A walk on the wild side (part III)
Food is sex. This is what I am thinking as I stop to read the menu posted on the door at Antoine’s, an elegant restaurant just off Bourbon Street. New Orleans is America’s best eating city in my humble estimation. Reading the menus at these fine establishments is foreplay, a turn-on, a prelude to gastronomic lovemaking, which comes in three to five courses, including appetizer and dessert.
The food in New Orleans really does get me this excited. A month before my trips here I have usually already planned my meals. I squeeze in as many restaurants as I can, including at least one top-tier eatery, where I will spend my entire week’s per diem in one meal, and one seafood shack where I will consume vast quantities of crawfish until I am ready to explode. Then, when I leave New Orleans to come home, I go through serious food withdrawal. For many days afterward, I find myself reliving my meals in my dreams, bite by bite. I have never called a 900 number for phone sex, but if someone were to start a service where women with smoky voices would read the menus from Antoine’s or Commander’s Palace or Emeril’s to me, I’d be dialing up every day. Imagine it, menu sex: “Yeah, baby, what’s your name? Jack? What are you looking for, Jack? You an appetizer man? How ‘bout some freshly shucked Louisiana oysters simmered with apple smoked bacon, leeks, and Yukon gold potatoes ~ garnished with a Choupiqué caviar profiterole?* Come on, baby, you know you want it. Then I’m gonna lay some pecan crusted gulf fish* on your ass. Uh huh. Darling, you know that fish is cooked to perfection and crowned with Champagne-poached jumbo lump crabmeat, a crushed corn sauce and roasted pecans. Oh yeah. I hear you whimpering back there. We’re not done yet, baby. I’m goin’ to finish you off with a Ponchatoula strawberry and dark chocolate crêpe with a rosé-infused white chocolate pastry cream and milk chocolate ganache.* So what you think, honey, you lovin’ it? Hello? Jack? You there? Hello?”
*actual items from the Commander’s Palace menu.
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After just thirty minutes on Bourbon Street I have already seen more breasts flashed at me than during my entire adolescence. The “tits for beads” phenomenon used to be just a Marti Gras occurrence. Now it is an every night event. I would even go so far as to say that it is the event on Bourbon Street. Nothing else comes close. Jazz clubs, restaurants, even the gentleman’s clubs of Bourbon Street cannot draw a crowd like the young women eager to lift up their shirts on command to the words “show us your tits!”
When I first came down here in 1996 I don’t recall having any breasts flashed at me on Bourbon Street. I have been here about a dozen times since then and the breast count has, well, ballooned.
It is a frenzied scene out here. There are crowds of people everywhere. Beads are flying down from the balconies above Bourbon Street. Beads are flying back up to the balconies. Men and women alike are shouting, “show us your tits.” Men and women alike are showing their tits. There is a gorgeous woman up on the balcony just above me who has been flashing the crowd over and over again since I got here. The crowd shows its appreciation by cheering and throwing beads at her, some of which smack her in the head as she is lifting her shirt. She is a very popular lady. If a pair of breasts could be elected mayor of this city, hers would be a strong candidate judging by the delight of this crowd. These breasts would never lead us to war unnecessarily. Nor would they speak a lie. These breasts would rock the vote.
I find the psychology of women baring their breasts on Bourbon Street to be fascinating. It’s the only reason I watch. You know, research. Some women, I’ve noticed, flash without any coaxing. They know what they’ve got and they want you to know what they’ve got, too. On the other extreme are the women who walk briskly down the street with their coats buttoned up and their eyes fixated on the pavement. No way are they going to lift their shirts – not with that many layers. The most interesting women in my estimation are the ones who seem to be fighting the temptation to flash. You can see it in their faces; sometimes they even mouth the words: “I’m not going to do it!” They smile and wave off the crowd in a dismissive manner. Then, after a lot of prompting and false starts, they finally lift up their shirts to wild applause and a shower of beads. These women are almost never wearing bras, which begs the question: did they know they would do this all along? Or at least that it was a possibility? A new act on Bourbon Street in the last couple of years is the boyfriend/girlfriend team. After an appropriate level of prompting from the balconies above, the guy gets behind the girl, and then, as if on cue, he lifts up her shirt. With her hands free, she waves to the crowd and catches the beads being thrown her way. One wonders if they shouldn’t be rated, like Olympic figure skaters, on artistic merit and technical difficulty: 5.9, 5.9, 5.7, 5.0 (the Canadian judge).
I continue my walk down Bourbon Street. There are more many more noteworthy sights, including: the woman who is having her chest and breasts painted by a street artisan; the Christian carrying the full-sized cross with the built-in electronic marquee complete with scrolling quotes from the Bible; the fat, drunken woman who falls into a deep puddle on the street and sends a wave of water flying three feet in the air that soaks a bunch of people on the sidewalk.
By the time I reach the corner of Bourbon and Orleans I have had enough. There is an invisible boundary here as you cross into the gay district. In all my visits to the French Quarter I have never ventured past this intersection, into this territory. I am sure it's a wild and depraved world just like the rest of Bourbon Street; it’s just not my world. So when I get to Orleans Street, I turn left and head back toward my hotel. It’s about 1am. I’m pooped. The walk back on Dauphine street is quiet until I reach the block with my hotel. Up on the third floor, my floor, there are people partying on the balconies outside their rooms. There is a dark room between them. This is my room. I reach into my pockets and feel for my earplugs. Maybe I’ll sleep tonight and maybe I won’t. It’s a roll of the dice in the French Quarter.
9:31:49 PM  Stories
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