Sleazy in the Big Easy

The city of New Orleans – America’s cultural paradise – is facing economic disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. “Hundreds of prostitutes have been washed away, their pimps drowned and brothels flooded,” bemoaned the Mayor at a recent press conference. “They’re the bedrock of our economy – without the whores to service, the drug dealers are facing ruin and dozens of private VD clinics and struck-off doctors could be put out of business permanently!” The Chief of Police has also highlighted the problem, pointing out that the demise of the city’s vice sector could have serious repercussions for his officers. “Many of my men are losing hundreds of dollars a week in bribes due to the absence of these lowlifes from our streets,” he has claimed. “It is causing them genuine financial hardship – how the hell are they supposed to run wives, mistresses, two homes and three cars on what the city pays them?” However, aid has been offered from the most unlikely of sources, with Cuba, that bastion of Communism on America’s own doorstep, offering to send six hundred new pimps to the Big Easy in an effort to get the city’s economy up and running again. “We thought of sending some of our highly trained medical staff, but we thought that surely the US would be able to provide sufficient health care for its displaced poor,” explains Enrique Castillo, a spokesperson for Cuban supremo Fidel Castro. “We wanted to make a unique contribution and we understand just how important vice is to the local economy in New Orleans.” Castillo guarantees that the new Cuban pimps will be every bit as vicious and brutal as their predecessors. “We’ve scoured our prisons to ensure that only the very best reach America,” he assured The Sleaze. “In fact, to help restore that unique local colour which attracts so many visitors to the city, we’re even prepared to throw in a few hundred assorted rapists, peadophiles, goat-buggerers and other sex-offenders!”

The city’s Mayor has welcomed the Cuban initiative with open arms. “It’s essential we restore the cultural heart of this city as quickly as possible – I want to see over-priced whores, smack dealers and colourful beggars back on every street corner, pronto,” he declared. “If we’re to kick-start the local economy we have to get the sex-tourists, thrill-seekers, mobsters and roving perverts back into New Orleans without delay!” Of course, the Cubans are not alone in offering material assistance to try and speed New Orleans’ economic recovery – Haiti has offered to send several dozen Voodoo priests and priestesses to try and get the ritual black magic murder trade restarted, whilst it is rumoured that Colombia is prepared to provide cut-price drugs and even trained dealers in support of the stricken vice industry. There have also been rumours of hundreds of prostitutes being flown in from Eastern Europe and Mexico offering thousands of beggars – even poorer and more desperate than their indigenous predecessors.

Nevertheless, although the sex and drugs industry has been badly hit by the flooding of New Orleans, many surviving members of the local sex-trade are less enthusiastic than their Mayor at the prospect of their city being inundated with foreign pimps and perverts. “I don’t know what they’re thinkin’ of – we don’t need no foreign trash here! We should be recruiting for new scum right here in the US of A! There’s plenty of pimps and dealers in LA, The Big Apple’s full of crack whores and I hear they got some mighty fine perverts up there in Texas. As for beggars – we got poor bastards all over,” declares local pimp Jean Lafitte, who survived the floods by clinging to one his prostitute’s surgically enhanced breasts, and is now planning to drive a herd of sixty new prostitutes down to Louisiana from Up State New York. “Hell, we should be proud of the number and sheer quality of the trash this great country of ours produces!” French quarter sex shop owner Larry Pritt – who survived for three days on a raft made from lashed-together dildos – fears that the proposed Cuban sex aid could be the vanguard of a Communist take-over of New Orleans’ sex-trade. “Before you know it they’ll be flooding the sex shops with cheap plastic Chinese sex toys,” he frets. “All the high quality stuff I carry – hand carved in wood by Cajun craftsmen – will be priced out of the market!”

Perhaps most perturbed by this proposed foreign invasion are New Orleans’ indigenous crime bosses. “Listen, we’ve spent years keeping these filthy spics out of our rackets, and now the Mayor and Police Chief just want to invite them in,” observes Giancarlo LaPitta, who has controlled drugs and prostitution on the South side for over twenty years. “I can guarantee those corrupt bastards are getting some heavy-duty kickbacks from those Colombians and Cubans!” LaPitta is worried that it is the customers who will suffer from this Hispanic take-over of vice in his city. “Those Colombians will just flood the place with cheap low grade shit, then jack the price up when they’ve cornered the market,” he opines. “As for these Cuban pimps – Jesus! Before you know it the Commie bastards will be running the whorehouses like communes, imposing quotas on the Johns and redistributing the profits! Now with our guys, the women know where they are – a good beating or a touch of maiming now and again, none of this profit-sharing crap! It just confuses them and takes away their incentives to perform professionally! Hell, those Cubans will probably force them to just give it away to the poor and needy! That’s no way to run a business!”

However, not everyone is sorry to see the demise of New Orleans’ sex trade. “It’s the Lord’s judgement – he has struck down this modern Sodom and destroyed its black heart,” declared the Reverend Lionel Brattler from the pulpit of his miraculously unscathed New Orleans chapel. “Mark my words – it is only a matter of time before he sends he Tsunami to wash away California, the false paradise of fornication, depravity and sodomy!” There are rumours that President Bush – himself a committed Christian – shares these beliefs. “I have it on good authority that he deliberately delayed sending aid after the hurricane so as to maximize the casualties and ensure the spread of disease,” opines leading conspiracy theorist Sam Nodger. “Apparently Bush believed that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – famine, pestilence, war and death – needed to be visited on this den of iniquity and French-speaking sodomites! They got them all, in spades!”

Naturally, such speculations have been dismissed out of hand by the White House. “It’s absolutely ridiculous – do people really think we’re a bunch of credulous fools? There is no way the President would ever endorse such ideas,” says a White House spokesperson. “There are perfectly rational reasons as to why w didn’t at first take the threat posed by the hurricane seriously and issue adequate warnings to the citizens of New Orleans – the initial storm warning came in the shape of NASA satellite imagery – we just assumed they were fakes! Heck, Everybody knows those bastards faked those Moon landings – why would we have assumed that this was any different?”