A Night of Regrets
It’s late March on a Saturday night in the French Quarter, and my mask wraps crooked around my mouth like a thin slice of raw pork, soggy with my own spit and sweat. The results of screaming for the last two hours. One tour down, one more to go. My left pocket is stuffed with tips, but my jaw aches and my throat is killing me. Telling stories for hours straight night after night in the quarter is never easy, but man, if you want a challenge try doing it with fabric strapped over your talking hole. Especially when you have to shout loud enough to make yourself heard over the endless parade of tourists, most of whom are howling into the night with naked mouths and liquored up tongues. The quarter is packed to the brim with people trying to make up for the year they lost. My busted ankle throbs from constantly having to maneuver around them.
But the real issue isn’t my body. Not my ankle, my throat, or my jaw. No the real issue is my mind, which feels foggy, used up, and burnt out.
You could leave all this and find a real job, one with benefits and a chance of upward mobility, instead of endlessly reciting the same ghost stories over and over while foolishly holding onto this lottery ticket of a successful writing career…
I approach my next group who are standing patiently on the curb of St. Peter Street waiting for me to dazzle them. Instead, I tell them to put on their masks and keep them on for the remainder of the tour.
“Why do we have to wear our masks when no one else is?” A tall man with blonde hair and a cute girlfriend asks. The rest of the group nod their head at this, because it’s a fair question, and one I’ve had to answer for an entire month now, when this new madness first began.
It was four weeks ago, after all, when the vaccine was still in its infancy, that the governors of Florida, Mississippi and Texas rolled the dice and declared covid officially over, unleashing thousands of Mad Max-esque caravans of people over to our city to celebrate the good news and perhaps infect us with their lunacy.
“Because we’re licensed by the city, that’s why. Don’t worry, after your third drink you’ll forget it’s even there,” I assure them, even though we all know this is a lie.
Just then, a large, anxious mother cuts in between me and my group, marching toward the darkness while pulling her small son along with her.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand! It’s dangerous here!” she screams at him before they exit stage left.
I watch my group take this in before they look around at the rest of the chaos. Here I have the first glimmer of hope for the night. My group looks genuinely confused and concerned about what’s happening right now. Normally a pub crawl group thrives on chaos and would be screaming with the rest of the hooligans. The fact that they are quiet and concerned is a huge win for me. With my shot voice and broken brain, I need this low energy to continue throughout the tour.
But there’s an issue, of course. I’m missing a group of five that have not yet arrived. That scares the hell out of me because I know in my condition an extra group of five can only make things worse. I need to get my group out of here before the late comers show up.
“YOOOO!!! WHERE ALL THE GHOSTS AND SHIT!?”
I hear this warcry from behind me and I beg the gods above that it’s just some passing drunk talking shit. But then I feel a poke to the back of my shoulder, and I turn around to find a young latino man with a gold chain around his neck and four friends by his side. He introduces himself as Mikey and asks if they’re at the right spot. I look at the reservation on his phone and confirm with a sigh that they are. Here is my missing group of five; three guys, two girls, all young and hammered and ready to hit the streets.
“LET’S FUCKING DO THIS!!!”
Fuck. I am fucked.
I instruct my new recruits to join the rest of my tour at the curb and watch as they instantly mutate the dynamic of the group, jumping around and cracking jokes and bringing some real energy to the table.
Oh crap…
And then, something stirs from deep inside me, something dark and sinister, and before I can even register what this is exactly, words come out of me like small incremental bursts of fire.
“Alright motherfuckers!… Shut the fuck up and listen!… This is a fucking pub crawl!… We are going to drink! We are going to hear ghost stories, and YOU will all piss your pants in fear! The only thing I ask, try not to get yourself killed before the tour is over. Now let’s fucking go!”
The group goes wild at this, and I hear Mikey with the gold chain telling his friends that their tour guide is “LIT”. If by lit he means exhausted to the point of delusional, then yes, I’m lit alright.
FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE
Our first stop of the night is a restaurant/bar at the corner crust of Bourbon. Their drink special is something called Raspberry Mountain, a delicious concoction of raspberries, lemons, and strawberries fused with vodka. It’s my favorite drink of the tour, and it’s also my favorite stop on the tour, because they have a private back room upstairs where I can tell my story in relative peace. I shouldn’t have to explain by now that in these conditions, peace is priceless. It’s fucking gold.
