In celebration of Mardi Gras, I though I’d write a series of  posts about New Orleans, the only city I ever married.

In New Orleans, many things are optional. Shoes, for instance. After finally moving to New Orleans, I went barefoot much of the time, my feet merrily slapping against the gritty concrete of her sun-warmed sidewalks. I eschewed any barrier between myself and New Orleans, I balked at sliding even the flimsiest rubber flip flop between us. I wanted to touch her with my skin, to paint the bottoms of my feet with her soot, like the hennaed soles of a Hindu bride. And no one raised an eyebrow at the black smudges curling up over the tops of my feet and crawling up my ankles like wisps of smoke.  The city is a woman with lavish charms, but she is not a lady; she has loosened her corset for life, she sits in a doorway with her skirts pulled up around her knees, fanning at her great, dewy bosoms, taking heavy drags from a cigarette. When you walk by with a sack of groceries, she smiles, and like the front porch denizens in my Mid-City neighborhood, she boldly asks you for the first beer from the sweating six-pack in your hand. She never demands, but she laughs at you if you say no. The city makes allowances for many things, but stinginess, taking yourself too seriously- these are traits she cannot abide. It’s a small but liberating price to pay for the many things she allows her allegiants to forego:  Outerwear, adulthood, self control, regular hours, bus fare. The were, of course, places that required shoes.

But not the Red Door. The Red Door Lounge on Carrollton was a perfect microcosm, a New Orleans petri dish in which everything wonderfully dank and dark and indulgent about the city was cultivated. (more…)