On some signal I didn’t catch, she melted off the floor and the man ushered me into a small room with a nearly ceiling-height glass partition. Fresh Face was already there, already fully clothed, on the other side of the partition. How she managed it so fast remains a mystery, but my beer-addled brain actually posed the silent question: You mean, I’m getting a dance without skin?
But behind that sheet of glass, she smiled shyly and switched on, of all things, a tango. Then she began dancing, though not the tango, and clothes began dropping off her swaying body as if by magic. I swear I didn’t see her unbutton or unhook anything.
The figure-eights that assorted body parts traced in the air were mesmerizing, hypnotic. The beer, if still tasteless, now packed a punch. She was gorgeous, but I found myself shaking my head, acutely aware of reaching some kind of sensory overload. Stop, I said suddenly, hardly able to believe my own words, just stop and sit down and talk to me.
Bewildered, and now down to only the briefest of thongs, she did just that. She, cross-legged and almost nude on the raised floor on that side of thick glass, and me, enveloped in a deep red armchair on this side. We must have been a sight to behold. Luckily nobody beheld, and though she spoke minimal English and I spoke less French, we had a very nice little chat. I remember none of it today. The beer, you see. Probably the body parts too.
I reached high to give her two notes over the partition; she reached high too, shaking her head and making more but inadvertent and smaller figure-eights, to return one of them. She smiled again, then I left. Bollywood man outside? Still snoring.
A few years earlier I had been reaching high too, in New Orleans. But lacking beer that time, the ogling got the better of me.
Here’s the situation, blow by blow. A pretty girl and I have just leapt to grab plastic beads flung by a man in a float, high above. We both close our fists on them. With an enraged look at me and snarling “Oh no, you don’t!”, she pulls them from my hand, almost tearing off my thumb.
Fearing for my life, I scuttle to safety under a nearby tree. They have their advantages, trees.
Question: Why has this girl behaved this way for mere plastic beads?
Ah, but you might, too, had you done what she did for them. It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, you see. Parade time, beads time. And, for females of the species, lift-your-T-shirt time. I mean, all around us T-shirts on feminine torsos are going up and down like yo-yos. Two women near me owe their enormous collection of beads to the salivating hordes on the balconies. Every time one pulls down the other’s neckline for them to slaver at, beads shower down. Cleavage and more cleavage, in exchange for useless plastic baubles. Sounds fair to me.
Anyway, here where I stood next to this particular fetching girl and then ran for the tree...the man up in the float had dangled extra pretty—but still cheap—beads and motioned to her. They were hers, he shouted, if she would only raise her T-shirt. “Show ’em to me!” he urged, beads in one hand, camera in the other. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I didn’t know what he wanted to see, so I won’t tell you. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was looking at him and not at her, so I won’t tell you that either.