I’m just about to enter the restaurant when I find a young man coming toward me trying to get my attention. Although I don’t recognize him, I can tell by his clothes and the license pinned to his black vest that he’s a fellow tour guide.
“Hey man, watch yourself out there.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s another crazy night.”
“No, I mean the taxi cab bureau. They’re out tonight, cracking down on us.”
I look at him dubiously. For years there have been rumors about the TCB patrolling the quarter, but I’ve never once actually seen them.
“No, I’m telling you,” he says to me, picking up on my doubt. “I saw them with my own eyes. They interrupted my tour and gave my group a warning about blocking the sidewalk, and they checked to make sure I had my license.”
“No shit! You saw them, they actually talked to you?”
“Yup. I just thought you should know because…”, he points at my vest now before walking away, with his sizable group following behind him like ducklings.
I stand there for a second, confused by his last words. Why did he point to my vest? I look down at it now and make a terrifying discovery. My license. It’s nowhere on my person. Holy fuck. It’s a five hundred dollar fine for not having your license during your tour. I check my pockets even though I know for sure it’s not there. I curse again when I find it’s not there. It must have fallen off at some point during my last tour. Of course this happens tonight of all nights. Over the years the risk of being fined for not having your license seemed to be an empty threat, but the taxi cab bureau is actually here tonight. (If you are wondering why the taxi cab bureau is in charge of enforcing the rules of walking tour guides, all I can tell you is, welcome to New Orleans. Nothing makes sense here.) The fact that they are out patrolling tonight after years of taking a holiday just shows how finally, after all these decades of madness, the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum. But what’s far worse is now I have to worry for the next two hours about getting busted for missing my license, as if I didn’t have enough on my mind.
Oh well, I think, at least I have this first story that I can tell inside, safely away from the crowds and the enforcers.
“Yo, Tour Guide Randy!” Mikey screams from behind, “Are we gonna get some drinks or what?!”
We walk into the restaurant/bar and I find the manager’s eyes immediately upon me and a screwed-up smirk on his face. I don’t like this. This guy is relatively new at the job, and he doesn’t seem to care for tour groups the way the last manager did, and I don’t want his smile to be connected to me in any kind of way.
“I’m sorry sir,” he tells me, “but the upstairs area is reserved tonight for a private party. You’ll have to take your group elsewhere to tell your little story.”
I do everything I can to restrain myself from strangling this man.
“Can we still get drinks down here?” I motion to the bar next to us.
“Of course sir, just try to be quick about it, we are clearly busy as you can see.”
Motherfucker, after all the business I bring in…
I instruct my group to go ahead and order their drinks at the bar and they quickly comply, with the group of late comers immediately hijacking one of the corners of the bar.
While my group orders from the bar, I beeline it to the bathroom, find the sink, and splash cold water on my face. I look at myself in the mirror like I’m a detective in some tired Hollywood thriller and I actually talk to myself.
“You can do this. Just two more hours and you’re done. You can do this. Just avoid the cops and the crowds as best you can and get the job done.”
As I look at the reflection of my weary eyes, the key to my salvation hits me. A nice cold beer. Something dark and strong. That’s exactly what I need.
I approach the bar and get the bartender’s attention. After I order, I watch the bartender go off to the beer taps, and then the manager approaches and whispers something in his ear.
“Hey there, mister tour guide,” one of the women in the group of late comers- who I later learn is named Jazmin- a short, latina woman, says as she approaches me at the bar, “is it always this crazy here?”
I laugh at this the way a madman might laugh at his own joke and tell her no, it’s not. I tell her about the slow months, the empty months of the quarter, when the rats took over Bourbon Street and the tour guides took over the rest. Then I go on an unwise tirade about a certain three states that turned us into a carnival of extraordinary mayhem.
“At least you’re making good money again,” she points out. I nod in agreement and realize how right she is. Obviously I should be grateful for the income, but sometimes there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing.
“I get it,” she says, “money is great, but people suck.”
