Mardi Gras Mambo

by Greg Herren

Genres: LGBT Gay

Synopsis

Go-go dancer turned private investigator Scotty Bradley, along with his boyfriends Frank and Colin, arrives in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but Ecstasy, murder, and the Russian mob thwart his plans of decadence and debauchery. Original.

Release date: March 1, 2006

Publisher: Kensington

Print pages: 304

Sample

Mardi Gras is not for the timid. It chews timid people up and spits them out without a second thought.

I’m probably overstating the obvious here. When people think Mardi Gras and Are Not From Here, they think about drinking and naked breasts bouncing and utter licentiousness—what the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah must have been like before fire and brimstone rained destruction down on those godless cities of the plain. Certainly there are some Christians who make that analogy, and desperate to save the city and its sinners from that same dreadful fate, they preach from the street corners through megaphones, screaming at the revelers to repent and find room for Jesus in their hearts rather than room for liquor in their livers. No one listens, of course—they just throw beads at them or bow their heads in respect as they walk past. Mardi Gras is a time for frivolity, for letting go of the daily inhibitions that keep people from behaving like, well, uncivilized animals. It’s called farewell to the flesh, the last chance to sin before Lent, and in New Orleans, we like to do things right. I guess it’s all about excess, really. A local performer, who calls herself the world’s only “female female impersonator,” often claims during her stage shows that the city motto should be “anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.”

Of course, the actual city motto isn’t that much different, really: Laissez le bon temps roule. (Let the good times roll.)

Carnival is all about more: more people, alcohol, sex, fun, dancing, nakedness—more of everything. It’s a time when anything goes—well, everything except sobriety. Fat Tuesday is a holiday throughout the state. Any business that doesn’t involve serving food or liquor comes to pretty much a complete halt in the days leading up to this final magic day. Mardi Gras is tied to Lent, after all, forty days of piety and prayer leading up to Easter. So, everyone has to get all the fun and frivolity out of their systems before Ash Wednesday. And going forty days without fun and frivolity in New Orleans—well, is it any wonder that Carnival is a nonstop, citywide drunken orgy that lasts up to ten days? We take our fun and frivolity seriously here, and it has to be as much fun as possible to make the somber nature of Lent even more symbolic.

Of course, that’s just the story we tell People Not From Here. Nobody really takes Lent as seriously as Carnival. The truly devout will give up something—chocolate, maybe cigarettes, some little sinful indulgence like that—but very few people actually give up liquor or sex for Lent. That just ain’t gonna happen, folks. Chocolate is one thing, but liquor? Perish the thought. But for most People Not From Here, New Orleans and Mardi Gras are irrevocably linked in their minds—and everyone has his or her own opinion of what Mardi Gras means. For me, it’s lots of pretty-boy tourists with little or no morals dancing all night every night with their shirts off with sweat running down their chests, and going to parades with a slight buzz on.

And the most important thing is the throws.

That’s right, throws, not beads. The krewes don’t just throw strings of beads to the screaming crowds, no matter what people might think. They throw plush toys, plastic spears, plastic go-cups, doubloons, and various other things, depending on the krewe. Every krewe has its own unique and special throw. The ladies of Muses, for example, throw red plastic shoes, to add a bit of feminine flavor to the festivities. Of course, the most treasured throw of all is the Zulu coconut. I’ve caught a few of those in my life. They don’t throw the coconuts anymore—too many people have gotten broken jaws or lost a lot of teeth over the years—so now they just hand them off the floats to the lucky chosen few. The hardest thing about getting the Zulu coconut is fighting off all the assholes who seem to think they are well within their rights to try to take it away from you. One year a woman grabbed me by the hair and said she’d yank it all out if I didn’t give her my coconut. I was raised to believe a gentleman never hits a lady, but as she yanked on my hair I realized she wasn’t a lady, punched her a good one in the gut, and once she let go of my hair gave her a strong shove for good measure. Bitch won’t try that again, I bet.

Throw fever at Mardi Gras is something to see, all right. It can turn into blood sport pretty darned quick.

