The Mardi Gras Trip 1983

                                               The Mardi Gras Trip 1983

                                                 A really unique experience

                                                       A Dracula in Drag

                                                       Written 2/11/2015

                                                          Howard Yasgar

    It was in January 1983 when my wife Katherine asked me where I was taking her for her birthday supper.

    Katherine’s birthday was on February 9, which is just around Mardi Gras time in New Orleans.

    It also happens that New Orleans was one of her very favorite places to visit.

    So, I suggested that we go to New Orleans for her birthday, not only could we celebrate her birthday there with excellent Cajun cooking, but we could celebrate Mardi Gras with the thousands of other crazy people that converge on New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras.

    In 1983, Mardi Gras was to end on February 18, so we knew looking for a room there might be difficult at such a late date.

    As it happens, we had been to New Orleans the previous year with our good friends Miguel Marquez and Raquel Roque.

    Both Miguel and Raquel were Cuban refugees, that came from small towns in Cuba

and neither  of them had ever experienced anything as wild as Mardi Gras.

    So once we knew Miguel and Raquel were coming with us, Katherine started looking for a place to stay.

    Trying to find rooms in New Orleans at Mardi Gras time is quite a task, as all the good balcony rooms overlooking Bourbon Street are booked years in advance.

    The best we could hope for was possibly finding a vacancy in a hotel on a side street.

    It wasn’t easy but somehow, Katherine managed to do it.   

    Katherine had somehow not only found a room for us, but she found a suite, that had ample room for our friends Miguel and Raquel.

    The suite Katherine located was at the Le Richelieu Hotel on 1234 Chartres Street in the French quarter, it was about two blocks from all the action on Bourbon Street.

    When we arrived we found out that the suite Katherine had reserved was actually the bridal suite, as nice a place you could ever find in New Orleans.

    Now, the reason I am mentioning our 1982 Mardi Gras experience now, is because it was the first time we were ever in New Orleans on the last day of Mardi Gras when it is at its wildest.

    So in 1982, besides from the hundreds of inebriated people throwing beads down to the crowds, there were many hundreds of people that were dressed in costume.

    Seeing all the people dressed in costumes and having so much fun, gave me an idea.

    I thought, wouldn’t it be wild for us to come to Mardi Gras and do it in a costume.

    So, here I was, a conservative person, coming from the small town of Westville, a suburb of New Haven Connecticut, and I was thinking about doing Mardi Gras in costume,

    Dressing in a costume for Mardi Gras was just not something that I would ever have ever considered before.

    The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

    As I was growing up, I always knew that I would enjoy play acting, but my coming from a small town in Connecticut, I knew that I probably would never, ever have an opportunity to do anything like that.

    So when we were considering going to Mardi Gras in 1983, I broached the subject with Katherine about doing it in costume, and she didn’t say no.

    She did ask what kind of  costume I was considering.

    I told her, that a couple of years earlier I had attended a dance school and they had a end of year costume party.

    As I had no costume for the party, and I had no intention of renting one, I came up with an idea.

    I was 6 foot two, with jet black hair, so I bought a women’s ruffled shirt, put on black pants and black shoes, then I slicked my hair back, got a set of plastic Dracula fangs and a little fake blood dripping from my mouth, and I was Dracula.

    I showed my wife a picture of me as Dracula, and I suggested that I would do it again for Mardi Gras and she could dress as a vampires.

    The idea took hold.

    There was a restaurant we frequented, near where we lived, it was called 36 West.

    The bar maid Susan, was a former June Taylor dancer, and when we told her about the costume idea, she loved it, and it just happened that her mother was a seamstress.

    Susan’s mom made me the most beautiful black satin cape with red interior and she made a beautiful white satin cape for Katherine.               

    I then bought a long sleeved ruffled woman’s shirt.

    I had the same black pants, black shoes and Dracula fangs from before.

    We decided Katherine was to be dressed all in white, and I had a long leash to lead her around with.

    Before we left, we tried on our costumes, and I had an idea.

    I knew New Orleans had a large gay community, we would always watch as they would throw beaded necklaces to the crowds.

    So I bought some balloons and I put two of them  under my ruffled shirt, and thus I became a Dracula in Drag.

    Some how Katherine did it and she again got us a room at the Le Richelieu hotel.

    I remember the first morning we woke up, we looked out our window to see around 20 gay men roller skating down the Chartres street with beautiful colored chiffon butterfly wings, and they were wearing only jock straps.

    That evening, as it got dark, we changed into out costumes and hit the streets with the crowds.

    We were a big hit, it seemed like everyone wanted pictures of us.

    As we walked along Bourbon street, all the people on the balconies were throwing down necklaces and  yelling, “Show your Tits”.

     I did my best to accommodate them, opening my cape.

    It was the best Mardi Gras ever.

    As we were in the plane flying home, to Miami, I was reading the editorial in the New Orleans Times Picayune newspaper.

    It said, Mardi Gras 1983 was sensational, and they had even spotted a Dracula

in drag on Bourbon Street.

    Hey, that was us.