I laugh hard at this and nod again. Too true. This is when she tells me her name is Jazmin and she’s from Los Angeles, just like all her other friends here. She has kind eyes and a friendly demeanor. A tinge of guilt hits me, as I realize that maybe I judged this group of late comers too harshly. Of course, the real test will be during the first story I tell…
The bartender returns and places a beer in front of me, before meekly sliding a bill across the bar.
“What’s this?”
“That’s how much you owe. Manager says no more free drinks.”
I look over at the manager, who is purposely looking away, but that shitty ass smirk is still on his face and somehow pointed right at me.
That motherfucker. Getting a free drink on the job is one of the few signs of respect and gratitude we tour guides get. You bring in a tour? Here, have one on the house! But of course that ends tonight.
I feel myself becoming a hot little pepper now. After years of talking them up and bringing them business, this weasley asshole is gonna do this to me? On this goddamn night of all nights?! I feel an eruption coming on. All my anger and frustration of the rest of the night, and month, is dying to come out and react to this slight. And it is here, during this imminent hissy fit, that I have that same thought about quitting. Only this time it’s far more intense. I need to quit this job and find something real.
In the middle of this revelation, a ten dollar bill slides into view. I look to find Jazmin with a big smile on her face.
“Let me and my friends buy you your drink.”
I thank her profusely and snap back into professional mode before addressing the rest of my group.
“Alright guys, let’s get the hell out of here and go hear about some motherf’ing ghosts!”
FINDING YOUR STAGE
Any tour guide worth their salt knows that half the battle of the job is finding a decent stage to tell your story. Now, by stage I just mean finding a place that is somewhat quiet and away from other tour groups, which is no easy task on a weekend night. That’s why that private room upstairs is always so clutch for my first story. Without it, I’m gonna have to improvise, which means walking far enough away from Bourbon Street until the roar of the drunks is considerably duller. Luckily, I have just a spot in mind. It’s up and to the right on Dauphine Street where the street lights are out for half a block and all the little stores are closed at this hour, so it’s fantastically dark, practically the shadow realm of the quarter. Not a great place to be alone at three in the morning, but for a tour guide who is trying to hide from the taxi cab bureau, the tourists, and his own life, it’s perfect.
Now I have three different versions of my first story, each one to be used depending on my current situation. The first is a nice slow burn where I give a quick history of the French settlers who established the colony in 1718 and what their intentions were, how they wanted to build a colony right next to the river for sea trading, but all the land was swamp and marsh which made it incredibly hard to build a settlement, and from there I’ll go into all the good and bad decisions they made that eventually led to the great fire of 1794. I’ll use this version if I have a nice chill group on some idle Tuesday.
The second version I start out hot with termite season, describing the biblical locust that hits us every year, thousands of flying termites attacking our lights and windows and how that led us to use cypress wood to build our colony because it had a special oil in that wood that termites didn’t like so they wouldn’t eat it. I’ll tell this version if my group is a bit rowdy, or the night a bit raucous, because it starts off exciting and continues to climb.
And finally, I have my third version where I cut straight to the action of the great fire of 1794 where we discover that the cypress wood we used to build the colony burns twice as fast as normal wood thanks to that special oil inside. I guess you could call this the Michael Bay version of the story and I only use it when the night is hell and I need to grab the attention of a bunch of ADD-addled drunks.
Tonight, I open with the third version. And my group eats it up. Well mostly just the late comers, the rest sort of just stand back and listen politely, but the late comers really get into it. They scream at the miles of burning buildings I create around them, they gasp at the poor burning souls of men, women and children that I pull up on stage, and they shudder at the ghost I conjure up in the distance, the spirit of the frantic mother still roaming the streets, looking for her newborn that was lost in the fire.
“Fuck yeah, Randy! That’s a fucking ghost story!” Mikey shouts, while the rest of his group beat their chest in agreement. For the first time that night, I feel a little good about things.
