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The Last Temptation of Dougie

This love story about an oversexed clubber will end with him hanging from a cross.

By Nadia Pflaum 

Dougie Rosenbrook has already pictured the way his crucifixion will go down.

He will be suspended on a 7-foot-tall wooden cross in front of his live, horrified audience, his arms and legs restrained with barbed wire. He'll wear nothing but a jockstrap and BluBlockers —'80s-era sunglasses with amber-tinted lenses. On his head, he'll wear a crown of barbed wire to match the curlicues of barbed wire spiraling down his pale body.

Enter the schoolgirls. Sixty tattooed, punk-rock women dressed in Catholic-school-uniform skirts and wielding Wiffle bats will take turns pummeling Dougie until the barbed wire draws blood.

And then?

"Um, that's it," Dougie says. "I think it'll be about a two-minute show, one second in between each girl."

Dougie has almost everything worked out. Securing a venue was tricky. He was going to crucify himself in a dominatrix friend's West Bottoms loft. But Mistress Maya and her roommate backed out. Nothing against performance art, they said. There's just the issue of 60 women and an audience traipsing through their living space. So Dougie checked with his friend Lori Burroughs, who owns the downtown bar Balanca's. She was all for playing host to Dougie's crucifixion, until her lawyer advised against it.

So as a last resort, Dougie plans to hold his crucifixion at midnight on the night of December 28 in Case Park downtown. It's as public as you can get.

If everything goes according to plan, Dougie imagines people protesting him in droves. Maybe the Phelpses will even come out. And if everything goes wrong — meaning, if he doesn't get the attention he desperately craves — well, then, it will be a disaster.

Refugees from Kansas City's rave scene might remember Dougie — or his alter ego, "Nightlife Jones," as he sometimes likes to call himself — as the weird little albino kid on the dance floor. But Dougie isn't albino. He's just very, very pale. He shaves his head to expose the circular tattoo on his crown, and he sometimes leaves a tiny blond fringe above his forehead and a white-blond soul patch on his chin.

Every October, people often compliment the 28-year-old on his costume (the most frequent guesses: Hunter S. Thompson, Elton John and Truman Capote). He doesn't wear a costume on Halloween, though — or ever. Dougie's look is distinct. He adores patterns, especially argyle and plaids. He loves accessories — ties and cravats and hats and sunglasses. A padded metallic briefcase protects his collection of multicolored aviator-frame eyeglasses and has a false bottom to hide sex toys. Sometimes he carries the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He wears his pants baggy, pairs them with Saucony sneakers or flip-flops, and coats himself in layers, no matter what the weather. A typical Dougie outfit is easily witnessed at the Peanut downtown on Sundays, when hip-hop DJs play the bar. Recently, he showed up in powder-blue pants; a wide-collared, powder-blue plaid shirt; a powder-blue argyle sweater vest; a blue tie peeking out from the V-neck; blue-tinted sunglasses; and a straw fedora. Top it all off with Issey Miyake cologne, and call it grandpa couture.

Dougie can also be found at work behind a sushi bar. Cooking fascinates Dougie almost as much as sex — the textures, the flavors, the temperatures. His idol is Ferran Adria, the Spanish chef who's famous for controversial concoctions such as apple caviar and edible foams. Dougie is proud to say that he once made a Red Bull-and-Jolly Rancher reduction as a sauce for a seafood dish. He has worked at Kansas City's swankiest eateries, including Lidia's, Piropos, Blue Bird Bistro and 40 Sardines.

At the Peanut, Dougie always carries two beer bottles at once, clamped precariously between the fingers of one hand. He leaves the other hand free for shaking, bumping fists or slinging over women's shoulders. His behavior is often outlandish, if not downright offensive — such as the time that his metal cock ring slipped off, dropped out his pants leg and rolled down the street during a game of double-dutch with some women downtown in Case Park. But Dougie is always forgiven. Perhaps it's because he always knows when to take his leave. He knows he's intense. A little Dougie goes a long way. He's courteous, witty, graceful and ... about to be crucified.

Even after learning of his quirks, strangers might still assume that he'll wuss out of the crucifixion. They must have missed Dougie's last stunt, pulled off at the Hurricane, before the dingy, smoky bar closed for remodeling. It didn't sound plausible — 100 $1 bills safety-pinned to his skin and removed by a throng of strangers. The doubters? They just don't know Dougie.

Back on June 24, in the basement of the Hurricane, Dougie was naked but for a pair of gray Shuttlecocks underwear and a Goorin Brothers straw fedora. His little beer gut poked out like a baby's tummy. A piercing artist who goes by the name of Tif counted dollar bills onto the felt of a pool table.

"I bet you're feeling pretty good right now," said Tif, who declined to give her full name. She explained that the body reacts to the pain of piercing by releasing a flood of feel-good endorphins.

Tif had spent the past hour sticking Dougie with safety pins. She attached a dollar bill to each pin after it was inserted, just by the dollar's edge, to make it easy to rip off. "There are 20 bills left," Tif reported. "We've done 80, bro. We've done this in, like, under an hour."

"Yeaaaaaaaah!" he yelled as Tif shoved a pin in his back. The rows of dollar bills pinned to his arms fluttered like feathers. As Tif poked him again, he made noises like someone smelling month-old cottage cheese. "I gotta be like Yoda's Dalai Lama," he said to himself.

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