Howl

I took myself out last night to celebrate the fact that I’m cool. I recommend everybody do this from time to time (take yourself out, that is, not me — though you’d have more fun if you took me out, probably). I started at the Brick around 11, which is later than most of you normal working stiffs would want to go out on a weeknight, but I’d had a nap, so it was all good. It was customer appreciation night at the club, which means 75 cent tacos and 2-for-1 drinks from 6 to 10 p.m. Obviously, I was too late for that, but I wasn’t too late to catch Superwolf, one of the city’s best-kept DJ secrets.

The wolfman is James Trotter, an artist who had an opening last First Friday at the Dolphin, so you know his shit’s profesh. He also has what’s probably the sickest collection of rare soul 45s in town — tons of records on obscure labels by 60s soul bands that only ever recorded one song. I saw him at Chez Charlie’s last week sometime, laying down similar grooves (perhaps more tame than the Brick set) on some kind of vintage, portable, folding, tweed record/speaker combo that sounded all crackly and good, like a bowl full of Rice Crispies and strawberry milk. What I like best about the guy is that he’s the opposite of smug. He knows more about the coolest genre of popular music than you could ever hope to, he’s spent up to $1,600 on a single record he just had to have, and all he wants to do is share the music with you and have a good time. Watching him DJ is like watching a child prodigy jam out on a playroom full of toy instruments.

I sat at the bar and asked the bartender, Junior Wolf (aka Zach from the Architects), to introduce me to a few new concoctions. The Ginger Snap came first, made with Sailor Jerry rum, soda, ginger syrup and lime. Delicious, but my lupine soul needed something more substantial, so JW mixed up an Old Fashioned (Jameson, soda, dash of bitters, lemon). That was more like it. JW pointed out that the bitters and lemon cancel out pretty much all flavor in the drink but that it’s definitely a classy old guy’s beverage. “Drink eight of those and you’ll definitely feel like you’re in the Rat Pack.” I settled in and read some awesome hardcore reporting in this free newspaper they had stocked in the doorway. Had one more Old Fashioned, then left because I had mad cravings for Pancho’s.

Now when I simply profess my love for the all-night Mexican grease-a-rama on Main, some people become instantly nauseous. I can understand how the place’s heinously awesome food may afflict people with reactions that require emergency medical attention, but for a kid practically weaned on taco meat, the stuff’s heavenly. (Also, Taco Bell, to me, is what’s truly indigestible.) Four other cars in the drive-thru at midnight proved I wasn’t alone in my passion. I ordered the carne asada burrito, a forearm-sized lump of fresh-cooked steak slathered with gravy, guac and pico and wrapped lovingly in a burrito the size of an adult diaper. Nostrils twitching at the smell of my new passenger, I swung around to 31st and pulled into the Empire Room‘s parking lot. My eyes turned yellow and my teeth sharpened to fangs as I dug the helpless burrito from its brown paper nest and tore into it like a baby deer, leaving only about a quarter of it left. Man, I’m gonna have to get this for lunch today, too.

Loaded with meat, I cleaned the tortilla bits from my teeth with the corner of a folded receipt and strode into the Empire Room to find a bunch of drunk people who’d been partying privately in celebration of the existence, arrival, etc., of some Australian vodka. Surf boards were hung about the place with packaging tape. And there was a huge poster on the wall that I didn’t notice until a guy with blinding white legs and loafers with no socks stepped on the end table I was keeping my beer on to attempt to take it down. Ah, the world of marketing.

My mates Megan and Tonian were DJing under the name Bitchwax and The Jamie was bartending. (I only mention The Jamie because her name was on the flyer I saw, which I think is pretty cool. The bartender really is the hidden and all-too-often unrecognized force behind any good DJ night. Also, Jamie’s a veritable force of sweetness, which is why I added the definite article to her name.) I hung out on the couch by the decks, which were situated on one of the low tables that, with the couches, make up the only furniture in the main area of the ER. It’s not a place you want to go if you’re worried about having nothing to talk about with whomever you’re with. Luckily, with Megan to my left and my homeboy Adrock on my right, I was never without scintillating company.

It was from that relaxed position that Adrock and I witnessed the gayest display he and I have ever seen in Kansas City. I’m all for being gay and wild if you’re gay and wild, but I do believe in boundaries when it comes to taste — for example, the honky in shorts and loafers I mentioned earlier. So, when the Bitchwax spun an MIA tune, this gay boy wearing the weirdest fashion accessory I’ve ever seen — a Medieval-ish pouch strapped to his chest via an over-the-shoulder-and-around-the-back harness that looked like some kind of accessory a thief from Henry IV, Part I would wear — decided to dance. And oh, did he dance. His main move consisted of a full-body pelvic wave that began with the shoulders, reached its peak at the hips and carried through to the ground. Variations of this wave carried him around the floor between where we were seated and the bar. I don’t know, maybe I’m an asshole, but I started to feel sorry for the guy for being such an extreme pansy. Then I wanted to push him in the mud and make him cry. Then I desperately wanted to take all those feelings back and hit on the gorgeous blond girl he began dancing with later. Instead, I cleared my throat, had a beer and focused on my ironclad, masculine island of self, the mountainous strip of me-land, battered by the waves of an ocean of fear (i.e., the grumpiness that comes from being lousy at talking to hot strangers).

I stayed until last call, then went out into the night, where, inside my chariot, the cold and moist remainder of my burrito awaited my tortured, unremitting hunger.