Mardi Gras: An Odyssey

What can I say about Mardi Gras? There was beer, alcohol, gumbo, drunks, grime, garbage, and so much lust that it was like “Bring a Porn Star to High School” day. I learned many valuable lessons on this trip, not the least of which is that the hype rarely lives up to the fact.

My expectations of beautiful women with huge titties throwing themselves at me, carrying armloads of beer and cigarettes and begging for sex was somewhat tempered when on the first day in the first bar, a rather large and unappealing chick pawed at my crotch and slurred an invitation to her room. I was sober enough to realize that this was most likely going to be a theme, but drunk enough to not let it bother me. I also was sober enough to refuse her invitation.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the hotel.


The hotel we stayed at was called Chateau Dupre. It looked like a quaint place as we entered the elevator, a throwback to the 17th century, which is how the entire French Quarter looks, basically. Not in a bad way, with diseases and outhouses and shit like that (well, maybe there were diseases), but in a kind of cool looking way. Whatever. We get into the hotel room and slump our shoulders in dismay.

There’s four of us there: myself, my friend Alan, and then Averil and Andy, two dudes he works with. See if you can guess which of the two is the black guy! Anyway, four of us, and only two beds. No big deal, right? We could take turns sleeping on the floor, it’s not a problem. Ooh… there’s not all that much floor space with all our bags put down, is there? Well, whatever. We’ll manage! Hey, not like we’ll be sleeping in our own room anyway, right? Hahahaha! Wink wink, nudge nudge! Hey, someone open the windows, I need a smoke (it was a smoking room, shut up).

Hmm… the windows are sealed shut, eh? Well, that…. Kinda sucks… Jesus! Look at that wall! The paint is peeling! Yes it is, right there! Wait, that’s a stain, not peeling paint. Ooh, that’s almost worse, isn’t it. Hey, I read something downstairs about a safety deposit box that we get. We’re paying for it already, let’s check it out. That? That’s it? Well, fuck, that’s not even big enough to hold all of our wallets! What else are we paying for? Long distance calls? Fuck, now I don’t have an excuse not to call home.

You get the idea. It was not a nice room. Alan looked unhappy, as he had made the arrangements, but judging from the website and the pictures on the website, I couldn’t blame him: http://www.chateauduprehotel.com/track.cgi/besthotels/. Check it out, the rooms that are pictured on the website are not the room we stayed in. The pictured rooms look wonderful, comfortable, spacious… quite the opposite of the room we stayed in. So the blame does not rest on Alan’s shoulders. I too would have happily made reservations in this hotel if I saw those pictures.

Anyway, bottom line is that the hotel was disappointing, but we figured it would be ok. Alas, here is a small list of the things that went wrong in the hotel:

-- They refused to let us get things out of our car after they had valet parked it, such as Averil’s cell phone. When he asked the valet dude about it, he claimed he had never seen any cell phone and walked off. This pissed us off quite thoroughly, as we felt the valet guy had just stolen his phone (thieves abound in Mardi Gras). Eventually we got his phone back, but it left a sour taste in our mouth.

-- The “turn down” service was more along the lines of a “sometimes we’ll stop by and make the beds” service. It happened maybe two or three times, and they rarely restocked the soaps or towels. In fact, we had to go down and get our own towels once. Alan called down to let them know we needed some towels, and they responded with, “We have towels down here, you can come and get them.” What the fuck were we paying for?

-- The TV broke. It honestly wasn’t our fault, it just stopped working. Luckily and surprisingly, it was soon replaced.

-- One of the dudes behind the counter chastised me when my hotel bracelet broke. The hotel gives its guests little hospital-style bracelets to identify them and no one without a bracelet can enter the hotel. He frowned when I brought in the flimsy bracelet that had simply snapped. “Now, let’s hope this doesn’t happen again” he said in a pissy voice. That rubbed us the wrong way, too.

-- The day we were checking out, we tried to get out of there at like 1 in the morning to avoid traffic. They couldn’t bring us the car because the streets were closed. They said they’d call us when the streets were opened again. We called back like a half hour later, because we needed to have a rough estimate. If they were going to be closed all night and into the morning, then we would just sleep all night and drive refreshed. When I called back, we got attitude about he had already told us what was going on and to relax, they’d call us. What a fuck head.

-- Eventually the road was re-opened, and we got the call. The call that told us that we could now get our own car. Let me repeat that to put it into proper context: we could get our own car from their valet parking. We could valet our own car. We sighed, and went downstairs to check out. No one was behind the desk. We waited there while Andy went to get the car, waited for like 5 minutes before the low-rent security guard wandered in and told us that the desk dude would be back in a minute. He asked us how we were doing, I told him that we were waiting while one of our party got our own car from their valet parking. I muttered words like “bullshit” and “ridiculous,” then sat down to wait. The guard was looking at me, and then demanded my name and ID. I handed him the ID and said, “Why do you need my ID?”

