The Beautiful Kind

The other night I went to see a local band called N-2N play at Corky’s BBQ in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The band gets annoyed if you pronounce their name “N-2-N” instead of the way they intended it - “N-TUNE,” but they should have considered the fact that most people don’t read carefully before they created their logo. They should have kept N-2N as a vanity license plate and stuck with something less clever for a band name, like The Rolling Stones or The Supremes. Also, I think it’s funny that the drummer’s day job is neuropsychology.

The lead singer is this big, beautiful woman named Daphne. Her girlfriend, who looks like a cross between Richard Gere and Geoffrey Rush (she’s actually pretty sexy), always acts as bouncer, standing by the stage and making sure no one invades Daphne’s personal space. The band has a lesbian following, so there was a nice variety of people present. A woman who was shaped like mashed potatoes and looked like her name should be Marjorie danced (over)enthusiastically until her beer intake finally caught up with her and she fell heavily and dramatically on her ass in the middle of the dance floor.

There was this voluptuous Bettie Page-type woman who wore retro heels and a skirt that barely covered her ass. She played around with two bois all evening - lots of ass smacking was involved. This little threesome intrigued me - I love that gender bending shit. I hope they didn’t mind me staring.

The most annoying couple was this straight couple who reeked of “swinger” - the woman was a submissive redhead who wore a Hawaiian print dress, and her man was a total show-off. It was embarrassing to watch this guy, who looked like a computer programmer with his neat haircut, pleated slacks, and clip-on phone, dirty dance in his tight short sleeved shirt and necklace (I refuse to refer to it as a “chain” the way so many people charitably do when describing a man who wears such a thing.) It would have been nice if Marjorie had fallen on him - I wish God had a better sense of humor and could have made that happen for me.

I was hanging out with three total geek boys, and we went out into the adjoining hotel hallway to take a short break from the freak show. This is where we spotted the small open ballroom where six dressy African-American women in peacock blue, red, and turquoise were dancing to New Orleans music, circling the room waving cloth napkins. They saw us and, beaming, motioned us in, and of course we balked, but one of the geek boys, a consummate Southern gentleman, surprised us by exclaiming happily, “Second line dancing!” and pulling a white handkerchief out of his pocket and leaping gracefully into the room.

I was horrified for a split second, but then came to my senses (thank you, beer) and the rest of us joined him and the women. They handed us cloth napkins and we bopped around the room. It was a precious moment, capping off a perfect night in the South.