S.E.C.R.E.T. (Secret 1)

For the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, the whole city of New Orleans takes on the spirit of a bride making last-minute preparations for her big day. No matter that the festivities take place this year, and next year, and every year, each Mardi Gras feels like the last, best one.

When I first moved here, I was fascinated by the krewes, the groups, some ancient, some modern, that put on the balls and built the floats for Mardi Gras parades. Mostly, I wondered why you’d spend so much of your spare time sewing costumes and gluing sequins. But after living here for a few years I began to understand the fatalistic nature of the average New Orleanian. People in this city tend to live and love vividly for today.

Even if I had wanted to join a krewe, many of the older ones—with names like Proteus, Rex and Bacchus—were downright impossible to get into, unless your bloodline was that of Bayou royalty. But nearing the end of my time with S.E.C.R.E.T., I began to feel that strong tug to belong to someone or something—which is, after all, the only antidote to loneliness. I was starting to see that melancholy isn’t romantic. It’s just a prettier word for depression.

In the month before Mardi Gras, I couldn’t walk down a street in Marigny or Tremé, let alone the French Quarter, without envying those sewing circles gathered on a porch, hand-stitching sparkly costumes and securing sequins to elaborate masks or sky-high feathered headdresses. Other nights, I’d take a run through the Warehouse District and spot, through a crack in a door, spray-painters in masks putting the finishing touches on a vivid float. My heart would skip a beat and I was able to let in a little joy.

But there was one event that struck my heart with sheer, unadulterated terror: the annual Les Filles de Frenchmen Revue, a Mardi Gras burlesque show featuring the women who worked at the bars and restaurants in Marigny. It was considered a sexy way for our neighborhood to celebrate, and every year Tracina, one of the lead organizers, perfunctorily asked if I wanted to participate. Every year I said no. Unequivocally no. Will allowed Les Filles to use the second floor of the Café to rehearse their dances, never failing to mention that if twenty girls can stomp around upstairs without falling through the ancient floorboards, surely twenty customers quietly sitting and eating wouldn’t pose any danger either.

This year, not only did Tracina fail to ask me to participate, she also bowed out of the revue herself, citing family obligations. Will told me her brother’s condition was getting more complicated to deal with as he hit adolescence, something I tried then to keep in mind whenever I was on the cusp of criticizing her.

I was surprised when Will put the gears to me about joining Les Filles.

“Come on, Cassie. Who’s going to represent Café Rose at the Revue?”

“Dell. She has really nice legs,” I said, avoiding eye contact with him while wiping down the coffee station.

“But—”

“No. That’s my final answer.” I dumped the tray of empty milk cart

ons into the trash to punctuate my decision.

“Coward,” Will teased.

“I’ll have you know, Mr. Foret, that I’ve done a few things this year that would set your teeth chattering. It just so happens that I know the limits of my courage. And that means not shaking my tits at a crowd of drunk men.”

The night of the Revue, I was closing the Café for Tracina for the second time that week. At eight o’clock sharp, while turning over the chairs to do the mopping, I heard the dancers upstairs practicing one last time—a dozen graceful ponies set loose above my head. I could hear each “Fille” perform her individual routine for the group to raucous laughter, hooting and whistling. Those familiar feelings of loneliness and inferiority returned to me then, along with the thought that I’d be ridiculed if I ever attempted such a thing. At thirty-five, almost thirty-six, I’d be the oldest dancer next to Steamboat Betty and Kit DeMarco. Kit was a bartender from the Spotted Cat, who at forty-one could still pull off a blue pixie hair-do and denim cutoffs. Steamboat Betty manned the antique cigarette booth at Snug Harbor and performed every year wearing the same burlesque outfit she claimed to have worn for thirty-six years in a row, never failing to boast that it still—sort of—fit her. Plus, there was no way I could dance next to Angela Rejean, a statuesque Haitian goddess who worked as a hostess at Maison and was a jazz singer on the side. Her body was so perfect that it made being jealous kind of pointless.

After completing my shut-down duties, I headed upstairs to hand the keys to Kit, who had offered to lock up after they were done. The review didn’t start until after 10 p.m. The girls would rehearse up until the last minute, and in the meantime, I wanted to go home and shower off the day. I had hoped to see Will at the show, but earlier in the day, when I asked him if he and Tracina were going to attend the event, he had shrugged noncommittally.

At the top of the stairs, I stepped past a new girl, with blond corkscrew curls, sitting cross-legged on the floor holding a hand-mirror. She was applying false eyelashes with expert precision. I couldn’t tell if her hair was a wig or real, but it was mesmerizing. A dozen more girls in various stages of undress were sitting or standing about, all getting ready for the big night, coats piled on the old mattress Will kept on the floor and sometimes slept on. Besides the mattress, the only other furniture up here was a broken wooden chair, which I’d sometimes find Will straddling, lost in thought, his chin resting on the back. The Café was a big empty space, perfect for a temporary rehearsal room. We closed early, were only a few doors down from the Blue Nile, which was hosting the event this year, and the bathroom upstairs was brand-new, though still lacking a door. Several women, one topless, were craning around the bathroom mirror, taking turns applying stage makeup. Curling irons and hair straighteners were plugged in everywhere. Bright costumes, feather boas and masks added festivity to the usually dull, gray room.

I found Kit, in a strapless bra and stockings, tapping out a dance sequence, her costume hanging on the exposed brick wall like a piece of art. She had had it specially made, a white lace bodice on a black satin backdrop, with scalloped pink trim around the sweetheart-cut front-piece. The laces up the back were pink too. I reached out to touch it, but shuddered when my fingers brushed the satin, memories of being blindfolded returning to me in a hot rush. I could never pull off what Kit and the rest of the girls were about to do in front of a room full of people—not without a blindfold.

“Hey, Cass. Make sure you thank Will for letting us stay after closing. I’ll get the keys back to you at the Blue Nile,” she said, not missing a beat with her feet. “You’re coming tonight, right?”

“I never miss it.”

“You should dance with us one year, Cassie,” yelled Angela from the cluster of girls crowding the washroom.

I felt flattered by her attention, but said, “I’d make a total fool of myself.”

“You’re supposed to make a fool of yourself. That’s what makes it sexy,” she crooned.

The other women laughed and nodded while Kit gave me a little shake of her behind. “Do dykes normally dress like this?” Kit asked me teasingly.

When she came out a couple of years ago, the only person who was surprised was Will. “Typical hetero,” Tracina had said, rolling her eyes at him. “Just because she dresses sexy, you think it’s all for male attention.”

Kit had begun dressing sexier after she came out and got a steady girlfriend. And tonight she had drawn a mole by her mouth and was wearing false eyelashes and the reddest shade of lipstick I’d ever seen. She’d grown the blue pixie cutout into a longer, very attractive shag. Still, her exaggerated girlishness contrasted with her trademark cowboy boots and the black terry-cloth sweatbands that she always wore around both wrists.

“Maybe I’ll join you guys next year, Kit,” I said, kind of meaning it.

“Promise?”

“No.” I laughed.

I wished the girls luck and ducked down the stairs, but at the bottom, I realized that I had forgotten to hand Kit the keys! As I turned to run back up, I smashed headlong into Kit herself, who was heading down, probably having had the same realization. Instead of bouncing off me, she completely lost her footing and slid down the last five steps, landing butt first on the hard tile floor. Luckily, I was wearing sneakers.