‘Liquid Loophole’ aided Monque’D’s mule driving career

City hall talk on Tuesday rambled around to adopting an employee drug test policy, something city officials and their attorney been kicking around for three or four years. It took me back to the time that J. Monque’D decided go back to his old job driving tourist carriages in the French Quarter.
I haven’t written much about J. Monque’D in a long time. For the uninitiated, J. Monque’D (pronounced “Jay Monkey Dee”) is the blues-harmonica-blowing, swamp-boogie-singing, legend-in-and-out-of-his-own-mind musician who has lived near us on Laurel Street since we first moved here years ago.
For a several years, due to my owning a car and having free time, I was an unofficial J. Monque’D roadie/chaffeur. I would haul him, his box of harmonicas, his speaker, mike and other gear, including the case carrying his CDs that he hoped to sell. I took him to a couple of Jazz Fests and with it came passes that let me roam anywhere on stage or behind, making photos. I’ve hauled him to hole-in-the-wall joints that I haven’t laid eyes on since. With him I saw some of the inner workings of Mardi Gras Indians and once went shopping with him at Meyer the Hatter where Fats Domino was among other customers and he introduced me to him.
When his music gigs became less frequent he decided to return to his old job of driving tourists around the French Quarter in a mule-drawn carriage, but when he attempted to renew his old mule driving license he learned that new, post 9-11-01 requirements had been added that included, you guessed it, a drug test. That was an obstacle because J. Monque’D functions better with “an illegal smile … it don’t cost very much and it last a great while.” But I digress.
So I now have this colorful memory of chauffeuring J. Monque’D to a head shop on Canal Street where he discussed at length and in great detail with the proprietor every product in his inventory that promised to deliver clean results on a drug test. Finally, he settled on a bottle of a viscous, semi-clear liquid substance that I have since dubbed “Liquid Loophole.” The label promised to get the consumer past (and “passed”) the urine test for drugs if the instructions were followed.
“You’re kind of a big guy, you’d better buy two,” the man said.
It was pouring rain the morning of the scheduled test. When he got into the car he told me about how he was following the directions on the Liquid Loophole bottles. Instructions included drinking the entire contents of the first bottle, then urinating before drinking the entire contents of the second, then holding it in for final delivery into the test cup.
We were fortunate that the drug testing clinic was nearby. As soon as J’Monque’D got in the car with all that rain pouring down and him full of two bottles of Liquid Loophole — well, he was quite fidgety to say the least. But we made it. As he stepped quickly (he could step a lot quicker then) from the car into the rain toward the clinic, he said he really hoped there wouldn’t be a long wait for the test.
He passed, got his license and went to work driving tourists. I never once doubted that those tourists who were fortunate enough to be his passengers got their money’s worth and more. They were a captive audience for an entertainer with the whole French Quarter as his stage. What a show he gave them. Never could they have guessed that their entertaining experience had been made possible by Liquid Loophole.