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Blogs / Lounge Act / January 2010 / Twisting the night away

Twisting the night away

There are plenty of things at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering to make an urban dweller like me feel less manly than the real ropers and ranchers who descend on Elko every year.

There are the impressive moustaches. There are the killer duds, from hats to boots. There's the hearty lifestyle that I imagine would take about one day before breaking me down and sending me crying home to mama.

Add an unexpected means of potential emasculation as of Friday night: dancing. Those cowboys know how to cut serious rug!

I went to the Friday night dance featuring Geno Delafose and French-Rockin' Boogie, an excellent zydeco crew from the creole cowboy culture of Southwest Louisiana. And despite the availability of delicous whiskey, there was no way I could keep up when the cowboys decided it was time to get down.

And that time was pretty much as soon as Delafose and co. started playing, and the dancing didn't stop for a solid three hours. Thankfully, single dudes are hard to come by, so I was lucky to have cowgals in need of a partner to ask me to dance. But I felt obliged to let them know, preemptively, that while I have rhythm, I don't know how to do the organized, swing-yer-partner-round-and-round style of boot-scootin' that was going on around us. Hell, I didn't even have boots.

The ladies were generous in letting me flail away anyway, and I had a gas, gas, gas.

 

 It was a fine end to a strange evening. Before I hit the show, I decided to try my luck with some blackjack at Stockman's Casino. I'd had a lucky streak earlier in the day at the Red Lion, and figured I might still be hot.

Nope. The dealer gave me a series of 16s to deal with, and then a crowd of twentysomething dudes joined the table. At least, one joined the table and the other five stood around him acting nervously. That's when I noticed the new player at the table had what was, quite clearly, a fake moustache. Really bad one, ala the Beastie Boys "Sabotage" video.

That moustache freaked me out, and I figured if these young dudes were about to go all "Point Break" on the casino, it was time to bail. So across the street i went to the fine Silver Dollar Club, a beautiful old bar. Pumped $20 into a video poker machine to kill a few minutes, and almost immediately hit a hand with four aces. Sweet, right? Except the damn machine was a nickel-per-credit--Elko is a low-budget town--and even playing the maximum bet, I only won $40. If I'd been in Wendover or Vegas, it would have been a quarter-credit machine and I'd be winning $400. Not sure if that qualifies as good luck or bad luck.

But I do know I had drink money for the Geno Delafose show. So I'll call it good luck, mmmkay?