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THE MAD SCRAMBLE IN THE BIG EASY
This month, I am writing to you from the original city of sin: New Orleans. As such, this month you are reading Keepin’ It Sleazy with EZ Breezy in the Big Easy – try saying that five times fast. Being in one of the most beautiful, vibrant and notoriously decadent cities in the world is an excellent way to gain some new perspective on sex.
The image one might conjure if you’ve never been here is one of booze, beads and breasts à la Mardi Gras, but New Orleans is a thriving tourist destination year-round. Wherever tourists have round-the-clock access to drinks as large as toddlers, there is an all-pervading sense of unresolved lust in the air. Seeking relief from the wet summer heat, you end up quickly identifying which bars have the best air conditioning and it’s in those places – cigarette and two dollar PBR in hand – where you see the most universal of barroom experiences.
Local bartenders call it “The Mad Scramble,” a time of the evening where self-respecting drunks looking for love realize that the “now or never” policy has come into effect. Fumbling attempts to make a connection in a haze of 3oz shots become more frantic and eyes eagerly scan the room for others doing the same. Back in Calgary, this time usually comes around 1 a.m., an hour before last call, but where there is no last call it’s probably closer to 2 or 3. Finding courage in desperation and possessed by lust, these people wander the bar like wobbly zombies, only instead of brains, they want to eat your… ahem. It’s really an amazing thing to watch! You’re sitting there, contemplating whether your liver will ever recover from this vacation, and all of a sudden there’s a tangible shift. It’s as real a phenomenon in a French Quarter dive as it is in any busy 17th Avenue pub and, yet, we never think of it in these conscious, linear terms.
To take a line from the good advice gospel of How I Met Your Mother, “When 2 a.m. rolls around, just go home and go to sleep… The decisions you make are the wrong decisions.” If you are selecting somebody to make sweet love to at four in the goddamn morning, you are probably going to regret it. You might break something. You might have to take a break to vomit. Perhaps you’re going to get chlamydia, or you’re going to accidentally unleash your fetish for balloon animals on some unwitting stranger. Most importantly, you are going to be very bad at sex. Nobody is good at sex after 18 shots of Jameson.
I think it’s nice that you can go anywhere and feel at home, even if it’s just because the pursuit of casual sex looks virtually identical. As such, the advice is the same. You’re drunk. Nobody worth banging is left at the bar. Just go the fuck home, guys. You won’t regret it.
By EZ Breezy
