I had been inside Studio 3 less than a minute when a naked woman came bounding across the warehouse floor doing cartwheels. Her boobs were glittered purple and gold. They sparkled as she rushed the stage. Behind her was a young man dressed as an octogenarian. He wore a Santa Claus beard and shuffled across the floor with his walker. He also was naked, but without the glitter.
Mardi Gras morning was only ten days away but I could feel the anticipation of its arrival ascending steeply. I have yet to experience it but I can feel it coming, and I can feel the microcosms of New Orleanian culture expounding with each approaching day. In a city that prefers parties over politics, absurdity over etiquette, and is never shy to express its color and sound by parading itself in the streets, Mardi Gras is definitive. It is hyperbole of this spirit actualized, the very real manifestation of everyone’s desire to deshackle social expectations and norms and walk freely in the streets as whatever the hell they feel like. The streets are no longer the stuff of cars, but our venue of a good time, where everyone agrees to meet to dance and drink together and disregard all the normalcies of daily life. After four weeks of eating King Cakes, its approach seems real and tangible, the magnetic field of the famous day pulling us all faster and faster toward it. The approach is communal and exciting, as if everyone is together on a large ship accelerating toward some funky island filled with music, beer and costumes, but the ship is also fillled with these things and so the ride there is almost just as good.
Ten days before Fat Tuesday I walked out the door wearing sequin shorts, a tank top, swimming goggles, a purple inner-tube and a Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers backpack filled with beer, whiskey and a foam kickboard. The apocalypse ball was that night. Costume was mandatory and people were encouraged to dress as if the world might end and the party would have to move skyward or hellward. I thought if the world ended tomorrow I would want to take a swim first. I put on sunscreen and my lifeguard whistle and headed out the door.
Two hours later I was dancing underneath several colossal floats, including thirty-foot tall Greek gods and goddesses. I was surrounded by people of various costumes and degrees of nudity. The stage was filled with young revelers that proclaimed the world might end soon and everyone must be quiet or die to hear what they had to say about it. They were lead by a half-naked drummer who called forth the High Priest, an old man wearing a red sparkling bikini. They marched around the stage and several women convulsed on the floor in some improvised ritual dance. The entertainers’ only objective was to stay weird, to stay in character. The drum beat picked up and the women continued to gyrate as the high priestess pointed to a disco ball, now ascending toward the ceiling, and up the nose of a twenty-foot wide Mardi Gras mask that overlooked us all. The revelry had already begun, but the high priestess now made it official.
Everyone danced and drank for several hours. Outside people strapped themselves to a large wheel designed to castigate party-goers with excessive tickling. Four stuffed animals lay on the wet ground as part of the petting zoo. Inside the warehouse space filled with smoke and the smell of marijuana. The ground accumulated the moisture of sweat and beer and the only place warm was in front of the dance floor where everyone danced wildly, an extreme inter-meshing of sparkles, costumes, and colors, all moving freely under the direction of the Stooges Brass Band.
When I danced I felt like a bumper car, my inner-tube bouncing against the hips of my neighbors until they spilled their beers. I ran away each time. Revelers were getting sloppy, and I knew it was my duty as a pre-apocalyptic lifeguard to try to save them. I wore the orange "guard" tanktop that legally obligated me to do so. I attached a rope to the tube and threw it into the crowd hoping to save at least person from the sweaty turpitude of a doomsday dance party. The innertube came back empty. Nobody wanted to be saved.
“If the Rapture happened, I wouldn’t want to go. Not before Mardi Gras,” a friend said. Everyone agreed. I ditched the innertube and pulled out my kickboard and swam back into the sweaty, glittering crowd. Nowhere else did this scene seem possible. Nowhere else seemed as desirable.
It took most of the next day to recover. The world hadn’t ended. The Rapture had not selected anyone, at least no locals. And Mardi Gras was now only nine days away. The Krewe of ‘Tit Rex was scheduled to roll at 5:30 in the Bywater. I rested until I felt good enough to travel again and then biked with friends across the train tracks and staked a claim on a corner of Burgundy. ‘Tit Rex was possibly the most adorable parade in New Orleans. Because everything is more precious when it is tinier. While most Mardi Gras parades feature colossal floats, the kinds that overlooked the debauchery in Studio 3 the night before, ‘Tit Rex featured miniature floats, tediously crafted and detailed, each no bigger than a microwave. Men and women in costume lead their floats by fishing line or remote control and distribued tiny coconuts, parasols and clothespins as throws. A group of older residents dangled tiny spectator puppets who waved at the floats as they went by, all of it lead by a trio of jazz bands spaced evenly throughout. Once again I found myself dancing in the street, and the same feeling came over me as always, “Here I am and Here we are….nowhere else…nowhere else…”
After, I walked with friends and found a bakery in the 9th Ward that opened at night, We ate maple bacon scones on our way to a swanky art gallery party at a house that had been vacant and rotting only six months before. Now it was a community art space in the middle of a poor neighborhood. The beer was free and a smooth jazz band serenaded a room full of hipsters looking at photographs of naked men and peppers on the walls and floors. Anywhere else the transitions between these activities and environments might seem impossible, if not jarring, but it all felt normal in the Bywater of New Orleans.
The next day the canine parade, Barkus, was scheduled to roll at 2:30. The French Quarter filled with dogs wearing funny sweaters or being toted in decorated wagons. The dog-walkers were not in costume, but they seemed crazy enough, all of them talking to each other through their animals.
"Is he potty-trained?" A woman asked a friend in the French Quarter. The dog was an English bulldog and it wore a blue, yellow, and purple sash around its neck while drooling heavily onto Chartres. She leaned down toward it.
"Are you potty-trained?" she asked. The dog looked blankly back.
"She's going through a program," the man said. "Aren't you?"
"Yes, you are," the woman said, "You are a good dog, aren't you?"
The parade was disappointing. I spent an hour watching several hundred residents take their dogs for an elaborate walk on a designated route, wearing sweaters and sashes. The dogs hadn't practiced and the spacing was terrible. Dogs aren't good at parading. It seemed too normal. "Cats would be better," a friend suggested. "That would be absurd enough." After the thousandth dog, I could not not stand it anymore, and I left to go home, hardly even stopping to dance to the lindy-hop jazz band on the corner.
I biked down Bourbon toward Esplanade ready to rest in my bed, knowing there would be a hard week of work before the partying began non-stop and I would need all my reserves to make it there and through. I passed an older man wearing a golden robe and a Persian nobility’s hat. He carried a golden pole with the flag of St. Ann. He was drunk and the bells on his ankles jingled as he walked. His stumble was rhythmic as he marched across the quiet end of Bourbon Street He fell over in the middle of the intersection. I heard the collapse of the pole and the smack of his bells ring against the pavement. I turned around. He was lifeless and prostrate in the street. No cars were coming. I approached him to help him up when he lifted his face and chest and then kissed the ground three times. He bent his knees and bowed his head, and even though I could not hear him, I understood his reverence, the veneration of excess--he was praying to the streets. Mardi Gras was finally here.
THE APOCALYPSE BALL
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| Apocalypse Ball 2012 |
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| Naked (censored) octogenarian costume |
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| 'TIT REX |
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| Horseman of the Apocalypse |
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| 'Tit Rex float |
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| 'Tit Rex |
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| 'Tit Rex |
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| 'Tit Rex |
BARKUS
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| Barkus |
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| Barkus To view videos, click on hyperlinks in text ('Tit Rex and Barkus) |
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