Salon Wanderlust | Mardi Gras unmasked

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MARDI GRAS UNMASKED | PAGE 1, 2,
- - - - - - - - - -
Day Three: Lundi Gras
Monday. Lundi Gras. Bourbon Street. This was how Mardi Gras was supposed to look: thousands of frat boys and girls wandering around, beer in hand, Bourbon Street reeking of vomit, balconies packed with men and women tossing beads to women flashing their breasts on the street below. Yeah, this was It.
So we meandered through the French Quarter and gulped down a few quick drinks at about 4 p.m. in order to catch up with the already inebriated crowds. As we wove in and out of the masses on Bourbon Street, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists and paunchy Caucasian men surrounded young women and coaxed them into a quick flip of the top, handy-cams pointed to catch the orbs. I imagined these men editing the images to create a videotape of tits, which they could then screen in their living rooms while their friends gathered around the tube and drank beer in some bizarre postmodern feedback loop.
As my mind started to get a bit fuzzy from the booze, I wondered what it was about breasts that fueled Mardi Gras. The totemic significance of the breast as a source of beads is a doctoral dissertation waiting to happen, but there didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it that afternoon. I had thought that flashing was supposed to be a one-way transaction, an "I'll show you mine, and you give me yours" sort of thing. But then we went up to a balcony and in an act that made no commercial sense, the woman next to me flashed her breasts and then threw beads to the crowd.
The horde on Bourbon Street seemed perfectly content to get drunker and drunker for hours on end, but it quickly acquired a "been-there, done-that" patina for me. We made our way to the river, where at 6, the Rex king came ashore, greeted the Zulu king (a role that Louis Armstrong played 40 years ago), and then was ceremonially given control of the city by Mayor Marc Morial. After that, fireworks erupted over the river, and the area cleared out toward Canal Street, where the Bards of Bohemia paraded just ahead of the massive Krewe Orpheus, led by jazz musician and sometime-actor Harry Connick Jr.
As the temperature dropped, we got more soused, and then the floats appeared, and suddenly we were on the other side of the looking glass. We were the people thrusting our hands in the air, pleading for beads. And though there were thousands of people lining the street, we got dozens of strings, some thin and wan, some shiny and thick. And each time we caught one, we felt like we had won a small victory and been granted some indescribable prize. By the end, it was after midnight, and we were drunk and bedecked with beads.
Day Four: Mardi Gras
Hungover, we woke to Fat Tuesday. The night before had acquired that post-alcohol unreality. The frat boys and their beer, the Rex king, the fireworks, the parades, the beads. I remembered all of it, but I couldn't recall any sound. I knew it had happened, but it hadn't felt tangible. There wasn't any Mardi Gras electricity, only a banal headache.
The simplest way to get to the French Quarter that afternoon was by bus. Dressed casually, we got on the bus and found row after row of people with painted faces, festooned with tall hats and bright colors. It was as if we had wandered into a commuting circus. Once we arrived at the Quarter, the bus disgorged its psychedelic passengers, and we plunged back in. Though Bourbon Street was still frat-and-breast heaven, the rest of the Quarter was entirely changed. The people of New Orleans filled the streets, and they strutted in their costumes in a silent rebuke to the tourists wearing T-shirts and shorts. Other than Halloween, Mardi Gras is the biggest party of the year for gay men, and they were clad in schoolgirl outfits, phantasmagoric masks, diaphanous gowns and fig leaves. The Rex Ball made its way down Canal Street, its majestic, costly floats throwing out the treasured Rex Doubloon. As the day wore on, people simply strolled through the Quarter, getting progressively more plastered. There was no point, no denouement, just the impending evening, the air getting cooler, people's bodies rejecting any more booze by passing out or telling their limbs to make their way home.
That night, we went to the Rex Ball. In New Orleans, Rex is an invitation-only, high-society club, and the ball is the highlight of the year. A friend of a friend was born into the society, and we used her name and her pin to get in. I wore a tuxedo, and I was underdressed.
Insofar as there were men in white tie and tails and women in gorgeous, costly evening gowns, and insofar as there was an orchestra, and an opportunity for formal dancing, the Rex Ball was a ball. But in every other respect, the Rex Ball was the twilight zone.
