Whoops...sorry...must be the Tabasco Sauce talking.

I swear that stuff is making me delirious. I don’t even know why people need to get drunk in New Orleans. The cooks in the restaurants all through the French Quarter sneak Tabasco Sauce into everything. Now I know why everyone is always ripping off their clothes at night on Bourbon Street. They’re not trying to get beads thrown at them. They’ve just finished a meal of jambalaya and their body temperatures are on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

When I finally break away from the convention booth on the afternoon of my third day in New Orleans and start wandering around the French Quarter, I find Tabasco Sauce everywhere. Drug stores, the House of Blues shop, daiquiri bars, and ice cream parlors. I walk by a quaint handbag store on Royal Street with shelves of expensive purses and wallets, and there’s a giant display of Tabasco Sauce right there in the window next to the alligator bags. I guess after a few swigs, customers don’t care about how much money they’re spending. The shop owner probably gives out free samples the minute you walk in.

Part of the reason I’m in the French Quarter in the first place is to escape the food at the convention. My company’s booth is set up in front of the buffet area. People are eating non-stop. I’ve never seen people gorging so much in my entire life. Winners of state fair pie-eating contests would look at these conventioneers and say, "Dude, you’re making me sick."

Convention attendees are eating off plastic plates as they talk to me. They take candy from huge bowls of sweets set up at the booths. Door prizes include food baskets from Holly Farms and gift certificates for area restaurants. I’m thinking the Grand Prize should be an evening of liposuction at Lenny’s Vacuum Cleaner and Tabasco Sauce Store on Royal Street.

And I don’t know what it is about frying everything around here. I can’t find anything broiled. One night at dinner, I order oysters and french fries. I get a plate with lumps of fried batter all piled up on top of each other. So do all my dinner companions. I don’t know how the waitress can tell our orders apart. We are all tired, so we just obediently chew on our fried stuff and talk about the business contacts we’ve made that day. Dessert is a fried roll of Tums.

So by the time I finally make my escape, I never want to see another morsel of food again. No problem in the French Quarter. They gave me plenty of alcohol and sex instead. And this being the colorful, free-spirited New Orleans, it’s not just your ordinary alcohol and sex. No, it’s every flavor of daiquiri you can imagine and strip bars advertising individuals who have physical characteristics of both of the major genders and several alternative ones that leading biologists are not currently aware of. If Darwin had ever walked down Bourbon Street, his brain would have exploded before he’d reached the end of one block.

And this is only midafternoon. I am told by the friendly natives selling beads that the French Quarter really comes to life at night. For purposes of my humor column, I plan to return after dark. I really do intend to come back.

Then I return to my hotel, and what I see there sends my brain into a spiral.

The directors of this convention are hosting a Mardi Gras gala that night. It is being held at the hotel, but the party-animal conventioneers are expected to spill out onto the streets and finish the wild night on Bourbon Street. As I walk through the lobby, middle-aged pharmaceutical executives are clogging the gift shops, buying beads and masks and feather boas and any other costume apparel they can get their hands on.

A group of executive women in their 40s and 50s are huddled together by the hotel bar, draping all these accessories over their business suits, carefully sprayed hairdos, and perfectly manicured nails. They are laughing that social business laughter that has been searing my eardrums over the last couple of days.

This dress-up session is apparently the most hysterical situation any of them have ever found themselves in in their entire lives. They are practically in tears. I get the feeling that their parents never let them participate in Halloween when they were children. They probably never knew there was such a thing as Halloween. Their parents probably locked them in the basement anytime anything fun was going on.

As I walk past them, one of the women shrieks, "Oooh, Lydia, isn’t this a HOOT??"

And that is why I do not go back to the French Quarter that night.

I do go out, though. I hook up with a couple of friends who live in the city (Sandy and Dwayne), and they take me out to dinner. On the way, Sandy points out the house where "The Real World – New Orleans" is filmed. I didn’t even know there was a New Orleans version of that show.

Sandy tells me that when the cast first moved into the house, there was a parade that night on the street in front of it. The locals turned out in droves to see the parade. The Real World directors and camera crews told the people around the house to ignore the cast members when they emerged. Apparently they were very strict about this. They wanted the cast members to blend naturally in with the crowd.

Well, that makes sense. It’s supposed to be the real world, after all. If I were watching a show with a bunch of bratty, self-centered 20-somethings living rent-free in a big house in New Orleans while cameras followed them everywhere recording their staged arguments and other hissy fits, it would just jolt me right out of the reality of it all if normal people actually noticed them.

Anyway, I have a wonderful meal of crawfish fettuccini and am back in my hotel bed at a decent hour. I am sharing a room with one of my co-workers on this trip, and she comes staggering in from the convention gala around 2am. She is laughing because during the evening she has wandered over to the giant casino across the street from the hotel where she has gambled away five hundred dollars.

She is laughing about this. I guess they give out free Tabasco Sauce at the slot machines as well.

The next morning, as I pack my bags to leave the eternal frat party that is New Orleans, I pause to reflect. What have I learned from my experience here?

Not a damn thing.

And that’s probably for the best.

Copyright 2000 by Jennifer Layton