Mardi Gras Boobs

Ha, made you look!

No, I’ve never been to Mardi Gras, but here’s a story anyhow: I know a perfectly--- actually, an extraordinarily--- respectable woman who, when she attended Mardi Gras for the first time in her middle years, ended up bare-breasted after a few days. Now, this is someone who would never ever do such a thing in real life. It was the erosion of what she thought of as “normal” amidst the unfamiliar and insistently pervasive atmosphere, the jazz, the booze, or any number of things some grad student somewhere is working on an experiment for.

Is there a tipping point beyond which the unimaginable becomes obvious?

There is a spectrum, from hopes to expectations, or maybe vice versa. (We’re not talking about nipples anymore, folks. Sorry.) People hope they’ll keep their New Year’s resolutions, but if they expected to, they’d’ve made the change long ago. Or so I cynically think.

We are loath to cross the line that defines our expectations--- but we do cross it, all the time. Do you enjoy food now you never thought you would eat? (Sushi, Jim? Paul?) I’m reading my first William Gibson novel, not ‘Neuromancer’, but still, I never thought I’d enter the oeuvre voluntarily. We constantly redefine what we think of as “normal”. We do it so often, in fact, we don’t even realize that we’re doing it.

I just hope the rest of you keep your shirts on in public, as beautiful as you all are.