The first Rex Ball was in 1873, and 126 years later, the Rex society congregates in the Municipal Auditorium where the Rex king and his queen hold court on an ornate set of quilted thrones. This year's king was a kindly local businessman whose father and grandfather had also had the honor of acting as king. His queen was connected to the family that owns the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They processed, greeted the crowd and then listened as the Marine Corps band played the Marine Corps' greatest hits, including a lachrymose rendition of "The Halls of Montezuma" and a mini-restaging of the siege of Iwo Jima. Then the debutantes were presented, along with the escorts, and the eight young women who came out that evening sat four and four on either side of the king and queen. After that, it was the turn of the special guests, who included the adjutant-general of the Marine Corps Reserves and the undersecretary of the Navy, each of whom received a Rex medallion of honor. Finally, the members of the society processed and presented themselves to the king, and the floor was then open to general dancing.
The evening ended later with the Rex king going next door to the Comus Ball and meeting up with the Comus king, thereby bringing Mardi Gras to a close. For us, the evening ended earlier. Though we had spent two hours watching this elaborately choreographed ball, we hadn't eaten, and the only food at the ball was reserved for the king and his court. We introduced ourselves to the undersecretary and asked if he had been at one of these before. "No, no," he said uncomfortably, "this is my first." My companion asked whether he felt like he was in a kangaroo court, and he smiled, clearly relieved that someone other than him noticed how surreal the evening was. We spied him as we were leaving, standing alone, waiting for something to happen.
Day Five: Will the real Mardi Gras please stand up?
And now comes the point when the author says that he learned that there is no one Mardi Gras. There are many. He learns that each of these was the real Mardi Gras experience, that there are as many Fat Tuesdays as there are revelers, that the variety is what makes it such a rich, textured festival.
Actually, no.
There is no real Mardi Gras. Not anymore. Certainly there are parades, and lights, and beads. There is flesh and drinking, and there is the hum of the saturnalia. But there is no festival that matches our images of the festival. In that sense, the postmodernists are right. Mardi Gras as a reality doesn't exist. Mardi Gras is a million people trying to play Mardi Gras, a million roles in search of actors to inhabit them, and if they're lucky, they get drunk enough to believe.
That doesn't mean that Mardi Gras in New Orleans is dull. It has moments of color and oddness and wildness and beauty and maybe even love. But that party that sends shivers of delight down our collective spine, that promise of unfettered hours, detached from morality and rules, that moment when Mardi Gras is a feeling and not an image, that thing is a will-o-the-wisp, yet another victim of the time we live in.
We forget that in order to have a counterculture, there needs to be a culture. We forget that you can't be bacchanalian for two days if there is no repression the other 363. We forget that in order for Mardi Gras to be an orgy of indulgence, it has to be followed by a period of denial. We forget that Mardi Gras originally meant something because it was the day before Lent, the day before the fast that marked the 40-day period of Jesus in Jerusalem, at the end of which he was crucified.
Not only do we live in an era without a culture, but New Orleans is now a city that defines itself year-round by its excess. That's how it draws tourists, and that's how the inhabitants like to think of themselves. They like to eat and drink and smoke, and they like it so much that New Orleans has earned the dubious distinction of being the least fit, most unhealthy city in America. But if your identity is excess, you can't get an illicit thrill from being more excessive. You can't unleash passions that are already unleashed, and you can't get that much more drunk than you usually get. All you can do is take a day off of work and put on silly costumes.
Of course, I'd rather live in our world, where the moral police have lost so much authority that even the Christian Coalition is conceding defeat. But the daily pleasures of our world have nullified the dark pleasures of Mardi Gras. That's a small loss, except for four days in New Orleans when hundreds of thousands of people get all dressed up with no place to go.
SALON | Feb. 28, 1999
Zachary Karabell is a frequent contributor to Salon Wanderlust.

