Mardi Gras Mambo Read online

  Colin is only about five six or seven, but he’s gorgeous in a completely different way from Frank. He has 185 pounds of solid muscle packed on his short frame, olive skin, green eyes, and the most beautiful, curly, short blue-black hair. He’s pure Italian, the kind who gets that gorgeous bluish black shadow on his face in the late afternoon. He has huge, round, green eyes, and the whitest, straightest teeth this side of a commercial hawking some tooth-whitening cream. When we first met, he told me he was a cat burglar (it’s a long story), and although that was just his cover, I know for a fact he can climb up the side of a building. Colin’s always full of surprises. He’s fluent in Hebrew, for example. I’m beginning to think there isn’t anything he can’t do.

  He’s also amazingly limber and can contort his body into the most incredible positions.

  I couldn’t choose—there just wasn’t any way.

  The really weird thing is it wasn’t my idea to have a three-way relationship—the boys came up with it all by themselves with no pushing from me. (My best friend, David, doesn’t believe me. He thinks it was my plan all along.) So far, it’s been surprisingly harmonious. I live on the third floor of a building on Decatur Street across from the Old Mint, and they share an apartment on the fourth floor. It’s kind of cool. We all have our privacy when we need it, or if we want to be together, we can be easily. If Frank needs some alone time, Colin comes down and hangs with me. Of course, we had to set up ground rules. The first thing we negotiated was sex. We decided all three of us didn’t need to be present for it to happen without guilt. Sometimes we all spend the night together; some nights we all sleep alone; some nights one sleeps alone. We also decided not to be monogamous. It seemed kind of silly to demand it of each other (things happen, after all—look at the three of us!), but so far no one’s strayed out of our arrangement. Goddess, who has time? I do like to go out sometimes by myself, and the bars are always crawling with hot boys, but I am doing it less and less. On those rare occasions when I do go to the bars alone, every time some hot guy gives me the eye I think about what I have waiting for me at home and just smile and look away. No guy is so hot that he would be better than the two I have at home.

  So, I guess I’ve kind of settled down my wayward ways. I worried about it sometimes: Was I getting old? Was I slowing down? Was I becoming someone I wasn’t? I still liked to go out dancing, but if the boys wanted to stay home I found myself staying home with them and doing some kind of crazy thing—when you put together a longtime private eye, an ex-stripper, and a former FBI agent, you can come up with all kinds of interesting experiences.

  One night we played “voyeur.” I thought it was kind of silly myself at first. I was supposed to climb up the back steps and pretend like I didn’t know either one of them. I know I rolled my eyes when Frank was explaining it all to me—role-play has always struck me as kind of silly—but both Frank and Colin thought it would be fun. And they were really into it. So I said, sure, okay, and sat down on my couch. I waited about fifteen minutes after they went upstairs, then followed. As I climbed the stairs all I could think was, “This is stupid, stupid, stupid.” As I got closer to the window into their back bedroom, I could hear them. I stopped and listened for just a minute. It was like listening to a porn tape with the picture off. I could hear them kissing, their breathing, the occasional moan, the slap of bare flesh coming together. I found myself getting aroused. I climbed up a few more steps and then found myself peeking over the ledge and into the room. The lights were off except for a few candles burning, and looking at their incredible naked bodies, their mouths pressed together, the urgency of their hands touching and stroking each other, I found myself watching for a lot longer than I thought I would. At first, I figured I’d get so turned on watching I’d be inside joining them in no time. But watching as they got it on, their two sweating and heaving muscular bodies coming together, hands exploring, mouths coming together in kisses both passionate and tender, I couldn’t tear myself away. It was like I was seeing something I wasn’t supposed to see, and that made it even more intensely erotic and sexy. Once, Frank looked over at me and winked before Colin went back to work on his nipples, and his eyes closed again. It was like interactive porn, almost. And then I realized they were both getting off on me watching, with the window in between us, and it was making them hornier, like they were performing for me, to make me excited, and that was when I couldn’t take it anymore and had to join in.

  Why on earth would you want to go to a bar when you can do things like that at home?

