The Mardi Gras Trip 1983

1982

A Vampire and Dracula in Drag

A True Story 801 Words

Written 02/11/2015*

#1 By Howard Yasgar

It was in January of 1982 when my wife Katherine asked me where I was taking her for her birthday.

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

It also happens that New Orleans was one of our very favorite places to visit, so, I suggested that we go to New Orleans for her birthday.

Not only could we celebrate her birthday with excellent Cajun cooking, but we could also celebrate Mardi Gras with the thousands of other crazy people that converge on Bourbon Street in New Orleans every year.

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

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

in the French Quarter.

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

Katherine had somehow not only found a room for us, but she found a suite.

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

When we arrived, we found out that the suite Katherine had reserved was the bridal suite, it was the nicest place you could ever find in New Orleans.

Now, the reason I am mentioning our 1982 Mardi Gras experience at this point of the story 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 and craziest.

So, at Mardi Gras in 1982, besides the hundreds of inebriated people throwing plastic beads everywhere. We also saw there were a lot of people that were dressed in costumes.

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

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

Here I was, a basically conservative person, coming from the small town of Westville, Connecticut, and I was thinking about doing Mardi Gras in a costume,

I didn’t think that dressing in a costume for Mardi Gras was something that I would ever have considered doing before.

But now, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.

So, when we were considering going to Mardi Gras in 1983, I broached the subject to my wife about doing it in costume, and she didn’t say no. But she did ask me what type of costume I was considering.

I told my wife that several years ago I had attended a costume party and dressed up as Dracula, and everyone liked it, and I could do it again even better this time and my wife could also dress as a vampire.

I was 6 foot two inches, with jet black hair, so we went shopping and I bought a girls ruffled white shirt, and put on black pants and black shoes, then I slicked my hair back, and I got two sets of plastic Dracula fangs and some fake blood that could drip from our mouths.

We mentioned the idea to a friend who loved it. She said her mother was a seamstress who could make us satin capes

The next thing I knew, I had a black satin cape and my wife Kathrine had a white one.

So, we then decided Katherine would be dressed all in white, and I had a long dog leash to lead her around with.

Before we left, for Mardi Gras, we tried on our costumes, and I had another idea.

I knew New Orleans had a large gay population. I bought a few balloons and I put a couple of them under my ruffled shirt, and my Dracula cape, and thus I became Dracula in Drag.

That evening the streets were loaded with Marti Gras crowds and 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 to us and they were yelling, “Show your Tits”.

I did my best to accommodate them by opening my satin cape.

It was the best Mardi Gras ever.

As we were on 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, they had even seen a realistic Dracula

in drag with big boobs, he was pulling along a vampire on Bourbon Street.

Hey, that was us.