FRIENDSHIPS ARE MADE
The second stop of the tour is located at the outer limits of the quarter, right up against Rampart Street. It’s a beer bar, so I tell my group to be brave and order a beer they never had before. I grab a seat at one of the outdoor patio tables and take a breather. I assess the situation so far. I’ve finished the first story without incident. Great. My group is a bit rowdy, but nothing too bad so far (of course, that can always change with each new drink). I just have to do two things to make things stay okay. One, keep up my energy for the next ninety minutes, using my anger as fuel, always a reliable trick for a tour guide, and two, don’t get caught by the taxi cab bureau. With this in mind, I peer down Rampart Street, looking for any enforcers. But that’s when it hits me that I have no idea what the agents of the Taxicab Bureau look like, because like I said, I’ve never seen them before out here on the streets. Part of me pictures men in yellow and black checkerboard jackets, with mirrored sunglasses and toothpicks in their mouths. But of course, the truth is they could look like anyone, which makes the game that much more dangerous for me…
In any case, as I’m looking for possible suspects, I notice two people walking away from both me and the bar. Even from the back, I realize they are one of the couples on my tour. They are leaving the tour without even telling me. Fantastic. Just fantastic. It’s ridiculous to take this personally, but that’s exactly what I do.
As I watch them leave, I find myself envious. How nice it must be to be able to leave this city whenever they want. As much as I love this swamptown, sometimes, like now, I feel stuck in it, feel like I’m squandering my life. I wonder what city my two escapees are from, I wonder what kind of life awaits them back home, and I wonder if I had their life, would I be happier than I am now?
“Hey man, mind if I join you?” I look up and find Mikey again, smiling and holding a bottle of Purple Haze, a raspberry beer that I personally love. I’m not much for fruit beers, but I love a good Purple Haze.
“Sure,” I tell him, “by all means.”
He takes a seat on one of the other wrought iron chairs and to my surprise he pulls out another Purple Haze from his jacket pocket and hands it to me.
“Got you one too, homie.”
“Aw, thanks man, that’s so kind of you,” I say, my words soaked in an absurd amount of gratitude, as if he had just given me a new car or a nice big hug. I blush a little at this, embarrassed by how emotional I’m getting over a free beer.
“Sorry, it’s just been a long day,” I awkwardly apologize.
“Don’t worry about it,” he tells me with a laugh and a smile. I notice here that he has the same kind eyes as his friend, Jazmin. In fact, now that I think about it, there’s something about both of them I find very comforting. Sometimes you find people on your tours that you instantly click with, and amazingly enough, on this shit night, that seems to be happening now.
We take a moment to enjoy our beers, and I watch him look over across the street to the gated park that’s all lit up.
“That a park?” he asks me.
“Yeah,” I tell him, in between sips, “actually, fun fact about that park. Somewhere in there is a place called Congo Square. Back before the Civil War, that’s where slaves would go to have fun when they weren’t working, a place away from all the white people. That’s where they would go to play music and dance. They began to come up with a lot of improvisational dance and music there, some even say they created the first seeds of what would later become jazz.”
“No shit? Right over there?”
“Yup. No one’s exactly sure where the square was, but there are theories.”
“Man this city is a trip.”
“Sure is. My favorite city of all time.”
“I believe that. The way you talk about the city and tell her stories, I can tell you love it here.”
“I do. And thanks for saying that.”
“I’m serious, you’re doing a great job, no bullshit. You’re really good. Really, really good.”
I just nod my head at this and sip my beer, fighting the tears forming at the corners of my eyes. God I’m such a baby. A few compliments thrown my way after a rough night and I start to melt.
“So you guys are from Los Angeles?” I ask.
“Yup. East LA. So stereotypical, right? Bunch of chicanas from East LA.”
“You like it there?”
“It’s alright,” he shrugs, “it’s home.”
I nod my head at this, internally debating whether to say what I want to say before I finally just say it.
“I used to live there.”
“In east LA? No shit?”
“Well, I used to live in Los Angeles I mean. For about five years.”
“Oh damn,” he says without emotion. I take another sip of beer as the memories flood back and before I can help myself I start talking again.
“Yeah, moved there right after college. Back when I was trying to make it in Hollywood.”
“Oh shit, like as an actor?”
“A writer.”
“Oh, you’re a writer? That makes sense. I bet you’re hella good at it, you know, storytelling and all.”
“Well, I wasn’t good enough for Hollywood,” I laugh.
“That’s why you left?”
I drink from my beer and look out to the moving traffic on the wide street.
“It… was a lot of things. I don’t know, I guess I found the whole thing kinda toxic. But, I mean, it wasn’t like any of the bigshots were clamoring for me to stay. I guess you can say I left the same way I arrived, unnoticed.”