_________________________________
For more information:

_________________________________


	T A B L E_T A L K Wherever you go, the barbecue seems to taste different. Find out where Table Talkers have found BBQ heaven in the Wanderlust discussion area ___________________ Want to learn more about beads and beignets? Search barnesandnoble.com's huge selection of books about Mardi Gras ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Railway ties By Morrie Erickson A traveler discovers the real Burma on a train to Mandalay (02/26/99) Escape from Tashkent By Jeffrey Tayler A Peace Corps worker unwittingly falls into a romantic adventure with a Russian waitress stranded in Uzbekistan (02/25/99) Ground zero By Ellen Meloy Excerpt: The Last Cheater's Waltz (01/24/99) Death in Ghana By Tanya Shaffer A simple succession of events in an African village leads to a tragedy -- and a traveler's haunting sense of hopelessness (02/23/99) Walking on silk By Thomas Golembeski A massage teacher in Thailand changes a Westerner's life (02/22/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		MARDI GRAS UNMASKED \| PAGE 1, 2, - - - - - - - - - - Day Three: Lundi Gras Monday. Lundi Gras. Bourbon Street. This was how Mardi Gras was supposed to look: thousands of frat boys and girls wandering around, beer in hand, Bourbon Street reeking of vomit, balconies packed with men and women tossing beads to women flashing their breasts on the street below. Yeah, this was It. So we meandered through the French Quarter and gulped down a few quick drinks at about 4 p.m. in order to catch up with the already inebriated crowds. As we wove in and out of the masses on Bourbon Street, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists and paunchy Caucasian men surrounded young women and coaxed them into a quick flip of the top, handy-cams pointed to catch the orbs. I imagined these men editing the images to create a videotape of tits, which they could then screen in their living rooms while their friends gathered around the tube and drank beer in some bizarre postmodern feedback loop. As my mind started to get a bit fuzzy from the booze, I wondered what it was about breasts that fueled Mardi Gras. The totemic significance of the breast as a source of beads is a doctoral dissertation waiting to happen, but there didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it that afternoon. I had thought that flashing was supposed to be a one-way transaction, an "I'll show you mine, and you give me yours" sort of thing. But then we went up to a balcony and in an act that made no commercial sense, the woman next to me flashed her breasts and then threw beads to the crowd. The horde on Bourbon Street seemed perfectly content to get drunker and drunker for hours on end, but it quickly acquired a "been-there, done-that" patina for me. We made our way to the river, where at 6, the Rex king came ashore, greeted the Zulu king (a role that Louis Armstrong played 40 years ago), and then was ceremonially given control of the city by Mayor Marc Morial. After that, fireworks erupted over the river, and the area cleared out toward Canal Street, where the Bards of Bohemia paraded just ahead of the massive Krewe Orpheus, led by jazz musician and sometime-actor Harry Connick Jr. As the temperature dropped, we got more soused, and then the floats appeared, and suddenly we were on the other side of the looking glass. We were the people thrusting our hands in the air, pleading for beads. And though there were thousands of people lining the street, we got dozens of strings, some thin and wan, some shiny and thick. And each time we caught one, we felt like we had won a small victory and been granted some indescribable prize. By the end, it was after midnight, and we were drunk and bedecked with beads. Day Four: Mardi Gras Hungover, we woke to Fat Tuesday. The night before had acquired that post-alcohol unreality. The frat boys and their beer, the Rex king, the fireworks, the parades, the beads. I remembered all of it, but I couldn't recall any sound. I knew it had happened, but it hadn't felt tangible. There wasn't any Mardi Gras electricity, only a banal headache. The simplest way to get to the French Quarter that afternoon was by bus. Dressed casually, we got on the bus and found row after row of people with painted faces, festooned with tall hats and bright colors. It was as if we had wandered into a commuting circus. Once we arrived at the Quarter, the bus disgorged its psychedelic passengers, and we plunged back in. Though Bourbon Street was still frat-and-breast heaven, the rest of the Quarter was entirely changed. The people of New Orleans filled the streets, and they strutted in their costumes in a silent rebuke to the tourists wearing T-shirts and shorts. Other than Halloween, Mardi Gras is the biggest party of the year for gay men, and they were clad in schoolgirl outfits, phantasmagoric masks, diaphanous gowns and fig leaves. The Rex Ball made its way down Canal Street, its majestic, costly floats throwing out the treasured Rex Doubloon. As the day wore on, people simply strolled through the Quarter, getting progressively more plastered. There was no point, no denouement, just the impending evening, the air getting cooler, people's bodies rejecting any more booze by passing out or telling their limbs to