The truck, along with my plans, gave out just north of Canton Mississippi.
I had been fantasizing about this trip south for at least five years. Growing up within shouting distance of the Canadian border in frostbitten upper Michigan, which I couldn't wait to leave, I had managed to at least get into university in big-time Chicago, which got me a little bit, at least a couple states' worth, closer to my cock-stiffening objective.
I had wanted, like forever, to go to Mardi Gras in that great Oz city of New Orleans. Every winter I dreamed about warm breezes off the Gulf of Mexico, a beer in hand in the French Quarter, babes draping their bare boobs, released from their shirts, out over second-story balconies while drunken guys threw strings of brightly colored beads at them in return, a whole city in full-party, all-rules-left-behind mode. It just couldn't possibly get any better than that.
Well maybe if I hooked up with a frisky, local, bourbon-marinated wench for the evening that would ice the cake. Actually wouldn't even need to be local.
But every year one thing or another – money, bad timing, bad weather, some wild-ass girlfriend who didn't fancy me making the trip down there solo – kept me away, but this year I was going, hell or high water.
I had saved up seven hundred bucks and was determined to blow it all in fine style. My cock had been erect the entire month beforehand just for thinking of the trip, and then after eleven plus hours on the road my miserable, fucking, ten-year old Nissan truck decides to crap out on me in god-forsaken Mississippi.
It had been running unevenly for awhile, the speedo pegging itself one moment, then everything hiccuping another, and I finally had to call it serious over with just outside Canton.
The guy at the gas station said no one in town would be able to do a decent job diagnosing and fixing it, so I had the thing towed to what he said was a good Nissan place in Jackson, which passed as the nearest city.
It finally got dropped off outside the closed gates of Ron's Autoservice near ten PM, so I would have to make arrangements first thing the next morning. I found a cheap old rundown hotel in the town center and wasn't exactly Mr. Happy Camper checking in.
Already I was spending money on staying somewhere other than New Orleans, and I didn't even know how many bucks the car was going to eat up before getting fixed. The prospects of getting to New Orleans before Fat Tuesday were vanishing before my eyes.
The girl who checked me in at the hotel didn't need to be very bright to figure out my mood. She was polite enough, thankfully, not to inquire too deeply into my scene, but I ended up telling her anyway, my face and agitated words revealing far more of my disappointment than I intended. She was maybe twenty, slender, nothing special, but she seemed to understand my frustration.
Her light brown hair was back in a bun, but she kept pushing a wayward strand of hair back behind her right ear while she listened to me.
"You know, we got our own decent Mardi Gras here in town," she said in that sing-song lilt that doesn't exist in the Northlands. "It's not New Orleans but it's a pretty good parade."
"How long does it go?" I went, skeptical.
"The whole of downtown, six whole blocks long."
Pretty much as I figured. Jackson, from what I had seen of it, seemed provincial even by Michigan standards, and I didn't bother to disguise my snort of disgust.
"I suppose they have the 4-H Club and the local SPCA in the thing too? Maybe even floats from the Kiwanis club?" I said, making a face. I had wanted dancing girls in thongs, their tits barely covered by wisps of feathers, while they shook their asses back and forth to drunken, appreciative hoots of male delight.
She looked a bit wounded, and I regretted my retort.
"Well, if you don't get to New Orleans, you still may want to check it out," she said. "You might be surprised. Starts around five in the afternoon while it is still light and goes on past dark."
I got my key and headed towards the stairs to my second story room.
"Do you go?" I asked, turning around, "or do you have to work that night?"
"Well, I do work that night, but not here," she replied, with a look that didn't invite any more inquiries.
I stomped up the stairs, dropped my bags and planted myself face-first on the lumpy bed, feeling as low as I had in a long time.
Sure enough the next morning, Monday, Ron's garage checked out my truck, and it needed a new "computer," the black box that apparently ran everything. Would set me back four hundred plus big ones and the part would come in Wednesday at the earliest. God fucking dammit.
I contemplated getting on a bus to New Orleans and trying to find a place halfway near the French Quarter but gave up that idea fairly quickly. It would be late Monday by the time I pulled in at best, and I might make it there for Fat Tuesday, but I knew whatever lodgings were close to the action would be expensive if available at all, since I had planned on staying a ways out of town on the cheap and driving into the city.
And my money, diminished by the truck repair, wouldn't stretch that far anyway. So I stewed around Jackson, trying one wretched bar after another, each sleazier and more local and more disappointing than the one before. I finally bought myself a burger and fries at Wendy's, then took that and a six-pack of Dixie back to the room.
Although I had been hoping to see the girl from yesterday at the desk, it was a guy, and not a friendly type, so I went upstairs and polished off the beer while watching stupid stuff on TV. I slept until noon the next day, not feeling all that great when I surfaced. The morning of Fat Tuesday arrived with a hangover, the order inverted as far as I was concerned.
Another walk around dismal Jackson was enough to drive me back into the hotel room and the TV for the afternoon. Finally as the sunlight started to slant into long shadows, I heard some music coming from downtown and figured I would go see what Jackson had to offer as a consolation prize.
Two things struck me right away. The first was that the crowd was much larger than I expected. It was shirt-sleeve weather and hordes of folks were out, all laughing and hollering and the women looked fine and the men were drinking and happy. The second was that the parade was fantastic!
I slithered my way up close to the action as the first band came by, playing a samba with loud driving drums that signaled serious party time. Some dancers came by, barely covered with feathers and slivers of fabric that did not require much imagination on my part to guess what was underneath.
Hot damn! Who would have thought that a place like Jackson could produce these handsome folks? Some girls were thin and small, others tall and angular, and there were some large wenches in colorful thongs who shook their ample rumps, their breasts bobbing around inside of whatever devices were there to try to contain them, but Newtonian physics seemed to work here as well as anywhere, and shaking made flesh move around, until the forces of stopping and starting made wonderful sights and I felt my groin tightening.
Well, the thing went on for hours. It was dark when it all finally began to wind down, and while my informant was correct, that it was only six blocks long, it didn't matter since the parade kept circling back, and you saw the same dancers and musicians more than once.
One group, Debbie Hurst and the Double-D Dixie Cups was fabulous. Debbie herself was slender and small, belting out old blues songs, but she was surrounded by a half dozen dancers, every one of them with some serious meat on their chests. My eyes ping-ponged back and forth, up and down, as they moved about.
Another band of dancers, the Sambassadors, were also tremendous, a mixed race crew of about ten women, all slender, all decked out in feathery wisps of costumes, and they moved with such sensual abandon I was transfixed. They had huge waving headdresses and long feathery costumes, and legs gyrating and asses hanging out, making movements that would have made a dead man's cock hard.
