This is Halloween

Okay I feel like those of you who only know me through this blog probably think I’m kind of a homebody. A little wifey in a new place, scared and alone. I’ll agree, I’ve been pretty boring. But see, Halloween in New Orleans is how I really party. 

I’m sort of afraid to try to put it to words, because it won’t effectively portray the mayhem, the debauchery, the drunken maelstrom of people and gender confusion and costumes and exhibition. The only word I can think of is EPIC. Picture your house packed with people. And every house on your block. Now picture the street jammed with human beings. Now the neighborhood. Now your entire town, and the town next to yours, every house and every street completely stuffed with people, all sort of vaguely going somewhere at pace between meander and saunter, all gaping up and around and back and forth in abject astonishment and spilling beer and smoking cigarettes and talking in their Party Voices. Now envision all of them wearing costumes.

We got in around 2:30, we wandered around a bit, we ate dinner on the balcony of a great little cajun place. During dinner, we started noticing an increasing number of people passing on the street below wearing costumes, and decided that we needed to put ours on immediately so that we could start making friends. From dinner, we headed back to the hotel. At one point we passed through a veritable swarm of pirates and wenches – hundreds of them. I started getting giddy. I love Halloween so much.

So anyway, back to our wonderful hotel just outside the French Quarter to change. Our hotel had a happy hour and we were allowed 3 drinks each, so we sat rather noticeably in the lobby enjoying our free booze. Everyone asked about our costumes, but nobody had seen the movie or read the play, which was a little discouraging, but we remained excited and hopeful that eventually we’d get a few bites. These people were tourists. Philistines!

We stepped back out of the hotel around 6, I’d say, looking marvelously like 1940’s relics. Observe:

Blanche Dubois

Blanche & Stanley

By the time we got back to the streets, it was like somebody had hit a light switch. Everyone had a drink in hand (it’s legal there), and every single last person had a costume on. We became VERY QUICKLY intoxicated, and it sort of became a blur, so I’ll recount a few tidbits for you:

There was a parade with giant floats of Halloween characters – witches, Dracula, Frankensteins, etc. Also, a marching band of junior high kids, which was amazing to me considering how ridiculously inappropriate the majority of the costumes were (not to mention the behavior). Then I looked around and realized there were lots of kids there, and that the city is just a whole lot more accepting than most. THEN I realized that while people were drinking and half-naked, nobody was being lewd or doing anything gross. People were just having a good time, and so were the kids, and who cares if there are some boobies around. After all, the parade was only at like 8 p.m.

At one point, Alan met our first San Franciscan cross-dresser, which is amazing because we haven’t moved to San Francisco yet. We followed their group around talking for a bit until we ducked in to get beer and lost them.

We were wandering around and Alan saw a little house off to the side where people were drinking on the porch. It looked like a party, so Alan just walked up and sat down. We made friends with the homeowners, who totally got our costumes, and told us we should come back for the Tennessee Williams Festival in March for the STELLA SCREAMING CONTEST. 

Alan grubbed a cigarette off of Captain America.

As we’d walk by, people would start screaming STELLAAAA.

I went to a bar with a balcony, and I stood on the balcony screaming at people below to do demeaning things for beads. 

There was a troop of breakdancing mummies.

Somebody with a pitcher on the street poured Alan a beer, which he dropped on my feet, so the nice man scooped up his cup and poured him another.

The coffee houses stayed open all night, so we ducked in for Irish Coffee, which was a delightful pick-me-up.

I walked back to my hotel barefoot because my shoes were killing me.

Nothing is off-limits. There are cops everywhere, and they just sort of sit on the corner, watching, making sure nobody gets hurt. I didn’t see ANY fights, nobody crying.  You watch a girl get her ass grabbed by some random dude and they both just start giggling. Then the same girl walks up to a tranny and grabs her fake tits, and THEY both just start giggling. It was paradise. Oh, and the gay section was my favorite, because everybody talked to us (mostly they were hitting on Alan), and they were all really excited about our costumes. I heard people calling me ‘beautiful’ in the gay section over and over. There were so many people in the streets it was more crowded than inside the bars. I think I was only physically inside a bar maybe twice all night. The street was where the real action was.

The next morning, we were up and out by ten, because honestly I was having too much fun to get totally completely obliterated the night before. An hour would go by and I wouldn’t even realize I didn’t have a drink in my hand. Alan on the other hand threw up a lot so he wasn’t hungover either. But so anyway, we were out on the street by 10 a.m., and the streets LOOKED hungover, like a city-wide party had ended merely a few hours before.

The bars were still kinda full. Apparently happy hour starts at 10 in most places. Scores of people were enjoying the walk of shame still be-costumed. We mostly had the city all to ourselves.

People sleeping on sidewalks. Bottles and cups and Hurricane glasses and beads and shoes (lots of shoes) and parts of costumes and boas and every possible imaginable thing littered the streets, which city employees were already hard at work to clean up. But the music was already playing again, and the street performers were out, and the shops were open. It kind of never ended.

We grabbed coffee and sat on the big steps by the moonwalk for about an hour just people watching. We heard a woman behind us up on the moonwalk looking at the view of the cathedral down the hill, and she said, “Ooh, this looks just like Disney!”, which sparked a conversation Alan and I had about the how some people just can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction. This place is real. Disney is fake. DISNEY is like THIS, and it’s an important distinction. (See also: Sarah Palin/Tina Fey caricature.)

Anyway, we wandered through the streets for the rest of the day thinking how weird it was that everyone was here last night, only in costumes, and how the juxtaposition was almost mind-blowing. Then we ate dinner and went home.

I never wanted to leave. I can’t wait to go back. I can’t wait to move to San Francisco. Click any of the pics below to see the album.

Rorschach!

streets

mob

parade

Train Wrecks in Love