One of the most fun things is watching people who’ve never been before catch the fever. I was really looking forward to seeing if Frank Sobieski, reserved retired FBI special agent, could resist the allure of catching throws. I could tell by the look on his face when he’d say things like, “I just can’t believe people will make fools of themselves for this stuff,” while looking at the big box of beads I keep in my bedroom closet, that he truly believed screaming for beads was beneath his dignity. I decided not to tell him that everyone thinks that before his or her first Mardi Gras—that it’s all just a silly local custom these newbies won’t succumb to. Of course they won’t.

No one ever does.

Colin had never been to Mardi Gras either, and he came down firmly on the same side of the fence as Frank. He was just as excited for the season as I was, but he would never scream for beads. I just smiled to myself as I listened to them talking about how they would never make fools of themselves for throws. Just you boys wait, I thought to myself with a smug grin, within ten minutes of the first beads flying you’ll be whoring yourself for whatever you can catch. Beneath your dignity, my ass.

I just hoped I could keep the smug “I told you so” look off my face.

There are certain rules about the beads People Not From Here never seem to understand. I’ve often wished that someone would publish a bead guide for those misguided people who just don’t get it. I mean, it’s not like it’s hard. First of all, you never buy beads. The rule is you can only buy beads if you are going to give them away to a total stranger—no exceptions. The second rule is you only wear beads you were given. And, of course, the most important of all: you only wear beads during Carnival. Every little tourist shop in the Quarter sells beads, and it never ceases to amaze me when I see people walking around with strands of beads around their neck when it isn’t Carnival. Nothing screams tourist louder than out-of-season bead wearing. You might as well wear a neon sign flashing MUG ME.

And you know those great big beads the size of your fist? Those never come from a parade rider. For one thing, they’re too expensive. Nope, those are store bought and are almost always worn by really attractive, young, straight college boys in the last full flush of their youthful beauty before the tragic slide into middle age so many of them suffer from. I have a theory about those beads: like a flashy expensive car, the bigger the beads, the smaller the penis. It’s just a theory, though. I’ve never had the opportunity to prove or disprove it.

Of all the parades, my favorite is the Mystic Krewe of Iris. There are several reasons for this. First, Iris is a women’s krewe, which means the masked figures on the floats tossing things are not men. Men always look for women (the larger the breasts, the better) and children in the crowd to reward with their largesse. They only throw to men by accident, or if someone yells particularly loud. This sucks if you like to catch throws. However, the ladies of Iris are just as sexist as the male krewe members. They throw to men and children. Flirting with the ladies definitely works. And since Iris rolls on the Saturday afternoon before Fat Tuesday, usually it’s sunny and warm. Sunny and warm means I don’t wear a shirt. (And a lot of guys don’t. It’s basically a beefcake bonanza out there on St. Charles Avenue the afternoon of Iris. Did I mention how much I love Iris?)

I get lots of throws at Iris every year.

Carnival so far had been a bit of a disappointment. Mardi Gras was early this year, which meant despite the fervent prayers of the locals, there was a strong possibility that Fat Tuesday itself could be cold, gray, and drizzly. If the weather on Fat Tuesday sucks, it adversely affects the tourist numbers of the following year, so the City Fathers were keeping their fingers crossed and praying just as hard for sunny, warm weather as the rest of us who just want to run around half naked. Unfortunately, every night since the parades started, it had been gray, cold, and wet. The parades still rolled despite the inclement weather, but all the newscasters were despondent about low numbers of people out for the parades. They failed to take into consideration that standing in a slight drizzle on a cold night waiting for a parade isn’t fun. You’d think they’d have realized it as they stood out there in their trench coats broadcasting. And, actually, it’s better for the businesses. Instead of being out there on the streets, the tourists were in the restaurants and the bars staying dry and warm spending their tourist dollars to support our economy.

Every night after we got home from the gym, I’d ask the boys if they wanted to go out and watch the parades. I hate standing out trying to catch throws when it’s cold, so I didn’t try very hard to convince them. I’d have gone if they’d wanted to, but Frank and Colin weren’t into standing around in the cold rain just to have beads thrown at them, so we pretty much blew off the earlier parades. After all, there’s always another day of parades, and the Goddess wouldn’t be so cruel as to have the weather suck the day of Iris. Regardless, I love the Iris parade, and unless the streets were flooding, we were going. Besides, my sister, Rain, is one of the ladies of Iris, so going was also a family obligation. Actually, most of my relatives are in one parade or another, but Rain’s appearance in Iris is the only one I care about.