  Suffice it to say, we have a great sex life together.

  So, in those days leading to Mardi Gras, life was good. Frank had also gone to work with us for the agency, and we had a small office in the Marigny, in an old building on Frenchmen Street. It was fun—we’d get up in the morning, have breakfast together, and walk over to the office. We’d work all day, and then around five we’d head for the gym. We didn’t have anything major to work on at the office; most times it was just doing back-up research for another branch office’s case, and the occasional job doing research for a lawyer (my older brother, Storm, had his firm throwing a lot of work our way). I had a regular paycheck and the kind of home life I’d never imagined in my wildest fantasies. We all got along great. About the only real problem had been convincing Frank to try Ecstasy at Mardi Gras. It hadn’t been easy, but he finally gave in.

  Little did I realize how much hassle we would have been spared if we’d only listened to Frank. You see, there’s something about Carnival that affects people. Every day in New Orleans is anything can happen day, and Mardi Gras somehow heightens that sense of insanity. Maybe it’s the liquor, maybe it’s the parades, or maybe it’s just the hordes of tourists; I don’t know. But Carnival is somehow different, more charged with the craziness that dogs our days here. My mom jokes that during Carnival the city spikes the drinking water, but I don’t know if that would do the trick. I think it’s something to do with the time of year, the way the planets align themselves or the stars are arranged when the season starts. Crazier things happen than usual. People let down their guard and open themselves to all kinds of bizarre behavior—things they wouldn’t do any other time of year. Straight boys go out on Fat Tuesday practically naked, showing off their bodies and actually enjoying the attention from the gay boys. And, of course, as everyone knows, lots of breasts are bared.

  I’ve always called it the Mardi Gras mambo.

  And if someone had told me what would happen during this year’s Carnival, I would have laughed my ass off at them. Please—it was too much for anyone to believe. And Frank has never once, since Fat Tuesday, ever said, “I told you so.” Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t done the Ecstasy, but I have a feeling it was kind of meant to be. Somehow, we would have gotten dragged into it. And if not for the Ecstasy, who knows? Maybe it would have wound up worse than it actually was. You can never question the Goddess and what she has in mind for you. All you can do is take what she throws at you and do your best. There’s never any point in thinking, “If we hadn’t done this or if we’d done this instead things would have been different.”

  Things happen for a reason, and it’s not our place to question those reasons, right? But sometimes I have to wonder if the Goddess doesn’t just enjoy fucking with me for her own entertainment. I mean, she probably does have a sense of humor, right? It’s not a stretch to think she likes to see how we are all going to react to the curveballs she throws at us. And I usually don’t mind the curveballs—that’s what makes life interesting, after all, and I can’t think of anything more tedious than having a life that is set in stone and completely predictable. Sure, some warning that something crazy is about to land in your lap would be nice—and maybe she could not throw a lot of successful curveballs at me in a row. But I’ve never been destined for a quiet life, as I’ve said, and for the most part my life has always been pretty charmed. I’ve got a great family, a great apartment, and two fabulous boyfriends, so apparently
she feels like I need to have some nutso stuff in my life as well. And if that’s the price I have to pay for the great life she’s given me, so be it. I don’t ever want my life to become boring.

  And since Ash Wednesday, I’ve gone over it again and again in my head. Sure, there were things that could have been done differently, but there was always a sense of the inevitable. It had to happen. Maybe I was getting too complacent with my life and the Goddess wanted to shake things up for me a bit. Maybe it was a life lesson she felt I needed to learn. And, ultimately, I did learn a lot from the whole mess. Maybe a bit more than I think I needed to learn, but you never get to make those choices.

  And maybe it was just the Mardi Gras mambo getting into our heads and our lives with a gleeful laugh. Mardi Gras is never what you expect, and this last Carnival was nothing like anything I’d ever imagined to experience.

  And despite everything, even now, I can hear the music playing in my head, and I can’t help but smile about it all.

  But from now on, I will always take the Mardi Gras mambo a bit more seriously. . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nine of Cups

  a love of sensual pleasures

  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.