For the portly gray dude, the day played out much more as a “Slender Saturday” than a “Fat Tuesday” more of a “Samedi Svelte” than a “Mardi Gras.” Not that proper attention to pre-Lenten rituals were not observed.
In fact, this year, with friends throwing a Mardi Gras bash at their place down in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Salt Lake, the usual rush to get as much debauchery onto the sinning side of the scales prior to that period of penance between Ash Wednesday and Easter didn’t seem all that pressing.
Transgression-wise, the gray dude had performed rather well this past year. He had kept his nose to the grindstone, as it were. It wasn’t like he needed to party the night away in order to have enough pages filled on the misbehavior side of his ledger to balance out the season of fasting and penitence looming on the horizon.
No, although many of his deviations might be deemed minor or slight “trifling peccadilloes,” as W. C. Fields might have put it you can’t discount the sheer volume of entries. Yes, indeed, as far as time spent loitering at the intersection of “shenanigan” and “monkey business,” he had a very good year.
Did I mention that the Mardi Gras festivities down in what has come to be called the Marmalade District featured a parade that circled the block amid much ballyhoo and brouhaha? Local stonework and rugby icon George “the Hack” Austin, plucking away on some as-yet-unidentified acoustic string instrument, served as a grand marshal of sorts along the route and also co-producer of the entire costume-infested gathering.
Although not totally unlike one of those “second line” New Orleans romps that usually follow the “Main Line” social tribe through the streets of the French Quarter, on this day there was an absence of distinction between the two. You couldn’t tell the inmates from those running the asylum, as it were.
It became evident to the portly gray dude somewhere during the uphill portion of the procession that there might well also be a lack of dissimilarity between absolution and mischief. The thought that you could get there from here gave him peace.
Hallelujah, he thought. Possibly enlightenment could be achieved through lack of discipline alone. Maybe the shortest distance between those two points could best be accomplished by the clever application of a virtuoso backslide. He could see it all now indulgence replacing temperance as a cardinal virtue.
It might have just been the hurricane glass full of a rather stout concoction that he had thrown down upon arrival, but he found himself muttering Ophelia’s admonition to her brother Laertes from Act I, Scene III of Hamlet: “Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven.” It has become a mantra, of sorts.
Some of the lesser practitioners of these rites arrived adorned in masks and beads alone, but that, obviously, would not do for the more experienced transgressors in their midst. Headwear spoke volumes as to the pecking order.
One of the most-innovative chapeaux to come down Bourbon Street (they had changed the street sign to fit the occasion) had to be the quite large and reconfigured wide swath of bubble-wrap flaunted by Rosemary-the-hostess.
You could say that one of her main duties was as a hedonist wrangler. Maintaining discipline by glance alone, she made sure that the feast tables were left un-pillaged until after the parade had totally disturbed those in the neighborhood who had yet to join the rebels in the street.
Once the group gorge ensued, it was every reveler for himself. Pacing became an immediate issue and not just with the many thematic libations that flowed as if through some breached New Orleans dike. No, the food choices of the banquet were such that they could consume you as easily as vice versa.
It’s often that way with festive feasts. One possible problem comes when the various gumbos, foie gras, sweetbreads, pates, cakes, crawfish, and shrimp become just one big pile on one big plate. As has been said, debauchery is not all glory. Often, one must give one’s self up for the team.
And all this transpired by mid-to-late afternoon. The true sons and daughters of Mardi Gras were just beginning to arrive, sporting the feathered finery earned by their somewhat extended free-fall from grace. In this crowd, that’s a good thing. Swagger trumps subtlety every time.
The dude may abide but he certainly can’t keep up with the top shelf of this tribe. Before they truly got down to it, before the Marie Laveau voodoo queens slithered in with their snakes and mojo hands, he bid adieu and excused himself. If his misdemeanors didn’t rank with the truly wayward, so it goes.
As it played out, however, the Mardi Gras dalliance down on Rue Apricot proved a quite efficient method of taking stock in his often imagined deviant behavior. He can live with being a middle-of-the-pack social offender. Lent doesn’t scare him. Lord knows a bit of fasting won’t do him any harm.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.