Fortunately, that Saturday dawned bright and sunny and warm. All three of us had gotten up early, so we could go to the gym and pump up—as I said, the sexist ladies of Iris really notice muscles. We caught a ride with my best friend, David, Uptown, where he managed to find a place to park on Baronne, and walked the two blocks over to St. Charles Avenue.

That’s another important thing to remember about Carnival. Never watch parades on Canal Street. That’s where the mobs of tourists are, drunk and boisterous and pushing and shoving and just getting on your nerves. It’s much more fun to go Uptown and watch along the St. Charles route. That’s where the locals go. It isn’t as crowded, there aren’t any breasts being bared, and instead you can see what Carnival really is supposed to be like—or what it was like before the college students found out about it. That’s where you see families out with their kids, portable barbecues set up on the streetcar tracks, and coolers full of beer everywhere. Of course people are drinking, but New Orleanians know how to pace themselves—after all, we have to all year long. Drinking might be a city pastime, de rigueur for every social event in town, but you don’t see people puking or passing out on St. Charles. You don’t see men taking a piss in a corner.

Many locals leave town during Carnival. They’re sick of the hordes of tourists, the problems getting around the city—St. Charles and Canal, the two main streets in the city, close for the parades, and it’s easy to get trapped inside the parade route. I can only imagine how frustratingly annoying it must be to live Uptown during Carnival. There’s also the familiarity. If you’ve been dealing with it your entire life, after a while I guess it can get old for some people, but I am not one of those people. After all, do you get sick of Christmas? And so far, it hasn’t gotten old for me. I feel like a kid again every year when the parades roll. I don’t believe I would ever get sick of Carnival. I love everything about it. I love the green, purple, and gold decorations everywhere—the huge masks adorning balconies, the beads hanging from the tree branches and the telephone lines. I even love the tourists, even though they do stupid stuff they would never dare to do in a million years at home. I love the parades, catching throws, the nonstop fun atmosphere. I even like the pervasive smell of grease from the vendors hawking corn dogs and French fries and those bizarre sausage sandwiches made with fried onions and green peppers. I love the signs in front of bars advertising BIG-ASS BEER $3.95—40 OUNCES!! Okay, it’s not like living in New Orleans is ever boring, mind you—it’s kind of like living on a nonstop rollercoaster ride sometimes—but Carnival is different. The whole city is in a festive mood, and everyone is relaxed and just wants to have a good time. What other American city throws such a huge party and invites the whole world to come join the fun?

Is it any wonder I love it here so much?

The first, dull floats had already passed—the ones with the royalty of the krewe. Maids, dukes, duchesses, the court, the captain, the King and Queen—these floats have only a couple of people on them and they can’t throw as much stuff. The best ones are the later ones, which have as many as thirty people on them throwing stuff out with one hand while hanging on to their drink with the other. I could tell Frank and Colin were unimpressed so far by their first parade. They still had their shirts on, hadn’t yelled once, and were standing back from the crowd with their arms crossed like the sticks-in-the-mud they were being. I’d caught a nice string of red beads from the Queen of Iris, and I had my shirt tucked into the back of my loose-fitting shorts, which just hung off my hips. I hadn’t worn underwear, and the shorts had crept down almost to the top of my pubic hair. David had already taken his shirt off, and he’d caught some beads too. Frank and Colin, though, were just standing there with bemused expressions on their faces, their shirts still on. We were standing on the neutral ground, David and I down on the curb, Frank and Colin standing farther back on the slight upward slope on the other side of the streetcar tracks.

“Just wait”—I nudged David, gesturing back at them—“till they catch their first beads.”

David winked back at me. David is the best friend anyone could ever ask for. He’s the kind of person you could call and say, “David, I just killed someone,” and without missing a beat he’d reply, “Well, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the body.” He’s in his early forties but is blessed with one of those metabolisms that simply refuses to allow fat to accumulate. We’ve been working out together for almost three years, and he’s managed to put on a lot of lean muscle without gaining a whole lot of weight. His entire body has changed. His reddish hair has gone almost completely white, and he’s buzzed it down to the scalp. He has very white skin, which burns easily. He has a massive tattoo of a dragon running down the left side of his body, from the shoulder down around the left pec.

