IN THE BEGINNING there was “skrinkle,” and it was good. “Skrinkle” begat “skroddle” and that, too, was good … unless it was bad.
“Skrinkle,” and its corollary “skroddle,” were the building blocks of a strange little world Michael was building for himself. It was a language of his own, and it consisted of just those two words and the infinite variations, conjugations, and not-so-subtle shifts in their meanings.
Either word could, in fact, mean anything—depending upon its context.
You were either a “skrink” or a “skrod.”
I was a “skrink-la-da” if I was good. Or a stupid “scrodlover” if I was bad.
Oh, but I’m sorry. Unless you, too, are doing Special K, then I’m going too fast, and none of this makes any sense. I guess I need to be a bit more linear. Let me start again …
Here’s the deal:
I am responsible for everything that’s happened—everything!—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Well, maybe not so much the ugly. Michael does deserve some of the credit.
But it all begins and ends with me.
Me! Me! Me!
I spawned Michael Alig, and for that I will forever be damned.
This is how I remember it happening:
I blew into town in 1984, from some plains state, and got off the train, looking for all the world just like Shirley Jones in “Oklahoma!” I was a kicky, corn-fed lass, with a song in my heart and a rosy hue on my cheeks …
Plucky? You bet!
I had a satchel full of crazy dreams, and a down-home country manner that people naturally cottoned to.
Why Andy Warhol, himself, took one look at me and said: “You there! I want YOU to be my next superstar!”
What are you looking at? You think I’m making this up? It’s true! Go ask him!
No, really.
Ask anybody. That’s what happened. I came first. I was the original.
So, anyway.
I’m Shirley Jones, right? All sunshine and freckles.
And if I’m Shirley Jones, that would make Michael … well … that would make him Danny Bonaduce, wouldn’t it? Little Danny Partridge, the slick-as-snot troublemaker who gets away with all the good lines.
Oh yes, I like that.
He, of course, has an entirely different view of things.
To hear Michael tell it, I am Mr. Magoo—that crazy old codger, bumping into walls and talking to himself—who buys drinks for the sexy little lamp in the corner and feeds the end table a dog biscuit.
He would then get to be Tennessee Tuxedo, the wisecracking penguin, who is looped obsessively onto his VCR.
So I suppose somewhere in between our two delusions lies the truth:
I guess I am a myopic old man in Shirley Partridge drag. And he must be a red-headed penguin.
I hope that helps.
You see, I just love analogies. Give me a good old analogy any day. That’s what I say.
I think it’s infinitely more telling for me to say that, oh, if we were characters on The Simpsons, I would be Grampa Simpson and he would be Mr. Burns.
Or if we were slices of bread, then he’s Cinnamon Raisin Swirl, I’m Sourdough.
In chemical terms: he’s a catalyst, I’m a noble gas.
How bloated we all are to think that our childhoods matter, that anybody really cares about our little lives. Nobody wants to read about your little rag doll or your first-grade teacher. I always notice a slight glazing of the eye whenever I trot out my old “pooping in the neighbor’s lawn” story.
One time, while snooping through his things, I discovered Michael Alig’s unpublished memoirs. In them, he goes on for an eternity about “digging a hole to hell” when he was a child, and listening to the furnace at night, thinking it was the voice of the devil. Sure it’s a sweet bit of foreshadowing: we see his paranoia, his fascination with the dark side …
But really.
Wading waist-high in Michael’s childhood memories is not my idea of fun.
So very quickly: his childhood.
I imagine it was full of, you know, pathos and pain. And there was a divorce, of course, and it was very hard on the kids …
He was poor. I like to think of him as a dirty street urchin, sucking on a stick. But somehow I bet he was the apple of everybody’s eye—Bonnie Prince Michael—and what little the family had, went to him.
He talks endlessly about a certain “experimental school” he went to—one of those terribly progressive early ’70s things— where you went to “blue rooms” and everybody applauded when you had a bowel movement. He credits this school for his free-thinking, rule-breaking ways.
Even so, I suspect he was a Ritalin child, impossible to pin down—you know, asking “What does this button do?” after he’s pushed it and the building next door has exploded and collapsed in a pile of dust. I would also imagine he seduced the neighborhood children during sleep-overs, and poked out the eyes of many a neighborhood dog.
