promoting a non-gender-essentialized cultural interaction

Joe Gross had me and Dulli pegged. In his Whigs entry for Rolling Stone‘s album guide he wrote “‘Gentleman,’ [Afghan Whigs] will take to their grave. Inside a brilliant, knowing record sleeve hides one of ’90s rock’s messiest psychodramas: reportedly written after a particularly nasty break-up, the Gentleman song-cycle portrays the artist as a grandmaster headfucker, the kind of guy you would keep your slightly obsessive sister away from at all costs even as she is, once again, climbing into his car. Dulli chronicles the melodramatic chess of maximum co-dependence with vengeful loathing, self- and otherwise.”
So today I call both dudes–Dulli, then Joe–for a quickie Q&A and emotional consultation, respectively. Joe and I have talked Greg’s misogy sex gallavantry, his being famously “sloppy,” but having the whole suavish sexual carnivore act down like he invented it.
Dulli starts calling me “babe” after two minutes of conversation and we’re talking Angie Stone which gets me going really good, and his voice has a rasp like a dud sputtering firecracker about to put out my eye. And I know he’s bad, he’s bad bad bad– there are like, novels and independent films about it. But I’m on the phone with fucking Cool Hand Luke. He tells me to watch The Wild Bunch, teases me for not having cable, tells me I have inspired him to cover “Everything is Everything” by Lauryn Hill, and before I know it, I’m climbing into his car, so to speak, mildly amused by the “babe”s even though anyone else I would have phone-clocked five minutes ago. It’s like being on the line with fucking Elvis or something. So now I REALLY understand his music: it’s all in there, smelling sweet and deadly like whiskey and cigarettes. (I also understand the obsession countless of my exes have had with Dulli–his magic works on straight males, too, though there is probably a fair amount of “I want to be him” attached. Ezra, for one, calls him, “A lot like John Reis, where despite being a macho/dickish UBER-MAN, he’s mad charming and clever as hell.” P.S. I always thought Ezra was going to leave me for the Hot Snakes.)
I relay this to Joe later and he tells me a lot but his first answer is the rightest: “Dude’s game is TIGHT.”