"Did you notice anything weird tonight?"

(The scene: the back room of the Bovine Sex Club, during the monthly rock and roll karaoke night, Kick Ass Karaoke.)

Carson walked up to me, looking pretty much the way he does at the end of every Kick Ass Karaoke night. The former “science and technology” news anchor for the Naked News’ male revue’s hair was flying all over the place. He’d taken off most of his clothes and was wearing only nipple rings and slightly-tighter-than-legal underwear with a leopard skin pattern. His body covered in sweat and glitter. Behind me, my friend Will was getting spanked to the beat and Jeff the Chef was rubbing my accordion in a suggestively obscene manner.

“Joey,” he said, “did you notice anything…weird…tonight?”

---

“Weird” comes with the territory when a bar is called the Bovine Sex Club. The Bovine, a leisurely ten-minute walk from my house, looks like a seedy bar that fell out of one of those sci-fi movies that takes place in a dystopian future. Most of the people wear black leather — jackets, pants, oftentimes both — and look as if they’re in an alt-rock or underground band. In fact, it’s a fair bet that ate least a third of the clientele is in a band, but there’s also an unusually high concentration of geek and IT people among the regulars. The Bovine has no sign over its door; just a lot of junk — Cory Doctorow’s bicycle, parts from kitchen appliances, rebar — wrapped in multicoloured Christmas lights. Its front window is mostly blacked out and covered with chain-link fence spray-painted black. The interior decor is pretty much like the sign: mechanical and electronic detruitus and Jagermeister bottles lashed to the wall and ceilings and then strung with lights. A set of four monitors above the bar constantly plays videos (usually visually interesting and offbeat ones like KISS Meets the Phantom or Eraserhead) and the DJs — most of whom play in local bands — play stuff along the lines of the Dead Kennedys, The Vines, Slayer, The White Stripes, the Circle Jerks and Imperial Teen.

---

Carson was right, though: last night’s Kick Ass Karaoke was a little weird. Although the room was packed, it was full of strange faces. A lot of the regulars and some of the die-hards weren’t there last night. That in itself isn’t weird, but some of the new faces were.

A 50ish guy who could’ve been the stunt double for “Major Dad” (a nickname which we gave him by the end of the evening) walked in with a 40ish blonde woman. Major Dad wore a black shirt, dark slacks and a brown jacket, while his date wore a dress that looked like a black nightie and white go-go dancer boots. She looked as though she’d already put away a few drinks. They looked like they belonged in one those sad suburban office park bars modelled after Cheers rather than the Bovine. At a place like the Bovine, where they’ll let just about any kind of freak in for a drink, these guys stuck out like a sore thumb.

What was even stranger was that although Major Dad’s body language suggested that they were on some kind of date, the blonde woman (whom we all referred to as “The Cougar“) started flirting, dancing and grinding with the youngest men she could find. One guy, a clean-cut sweatshirt-and-Dockers type whom we ended up nicknaming “College Boy”, got the most Cougar-time of the half-dozen still-wet-behind-the-ears fellas with whom she dirty danced.

Anyone I talked to that night said something along the lines of “Have you seen the older guy, the older woman and the young guy? What’s up with that?”

“Check that out,” said Carson at one point, pointing to the scene across the room. The Cougar was pressed up behind College Boy doing pelvic thrusts while Major Dad looked on and lit a cigarette.

“Maybe that’s his thing,” said Crystal. “He lets her flirt with other men, he gets all excited, and then he takes her home.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said. “He likes to watch. Makes him feel dirty, I’ll bet. I feel soiled just watching him get plump watching her.”

“Plump?! Ewwwwww!”

Katie struck up a conversation with Major Dad and had news to report afterwards.

“He’s only met her tonight. It seems she was getting beaten up by a boyfriend or something like that, and he rescued her. Then he took her here.”

“And now she’s flirting with every 20-year-old guy in the room?” Will asked.

“Everyone deals with stress differently,” I remarked.

---

Later that night, we went to Amato’s for a late-night snack. I was a telling a friend about the scene with Major Dad, The Cougar and College Boy when Will interrupted me with a tap on the shoulder.

“Joe — College Boy’s right…over…there!” he said in a stage whisper.

Luckily, College Boy didn’t overhear me. He was sitting at a table alone, his body hunched over, his head in his hands.

A man at the next table over looked at the TV set above, which was tuned to MuchMusic.

“Yeah, Christina,” he said, as Christina Aguilara’s Dirty video played. “She dirty.”

“Shut up!” exploded College Boy, pushing back his chair violently. “You just shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

He stormed towards the door, but turned to yell at the staff first.

“You guys should kick him out. I paid six dollars…SIX DOLLARS!!!…and all I want is some goddamn peace and quiet. You should kick him out. I fuckin’ hate all of you!”

And with that, he left the pizza place in a huff. We all looked at each other in amazement.

“Guess she went home with Major Dad,” said Will.