He nodded his head. “It’s a tough place to make it.”
“Yep. So one day I just got fed up with the whole thing, packed all my stuff up in my car and drove three days through the desert to get to the swamp.”
“And now you tell ghost stories in the big easy.”
“And now I tell ghost stories in the big easy.”
“Sounds like a fun life.”
“It is,” I tell him, “but I’d be lying if I didn’t sometimes think about what life would be like if I had stuck things out in LA.”
Mikey smiles at this and that wave of familiarity hits me again. That’s one of the weirder aspects of this job. As I said before, sometimes you meet people that you click with, but sometimes, something even rarer happens, where you meet someone that you swear you must have known before because they seem so damn familiar. Like their old friends from another time, even though you know of course this isn’t true. That’s the energy Mikey is giving me now. And when I think back to that first story I told, to his friends hyping me up and going nuts I realize I got a similar vibe then.
“So how do you guys all know each other?” I ask. “You all seem like childhood friends.”
“I know, right?! But we’re not. We all know each other from work.”
“Oh. What do you do?”
“We’re law clerks.”
“Oh,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say… until I finally say the same thing I always say to people in my groups that have jobs that don’t interest me or sound fun. “That sounds like fun.”
“It’s not. It’s bullshit,” he shoots back with a laugh.
“You don’t like it at all?”
“It’s fine. It’s a job. Money’s good, and the benefits are nice.”
“Hey don’t shit on that. A nice salary and benefits seem pretty fantastic when you’re standing on the other side of the fence. Trust me.”
“For sure.”
“So is the ultimate goal for you all to become actual lawyers?”
“Nah, not at all. It’s a job, you know?”
I nod my head.
“And that’s something you shouldn’t take for granted,” he tells me.
“What’s that?”
“Being passionate about what you do.”
I frown. “I mean I do love this job, but sometimes it drives me absolutely crazy. Sometimes I hate it. Just tonight I was convincing myself I needed to quit and get a real job. But of course if I did that, I wouldn’t have all day to write. That’s another great thing about being a guide, I can work all day on what I’m really passionate about and still pay the bills and all that.”
“Exactly! Plus this job is so crazy that it adds something to your character or persona or whatever. Like after you write your first big hit book or whatever and you get interviewed, they’re gonna be like, ‘So we hear before you were a successful writer you were a french quarter ghost tour guide. What was that like?’”
“Exactly!” I excitedly scooch to the edge of my chair now, moving my arms with great intensity. “Dude, you have no idea how much I’ve thought about that. Plus I got a great idea for a novel based off this job. I can see it so clearly in my head how it’s all gonna work out, you have no idea. It’s gonna be a comedy but also have serious moments. I think about it all the time.”
“Of course you do! Because that’s your passion. And you should never forget that. You’re lucky for that. I wish I had that. Everyone with me wishes they had that, believe me. Because otherwise, you just work to live and shit, and you take vacations to cool places to make you forget your actual life is just whatever.”
What the hell is happening right now, I wonder. How did a casual conversation turn into me finding my life coach…
“But,” I tell him, “The thing is, once you choose a path like mine, the question is always, what if it never happens? What if I’m sixty and still doing this and my dreams never happen.”
Mikey smiles his classic smile at me now and I immediately feel foolish for what I just said. “Well yeah, that’s life, ain’t it? But fuck it. What else you gonna do? Go work an office job and be miserable. If this is your path, then just follow your path. What else you gonna do?”
I look out to the street once more, focusing on the spinning car tires going over the potholes. I feel like I’m dreaming.
Just then our beautiful moment is interrupted when one of his friends walks out of the bar and finds us at the table.
“Yo Mikey! What’d you get?”
As the two compare their beers, something down the street catches my eye. It’s a tour group, a decent sized one, about twice the size as mine, with the group on the sidewalk and the guide on the street. I can’t tell who the guide is from this distance, but what really makes me take notice are the two shadowy figures behind him, crossing Rampart, looking awfully official in their dark clothes.
“This shit is dope, man! I love this fucking city!” I hear Mikey’s friend say. “Hey, tour guide Randy, what’s our next stop?”