make their way home. That night, we went to the Rex Ball. In New Orleans, Rex is an invitation-only, high-society club, and the ball is the highlight of the year. A friend of a friend was born into the society, and we used her name and her pin to get in. I wore a tuxedo, and I was underdressed. Insofar as there were men in white tie and tails and women in gorgeous, costly evening gowns, and insofar as there was an orchestra, and an opportunity for formal dancing, the Rex Ball was a ball. But in every other respect, the Rex Ball was the twilight zone. The first Rex Ball was in 1873, and 126 years later, the Rex society congregates in the Municipal Auditorium where the Rex king and his queen hold court on an ornate set of quilted thrones. This year's king was a kindly local businessman whose father and grandfather had also had the honor of acting as king. His queen was connected to the family that owns the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They processed, greeted the crowd and then listened as the Marine Corps band played the Marine Corps' greatest hits, including a lachrymose rendition of "The Halls of Montezuma" and a mini-restaging of the siege of Iwo Jima. Then the debutantes were presented, along with the escorts, and the eight young women who came out that evening sat four and four on either side of the king and queen. After that, it was the turn of the special guests, who included the adjutant-general of the Marine Corps Reserves and the undersecretary of the Navy, each of whom received a Rex medallion of honor. Finally, the members of the society processed and presented themselves to the king, and the floor was then open to general dancing. The evening ended later with the Rex king going next door to the Comus Ball and meeting up with the Comus king, thereby bringing Mardi Gras to a close. For us, the evening ended earlier. Though we had spent two hours watching this elaborately choreographed ball, we hadn't eaten, and the only food at the ball was reserved for the king and his court. We introduced ourselves to the undersecretary and asked if he had been at one of these before. "No, no," he said uncomfortably, "this is my first." My companion asked whether he felt like he was in a kangaroo court, and he smiled, clearly relieved that someone other than him noticed how surreal the evening was. We spied him as we were leaving, standing alone, waiting for something to happen. Day Five: Will the real Mardi Gras please stand up? And now comes the point when the author says that he learned that there is no one Mardi Gras. There are many. He learns that each of these was the real Mardi Gras experience, that there are as many Fat Tuesdays as there are revelers, that the variety is what makes it such a rich, textured festival. Actually, no. There is no real Mardi Gras. Not anymore. Certainly there are parades, and lights, and beads. There is flesh and drinking, and there is the hum of the saturnalia. But there is no festival that matches our images of the festival. In that sense, the postmodernists are right. Mardi Gras as a reality doesn't exist. Mardi Gras is a million people trying to play Mardi Gras, a million roles in search of actors to inhabit them, and if they're lucky, they get drunk enough to believe. That doesn't mean that Mardi Gras in New Orleans is dull. It has moments of color and oddness and wildness and beauty and maybe even love. But that party that sends shivers of delight down our collective spine, that promise of unfettered hours, detached from morality and rules, that moment when Mardi Gras is a feeling and not an image, that thing is a will-o-the-wisp, yet another victim of the time we live in. We forget that in order to have a counterculture, there needs to be a culture. We forget that you can't be bacchanalian for two days if there is no repression the other 363. We forget that in order for Mardi Gras to be an orgy of indulgence, it has to be followed by a period of denial. We forget that Mardi Gras originally meant something because it was the day before Lent, the day before the fast that marked the 40-day period of Jesus in Jerusalem, at the end of which he was crucified. Not only do we live in an era without a culture, but New Orleans is now a city that defines itself year-round by its excess. That's how it draws tourists, and that's how the inhabitants like to think of themselves. They like to eat and drink and smoke, and they like it so much that New Orleans has earned the dubious distinction of being the least fit, most unhealthy city in America. But if your identity is excess, you can't get an illicit thrill from being more excessive. You can't unleash passions that are already unleashed, and you can't get that much more drunk than you usually get. All you can do is take a day off of work and put on silly costumes. Of course, I'd rather live in our world, where the moral police have lost so much authority that even the Christian Coalition is conceding defeat. But the daily pleasures of our world have nullified the dark pleasures of Mardi Gras. That's a small loss, except for four days in New Orleans when hundreds of thousands of people get all dressed up with no place to go. SALON \| Feb. 28, 1999 Zachary Karabell is a frequent contributor to Salon Wanderlust. _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________