“Because I’m security, that’s why.” I shook my head, smiling at the bullshit, and he said, “You don’t get to ask me why I need your ID, you just do it.” I snatched back my ID and said, as I walked back to my bags to take them outside, “You’ve seen me come in here every day for the last 6 days, and you need to see my ID? This hotel sucks.” He followed us outside, muttering, and glaring at us while we loaded the car. I used my awesome powers of the mind to wish a variety of venereal diseases upon him as we drove away.

So yeah, the hotel was not only bullshit, but it was also horseshit and monkey shit, too. Not that it will do anything, but I’ll be contacting the manager of the hotel and complaining about this shit. All four of us paid 300 bucks (well, I paid 300 bucks, Alan paid 900 bucks, and Averil and Andy didn’t pay anything. I think they still owe him the money). 300 apiece, and for what? Shitty attitudes, a shitty room, harassing rent-a-cop security guards, and shitty services when we were promise good service. Oh, words will be exchanged.


There’s a couple of good stories and incidents that warrant mention, so here they are, in no particular order.


We were walking to some diner called Mother’s when we passed a Coyote Ugly bar. There were some rather bulky bouncers outside, two of whom were black. As we walked passed, they called out to me, “Hey! Glasses! GLASSES!” I turned around and one of them said, “Stay black, white dude. Stay black.”

In retrospect, I should have lowered my pants so they were dangling down by my ankles and walked with a funky hitch. Then I would have won their respect. Dance, monkey! Dance!


I got my crotch grabbed like 80 times down there, which sounds much more satisfying than it actually was. Only once was it done by an attractive woman. She was a waitress / bartender in a club, walking around with those test-tube shot things. After I did my shot she dropped the tube and crouched down to find it. I guess she lost her balance, because she grabbed at my pants and was soon hanging onto Nature’s Lever. Luckily, it was Mardi Gras, so I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in what she was saying.


The food there was good, but I had the worst luck in the world getting food. At that diner Mother’s, I ordered an egg and some of their baked ham, touted as “The greatest baked ham in the world!” on their sign. Instead they charged me for some breakfast with two eggs, biscuits, and some other bells and whistles. Whatever, I like biscuits.

So I’m waiting for my food. Andy and Averil are nearly done eating by the time it comes, and there’s sausage on it, instead of ham. “I’m sorry sir, we’re out of ham. We gave you sausage instead.”

Whatever, I like sausage. Only problem was it was cold. The eggs were cold, too. I sent it back, and finally when they brought out warm food, Andy noticed that on one of the other plates the dude was carrying, there was ham. Motherfuckers.

OK, and at another place, their gumbo tasted like a sack of moldy ass. Not that I’ve ever eaten moldy ass. Forget I said anything.

At another place, I ordered some chicken, sausage and shrimp gumbo. It came, luke-warm, with one sliver of sausage in it. No shrimp. No chicken. FUCK!

Yeah, I had bad experiences. The Bubba Gump Shrimp company delighted me both times, however, so I highly recommend it.


We were at a club, watching people dance while we drank and I smoked. I was hanging out on the side of the club, which was the only place I could smoke without setting some hopping, grooving jackass on fire with my smoke.

A trio of Mexican dudes wandered over to me, and through much arm waving and hand gesturing, asked me for a light. I gave them a light, and for the next like 10 minutes, they talked to me. I not only couldn’t hear them, but probably couldn’t understand them if I tried. I just nodded, laughed, etc at all the appropriate places. Or so I thought.

Then one of them bought me a shot from one of the wandering waitresses. This didn’t strike me as odd, because before this club, I had been sitting in a quiet bar next to some couple from Indiana who had left their cigarettes at their hotel. I gave them a couple, and for the next hour they kept me well-fed on beer and jager-bombs. Then, the Mexicans bought me another drink. Then one of them put his cowboy hat on my head.

Then one of them tried to dance with me.

It was about this time Averil wandered over to make his presence known. He kept saying, “Brian, I need your help. Come on, let’s go.” I kept on telling him to wait a minute, because the Mexicans were trying to ask me something, but I couldn’t hear them. Eventually, Averil grabbed me and pulled me away from them, much to their dismay.

As we walked, he whispered in a half-strangled laugh, “Dude, those guys were trying to fuck you!”

What?

“They were gay, trying to nail you!”

Oh, God…

Thus began the rich tradition of “Make jokes about Brian being gay,” which did not have it’s appeal diminished through repeated use. I laughed along with them, but after the 100th joke, it got annoying. Not because it was bothering me, but because they kept saying the same shit over and over. The same words, the same jokes. I mean, Andy I would expect to not be creative because he’s Polish, but Averil? Sure, he looks like Usher, but he should still be smart enough to make new jokes.