I hear the question, but I’m too occupied looking over at the two figures heading for the other group to answer. The guide has now stopped his story and has turned around to address the two figures who are now standing right next to him. Holy shit, I think, that must be the TCB.
“Tour guide Randy? Yo? What’s our next stop?”
I feel Mikey’s foot gently tap my shin under the table and I snap back to the conversation.
“What? Our next stop? Well I mean, it’s kinda a secret, do you want to ruin the surprise?”
“No, I guess not, but just tell me this, is it a titty bar, brah?”
“Man, shut up,” Mikey tells him, “it ain’t no titty bar. This ain’t the haunted titty bar tour, and even if it was, they wouldn’t let you in anyway.”
“What you talkin’ about? I’ve been to tons of titty bars!”
“That’s nothing to brag about, homie. Damn!”
The laughter pours over the table, and then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to find one of the other couples on the tour facing me wearing a look on their face I know all too well. They’re going to leave us.
“Hey man, it’s been fun but we got dinner reservations and we didn’t plan this out well so we’re gonna go.”
I nod at this and hope for a tip even though I know one isn’t coming, and it doesn’t, and they leave. Mikey and his friend watch them go, and once they’re out of earshot they voice their disapproval.
“Man, that was some cold shit.”
“Who leaves a pub crawl so early?”
“And they didn’t even tip. Cheap fuckers.”
Normally I would be right in the middle of this cursing them too, but my attention is back on the two shadowy figures, or at least, on the spot they used to be. But now they’re no longer there, nor is the tour group they were talking to. Where did they go? What did they want? Was it TCB? God damn it I don’t need a 500 dollar fine tonight.
“Yo, José! Mikey!” someone from the LA group screams from the bar entrance. “Come take this shot with us! Tour guide too if you want!”
Of the three of us, only Jose accepts the invitation.
“I don’t need anymore shots after last night,” Mickey tells me once it’s just me and him again.
“Yeah, I don’t do shots while I’m working,” I say, still distracted, looking down the streets in every direction for those shadowy figures.
“Everything alright, my guy?”
I sigh and finish my beer before telling him about The Taxi Cab Bureau, my missing license and the 500 dollar fine.
Once I’m finished, he nods his head understandingly.
“That’s no biggie. We got you.”
“You got me? What does that mean?” I ask with a laugh.
“It means, we’ll protect you. You say they’re looking for tour groups right, so we’ll just make sure not to look like a tour group.”
“And how do we do that?”
“We’ll just surround you. When we walk you’ll be in the middle of us, instead of out front, and when you tell stories, it’ll be in like a cluster, again with you in the middle, they’ll think we’re just a bunch of drunks talking.”
I rub my beard.
“You really think that would work?”
He shrugs. “We won’t know until we try.”
The rest of his friends now pour out of the bar and head over to the table, all of them holding shots of something clear in both hands.
“We decided to take the shots to you, pussies!” Jazmin said. “Come on, we got enough for everyone, even you, tour guide.”
“His name’s Randy,” Mikey reminds her.
“Yeah, Randy,” she responds warmly, “Homie Randy, the best damn tour guide in the city!”
I look down at the shot placed in front of me.
“I really can’t,” I tell her, “not when I’m still working.”
“Fool, what do you care, it’s just us on your tour, and we all love you!”
A cheer breaks out here and my heart swells yet again.
“That’s very kind, but no, there are others here too on the tour.”
“Like who?” she asks. “Them?”
She points to the two other couples on the tour, who are coming out of the bar holding their own shots while talking with a wild José.
“Hey! Do you guys care if he does a shot with us?!”
“Hell no!” One of the girls says, “Randy’s the man!”
I scratch my chin, thinking. Mikey looks over at me with a mischievous smile.
“Come on man, sometimes you just gotta follow the path.”
After we all take our shots, Mikey explains the whole Taxi Cab Bureau debacle.
“So we’re gonna have to hide his ass for the rest of the tour, got it?”
The group howls in agreement.
“Anything for our tour guide!”
We’re heading back down St. Peter Street now, so I can find a new stage to tell the next story. Of course, this stage will have new requirements considering the recent change in strategy. I have no idea if this is gonna work out at all, but it’ll be fun to find out.
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