He looks pretty good.

We moved back as the marching band from Warren Easton High School approached. The public school bands are amazing. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched a New Orleans public school band. Even the junior high ones are awesome. They are almost entirely black, and they put on a show. They dance and sway as they play their instruments and get into it in a way no predominantly white school band can. And because they don’t subscribe to the image that only bone-thin women with huge boobs are sexy, their cheerleaders, drill teams, and majorettes are a mix of different sizes and looks. The girls all have taps on their boots, and they know how to dance in their skintight sequined body suits. And their hair! They have these incredibly elaborate hairdos (what we call “parade hair”); towering masses of curls and curlicues and crimpled hair crowned with rhinestone tiaras. Interestingly enough, the bigger girls—the ones white schools would think too fat and make fun of—are usually the better dancers.

They are fabulous.

The band stopped right in front of us and launched into a version of a current hit hip-hop song. The batons started twirling and the pom-poms shaking as the girls went into their dance as the crowd cheered. I looked back at Colin and Frank. They were staring, their mouths open. I walked back to them.

“Those kids are good,” Frank said, unable to look away from them.

Colin pointed to a large majorette, stuffed into a tight formfitting sequined bodysuit. “That girl can move.”

“She’d be considered too fat to be a majorette in most schools,” I said, feeling proud of my city. Our public school system might be one of the worst in the country, but it could produce some amazing marching bands. That has to count for something. “Isn’t this fun?”

Frank and Colin exchanged that look I’d come to know fairly well since they’d moved here. It was the “Scotty-is-such-a-cute-little-whack-job” look. I just rolled my eyes. The band was moving along, and the first real float was coming. “Come on, guys, come get some beads. Loosen up already!”

They exchanged the look again. I shrugged and moved back up to David.

Okay, the most important thing about catching throws is to pay attention. You have to pay attention. When the throws start flying, you’ve got to keep your head up and your eyes moving. If you don’t, you’re likely to get smacked in the face by some beads. Trust me, it hurts. (The city council passed an ordinance protecting the krewes from being sued for injuring people. Unfortunately, the riders party just as hard as the crowd, so some of the drunker krewe members will whip beads into the crowd like they’re trying to win the World Series. I got a black eye once from a particularly nice string of green, gold, and purple beads. I kept them, and the black eye gave me a kind of roguish, dangerous look. It was kind of cool looking, like rough trade.) As the float got closer, David and I both put our arms up and started shouting. The beads started flying. I jumped up and grabbed a nice string of purple ones, then a couple more. I made eye contact with a woman on the first level, and she tossed me a handful of real beauties, and then the float was gone . . . but there was another one coming up right behind it.

I looked back at Frank and Colin. They had each caught some. Colin had a huge grin on his face and was putting his around his neck. But Frank was just holding his, his arms crossed. Loosen up, Special Agent, I thought and turned back to start screaming at the next float.

I’d just caught a nice strand of special beads, red ones shaped like dice rather than round, when I realized Colin was standing next to me, screaming, his shirt stuck into the back of his jeans. I glanced over at him and laughed out loud. He was flexing his biceps and making his pecs bounce! He was justly rewarded for this gorgeous display of masculine musculature with a full bag of beads. He stuck his tongue out at me as he tore the bag open.

Bead fever . . . it’s really hard to resist.

After the float moved on, and another marching band—this time the ROTC band from Dillard University—was heading past us, Colin grinned at me. “Okay, this is fun.”

I looked back at Frank, who was tucking his shirt through a belt loop. He gave me an embarrassed smile as he looped his handful of beads over his head and walked up to the curb.

“Having fun, Special Agent?” David asked.

He glared at us for a minute, then threw back his head and started laughing. “This is awesome!” he said, in a dead-on imitation of my voice.

And once again, I thanked the Goddess for the amazing life she was giving me. Is there anything better than having two men who love you, who have a sense of play, who can go to a Carnival parade and have a good time in the sunshine? I wanted to kiss them both.

Ah, life is good.

