FRAMINGHAM, Mass. It’s Ladies Night at the Knaughty Knights Lounge in the Metrowest Hotel here, a marketing tool that has undergone a not-so-subtle transformation in the wake of the “Me Too Movement.” “Before it meant that women got in free and long-neck Bud Lights were only $2,” grouses Arch Witcomb, a rough-looking man who is a landscaper three seasons of the year and a snow plow driver in the winter. “That guy Weinstein really screwed things up for refined gentlemen like me.”
“I said no–which means yes it’s time for you to go.”
Starting last month, Ladies Night means a women-only policy that extends both to patrons and to entertainers in the lounge, with men relegated to the less commodious bar in the hotel’s dining room. “It’s rank discrimination is what it is,” says Bud Shrank, a commission salesman who is jammed between two other male patrons sitting on bar stools. “As long as I don’t grab anybody I ought to be able to ogle all the women in yoga pants I want.”
“You’re such a total loser–that pick-up line was a snoozer.”
But times change, and with them the song stylings of Jodi (“with an ‘I’”) Dufresne, who until her consciousness was raised used to sing songs of women hopelessly in love with losers and rascals. “No more,” she says. “I got so mad when I read about Matt Lauer in People I wrote enough angry songs to make an album.”
Dufresne takes the stage for her rousing opening number, “What’s That Little Thing Between Your Legs?,” a song that is the sexual flip side of “The Lady is a Tramp.”
I like men, she belts out as she grabs the mic, and I ain’t fickle.
I’ll stick by my guy like a Commie’s hammer to his sickle,
But what’s that garnish–a gherkin pickle?
What’s that little thing between your legs?
It’s a far cry from her previous repertoire, which sang of women throwing themselves headlong into love affairs, heedless of the consequences, sometimes with a happy ending but usually not. “I felt responsible,” she says during a break as she sips a Brandy Alexander. “How many girls could have settled for a nice relationship with a boring accountant, but instead heard me sing and hooked up with some loser who oozed testosterone?”
“I saw you across a crowded room, and my heart was weighed down with a pervading sense of gloom.”
After intermission, Dufresne switches to a softer mood with a song that tells the tale of a woman who has checked out a potential boyfriend through word of mouth and romantic opposition research, assisted by her college classmates and co-workers.
I talked to all my friends,
’cause you came off as kind of slick.
Some were just indifferent,
others said you made them sick.
But all agreed they understood
what it is that makes you tick–
everyone thinks you’re a dick.