Fucker.


The very first night we were there, Alan drank an awful lot. This by itself would not normally have caused any problems, but his antibiotics apparently didn’t mix properly.

He, Andy and I were standing under balconies trying to get beads when Alan decided that the best way to get beads is to stand in front of everyone, half-crouched and shoving people back, all while screaming at the people on the balconies. “COME ON!! COME OOOOONNNNNNNN! BEADS!!BEEEEAAAAADS!” The people on the balconies saw how drunk he was, conferred amongst themselves, and then started pelting him in the head with beads, throwing them as hard as they could. I tried leaping over him, batting beads away from his eyes and throat, all while he shouted at me, accusing me of stealing his beads. This went on for some time.

A while later, I went to go find Andy (Averil was in the hotel room asleep). “Dude, I think we should bring Alan back to the room. He’s pretty drunk.”

Andy chuckled and pointed behind me. “Nah, I think Alan’s doing all right.” I looked behind me to be treated to the scene of Alan standing behind some chick, bear hugging her. She was looking around, either for help or a knife. “Ahh, fuck,” I muttered.

I elbowed past people, arriving at the scene. Alan was mumbling something about Mardi Gras and hugging. “I’m sorry, he’s really drunk. Let me get rid of him.”

“I can see that,” she said in a good-natured, long-suffering voice. I tried to pull him off, but he only tightened his grip. “Come on, man. Let her go, she doesn’t want you to hug her.”

“NOO!! It’s Mardi Gras! WOOO!” he bellowed.

“You need to get your friend off of me.” She had obviously reached the limits of her patience. I finally pulled them apart, and Alan walks off. Unfortunately, but this point his beads had gotten tangled with her beads, and so he’s dragging her by her neck. Again I lunge, snatch Alan by the beads (the Mardi Gras beads, perverts), and untangle them. As I’m apologizing to her, Alan has decided to give his beads away to some girl, none of whom want them. Finally he gives them away successfully.

And then he takes off running. Flat out, full-on sprinting.

“SHIT!” I yell. I look frantically for Andy, who is looking frantically at some fat chick lift up her shirt. Sighing, I run after him. We ran for about 3-4 minutes until we come to a stop by a big iron fence with a doorknob and a lock. Alan was holding the bars, rocking slightly.

“Dude, we have to get in here.”

“Alan, we can’t get in there, that’s not our hotel. Come on, let’s go.”

“Nooooo…. We have to get in there.”

Sigh. “We don’t have a key.”

“We have to wait for the password.”

Password? What the fuck? “What are you talking about, man?”

“We have to enter the contest.”

Jesus. “What are you talking about? What contest?”

“The contest, man. The contest. We have to find Averil.”

This is pissing me off. I missing valuable beer and titty time. “He’s in the hotel, man. Let’s go to the hotel.”

“No, he’s not in the hotel.”

“OK, then let’s go find him.”

“No, I know where he is. This is your contest.”

It’s obvious he’s trying to ditch me, something that in his present condition, I just can’t allow. So I stand there, waiting. Finally he lets go of the bars, and walks two steps away from me. He slowly turns his head to look at me….staring…staring…staring….OH FUCK RUNNING! He just takes off again.

I catch up to him a minute later, and he’s sitting on some porch, head in his hands, rocking. I sit next to him, spark a cigarette, and BOOM! He tips over and falls on his face. “This is beautiful,” I said. Worried about his cigarettes and his cell phone, and somewhat concerned for his face, I roll him on his back to take his breakables and hold them until I can trust him not to trade them for beads or some shit. A small crowd of people wanders by us, and one off the guys said, “Hey! What are you doing over there?”

I guess it could look like I was robbing him, so I calmly said, “Holding my friend’s cell phone and smokes while I carry him back to our hotel.” They obviously didn’t believe me and kept pestering me with stupid questions until I said, “Look, are you gonna help me carry him?” They said that they weren’t, so I said, “Well, then fuck off.” They left, presumably to fuck off. I looked down and saw that Alan had managed to roll half into the street, so I pull him back onto the sidewalk.

Unfortunately, he picks this as a good time to start throwing up.

He’s puking all over the sidewalk, I’m trying to turn him on his side so I don’t get vomit on myself (I fail), he’s retching and heaving like Michael Moore when he accidentally eats salads. I let him finish up, and then I’m thinking about calling the hotel to get some help in dragging this dead weight back when up walks the man who would change my life. Well, not really. But seriously, this guy was something else.

He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, along with a baseball cap. He looked really intense, like he was on PCP, whiskey, and had just used and axe to cut someone into tiny pieces for gumbo. In a Southern accent straight out of a movie, he asked, “What’s goin on here, boy? What’s wrong with this guy?”

