It was a little after ten when Brian tiptoed through the dark hotel room to the foot of his parents' bed. "Dad." Too soft. He cleared his throat and said, "Dad."
His mother stirred. "Huh?"
"I'm going for a walk."
"What?"
"You said I could go for a walk around the French Quarter if I was packed and ready to go. I am."
His mother said, "I don't think so. It isn't safe."
"You said I could."
"Your father said you could. I say you can't."
His father said, "For God's sake, it's a Monday morning, not Mardi Gras." His dad looked at him. "Be back by noon. I mean it."
"I will!" He grabbed his wallet and headed for the door.
"Leave your wallet," his mother said. "Put your money in your sock so pickpockets don't get it.
"Pickpockets?" Brian asked.
"Jesus Christ," his exasperated father said. "How much money do you have?"
"A hundred and forty dollars."
"Let me see," his mother said, and made him count out the seven twenties.
His father said, "Come back with all of it. Don't go spending it on junk."
"I might stop and get some beignets."
"Fine. But that's it. And back by noon."
"Can I take the camera?"
His dad sighed. "OK."
He trotted through the door and it slid shut and there was silence, blessed silence.
He was free.
He jogged down the stairs and through the lobby and was on Rampart Street in fifteen seconds. Already the air was heavy and damp and he knew it would be another scorcher. But who cared about that now? He was on his own, a man about town, and what a town! New Orleans, the Big Easy. He could see himself back home in Pittsburgh, telling his buddies about the forbidden joys of the busiest street in the world, the one and only Bourbon Street.
The past week had been utter hell. They'd flown to Phoenix to spend time with Brian's grandparents. It should have been a lot of fun, golf and hiking and lounging in the pool, but a freak storm rained out two whole days, and then Brian came down with the flu. The trip was a complete loss.
His parents drove him nuts, he thought on purpose. He started college in the fall and they were still trying to get him to forget Penn State and go to Pitt. "If you went to Pitt, you could live here and take the bus to class," his mother said, unintentionally making the case against Pitt absolutely air-tight. All he had to do was convince them to let him go. The problem was, he had no idea how. and he didn't know if he had the guts to stand up to them.
He walked up St. Anne's Street and admired the pastel-painted houses and their formidable defenses. Every house was guarded by a tall wrought-iron fence, the tops of the fences festooned with barbed wire, metal spikes, even shards of broken glass. He grinned, thinking of some drunken slob, desperate for a quiet place to piss, climbing up and getting a very rude surprise at the top. He took pictures of the most lethal-looking contraptions and moved along.
Bourbon Street was mostly deserted but it was still a remarkable sight. He looked downtown and it stretched on forever, block after block after block, an vast avenue of full of forbidden delights. And he had two glorious hours to explore them.
It was already getting oppressively humid, and Brian paused in front of a saloon to soak up the freezing air blasting out of its open door. He walked a few feet and there was another bar, it's door open, sub-arctic air creating a cone of cold just outside the door. The frigid air felt wonderful on his skin.
It was too much to take in all at once. He walked past a karaoke bar, a souvenir shop, a three-star restaurant, and a place that sold all sorts of voodoo trinkets and other spooky stuff. And the chaotic jumble of bars and shops and restaurants continued to the horizon. There was this little hole in the wall, barely big enough for five people to stand in, that sold frozen daquiris. A pretty blonde girl with very large breasts and a tight T-shirt tended plastic tubs filled with different colored slurries. It was 10AM and she already had a half-dozen customers. Unreal.
He walked past a storefront and stopped cold. The sign said, "Nude Girls!", the two-word combination most likely to get the attention of an 18-year-old boy. It was a strip joint, obviously, a low-rent, seedy place with a bright green awning over the doorway. The entrance was covered by thick plastic slats, the kind that keep the cold inside a meat locker.
"Nice place," he murmured to himself, trying to imagine the goings-on in a place like this. His mother would literally kill him if he went in a place like this, actually break his neck and dump his body in the woods. Even if she saw him looking at it she'd flip. He thought about taking a picture, just to freak her out, but he knew better. Freaking out Mom was a losing game.
He remembered that ghastly day when his mother walked in on him masturbating in the bathroom. Did she turn away in embarrassment, or run away screaming? No. She grabbed him by the arm, dragged him down to the car, Brian desperately trying to pull his pants up, and took him to see their parish priest. There he was subjected to an hour-long lecture on the evils of self-abuse by a 65-year-old man who probably hadn't had an erotic thought in his life. Father Walter, perpetually befuddled, oblivious to the outside world, telling Brian about how spilling his seed on the ground was a ticket to eternal damnation. That's the phrase he used, spilling his seed.
