Revelry.

Maybe not in the strictest sense, but spoonfuls can be quite enough. Spoonfuls of airy powdered-sugar fun.

And liters of body wash.

Because New Orleans stinks. Literally.

Perhaps it's the layers of heat--heat of a thousand categories. Or perhaps it's the irrepressible plant life left to rot and riot and rot again. Or the fluids produced by body and building--sweat and piss and beer and coffee and fourth-story runoff--travelling in milky rivulets down every street, over every stone, between unwary toes. But the smell has a presence, if not a name. And it clings to that fat insistent dance partner that is Southern summer.

A city of glorious excretion, but I fear it's never coming off.