Jazz, Bourbon Street, Jambalaya - not on my travel brochure

DOWNHOME LOUISIANA

I wake abruptly.  A cockroach scurries across my neck and disappears under the silk label of my nightshirt.  I jump out of bed, do a frantic wiggle and scream at my bedmates, the one snoring like a moose in heat and the six-legged bug on the run. "I want to go back to California."

"What?  You don't like New Orleans?" Ryan yawns and kicks the sheets off his sweltering body. "Ain't it great?  Jazz, Bourbon Street, Jambalaya…" 

"… Vomit, bourbon, urine, mildew." I check under the pillow for another Louisiana midnight special. "And cockroaches, Southern ones." I search under the covers and tousle my fingers through my hair.  I shake my ears to empty any unwanted roaches. I saw Twilight Zone as a kid.

"Just the flavor of the French Quarter," he adds.

"Flavor?" I eye the dismal room of the Marie LaVoux guesthouse and listen for the street activity.  Quarter block from the parameter of safety, we were advised to be tucked in by midnight or encounter strange acts of the night.

Outside, boisterous voices rock the loose windowpanes. A tiny chain link guards the door of our one-star room. I note, no phone and reclassify the rating to a minus five. Some safety. I scoot back in bed and count the cobwebs dangling from the plank ceiling.

"Seems to me you added a little of your own flavor to the streets." He rests on his side and traces counter-clockwise designs around my navel.

"It was that Hurricane." I hold my head and start to spin again. "I know why they call them Hurricanes.  They hit fast, reek havoc and leave disaster in their wake."

"No one said you had to order two." He waves two fingers in my face.  I count four.

"Well, no one told me there were four ounces of rum in that tall glass of punch."

My stomach comes to greet me and I stagger to the bathroom.  My knees buckle and I swear the walls breathe in and out, a living poltergeist.

"I'm sick…" I grasp the sides of the toilet, plunge my head forward and retch.

"Man, you should have seen you on Bourbon Street contributing to what was it now?  Oh yeah, the stench of 'vomit, bourbon, urine and mildew'." Ryan cradles me against his bare chest and helps me towel my brow.

I walk lopsided back to the bed and flop on my back. "It's all your fault." 

"My fault?"

I chance to open an eye.  A fan twirls wooden blades.  I gulp to hold in the remainder of my gut. "You were the one that told me to sit down on the curb and 'take in a hearty breath'." I shut my eyes to close off the rotating room and drop into a deep abyss of darkness. 

"How was I to know that the mule drawn carriage would stop in front of you and you'd take in a deep one of mule's ass." 

"The smell, the flick of the tail in my face," I recoil and relive the moment. A parade of flies, fragrant droppings, mule sweat. I hustle again to the oval basin and heave bile.

A chair braces my wobble and I step-by-step cling to objects until I reach the bed.

"Anyone would have contributed to the cause at that point. Besides I only puked. I didn't pee like someone else in this room." I curl into a fetal ball and wait for the waves of nausea to subside.

"That's fair." Ryan snuggles up and asks, "What do you want to do tomorrow?  It's red beans and rice day." He counts off the list of activities. "We could go to the Imax Theater. You know and see the 3-D show of dinosaurs and later take the cemetery tour. Then we can splurge on dinner and tour down the Mississippi."

I grab my temples and squeeze hard to shut out the image of distorted prehistorics and rocking waters.  The cemetery reaches out in my haze and I visualize an ornate crypt with my name etched in gothic letters on marble stone. 

"You okay?"  He tugs at my limp arm. "Are you still breathing?"

"I'm alive if that's what you mean."  A spring in the bed jabs between my shoulder blades as I drift back into my hours of alcoholic doom.

"Ah, this is living." He lies back, basks in the humid air and escapes into a Cajun fantasy.

I pray as I crawl to the porcelain one to render another offering. "Marie, Queen of the Voodoos, please darken my threshold and remove this soul from this wretched place and transport me to a Hilton with a bathtub of Alka Seltzer and Seven Up, a place of no Hurricanes." I watch a bug streak across the linoleum and add, "and no Southern hospitality bedbugs.”   

Thanks for stopping by and sharing a laugh

Until next time, the smiles are on me

Have a great day!