck two one-dollar bills in one of the male dancer’s underwear. James was quick to point this out to me the next morning.

I’m not sure exactly how much James had to drink, but when I turned around in my seat at the bar to face him, he had his back to me and was talking to a group of girls and was waving his beer around spilling it all over the bar. I tapped him on the shoulder and suggested we call it a night.

When we get back to the hotel, the alcohol finally got the best of me, and I decided I would make myself comfortable on the bathroom floor beside the toilet. I threw up a couple of times, and for some reason James kept trying to drag me back to the bed as if he was trying to take care of me, but I was burning up, and that cold porcelain toilet felt so good, and I was not about to leave it. James and I struggled for a bit, all the while laughing uncontrollably. He tried to push me away from the toilet long enough to take a piss, but I crawled back over to him, stuck my tongue out, and began drinking his piss. He was laughing so hard, he ended up pissing all over the front of his pajama bottoms.

After we finally crawled into bed, we had drunk sex which sounds a lot more fun than it really is.

We didn’t drink for the rest of the trip. Well, I take that back. I did have one more vodka with cranberry juice on the last night there, but it just didn’t seem as fun as it did that first night.

Come to think of it, bars aren’t as fun when you’re not drinking. We went back to the same gay bar the last night we were in town, and things seemed very different. I got hit on three times on my way from the bathroom to the bar. One guy in particular, a stocky Mexican, tapped me on my shoulder and told me I was cute while he grabbed his crotch. The whole place felt like a meat market, and neither one of us had very much fun.

Here’s a tip for anyone traveling to New Orleans for the first time. If someone on the street tries to bet you that they can tell you where you got your shoes, run away.