AZZ EVERYWHERE! AZZ! AZZ! EVERYWHERE!
In front of us, on a stage flanked by dusty marigold curtains, a sweaty black man with relaxed hair and a red flannel shirt raps in front of a beautiful tableau: girls with their backs to the crowd, shaking, bumping, gyrating their asses to his oversimplified but altogether catchy song “Azz Everywhere.”
For the better part of ten minutes, the man known as Big Freedia continues to loop the same lyrics over and over again – AZZ EVERYWHERE! AZZ! AZZ! EVERYWHERE! – the girls sweating and shaking and humping and lip-biting with an intensity that would make the casual, sober observer decide that they are hired hands and not just girls relieved to find out where the azz is (everywhere). The crowd stands beneath Big Freedia, all of us willfully subjecting ourselves to the gratuitous ass shaking. It’s like a circus of ass with Big Freedia as (azz?) the ringmaster.
I watch the bouncing of cellulite-dimpled flesh tucked into American Apparel hot pants in the wrong size. I contemplate the bending of less able skinny white chicks with tiny tits and pale skin. A personal favorite is the 19 year-old JAP-turned-hipster with the septum piercing, Fresh Prince of Bel Air era baseball hat and gray and white bike shorts with an artist’s rendering of male genitalia.
AZZ EVERYWHERE! AZZ! AZZ! EVERYWHERE!
Not to be outdone, BF gets in there with his own sumptuous booty and makes it clap. Girls hump each other and have ass-to-ass dance-offs. Freedia’s wingman dances on the corner of the stage, wearing a big black jacket with the words “Filthy Savage” written on the back. His hair – also relaxed and gleaming in the light – swings stiffly like an inky pendulum. He reminds me of The Misfits, Kurt Cobain, Pocahontas, and Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas all at once. Between the asses and heavy bass line, I think my brain is exploding.
While all of this mind-blowing is going on, Sarah points out that we are standing amongst one of the weirdest crowds in New York City. It’s a hodgepodge of Greenpoint locals, Polish shut-ins, Hipsters, Druggies, and the How The Fuck Did We Get Here group. It feels like a high school dance, only with more beer and heavier petting.
I wouldn’t have a problem with this tossed salad approach to room-filling, except for the fact that there is an inordinate number of lecherous weirdos wandering around. One in particular – a polo-wearing man with a premature beer gut that reminds me of Warren from There’s Just Something About Mary – circles me like a shark until he goes in for the kill, bumping into me needlessly from behind, likely trying to cop a desensitized feel through the outside of his pants. I scurry away from him, feeling more violated than I have in quite some time. When I look back, he’s staring at me. If he followed me home and chopped me up into tater tot-sized pieces, I would not be surprised.
Eventually, the shit show must come to a close. Freedia and his gang of bitches leave the stage. Someone turns the house lights down and someone else turns the house music up and I spin around the room, making sure to keep eyes on my potential rapist. I keep tabs on him and his yellow and gray polo shirt for the rest of the night. He disappears, probably to stalk a less aware victim.
We head to the bar sitting below the sign WARSAW AT THE POLISH NATIONAL HOME. The room is one of those auditoriums ordinarily used for geriatric bingo night and Girl Scout square dances. Or, in our case, Big Freedia. Kids make out under the dimmed lights like they’re on curfew. Skinny dudes wander the crowd holding cans of beer. Sarah walks through the pierogi room and comes back feeling like a casualty of an olfactory war. “That was so fucking disgusting,” are her words.
Sarah and Tobias need to nurse their cigarette addiction so we head through the room adjacent to the pierogi room. A New Orleans-style band plays loudly in the corner. Delicately painted renderings of Polish hamlets adorn the walls beneath the low ceiling. It smells like summer bodies and burped-up pierogis. I feel my hair absorb the stench like a reluctant sponge. People push and shove ineffectually, shifting subtly like a shoulder-to-shoulder wave of overheated white bodies.
We make it to the door, avoiding death by crushing stampede. A Polish security guard directs traffic. “Next unit,” he says to Sarah, his voice filled with Eastern Promises. He stamps our wrists with a pair of red-inked lips.
Sarah smokes her cigarettes and we talk on the pavement. Boys borrow lighters and gather in huddled circles. We intermittently chant the hook to “Azz Everywhere,” throwing up hands holding cigarettes into the air and then bringing them down to drag in nicotine. The air is wet and warm and all I can think of is that this bizarre, pierogi-smelling, stalker-acquiring, Big Freedia- produced evening is the reason why I live in New York. Just another life lesson learned between the hours of 12 a.m. and 2 a.m.: Don’t fight the weird.
For more from Jenny, click some of the fun buttons below…
Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow her on Twitter.
Related Posts
Annoying bits of pistachio shells fall onto my skirt, littering the surface of my black tights like snow. Doug, the show’s “producer,” stands to my left, eyeing me in watchful disdain. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed that I am eating or pissed that I’m making as a lap-bound mess while waiting to get my hair and makeup done. I sit there, pi...
The wind breathes mossy air over the East River, hot like breath. I keep waiting for spring to retract its premature promises. I watch the canopy spread its arms above my street, filling the space between brick buildings and blue sky. I wait for the leaves to curl back into their little pods like disturbed sea anemones, shrinking to the touch....
FEEL MORE! Golden words commanded from their place on a clean windowpane. Words advertising clothing and midcentury furniture, a lifestyle this particular store wanted to promote. FEEL MORE! Lourdes wanted to feel less. She wanted to feel nothing. She was in a horrible mood, one that had become distressingly familiar. The strain in her che...
“It smells…like…like flowers in here.” The four of us walk through a marble lobby, complete with doorman, $1,000 centerpiece, and an aroma I only ever associate with impossibly expensive hotel spas. Care for a cold towel, Miss Bahn? It’s literally the nicest smelling lobby I’ve ever walked into in New York – an incredible feat cons...
With my trustworthy Xanax and a healthy serving of wine from a clear, plastic screw-top bottle, I fall asleep after dinner and wake up to breakfast – a shitty white roll that looks suspiciously similar to the shitty croissant they serve on the flight to Paris. My itinerary calls the Spartan slop placed before me “continental,” which at one ...
Comments