His mother, Elka, was a blowzy Shelley-Winters-in-her-sex-pot-days, and I’m being kind here. In that attempted autobiography, if you choose to believe it, there are all sorts of juicy tidbits about her, things you wouldn’t believe. Of course, I’m too much of a lady to go into detail here. Suffice to say, Michael alleges that there were all sorts of comings and goings in the Alig household, a topsy-turvy little world.
The elderly couple next door, Clarabel and Earl, swooped in and took over the daily job of raising him. I’m sure he was their little gift from heaven, as they had nothing better to do, and it allowed Elka the freedom to pursue, well, “other things.” Hmmm. I seem to recall there was a brief stint at catalogue modeling, ski wear and what-not, and oh! you should see the pictures!
So that’s his childhood. There it is.
Yada, yada, yada.
We all have issues, we all had problems. I was no different, really. We were both boys, two boys, two Midwestern misfits. We had parallel running lives …
While I was getting boogers wiped in my hair during Biology, he was being spit on in Social Studies.
A common story.
But there was a day, a sunny day in May, I’m sure, when at exactly 2 P.M., we both looked out of the window of our different schools and … What?
We didn’t wish—wishes are wasted …
We didn’t hope—because our future was inevitable …
And we didn’t pray—we were on our own.
So we sent out energy bullets: “This is for New York.”
“This is for when I get there.”
Little pockets of energy, to be saved and accumulated and used upon arrival.
I can only project my longings and my needs onto him. I can only express my rapture in finding an Interview magazine, seeing a picture of Andy Warhol or Divine, and just aching.
I was so scared it was all going to be gone by the time I got there. Ninth grade, tenth grade—can’t this thing go any faster?
In the magazine, there were funny people with funny names like John Sex, who had wild white hair and a snake!—and didn’t that just open up a kaleidoscope of new possibilities?
And how long the years are—endless! And the minutiae of your daily life! So tedious, when there are BIG THINGS happening a thousand miles away. And when you go to bed at night, it’s hard to believe those people, those fabulous, daunting people, are out there right now!
So we wait, and we endure, and someday we will be there, and we will make it.
And, by golly, we did …
The club scene that I arrived onto in the mid-’80s was an impenetrable clique, with a complex hierarchy of “superstars.” There were intricate rules of behavior, Byzantine rituals, and unspoken customs that were designed to exclude the unwanted, and massage the egos of the Chosen Few.
There was a certain type of person who was deemed “fabulous”—but only if that person understood the system’s infrastructure and played by its rules.
At the tippy-top of this system was the nightclub Area, the downtown society magazine Details, and the titular Queen of the Night, Dianne Brill. The goal, then, was to have your picture in Details, with Dianne, in the VIP Room of Area. If that happened, well, God himself would drop out of the heavens and give you a drink ticket.
It was a tough nut to crack, I’ll tell you that much.
But for someone, like myself, who had all the time in the world, and a closet full of flowing lamé things, it seemed like a perfect way to while away the evenings.
I took to my task with the plucky determination of a Perfume Sprayer at Bloomingdale’s. Nothing could stop me. I was like a rabid MCI operator—oozing sincerity, feigning “spontaneous” conversations, and always, but always, just right there in your face.
Oh, I had moxie, all right. Like Pia Zadora on a sugar rush.
I enlisted the aid of a buxom young girl, to counteract my sometimes unnerving flamboyance. She was my sidekick. My partner in crime.
I schooled her in the Art of Schmoozing.
I even went so far as to make up flash cards to help her remember who stood where in the social scheme of things.
“Who’s this?” I asked, as I held up a laminated card.
“Cornelia Guest!”
“Very good. Now what’s her dog’s name?”
“Mr. Whiskers.”
And then, when we would actually SEE Cornelia out and about, well, we were her BEST FRIENDS! We would hug her and kiss her: “How is Mr. Whiskers?” and she played right along, too embarrassed to admit she didn’t know us from a hole in the wall.
I learned very quickly, watching the master, Dianne Brill, at work. She was brilliant. And now I will pass her ancient secrets on to you. Here, for the first time, is the Art of Working a Room.
Now you, too, can conquer any scene in high style! Watch as uppity faggots fall into line! Semi-important people think that you’re a Somebody! Has-beens cling to your coattails! It’s easy! It’s fun! It’s the patented Brill-o-matic 1-2-3 to Social Acceptance!
First: Spend at least six hours getting ready. Study yourself in the mirror at home. Is your hairdo media-friendly? Will your outfit read in black and white? Does your “look” inspire at least two clever sound bites?
