1: Bourbon Street's Siren Call
I didn't belong here.
The second we turned onto Bourbon Street, I knew it in the marrow of my bones.
The crowd swallowed us immediately--bodies packed elbow to elbow, heat rising in greasy, boozy waves. The air tasted like fried food and spilled beer and human breath. Neon signs bled down the crumbling brick walls in pinks and greens and molten golds, throwing colors over the swarming street like a drunk god smearing paint with his fingers.
Somewhere above the roar, a brass band wailed a sloppy, jubilant tune. The cracked pavement vibrated under my sneakers.
I pulled my arms in tight across my chest, fingers digging into the thin fabric of my hoodie until the stitches bit into my skin. I wanted to disappear. Sink into the broken sidewalk and vanish like smoke.
Instead, I was tugged along, helpless between my friends' laughter and the crush of strangers pressing in from every side.
I kept my head down. It was safer not to look.
But I looked anyway.
I couldn't not look.
Everywhere around me--skin.
Skin slicked with glitter and sweat, glistening under the endless strobe of neon. Breasts of every shape and size, painted, pierced, swinging free without apology. Round bellies and jutting ribs, thick thighs and bony knees, muscled arms wrapped around strangers' shoulders.
Bodies paraded past in an endless, chaotic, glorious river--young and old, thin and wide, white and black and brown and gold, hair shaved into jagged patterns or flowing wild down naked backs.
A man painted silver from head to toe stumbled sideways, sloshing his drink and bumping into me.
"Whoops! Sorry, darlin'," he slurred, laughing, and before I could even react, he looped a heavy strand of beads around my neck with clumsy affection.
The beads thudded against my chest, shocking in their weight. I clutched at them instinctively, my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. He winked and was gone, swallowed back into the glittering tide.
My heart tripped over itself. Strangers touching me, noticing me--it should have made me want to bolt.
Instead, a strange, fizzy thrill fizzed up under my skin, impossible to ignore.
I saw thick curls between legs, tangled and proud; smooth, bald pubic mounds gleaming under glitter. Men laughed with erections bobbing unbothered, some small and twitching, some heavy and swaying like flags of surrender.
No one was hiding. No one cared.
The sheer riot of it--the raw, sweating, laughing reality of humanity unhidden--made my heart slam against my ribs.
I twisted the hem of my hoodie tighter, but my fingers were sweaty, slipping. My breath came fast and shallow.
I should have looked away. I should have clamped my eyes shut, shoved through the crowd, found some dark corner where I could pretend I was still the girl I was supposed to be.
Instead, I stared, heat crawling up the back of my neck, a helpless, dizzy pull rooting me to the spot.
Two women waltzed past, naked but for green beads strung across their chests, their hips bumping and hands clasped. One caught my gaze and winked, her smile slow and easy and utterly unashamed.
I whipped my eyes down to the pavement, heart hammering so hard it hurt, twisting my sleeves into knots.
It was so much.
It was too much.
And it was marvelous.
Not a freak show. Not a punchline. Not a sin to be hidden and hushed.
A cathedral of flesh and spirit, a symphony of movement and laughter and nakedness shouting into the night: Look at me. I am here. I am alive. I am not ashamed.
I had spent so long trying to shrink myself, trying to fold small enough to fit inside silence. To be safe. To be invisible.
Here, no one was safe. No one wanted to be.
Here, existence itself was rebellion. Celebration.
The music pounded louder, thick and hot, driving up through my soles, rattling my knees, making my fingers tingle. My body rocked without permission, swaying on the balls of my feet to some reckless rhythm I didn't know I remembered.
I should have been terrified. I was--but not the way I expected. It wasn't just fear anymore. It was something hotter, hungrier, almost electric.
But underneath it--sharp, bright, undeniable--was thrill.
I could feel it pulling at me.
The wild music, the glittering bodies, the pulsing heat--Bourbon Street's Siren Call, singing low and dangerous in my ears, promising if I just let go, if I just gave in, I could be a part of it.
Not watching from the sidelines.
Not hiding in the dark.
Alive.
Free.
The thought struck me so hard I staggered a little, bumping shoulders with a laughing woman painted gold and wearing nothing but beads and a smile.
I mumbled an apology I wasn't sure she heard, dragging my gaze back to the cracked sidewalk, willing my hands to stop shaking.
Out of nowhere, a girl with pink hair and smeared lipstick stumbled past, laughing, and pressed another strand of beads into my hand.
"You're so pretty!" she shouted over the music, beaming as if she truly meant it.
Before I could even stammer a response, she was twirling away, her bare back gleaming under the neon haze.
I stared at the beads tangled in my fingers, my throat thick. Pretty.
No one had ever called me that before--not like that, not like it was obvious.
I twisted the hem of my hoodie until the seams bit into my palms.
It was too much. It was thrilling. It was terrifying.
My heart beat too hard. My mouth was dry. My skin buzzed like it was trying to lift off my bones.
Under the fear, under the noise, something inside me burned.
The tiny ember I had buried so long ago flared to life.
The one that wanted to see.
The one that wanted--secretly, shamefully--to be seen.
