Southern Decadence

The other night I went to Southern Decadence.

For those of you who don't know, Southern Decadence is basically gay Mardi Gras. I had heard the lore, but never attended, so it seemed that for my final year in NOLA I should check it out. The quarter was indeed brimming with leather-harness-wearing-men, lesbians, trannies, and drag queens and I did find it to be the best people watching ever. Last year Katrina hit the weekend of Southern Decadence and I have been told that attendance this year was significantly down. I believe this estimate to be true as Bourbon was not nearly as crowded as I expected. It seems that the freakness was also proportionately smaller as there were no 60 year old men with nipple clamps and boas as, according to reports, were in attendance the year before Katrina. I was somewhat disappointed by the low turnout, but then again there was enough inappropriate thong-wearing to last me a life time.

As previously mentioned, my powers with gay men are great, but I thought that in such a large group, they would be diminshed, but lo and behold, they were not. My friends and I were in the street deciding which club we were going to enter when a spandex clad gent sees me and then proceeds to deck me and me alone in his silver mardi gras beads. I thank you sir, because clearly I was not glittery enough for the festivities.

The interior of the club proved to be equally exciting, albeit crowded, and about 5 minutes on the dance floor was plenty. You haven't lived until you've heard the Pussy Cat Dolls' excuse for music "Stick Wit U" remixed and throbbing at a billion decibels while surrounded by a throng of gyrating, shirtless, sweaty men. And there's nothing like anonymous back sweat in the 90 degree heat. After abandoning the dance floor I noticed a friend has sent me a text message and as I was replying a boy sauntered up to me and shouted "Honey, who are you texting? I'm right here!" If only straight men in bars were as clever! My friends Tiny and Candy Girl joined me soon thereafter where a very drunk and confused gay boy tried to freak Tiny. We are hope that he was merely drunk and confused rather than thinking we were trannies.

Sometime around 3am we abandoned the club, now thoroughly sweaty and deaf and headed to Cafe du Monde for late night beignets. Conversation was rather lacking as were so deaf we spent the next half hour basically just shouting "WHAT?" at each other.

My ears were still ringing the next morning, which is surely the sign of an excellent evening.