Remember, you must be eye-catching but simple. If you and your “look” can be reduced to a simple caricature and not lose any essential qualities, you’ve got yourself a hit. Think Carmen Miranda. Jessica Rabbit. The band members of Poison.
Be sure that your partner doesn’t clash with your look. Plan ahead and execute together.
As you stand outside the entrance to the party, take your partner by the hand and shake it once for solidarity. Quickly, adjust your vibrations to the music. Throw your ears back, push your energy forward, turn on that smile and SWEEP into view.
Enter the room in a clatter of commotion.
Circle the room, once together, smiling and saying hello to EVERY PERSON in the room. Even if you don’t know them. ESPECIALLY if you don’t know them. Pretend that you do. You should make a snappy comment about something they’re wearing: “My what a beautiful corsage!” (if it’s a woman or a drag queen); or “Darling, look at those massive shoulders!” (if it’s a man or a drag queen).
Smile and acknowledge EVERY PERSON in the room … in a clockwise rotation—never stopping, never pausing—always moving, always smiling … brilliant … animated … ON!
This takes twenty to twenty-five minutes.
Then: Separate!
Both of you circle, alone, in opposite directions. (You continue moving clockwise, your partner retraces your steps.) Pretend you are searching for each other—that it’s a matter of life and death—and be sure to involve every person in the club in your desperate hunt.
(This should take no longer than twenty-five minutes.)
Finally, regroup and scream with transcendental bliss at the thrill of finding one and other again.
Now, lock arms and work the whole room again, telling all your newfound friends, “Not to worry, we’ve found each other at long last.”
Then leave.
Never stay longer than an hour and a half. And that is on the very outside. I MEAN IT!
Always leave them wanting more.
Do this every night, for three months, at the hottest club in town, and I personally guarantee that for the rest of your life you will know everybody in every room of every party, everywhere.
That’s what we did. We climbed our way into their charmed little circle. Me and my booby best friend were dubbed “celebutantes” by Newsweek magazine, and soon we were the toast of the town.
Now, if you’re looking for some sort of lofty moral summation—like: “Being Popular Isn’t What’s Important”—well, you won’t find it here. Because I had a wonderful time …
… met a lot of fascinating people …
… and saw sights that would make Caligula blush …
And I also learned some VERY IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS.
For example:
That’s what I learned when I was fabulous.
What does it all mean? Not much.
It qualifies me to be a hostess at Denny’s.
But, remember—at the time, I took it all rather seriously. I paid my dues. Played by the rules.
There I was, sitting pretty, perched in the upper branches of the nightclubbing hierarchy.
Suddenly, in whooshed Michael Alig—just as brazen, just as devil-may-care, just as uncouth and unschooled….
A big old bowling ball searching for a gutter …
I remember I was at the bar at Area, coolly studying my reflection in a Doublemint gum wrapper that was lying there. More lip gloss, perhaps?
That’s when he came skroddling up to the bar. I saw him and I thought, My Lord, that could very well be my uglier twin sister! He had the same pigtails, same lunchbox, same fashionable blue lips! It was unnerving!
“Hi. I’m Michael Alig. And you’re James St. James!”
“Well. I’m glad we finally got that worked out.”
“I saw you on Oprah and I have your picture from Interview magazine on my refrigerator.”
“Of course you do, darling. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
“I’m going to be a party promoter.”
“So is my Guatemalan housekeeper. But you hang in there, dear. Goodbye.”
“What do you think of this idea: a masquerade party at the Kit Kat Club where everybody comes dressed as their favorite Saturday morning cartoon character, like Electra-Woman or Hong Kong Phooey?”
“I’d rather have rectal cancer, darling, but it was sweet of you to ask. Now, goodnight.”
And I ran for the exit, hoping that was the end of it.
But there he was again, the next night—draped across Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto! And the next night, and every night, every party, everywhere we went—THERE HE WAS! Smiling and chatting up everybody in the room!
Well, everyone was just horrified!
Of course, I ignored him. Who wanted some loud, young upstart, just brazenly walking up to total strangers in a club, acting as if he knew them!
How crass! How contrived! Did he think we didn’t see through his blatant social climbing?!
