mardi gras scene report

it was fun

L was on a cross-country tour in her van through the end of the spring, having spent the past several years between living with family and in the jungle where, she complained, she still can’t stop worrying about time. I saw through her Instagram stories that she was in New Orleans, too.

The last time I saw her, it was the last night of Chaos Computer. She, A and I ran away from the party to go down to the East River and smoke, L asked to hold both our hands while she peed off the side of a rock. Now we were by the water again, but it was earlier in the night, and the river was on the other side of a levee that had black train cars on top. L’s face was painted, barely, like a mime, with blue and gold eyeliner, a blue line over the bridge of her nose, and hearts on her cheeks, in a bone yellow fake fur hat. Her spirits, she told me, had asked her to, as much as possible, keep her head covered and her eyes closed.

In front of us, in front of the levee and rusted steel bridge, the parking lot was filled with one thousand punks. On one side of it, a giant speaker strobed EDM and green lights, and on the other, there was a small marching band—just a tuba, a trumpet or two, saxophone, drums. Handmade floats, a glowing blue whale, orange blowfish, mounted on tricycles, circled the crowd. Fireworks set off from random points of the parking lot exploded low overhead, one crash of red at a time. We were already stoned when we realized that we were either at the wrong party or at the wrong end of the party we were supposed to be at. L got on her bike and we began traveling toward the moving Apple Maps dots of our friends and her friends, coming from other parties and parades. L rode in the middle of the street, woozily, down a one-way, into the cars.

We found our friends and the party in another parking lot. It was more of a carnival now. Most of the people—beautiful young, passing around baggies of drugs—were dressed up as jesters and mimes, climbing bare trees, some of them clowning, speaking in gibberish, pretending to mime, unclear what they were pretending to do. Almost as soon as we got there, the party started to move, all of us, plus a 20 foot tall spinning pizza on wheels, proceeding to we didn’t know where: to a garden behind the old neighborhood opera house that looked a bit like a Spanish mission but naked without the tile, bone yellow plaster painfully white in LED light.

There was a full clown/mime marching band playing “Sandstorm” on the steps, shopping carts piled on the ground, people and puppets climbing up, dancing on them. Fireworks were set off from random parts of the lot, exploding low overhead, crashes of violet and red. A giant blonde wig in rollers under a bright red kerchief, black sunglasses, clown white face, pink bow lips, black bow lips, black diamonds, blue diamonds, red hearts. Clowns climbed the trees and the fences, to dance and to look, speaking in gibberish, miming, it wasn’t clear what. Pointed hats, veils, diamond satin, tulle, silver, blue pom poms, red pom poms, pink. Jesters and mimes, in home sewn horned hats, hearts painted on their white faces, red and black diamond horse heads attached to their shoulders, harlequin, cardboard, paint, balsa wood, torn black and neon fishnets stretched over faces with holes for a mouth, for an eye. Some stood in small circles, passing around folded post-it notes filled with drugs, some had glass vials. L told me she had been planning for years to do this drive around the country, which will take months, to try to figure out where to live.

“Me too,” I said. Except I’m doing it sitting in place.

I don’t feel anything seeing the new and beautiful cities or the new possible lives in the ones where I’ve lived—nothing has pull. She is a few years younger than me. I wonder whether she’ll come to the same conclusion or see something else. I didn’t tell her the news. It might not be hers. She might, who knows, find something else.

I had to go home even though it was still before midnight. I was self-conscious, not having dressed like a clown. I hadn’t really slept in three days and I was planning to get up at 4 and go to Skull and Bones, the parade of the dead, where men dressed as skeletons march through the streets telling people, “You’re next.” An hour after I got home, the carnival relocated to the intersection outside of my house.

I fell asleep on the couch, Olympic ice dancing on the TV on mute, to the fireworks and the drums and the tubas outside. They were gone when I woke up at 5. L was already out riding toward Skull and Bones. Using an Instagram promoted ad about Chinese New Year that said not to get up too early and not to wear black, my spirits told me that I could stay home.

L texted me afterwards, saying that after she got back to her van and went back to sleep, she dreamt of spirits from a tradition she didn’t know. They said, “Slow down.” I was already at the airport. I flew back to work.