Another Word For "Happy"

It’s funny how life occasionally brings us classic moments. I sit in my New Orleans hotel room after a long day on my feet (it was a long day on the rest of me, too!), and I am compelled by an incident that happened to me here in this city back in 2002 to share a story that begs to be told.

As part of my job, I had to capture video footage of New Orleans's most popular tourist attraction, Bourbon Street. The stupid part of it was that I was sent out in the afternoon to do it. My producer — who I usually refer to here as Producer, so as to avoid any confusion — went along with me to “help.”

We had worked a long morning, and we were both pretty hungry, so Producer suggested we stop for a bite to eat before we hit the strip. As is his usual, he’ll say something like that, and then say, “So what do you want?”

To which I usually reply, “I don’t care, whatever you want is fine with me.”

And he usually replies, “I don’t care, either…you pick.”

And usually, after I suppress the urge to kick him in the groin, I’ll make a suggestion, which he will reject because of any number of reasons: the place looks dirty (have you ever been to New Orleans before?!); it looks like they only serve seafood; he heard somebody say they didn’t care for their salad… you name it, he’ll find a reason not to go in there.

Out of necessity, we fairly quickly decided on a place on Convention Center Rd., called Mulate’s. As I recall, they seemed to specialize in Po’ Boy sandwiches, and, being fairly new to the New Orleans kitsch, I decided I would try me a shrimp Po’ Boy.

I don’t recall that the sandwich was anything to write about, but the food had come quickly enough. After the meal we scuttled back across the street to our designated edit room in the convention center and grabbed the camera. We hailed a cab and directed the driver to take us to the point where Bourbon Street Begins…or ends, depending on which side of your binge you’re on….

About twenty to thirty minutes into getting the various shots of anything interesting that we could shoot on a Sunday afternoon, I started getting bad abdominal cramps. I’ll never be certain if there was something wrong with the food we had at lunch or if the unseasonably warm temperatures caused my stomach upset, but after one of the shots I told Producer, “I’m gonna have to hit a bathroom soon.” We were about halfway down the “interesting” part of Bourbon Street.

With each establishment that we passed, Producer asked me if I wanted to go in there. I was holding off pretty well because I wasn’t too keen on using the facilities at any of the places along Bourbon Street (have you ever been to New Orleans before?!), but as we got to the end of the bars and souvenir shops, I said, “Okay, I cant wait any longer." We were steps away from the wide open doors of a bar, and we stepped inside. The air conditioning was on, and there were ceiling fans moving the cooled air around nicely. Producer took the camera from me, said he was dying for a beer, and asked me if I wanted something to drink. I said, “Coke,” and headed off toward the bathroom. On my way, I glanced up at the TV over the bar and noticed that it must have been tuned to HBO or some other movie channel, because a Julie Andrews musical number from the film Victor, Victoria was playing.

I stepped into the men’s room and was immediately dismayed that none of the toilet stalls had doors on them. If I have a true mental hang-up, it’s the absence of a door on any toilet stall I need to use. It stems from all the way back in kindergarten, when, at our school in which the bathroom toilet stalls did not have doors on them, two kids, Matt and Mark, used to torment me in the bathroom because, at age five, I still sat on the toilet to pee. That is the stuff that hang-ups are made of. You can imagine the hell that Air force basic training was for me…. but I digress.

There was no decision to make, as I was about to soil my underwear. I simply stepped to the nearest stall and went about my business. Sitting there after the first wave of “joy” passed, I saw a man enter the bathroom. He walked slowly and turned his head slightly in my direction, but turned left, away from me. Just before he turned to enter the side of the men’s room where the urinals were, he turned his head full-on and looked at me. HELLO! Do you mind? I'm poopin', here!

That was weird.

After the second wave passed, I noticed that the sound from the TV had changed, and Victor, Victoria had now been replaced with the goofy little musical number in the scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where Harvey Fierstein is giving make-up pointers to Robin Williams. Little things started falling into place in my head. The door-less toilet stalls; the lingering look from the guy who entered the bathroom after I had gotten down to business; two movies with cross-dressing as their major themes…. “Is this a gay bar?” I heard the voice in my head ask me. “Nah, must just be a coincidence,” the other voice answered. “Kill all of your co-workers,” said the third voice, but I’m usually able to tune that one out….

Meanwhile, out in the bar, Producer was sipping at his ice-cold bottle of beer, and he was just as perplexed when the Mrs. Doubtfire clip started up. Then he looked around and noticed that most of the bar patrons were men, and they all seemed to be paired off with each other, as were the only two women in the place. The other thing he noticed was that, to a person, everyone in the establishment was staring at him.

The weird guy in the bathroom (other than I) finished his business and stepped back around into my view. As he stepped toward the doorway out to the bar he gave me another lingering look. I had already instinctively covered up my privates, but in that moment, two thoughts formed very clearly in my head: I wish I had a third hand to help cover me; and this MUST be a gay bar!

Such a suspicion causes most straight men to pucker down below, and whether I felt I was finished or not, any further voiding was impossible. I quickly cleaned up, put myself back together, washed up and headed back out into the bar. Producer — who rarely carries anything for me — stood at the end of the bar holding my camera and a to-go cup of my Coke. A guy who really likes to savor his beer, Producer had already set his bottle on the bar, empty and still glistening with condensation. “Ready?” he asked me with odd strain in his voice.

“Yes!” I said, I’m certain with as much strain in mine.

I took the cup and the camera from his hands, and we both headed out the door. No more than five steps past the place, I said confidentially to Producer out of the corner of my mouth, “Was that a gay bar?”

With nervous exasperation, Producer said, “Yes!”

About five steps later we were both so doubled over in laughter and practically rolling in the gutter that passers-by must have thought we were still reveling from the night before…or starting early for the night to come! Talk about a couple of fish out of water!



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