Grace Under Pressure

Six Degrees Lounge is empty. They’re an hour into what may be the city’s best idea: a six-hour (get it!?) happy hour. Bartender Kelly serves me another beer and goes back to a conversation about hair weaves with the only other folks at the bar.

Soon after, a busty blond with a suitcase-size purse hanging from her arm walks in. She’s talking on the phone — words are pouring from her mouth at a blistering, speed-of-light pace. Having been on the other end of her phone just a day earlier, I recognize her voice.

She hangs up, puts down her luggage and asks, “How are y’all,” to no one in particular.

“Kim?” I ask.

It’s Kim all right, but before we can even shake hands or exchange pleasantries she’s off to the races on her celly again.

“I’m so sorry,” she says before answering, “work never stops.”

While she’s gabbing I take in Six Degrees. Its posh, clean lines, leather furniture and whacked-out, campy lighting mingle with slightly worn original tile that looks fresh from your grandmother’s bathroom.

In a refreshing downtown hot-spot twist, the speakers are blaring out old-timey country instead of the usual hodgepodge of spaced-out house and trance. The sounds of fiddles galore fly through the air and into my impressed earholes, while the smell of today’s happy-hour-buffet barbecue pounds my olfactory.

But I’m not here to participate in an orgy of the senses, I’m here to meet Kim Coyne, who is STILL TALKING ON THE FUCKING PHONE! She’s Houston’s self-proclaimed Queen of Clubs. Through the newsletter she sends to her huge e-mail list, Queen reaches close to 13,000 Houstonians every other week to give them the lowdown on H-town nightlife. Part of her job is hanging out and socializing in bars.

I’m here to make her acquaintance, yes, but more important, to introduce her to a man with a nickname of his own: Le Grand Fromage. Fromage is Queen’s antithesis — the yin to her yang, the black to her white.

As an event planner, promoter and marketing director for more than ten years, Queen is one of the city’s finest…just ask her. Le Grand Fromage, on the other hand, is gifted in the art of party crashing — and once in the door, he’s that curiously entertaining goof who drinks too much and is adept at doing something that makes everyone feel isolated and uncomfortable.

I’ve given Le Grand Fromage only one instruction for the night: Be as obnoxious as possible without getting the law involved. It’ll be the ultimate test of Queen’s party-hosting moxie.

What will happen when the irresistible force meets the immovable object? As she hangs up, the two touch gloves. Let’s get ready to ruuuuuuuuummmmmble!

Understand this: Queen has a routine. Her greetings are coupled with the deft dealing of one of her three business cards, which she flicks smoothly like a ninja executing enemies with throwing stars. She’s uncomfortable with silence. Pauses for breathing or emphasis in her speech are harder to find than a supermodel sporting baby-seal pelt at a PETA convention.

Fromage can do some talking of his own. Only two beers in, he’s lobbing Queen slow pitches — complimenting her looks (“You’re 39!? Get the fuck out! You’re beautiful!”) and the bar (“It’s no Lola’s, but it’s nice!”).

Fromage hugs Queen after she announces that our next drinks will be on her tab. He wanders off, taken by the group of soccer players that has just walked in. While he’s gone I get to know Queen better. Her ample bosom, she tells me, is of the saline variety. She didn’t start smoking until age 36, got her first tattoo at 38 and just recently participated in her first wet T-shirt contest.

Before we can delve into the psychology of it all, Fromage is back and sporting a grin so wicked, somewhere the Cheshire cat is on the phone with his copyright lawyer.

“I think we should leave,” he says. “I just told those guys soccer is for fags.”

Queen isn’t rattled. “Those are some of our regulars. They’re harmless.”

“The Queen of Clubs has implants,” I inform Fromage.

“You can touch them, they feel real,” Queen says. She barely finishes before Fromage gives her an amateur mammogram.

Over the course of the night Fromage gets out his fair share of zingers. When introduced to a Chronicle lifestyles writer, he says, “Yeah, we’ve met before — I think I bought coke from you once.” His introduction to a local (male) public access TV host is met with “Oh, I know him already. He hit on me once — yep, offered me a blow job.”

Queen skillfully defuses any situations that might arise, all the while doing it with a smile. “I make my living on this side of the bar with people. I deal with drunken yahoos all the time,” she says after I compliment her handling of Fromage.

Later in the evening, Fromage ups the ante at another one of those establishments: Slainte. The bar’s Irish-language name is pronounced slan-chey or, if you too are from Oklahoma and “don’t play that Gaelic bullshit!” like Fromage, slaint. It is here that Fromage shoves his digital camera into the faces of unsuspecting customers who seem less than pleased when its flash distracts them from their Guinness.

“Come sit next to me, sweetie.” Queen skillfully reels him back in. As a grand finale Fromage spews vomit on Slainte’s wooden floor and not in a Queen-provided trash can. Again Queen seems unfazed, simply telling the bartender, “We’re going to need a mop.” What makes it all the more remarkable is the fact that this emission has come mere moments after Fromage has unabashedly flopped out his penis at the bar after Queen told him it was the price for another titty grab.

Back at Six Degrees the lights turn on — the bell has rung, the fight is over. The verdict: Queen in a unanimous decision. Queen is pure grace under fire. Fromage throws tons of shrapnel her way and she is able to keep her cool — at times even laughing about the whole thing.

But one wonders how straight she might have played it had this night been one of her big exclusive events. We’ll find out soon enough — Fromage is now an avid reader of Queen’s newsletter.