T A B L E_T A L K What is it about Paris that makes it so je ne sais quoi? Theorize and romanticize in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Fear, drugs, and soccer in Asia By Karl Taro Greenfeld Hedonistic expats: Fear, drugs and soccer in Asia (02/02/98) I got it online, part 2 By Jenn Shreve Comparing the pros and cons of four Internet travel services (02/02/98) I got it online, part 1 By Jenn Shreve There really are advantages to making your travel plans on the Web (01/30/98) America, grow up! By David Downie The French and Italians decry the Clinton brouhaha (01/29/98) Passages By Ralph McCarthy Four views of the expat's life in Japan (01/28/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Road warrior archives		[ Next week Courtney Weaver concludes the saga of Kath and Nigel ] BY COURTNEY WEAVER | I always considered New Orleans' French Quarter to be synonymous with sordidness. Even on a crisp November day, when the pastel colors of historic 19th century homes appear more vibrant against dull gray skies, there's an unmistakable energy about this town, a sense that maybe there's something going on that you just don't know about. For whatever reason -- perhaps it's simply historical -- people come to the Quarter to have fun. What kind of fun, though? Think New Orleans and a few images come to mind: Blanche DuBois, overground mausoleums, maybe Anne Rice. But I came to New Orleans -- and more specifically, the Quarter -- in search of the seamy sexual underbelly I'd heard so much about. Indeed, walk along the disturbingly tidy Bourbon Street and you will find a modern paean to the Seven Deadly Sins; greed, gluttony, envy ... They're all there in varying degrees. Closet-sized bars serve rum-packed Hurricanes in to-go cups. Tired mules draw carriages full of goggle-eyed tourists listening to the ever-changing stories of their driver. New Orleans doesn't even need barkers to lure customers into the strip clubs. Men and women -- mostly in their 30s and sweatshirt-clad, tennis shoe-shod, slightly overweight -- happily toddle in with plastic beer cup in hand, view an act or two, and toddle out. But where is sordid New Orleans? My first clue may have been a question I'd unwittingly posed the first day of my stay. "How come this place looks so, so different from other parts of the city?" I couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't just the wrap-around verandas with their lacy ironwork on the two-story houses (à la "Streetcar Named Desire"), or the Spanish moss hanging from trees, or the distinctively 19th century architecture, or even the "slave houses" -- long, narrow quarters behind the houses with few windows that were now offered as apartments. Finally I figured it out: There was no tangle of phone, electrical or bus cables overhead. In the interest of keeping the Quarter historically preserved, all signs of technology are safely and neatly wired underground. Sure, it looks great. But as I toured the area in search of the dirtier, nastier New Orleans, it seemed metaphorical. The sex industry is there, but somewhat sadly, New Orleans isn't immune to the sanitizing '90s, the era that's transformed Times Square into Disneyland East and San Francisco's North Beach into an upscale dining mecca for yuppies. On Bourbon Street -- the long promenade with wide sidewalks and blinking neon that is the linchpin of the Quarter -- I found strip clubs and theaters proclaiming live male/female love acts sandwiched up against everything else touristy: tiny museums, corner cafes, karaoke bars and jazz clubs. I pondered: a Jello-Shot or Big Daddy's strip club? Me being me, I chose the latter and found myself cantering into the dark (but clean!) club that seemed to have as many staff standing around as patrons. My friends and I commandeered a table and ordered a Heineken for the princely sum of $6.50 a bottle. As far as these things go, it was nothing out of the ordinary: skinny women with big breasts, probably dancers by trade, shimmying up and down a brass pole and writhing around on a circular rotating platform to the strains of everything from zydeco ditties to Portishead. Where are the Mitchell Brothers when you need them? A shot of obscenity would do this place a world of good. I was oddly intrigued by the token triangle of cloth each stripper wore around her pubic area, suspended by invisible strings around the hips and butt -- a nod to the crazy law that apparently finds the sight of a clitoris obscene but an anus not. One of my friends whispered in my ear a study he'd read about how strippers pass their yeast infections around like a bad cold due to that obligatory gyroscope move around the brass pole. "That's gross," I said loudly, and I grew tired of watching the strippers, who seemed a little distracted to me anyway. We began watching the audience instead. It was a motley mixture of young men and women, seemingly tourists, students and conventioneers. Occasionally two of the working girls would mysteriously bring out a small wooden platform and set it in front of a man to perform a "private" dance. It was of course hardly private, since half the audience would turn their attention away from the stage and instead watch the naked women cavort inches away from their customer's face. I wondered what the men were thinking. Was this really sexy for them? Would they come in their pants? Did they think the girls were turned on by their fat stomachs and blinking eyes behind their glasses? N E X T+P A G E+| Sleep with a virgin, cure chlamydia!