You find yourself in this city in the south, post-Katrina and not during Mardi Gras-- a time when New Orleans goes ignored like a pet during its owner's pregnancy. But even though it is not Fat Tuesday and you plan on keeping on your bra, you go to Bourbon Street.
You turn off Canal St. toward a neon pink "Hustler" sign and get a drink from the closest bar, one called Krazy Korner (or was it Utopia?) where a woman in a bra top and booty shorts is selling "shots,"artificially colored alcohol standing upright in what looks like a syringe. You opt for a margarita, with salt, to go, and sip down quickly from your green plastic cactus-shaped cup. You are shouted at by men on 2nd and 3rd stories of short hotels and lofts and think "ugh" but as you continue down the (surprisingly short!!) street, you begin to feel slightly overdressed. Not that you're not wearing your "goin' out" clothes, but that you haven't got much skin showing and these women selling themselves to sell a bar seem so confident and you want that.
But they also seem so sad.
"Do you think her mother knows?" you ask your friend, but you don't wait long enough to realize the unfortunate reality.
For a second you envision pushing through the crowd of men swarmed around her, taking her hand, and running away; maybe to a cafe somewhere where you could talk about how repulsive those men are, whose blue eyes glaze over and morph into venomous snakes (oh, those Biblical references!). Or maybe to France, to the real vieux France. Vive la verite!
Is this a positive step for our country? That our women (girls, really, as one "barely legal" sign informs you) can stand outside with their inner thighs and cleavage, sometimes asses, exposed and not worry about genital mutilation or being sold into sex slavery (god, you're naive). They use their sexuality as a tool and means of power over the men and women who expect them to be easy based on how they're dressed, and the more you and your friends go and stare and drink and stare and spend and stare, the more praise they get from their manager--maybe a slap on the ass for being good for business. But nothing is ever what it looks like--water is not blue and money is never just money, and this is not real confidence in these women. Bourbon Street is dirty and what many would call sinful but that doesn't stop you from having what you think is fun. This is a place where you can have your tits and eat them too because that's what it is known for, and this is America, and it's not like you're doing anything wrong, right?