There are a million stories of how we all tortured him, ran from him, and tried desperately to thwart him. When he was a busboy at Area, I might throw drinks and ashtrays on the ground and scream “Busboy!” just to make him grovel. When he started throwing parties at Danceteria, we wouldn’t be caught dead gracing them with our social presence. He wasn’t written about in Details. He was simply not allowed in our clique.
There was only one reason I maybe tolerated a moment or two of his presence at all: I was madly in love with his boyfriend:
The future Superstar DJ, Keoki.
When they met, Keoki was still a baggage handler for TWA. He somehow got into Area one night and met Michael, who was still a busboy. They were both very different people then from who they are now. This was before the egos, the drugs, the successes, the failures, and the fans. But maybe they saw the future in one and another. Who knows? Who cares. Anyway, they left together and embarked on an eight-year, whirlwind, co-dependent, psychotic love affair.
Little Keoki was just adorable back then. Cute as a bug. I was immediately smitten. I remember we all were. The entire club stopped cold the first night Michael brought out his hot little Spanish boy-toy.
How could he get someone that cute?
But there he was, and there they were. Keoki was in his underwear on a mattress in the corner of the lounge at Area. I don’t remember why. Perhaps Michael had gotten him a job as an Art Installation. Or maybe he just felt fabulous.
But here was this gorgeous, Dionysian, creature, a real Latin heartthrob, smothering MICHAEL ALIG in kisses.
We were flummoxed.
Absolutely flummoxed.
And so, I was in love.
Now maybe, if I look real deep into myself, I can admit that just maybe I have a few intimacy issues that need to be resolved. I mention this only because I dealt with my “crush” just like any ten-year-old would: I chased him around and tortured him mercilessly. If he had had pigtails, I’d have pulled them.
Michael launched an elaborate campaign to secure a job for Keoki at Area. Keoki decided he wanted to be a DJ—despite the fact that he didn’t know the first thing about it. Oh, he was just awful. His selections were a mishmash of the pretentious, the obvious, and just plain bad taste. Nobody could clear a room faster than Keoki.
Nevertheless, Michael began billing him as “The It Boy of the ’80s” on every flier for every party.
“The It Boy of the ’80s”?
Ludicrous!
How could I not make fun of that? Nobody even knew who he was!
But I did go on a bit. Anytime he walked into a room, I would scream, scream: “OH MY GOD! IT’S THE ‘IT BOY’!”
I was braying like a herniated yak.
Every night—“IT’S THE ‘IT BOY’!”
Until one night, he was go-go dancing in his underwear, and Michael and I stood transfixed, unable to stop ourselves from gawking. Then, abruptly, I launched into my tirade.
“LOOK AT THE ‘IT BOY’!”
But Keoki had had enough. He grabbed a drink from the bar and began pelting me with ice cubes. Cube after cube, CLUNK, on my head, CLUNK, down my shirt. Ice cubes were followed by lemon wedges, and before I knew it, I was being pummeled with cigarette butts and beer bottles, OH THE HUMANITY!
The other go-go boys joined in. Spurred on by Keoki’s taunts and jeers, they poured drinks on me, seriously staining my pretty new tube skirt, I will never forget it.
I fell to the floor, racked with sobs. How could somebody so beautiful be such a monster?
Another time, Musto and I were posed in our corner of the Palladium bathroom with our force fields UP. We were saying deeply superficial things to each other, and looking very soigné doing so. Nobody would have dared to approach us. We were that good.
Nobody, except …
Leaping and bounding through the crowd—arms flailing, invites spilling everywhere—looking for all the world like Old Yeller in heat …
MICHAEL ALIG!
He dared enter our sacred personal space! He was out of breath, panting, and looking positively CANINE, in some weird furry sort of getup. He poked his face RIGHT INTO OURS, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, something he did every day.
“JAMES! MICHAEL! MICHAEL! JAMES! Oh My God! Hi! I AM SO GLAD I FOUND YOU! I’m throwing a party, you have to come! It’s at Area and the theme of the party is BLUE. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Can I put you down on the YES list, please?”
I’d rather suck a urinal cake.
“I’ll be sure to red-letter it on my social calendar,” Musto gushed in that ego-squashing way of his. “I was going to go to Bianca Jagger’s birthday … but … hmm … Bianca or Blue? Blue or Bianca? Hey, it’s Blue for me! I’ll be there!”
“No, really, guys—it’s going to be fun. Open bar from ten till eleven! PLEASE? Please come …”
Hoping to sidestep a commitment, I quickly changed the subject.
