FLORENT MORELLET

Traveling, for me, is about immersing myself. I do my best to live like a local and avoid being the tourist. And this is what I intended to do when I went down to New Orleans for Halloween with my friend Jerry.

This trip was supposed to have happened seventeen years earlier. We were on our way to Mardi Gras, costumes, feathers and wigs in tow, all packed up, all psyched up. Instead, we got stranded at JFK in a snowstorm.

Now, at last, the party boy was on his way down south to “The Big Easy,” “The City that Care Forgot” -- to forget care, be easy, and, of course, feast at good restaurants and corner dives.

Jerry grew up there, and Becky, one of his oldest friends, was our hostess. Becky calls herself the world’s only female female-impersonator. Everybody seems to know Becky Allen and her big bosom, the star of local musicals, the mistress of drag shows, the queen of the night. In tandem with Roy, her live-in costume designer, she dresses and accessorizes the drag queens of the French Quarter, the Delta and beyond. I arrived at her home, in a benevolently crumbling corner of the Vieux Carré and seemed to have walked into a Victorian bordello, overflowing with mementos and knickknacks, piles of dresses, wigs and jeweled accessories. And lamps -- lots of little lamps -- and no daylight.

During Halloween and Mardis Gras, there is a perpetual coming and going at all hours, night and day. Men being dragged up and dragged down, friends, lots of friends, popping in for a little chitchat, a little gossip, a little drink, a joint. And in the background, the constant hum of a television set that is always, always on.

At once, I fell under the spell of Becky and her life. For a few days, I was to become a decaying soul in a steamy Tennessee Williams story. A fabulous fate I was ready to bear…until it came time to retire to the Blanche Dubois boudoir I required. In a dramatically brilliant reversal of fortune, this languorous Blanche was transformed into a frantic little cat on a hot tin roof…when it was revealed that my bed was the living room couch right in the middle of the mayhem.

My sleep is my Achilles heel. It is, at best, precarious; at worst, pure, wide-eyed anxiety. The mere anticipation of this sleepless night guaranteed it. How could I survive four more? But a move to a hotel would be much too rude.

By night two, I had found a lovely private room in the heart of the Garden District. In the morning, lots of daylight, sky, and tops of oak trees. And I hadn’t hurt anybody’s feeling because this lovely room was tucked in a quiet corner of the very pleasant Touro Hospital, where I had ended up with an emergency bout of something called diverticulitis. (You bleed for hours, they give you blood and eventually it stops.)

Away from the tourist-filled French Quarter, I still had my chance to experience New Orleans famed hospitality first-hand. Everyone from the doctors to the janitors had an easy-going –- Big Easy-going -- sense of humor, a rare commodity once you leave the island of Manhattan for “out there.” They all got my twisted jokes, and I was on a roll, firing them like a machine gun. Laughing seemed to be the only thing left to do, hooked up to machine and presuming I would soon be dead of this hemorrhaging. The staff and I had a ball together. A straight nurse even introduced me to his gay supervisor saying,” You have to meet him. I think he’s ‘sweet’ like you.”

I luxuriated in that rare commodity, rest…private room, cell phone, laptop. The three-page menu (yes, in New Orleans, the hospitals have menus, thank you) listed its Cajun specialties: broiled catfish, spinach soufflé, jambalaya, “Our Award-winning Gumbo,” and bread pudding…with bourbon sauce! I could order anything and everything, two entrees, three desserts -- all you can eat. And in that town, they want you to eat.

There I was, lying in bed in the New Orleans I was looking for -- great food, fun people, a restful, insider’s view. So here’s a travel tip that might work for you, too: if you really want to be part of the local culture, go there and get sick.

FLORENT MORELLET is co-chair of Save the Gansevoort Market and president of Compassion in Dying NY. He is a mapmaker, drag queen, and the unofficial mayor of the Meat Market. The restaurant that bears his name has been a New York institution for nineteen years.