“Ahh, he just had to much to drink,” I started to say, but he lost interest in me as he crouched next to Alan.

“HEY! What’s wrong with you? Git up, man! Come on, GIT UP!” He’s screaming at the top of his lungs, shaking in some sort of twisted emotional fit. I considered taking a step or two away from him. Another group of people come along, and ask if they can help. This dude hops up and gets right in their face, screaming. “HEY! Do you know this boy? Do you? Then, then, then what the fuck does it matter to you if he lives or dies? HUH??” I step in to stop a fight, and then Alan’s phone stared ringing. It was Andy, asking where we were. The crazy dude and the group are still yelling at each other, so I told him I’d call back.

“Look, everyone just fucking relax!” I yelled. “He had too much to drink, I’m taking him back to the hotel right now, you can all go off and do whatever you want. We’re fine.” The group leaves right away, the crazy guy slowly, with much looking behind his back.

I manage to get one of his arms around me neck, and start staggering down the street, trying to avoid the wild elbows and punches Alan’s flinging at my face and torso. Eventually he just goes completely limp, and his 200 pound muscular frame makes me fold under him. He’s lying on top of me, vomiting over my shoulder onto the ground, so I heave him off, letting him hit his head on the ground in the process.

Then the crazy hillbilly wanders back over. “Hey man, I jus’ can’t leave you two alone. My buddy died from what he’s got and I can’t have that shit on my conscience, ya know?”

Whatever, Jethro.

“My name’s Patrick. I’m a nurse, and this boy needs to git to a hospital!”

“What? No, he’s fine. He just drank too much.”

Alan chose this moment to speak. “Help me! I’m dying…”

“Ya see? YOU AIN’T GONNA DIE, BOY! I WON’T LET YA!”

“Holy shit. He’s not dying, he’s just really drunk. Let’s just get him to the hotel.”

We try to grab him, but he’s fighting and kicking at us. Patrick gets angry. “Hey, motherfucker! We’re jus’ tryin’ ta help you! What’s your problem?”

“No, man… no…” Alan slurred. “No, man. You’re cool, but HIM!” He pointed at me. “He’s trying to KILL ME!”

“You ungrateful little fuck! I AM gonna kill you! Just wait until we get back to the hotel, you’re a fucking dead man!”

“Come on, git up! GIT UP! WALK! WALK! COME ON, BOY!” Patrick took charge and hoisted Alan up. I rush to help with the weight, choking slightly when Alan gets me in a headlock. Alan staggers and slumps between us as Patrick shouts encouraging things like, “He’s gonna die! We need to git him to a hospital!” and “I had eye surgery three weeks ago, and I can’t lift heavy weight! I’m gonna lose my eye for this boy, but I love his life and it’s worth more to me than an eye!” Alan retches as it point. “YOU HEAR ME, BOY? I’M GONNA LOSE MY EYE BECAUSE I LOVE YOU! I’LL LOSE TEN EYES BEFORE I LET YOU DIE ON ME! NOW WALK! WALK MOTHERFUCKER MOTHERFUCKER MOTHERFUCKER!”

Ten eyes? Jesus….

We manage to get him to a busy intersection, and minutes later, Averil and Andy wander up to us. “Brian, the hotel is like twelve blocks that way,” Andy said, gesturing back in the direction we just came.

Patrick rushed over to them and got all up in their grill. “HEY! Where’s your hotel at, boys?” They exchange “who the fuck is this lunatic” looks, and Patrick gets impatient and claps his hands, screaming. “HEY! HEY HEY! Where’s the hotel??”

“Patrick, we need a cab. Go get us one, would you?” I asked. Patrick darted off into traffic to scream at cars while Averil and Andy inch closer to me and Alan, who is sprawled on the pavement, shuddering and retching. “Dude, who the fuck IS that?”

“He’s Patrick,” I responded. “He’s a nurse. He loves Alan’s life, so he’s going to lose an eye.”

Eventually we get a cab and bring Alan back to the hotel, after I ensure Patrick that Alan is not going to die and I am not going to kill him. Patrick wanders off to score some meth or whatever he was on, and we push Alan into a cab. As we’re shoving him in, he grabs Andy by the shirt and pulls himself up so he can whisper to Andy: “Brian’s EVIL!”

We get into our hotel room and drop Alan in the bathroom. He hits his head on a couple of things on the way down, and then on a whim I pull him away from all sharp corners so he doesn’t thrash in his sleep and… lose an eye. I look down at him, and after taking a picture for blackmailing purposes, tell Averil and Andy, “Well, I’m going to a bar.”


Well, such was my experience with Mardi Gras. I’m already looking forward to next year, provided we get a better hotel, and provided we don’t mix antibiotics with alcohol.

And especially provided we don’t run into crazy redneck nurses with one eye or gay squadrons of Mexicans.

Blargh.