While Cincinnati Captain Jack and Chicago Captain Jack chatted, sharing the make-up and prop tips of celebrity impersonators, and becoming fast friends with all of the other Captain Jack Sparrow impersonators on the stage, MAD and I were left to our own devices. “Oh shit MAD.” I held my newly acquired weapon away from me awkwardly pointing it upwards.

“What now.” she said surly, as if something was growing under her skin.

“I cocked it.” Despite the fact that I had grown familiar with such a fine piece of weaponry over the past couple of drunken nights, I never did that before and given the source, it could even be loaded.

“ I don’t know what will happen if I pull the trigger. We did after all just steal a gun from a true pirate.” I said holding the gun like a bomb about to go off. I envisioned myself pulling the trigger and knocked violently to the sidewalk by the powder blast as shot rained down upon a veritable sea of revelers.

“We’ll pull the trigger. And if anything happens we run.” MAD suggested It could just spark and pop, but we had to know.

“Yeah better to shoot it now instead of accidentally shooting someone with it later.” We were after all, fantasy pirates not real ones and had a limited grasp on such armaments other than the fact that we looked good wielding them. The Curvy Dogs stood bravely together with what could very well be a live weapon between us, we closed our eyes and braced ourselves as I pulled the trigger only to hear it faintly click.

The two of us sat regrouping in the back corner of a bar, nursing a beer. “I want my buttons,” MAD fumed, her mind still on that wretched girl. Somehow, during the course of the week, our crew picked up a stowaway. No one really remembers how she got there. Since the beginning, I had my reservations about the little drunk gutter-slut, other than suggesting we dump her in the alley a couple of times, I kept them to myself. After a few days of her tagging along on our excursions, all the drama came to a head. The three of us figured out her motive, telling tales to drive a wedge between them so she could have her way with a Captain Jack Sparrow. It was a pirate convention and the place was crawling with them.

“I’m going to take them back. Those are my pink silk breeches. She has no right to wear them.” My mate wanted nothing to with the pants themselves, not anymore, now that she wore them. The buttons were special silver and branded with a “P.”

“MAD, if you go and cut them off of her, I’ll admire you forever.” My voice rose cheerfully as I egged her on. I wasn’t about to discourage her or let her embark on such a purposeful mission all by her lonesome. With everything we went through during this expedition, we managed to stay together. For the sake of our survival, nothing was going to get between that. Indeed, this Kamikaze girl chose the wrong crew to mess with. Sure enough, there she was flanked by at least eight or so impersonators and dressed in Mad Anne Dandy’s pink silk britches. We pushed our way through the crowd and boarded the stage where she stood, working a whole flock of Sparrows. “I want your knife,” MAD whispered to the overtly resourceful Cincinnati Jack, knowing that he never went anywhere with out it.

“What for?”

“To cut the buttons off my pants.” She growled, absently, he handed it too her. Distracted by some drunken conversation, I turned around in time to see MAD kneeling beside the poor girl purposefully hacking away at hot pink silk.

“This pirate is my best mate!” I exclaimed as she returned successfully, five of the buttons were in her hand. The others were sadly lost. We watched mirthfully as she struggled for a bit with her broken breeches, and much to our displeasure, she successfully secured them with a safely pin.

“Damn, ya should have taken the safety pin too… and the bloody sash.” I didn’t have it in me to sacrifice her to The One True Pirate in order to save our skins Friday night, I might have been willing to see her wander those mad streets drunk and pants-less.

“We need to do something else,” Her mind was grinding, thinking of a new non-violent way to make her pay; despite the physical harm she really wanted to cause. MAD was in the right mind for fighting. “We could always toss a drink at her face.” She suggested after a while. It always seemed like a fun fallback whilst doling out Curvy Dog Corporal Punishment. But we were pirates first, and couldn’t bare wasting the our hard-earned alcohol on a petty thing such as revenge, unless…

“Swill,” we reached the same conclusion.

“Go around and find all the cups you can,” MAD ordered. We diligently set to work abundantly filling our cups with all the dregs we could muster.

Distracted again, I looked over to hear MAD shout something to the effect of “BANZAI!” and hurl her awful concoction into her face.
Pleased, I absently raised my glass to toast and remembered what I held. Purposefully, I strode across the stage, armed with the swill cup and the rifle still slung over my shoulder, I approached the edge where she stood dripping and confused. Looking down at her, I smiled, aimed for her cleavage as it popped poorly out of her corset, and poured.

“Thank you, I appreciate that.” She smiled politely with her jaw clenched tightly.

“Why, you’re welcome,” I said gleefully, bowed and made my way back to my companions. “She’s got limes in her tits.” The beauty of it was the fact that when silk gets wet, it smells an awful lot like fish that sat moldering in the sun. For the most part, it seemed our little escapade went unnoticed.
Suddenly, there was a confrontation afoot. “Why did you do that?” Kamikaze cried seeking sympathy from for the wrong person: MAD.

“Why are you still here?” she seethed back, “Go, leave, we don’t want you here”

“But-”

“I said-” she had enough and finished her sentence with a bodily shove that sent the stowaway sailing across the stage. The silence that followed lasted a second before everyone surrounding us went continued on their merry way. The mood among our crew changed, moments later after some conversation in the streets, we decided to depart and ride out the rest of the night in the seclusion of Pirates Alley. The stowaway was kicked out of the convention, for she had a history of doing such things, and Captain Jack Sparrows. At Last Call, we said our goodbyes to our compatriots and made our way back to camp, glad we survived yet another night in the French Quarter.

I laid flat in my mates’ tent since mine was lost in the storm. It was balmy enough that I didn’t need blankets, either that or I was finally exhausted enough to sleep. “Son of a bitch” I mused, before drifting off and I laughed aloud. It was finally quiet enough to do the math. “This entire night I’ve been telling people that we’ve been here doing this for nine days. I was convinced! But, if we arrived Saturday and today is Saturday… it’s only been a week!”