When Johnny Vegas appears in the doorway of the Cabaret Room at Ka-Boom! nightclub, a dozen pairs of arms shoot into the air. Johnny Vegas saunters through the crowd with a pleased grin; everyone knows him here.
He slips on a white disco jacket that reveals his bare, bony chest and slides into white bell-bottoms and black penny loafers. Then Johnny Vegas reaches into one of the duffel bags and pulls out a bottle of cologne. He sits in the booth, arches his back, opens his mouth in a cackle, and lets the scent splash all over his chest. Then he sticks his nose in the air and crinkles his face in disappointment. He goes back into the bag and pulls out a bottle of Brut.
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“This should take care of things,” Johnny Vegas says, and douses himself again. He pulls a few more things out of the bags: a miniature disco ball on a string, which he hangs around his neck, and a handful of tissues, which he stuffs into his crotch. “As far as anyone’s concerned, I don’t do this,” he says. “I tell them that sometimes I put one cotton ball down there, but only in case I sweat.” The air around the booth has become almost unbreathable with cologne, but Johnny Vegas is no longer there. He has popped a cigarette in his mouth and headed for the dance floor.
“The way you judge a man is by the length of his pant cuffs,” Johnny Vegas yells back, and the whole crowd hoots and laughs. He fingers his disco ball, looks at it dreamily.
Once upon a time Johnny Vegas was a self-described yuppie, a financially successful entrepreneur in his early 20s with a Jaguar and a Rolex. He was also a frequent clubgoer, and sometime around 1985 he decided he didn’t like what he was seeing at various north-side establishments. There existed an antisocial creature called the Club Kid, who was antithetical to the way Johnny Vegas saw the world.
Down in the Cabaret Room, Johnny Vegas is changing costumes for the next number, a take on the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” “It kind of makes fun of homosexuals,” Johnny Vegas says, “but that’s OK because some of my best fans are homosexuals, and they go nuts over this. They’re more loose and carefree on the dance floor.”
“This is my friend here,” Johnny Vegas says. “If he was here more often with me, he wouldn’t be at the track losing money.”