And the sex is even better. Have I mentioned that?

My cell phone rang, so I pulled it out of my pocket and walked to the other side of the neutral ground so I could hear before answering it. “Hello?”

“Hey, Scotty,” said a heavily accented voice. It was Misha, my Ecstasy connection. He was originally from Russia, and he has the sexiest accent. “Just wanted to let you know your Avon products came in.” Avon is our code for Ecstasy, because when you’re on it, you feel beautiful. Hell, everything’s beautiful when you’re rolling on Ecstasy.

It’s such a nice feeling.

“Cool. I’ll come by around eight. Is that cool?”

“Perfect.” He hung up. I closed my phone and grinned from ear to ear as I walked back over to the boys. “That was Misha. Our beauty boosters are in.”

“All right!” David grinned, pumping his fists. Okay, one of the bad things I’d done in my life was get him to try Ecstasy for the first time. He went through a phase where he was doing it every weekend, but finally he realized it was better to do it just three times a year, like I’d told him to begin with. Mardi Gras, Decadence, and Halloween—don’t do it anytime in between.

Frank’s smile faded. He sighed. “I still don’t think this is a good idea.”

Here we go again, I thought, trying not to roll my eyes.

“Come on, Frank.” Colin lightly punched him in the chest. “We’ve been through this already. It never hurts to try something once. No one’s going to make you do it again. Just try it once; that’s all we ask.”

“But it’s illegal,” he growled. “I hate the thought of Scotty taking the risk of getting arrested buying it.”

“I’ve done it a million times.” I shrugged. Okay, that was an exaggeration—at least I hoped it was. “And it’s cool; don’t worry so much. I mean, every time we walk into Mom and Dad’s we take that risk.” Mom and Dad always have a big supply of marijuana on hand, and they get the best stuff. I don’t know how or where they get it—with my parents sometimes it’s best not to ask too many questions—but a police drug raid would probably put them behind bars for the rest of their lives.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I said I’d try it.”

I reached over and squeezed his rock-hard ass. “Trust me, honey, you’ll like it.”

He gave me a guarded smile. “Okay.” Another float was coming, and we all assumed our bead-whore positions. He leaned over and whispered, “But I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

By the time Rain’s float, one of the last, arrived, we were completely buried in beads. My neck was getting a little sore from their weight. Frank was practically hoarse from screaming, and when I recognized Rain behind her mask, I ran up to the side of the float and screamed, “Throw me something, sister!” She threw her head back and laughed. She reached down, loaded up her arms, and began showering beads down on us.

Rain is cool. I couldn’t have asked for a better older sister. She prefers to be called Rhonda, but no one inside the family acknowledges that. She’s married to a successful Uptown doctor and has a gorgeous house up on Arabella Street. She has a degree from Baylor but has never worked a day in her life. She used to try to fix me up with every gay man she met, which led to a lot of tedious blind dates for me, since she had no earthly idea of what I was looking for in a man. Hell, I didn’t know myself back then. Although she had a little difficulty at first wrapping her head around the Scotty-Frank-Colin arrangement, she welcomed my boys into the family without question and treated them like brothers-in-law. Her car had broken down once and Colin, being Colin, had gone over to her house and in an afternoon repaired the engine. She swore it ran better than it had when it was new. Now, any time her car makes a funny noise, she is on the phone to Colin asking him to come take a look at it. And Frank had taught her how his grandmother used to make brownies, which turned out to be the best brownies ever. “Who knew,” she once whispered to me as Frank whipped up another batch in her kitchen, “that a Fed would be such a good cook?” She looked over at him and sighed. “And that ass! My God, he is such a hunk!” Just at that moment Colin came in through the back door, covered with oil and grease from cleaning her carburetor. His shirt was off, and the grease glistened on his muscles, which were flexing as he tried to wipe his hands clean. She looked back at me and sighed. “You have such a charmed life, baby bro.”

What could I say? I agreed with her. When she’s right, she’s right.

And then the float was past. I looked down St. Charles. There were only two more before the police cars and their flashing red lights signaled the end of Iris. We’d already decided not to stick around for Tucks, the parade behind Iris. We had to get David’s car back downtown before the cops closed Canal Street down completely for Endymion,. . .