“My, that’s some jacket you have there.” The jacket was awful. Goat fur. Or dead dog. And waist length! Simply GENIUS. So IN-YOUR-FACE. Hookers would use this jacket to blow their noses on. And it was a balmy 102 degrees in the ladies’ room. Why hadn’t he checked it with coat check? Or the ASPCA? “Yep, that’s SOME look, there.”
“You like it?” He petted the matted fur fondly, and then it dawned on me: poor dear—he wasn’t being camp! He must have thought he looked chic … or moneyed! He was parading around like a mangy little monkey because he was proud of this look. This was clearly a boy going nowhere—fast.
“It was a Christmas present from Keoki. Try it on! Here! Go ahead! Really, it’ll look great on you!”
Oh My God. Should I?
I could see Musto’s attention span waning—any minute he might bolt. Three minutes of his time, and an original epigram to take home, was all he gave to any one person. Anything more exhausted him. Michael Alig had already used up his allotted time.
BUT THAT COAT WAS SUCH A GIGGLE! Even he wanted to try it on.
I was wearing leopard spandex and six-inch spikes. It would match hysterically. I slipped it on.
“Heavy Metal Housewife from Yonkers!” Musto announced, and everybody clapped. I vamped a bit, and Michael was in heaven: HIS coat on MY back … with a Musto quote to boot!
Oh, it was such an ill coat!
I looked positively perverse—just like Divine, only young and thin and with a pretty face.
I couldn’t take it off. I struck a few more poses, until—
… out of the corner of my eye …
I saw an angry mass of manliness RUSH into the room and,
—before I knew it—
I was THROWN against the wall.
It was Keoki, red-faced and rabid.
“Take it off! Now! Take it off or I’ll kick the crap out of you!”
Then he turned to Michael: “How dare you, Michael Alig—let him wear your Christmas present? And James St. James, OF ALL PEOPLE! How could you? Is this how you treat my gift? You just ruined my present!”
It was a full-blown, “all eyes on me” temper tantrum.
Musto, whose Warholian fear of confrontation instantly propelled him halfway across the club, left me to deal with this cut-rate Ricky Ricardo.
“But. I. He—” was all I could sputter.
Michael was absolutely mortified by this poorly timed and wildly distorted display of Latino bravado. Keoki had clearly ruined his moment—a truly fabulous moment of real social bonding. He had probably been hoping against hope that it would end up in Musto’s column. But that dream was dashed. Musto was gone, I was angry, and it was most likely neither of us would come to his Blue Party! What started off ten minutes ago as one cozy stepup, was now disastrously three steps down the still rigid social ladder.
I grabbed my lunchbox and tried to pull off a huffy exit: “I guess the It Boy must have been VERY CLOSE to that dog when it was still alive!”
Oh, that Keoki! Here I was doing Michael a favor by transforming his flea-bitten old rag into a postmodern coat of irony.
I was more determined than ever to keep my distance from those freaks. Disagreeable troublemakers, that’s what they were. I predicted then that they’d both be gone and forgotten in six months’ time. Those types never lasted.
Our little war escalated quickly until one night …
Ah yes. I remember it well …
The opening night of the Tunnel … and it was going to be FABULOUS! This might single-handedly bring back nightlife as we knew it!
I still had my old-lady bubble hairdo—and my dear, I spent the entire day in the beauty salon: starting with a wash and mousse, setting it with rollers, under the drier, then back-comb, hairspray, tease, hairspray, curling iron, hairspray—IT TOOK HOURS.
By the time I was through, it was enormous! Über bubble!
I was Super Society Woman!
And my dress!
It was Gaultier—green and blue satin, with giant Russian lettering, in velvet, across the chest and arms.
Too chic!
Remember that season? Fall ’86 I think, and all that Soviet madness? We wore Russian logos and listened to Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Oh, and we all quoted Karl Marx and went to those Yakov Smirnoff concerts (or was that just me?). Anyway, Communist chic was all the rage.
So, in a word, I was stunning.
And!
It was a club opening! A special occasion! Put on your most festive party hat! You couldn’t wait to see the same people you saw every night, IN A WHOLE NEW SETTING!
It was almost too much fun!!
But there was a glitch.
A fly in the ointment.
Musto and I had agreed to present a Nightlife Award at Area. Michael Alig was doing something called “The Glammies,” in which he would recognize and honor those in the scene for their contributions (GIRL OF THE MOMENT! HOTTEST GOGO BOY! BIGGEST SLUT!).
