Homosexuals ruin everything.
Well, clueless homosexuals do. Look at Southern Decadence, or Memorial Day, or Halloween: at one point, these were all fun, festive holidays, fabulous excuses to dress up and boogie down. Not to get all essentialist on your ass or anything, but there’s something very special and particular about the way New Orleanians pass their good times, and folks who first threw parties associated with these holidays knew how to do them up right. They knew how to enjoy the moment in that kinda unique way, when the only tools at their disposal were a keg of cheap beer, an amateur funk band, and a old muddy lot in the ghetto.
Now, yes, I understand: change is inevitable. These were good parties, and it would have been impossible to keep them from growing in size and scale. But even with everyone telling two friends, and so on, and so on, the character of the events had been kept intact. They still had that certain je ne sais quoi.
Until last night.
Last night was Decadence Ball (technically, no relation to the aforementioned Southern Decadence, though I’m beginning to wonder if it hasn’t been co-opted by the latter just to annoy me). For years, the Ball has been a full-on freakfest, a celebration of the Ninth Ward personality: funky, dirty, nasty. It’s been held in artist’s studios and abandoned warehouses and on condemned properties, drawing a devout crowd of locals from Elysian Fields to Poland Avenue. But last night, as I walked onto the scene with my two housemates, I was dismayed to see so many Decadence costumes–I mean Southern Decadence now–scuttling around. Gold lame thongs. Oakleys worn without a hint of irony. Tans straight from the bottle. Couples with pupils the size of quarters darting off behind the stacks of unused lumber at the back of the lot, then coming back with pupils the size of silver dollars.
Where were the freaks, the beautiful, delectable freaks? Sure, there were a few familiar faces in the crowd, but not as many as I’d have liked–and of the several I recognized, there were quite a few I wanted to avoid. I tried drinking copious amounts of cheap beer to put myself in the mood. No dice. I left after an hour.
Of course, it’s not just the homers that have ruined it. It’s people like the woman I passed, sporting a mundane ensemble of jeans and a leopard-print t-shirt screaming into her cell phone with a thick yat accent, “Oh my god, dawlin’, you gotta come down here and see dis. Dis shit is wild!” To put it in New York terms, the party’s gone all bridge-and-tunnel, you know. In other words, it’s over.
Maybe I sound bitter. Or jaded. Or self-aggrandizing. Or like an old person waxing nostalgic. But more than anything, I think I sound like Ralph.
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