It was crazy that I was even here. If you'd asked me a month ago, I would have laughed in your face. Bourbon Street? Mardi Gras? Public nudity? Flashing strangers for beads? Not in a million years.
I was the quiet one. The girl who kept her head down. The girl who disappeared into library corners and romance novels where other people had adventures.
I wasn't brave. I wasn't bold. I wasn't like Jenn and Cassie, dragging me through this wild river of bodies like it was just another Friday night.
When they invited me, I almost said no. I almost locked myself in my room and buried myself in a book and pretended none of this existed.
But late at night, lying awake with the invitation still buzzing in my phone, a different thought took hold.
You could watch.
Just... watch. Hidden in the crowd, anonymous and safe.
I wouldn't do anything. God, no. But to see it, to feel it, to get close enough to taste that wild, reckless freedom secondhand...
The thought made my stomach flip in a way that no date, no tentative brush of fingers in a movie theater, no clumsy first kiss ever had.
I wanted to see.
βΈ»
"Come on, shy girl!" Jenn hollered, looping an arm around me and yanking me closer. She tossed a handful of beads at a passing float, laughing as a drunken clown hurled a whole rainbow of necklaces back at her.
I stumbled against her, almost tripping, and had to laugh--half because it was funny, half because it was laugh or scream.
Beads rained from balconies above. Women twirled and spun, lifting their shirts, baring their bodies to the roar of approval below.
Camera flashes exploded like fireworks, dazzling and endless.
Jenn elbowed me, grinning. "Hey, look! Free show!"
I followed her pointing finger--and immediately regretted it.
Two women on a wrought-iron balcony, bare-chested and sparkling with glitter, pressed their bodies together, tossing beads and laughing like they ruled the world.
I jerked my gaze away so fast I nearly pulled something, clapping my hand over my mouth to smother the gasp that wanted to escape.
Jenn caught the move and laughed. "You're adorable when you blush," she teased, tossing a strand of purple beads over my head. "Lighten up! It's Mardi Gras!"
I nodded mutely, shoving the beads into my hoodie pocket like stolen treasure.
But my eyes kept flickering back, drawn like a moth to flame.
God, they looked so free.
Not embarrassed. Not humiliated. Not shrinking.
They danced, they laughed--and the world loved them for it.
A knot formed in my throat.
I twisted a lock of hair around my finger until it went numb, bouncing lightly on my toes, desperate to bleed off the electricity under my skin.
Part of me screamed to vanish, to melt into the pavement and vanish. Another part--the part I barely dared to name--ached to stay. To drink it in. To be seen.
Both truths tangled inside me, tight as the beads strung around my neck.
βΈ»
We drifted with the tide of the crowd, the music and noise rising around us until the world became a single living thing.
I lost track of time. I lost track of myself.
Sweat slicked my skin. Lights blurred. My heart battered my ribs like a caged thing.
I should have been terrified. I was terrified.
But a bigger part--the part I tried so hard to pretend didn't exist--was drunk on it.
This was what it felt like to be alive.
This was what it felt like to matter.
Jenn swung around, laughing, and draped a strand of gold beads over my head like a crown. "Glad you came?" she shouted.
I clutched the beads with shaking fingers, too breathless to speak.
I nodded.
Ahead of me, a man wearing nothing but a red feather boa and a cowboy hat spun in dizzy circles, hooting like a cartoon. His erect cock jiggled with each wild step, sending peals of laughter through the nearby crowd.
I clapped my hand over my mouth, but a choked giggle escaped anyway--loud and ridiculous and real.
For a second, I forgot to be embarrassed. I just laughed, the sound bursting out of me like a secret too big to hold.
And for the first time, I smiled--wide, stupid, unstoppable.
Jenn whooped and spun away, dragging Cassie into the churning crowd.
I stood still, hugging myself tight, feeling the pulse of music and life pounding against my skin.
Maybe I didn't belong here.
Maybe that was exactly why I was here.
Maybe, for once, it was okay to want to be seen.
Maybe, just maybe, it was okay to want more.2: Lost in the Madness
We pushed deeper into the crowd, swallowed by it like minnows caught in a flood.
Jenn's fingers were sweaty but sure, yanking me forward through the heaving, laughing, pulsing mass of bodies. Cassie whooped somewhere ahead, but her voice blurred into the roar of the street, impossible to pin down.
I clung tighter to Jenn's hand, weaving through swaying hips and swinging beads, until my arm felt ready to pull out of its socket.
Then--
A yank at my neck.
A stranger's hand caught the beads dangling over my chest and tugged hard, jolting me sideways.
I cried out, twisting away on reflex--
--and my hand slipped free of Jenn's.
Gone.
"Jenn?" I gasped, spinning around, panic already blooming cold and sharp under my ribs.
Faces. Costumes. Sweat-slicked skin. Neon glare. A hundred bodies between me and anything familiar.
"Jenn!" I shouted again, but the name shredded in the noise.
The crowd surged and twisted, and I was caught helplessly in the pull--
--swept off my feet.
My sneakers barely touched the sticky pavement. I was lifted, carried forward by the unstoppable shove of bodies, packed so tight I could feel every jostling elbow, every humid breath against my skin.
Hands brushed my sides, my back, my waist.