We never would have agreed to do this on tonight of all nights, but we had agreed long before we knew of the conflict. Who knew it would fall on the night of the BIGGEST PARTY OF THE YEAR?
And Dianne was coming with Raquel Welch—they were friends now!—That Dianne was such a meteor!
At least Michael was putting us on the budget and we were going to get fifty dollars apiece!
Fifty dollars just to show up at a nightclub!
What an innovation!
It worked, because there we were, at Area—AREA! Of all places! Area was already over. Very “last month.” You could smell the decay.
There I was, pretty as a picture. All gussied up—new heels (patent leather, with little bows on the heel! FABULOUS! SQUEAL!).
The hairdo of life …
And the most fabulous dress I have ever owned!
Sitting with Michael Alig—MICHAEL ALIG!—at Area—AREA!—when the entire civilized world was across town. “If I miss Dianne and Rockie, I’ll just die! Oh and Andy will be there! And Liza!”
Cut to this dreary wake.
Oh, it was too much! Fifty dollars or no fifty dollars, let’s get this show on the road! Hup to it!
Well, Michael had to milk our presence for all it was worth and parade us around to the managers to show what a good crowd he pulled in.
GOOD CROWD? It was the four of us and a few crickets!
Finally the awards started—I was wound up so tight—I don’t remember anything about it, except I was in an awful mood.
My turn. I got on stage. Someone handed me the category.
“Best DJ.”
Oh dear.
“And the nominees are …” and I read a list of the crème de la crème—the most fabulous DJs in the city (NONE OF WHOM WERE THERE)—and Keoki (who WAS SEATED NEXT TO THE STAGE).
“And the winner is …”
No. Please. No. Even Michael would not stoop this low!
“OH MY GOD!” I shrieked, “IT’S THE ‘IT BOY’!”
Keoki, who couldn’t mix two songs to save his life; Keoki, who nobody knew, who was three months on the scene—Keoki won against the tops, the most talented, the A-listers.
Wouldn’t you know?
“Where’s the It Boy? Somebody get the goddamn It Boy, so we can get our money and get the hell out of here and go to the Tunnel, PLEASE!”
And I began to stomp off stage.
Well, I went too far. From my grand old age now, and the wisdom I’ve accumulated, yes, even I concede—I went too far.
I was rude and I ruined Michael’s party and embarrassed him in front of the managers he was trying so hard to impress.
But don’t cry for Michael and Keoki.
Listen to what happened next, and I think you’ll agree that, well, I got my comeuppance (and then some!), and the punishment far exceeded the crime.
Keoki and two of his goons bum’s-rushed the stage, picked me up, and threw me—THREW ME!—
Like I was an old tissue!
Like I wasn’t a delicate porcelain doll!
They threw me into the fountain.
And everybody laughed.
Me!
The celebutante!
And when I sputtered and crawled out of the water—
My four-hour hairdo was … was … a mop! A bunch of henna’ed noodles!
And my panty hose were bagging around my ankles!
And my pretty new dress was ruined.
I looked like … a soggy old sea hag!
It was the worst night of my life!
I’m getting all choked up again, just telling you about it.
I went to the opening of the Tunnel, anyway, and everybody was very sweet when I cornered them and vented and sobbed and generally called so much attention to myself that I was actually pretty fabulous.
But, oh!, that Keoki!
I was so mad at him!
I was so mad, I … broke down and got him a drink and we had a really long, complicated conversation about … my lip gloss.
And thus, in my darkest hour, out of cruelty came kindness. We bonded that night and became friends—through thick and thin—and that friendship has endured ten tumultuous years.
Sure, I was still in love with him, but now we were friends as well.
And it was because I spent so much time with Keoki that a thaw in my attitude toward Michael was inevitable.
But let’s peel the onion here. Psychologically, I think I chose to fall in love with Keoki as an excuse. That way I could set up my friendship with Michael, and still think of him as an adversary.
I didn’t have to admit to myself that I might really like him.
I was free to resent him.
So I floated into their lives and it felt right and comfortable.
The old crowd was appalled with me: “There goes Troll St. Troll! Looks like he found a new bandwagon to hop on to!” “Like a barnacle in heat, that one!”
After all the ranting and raving about my dislike for Michael—and my contempt for his silly little parties—I guess I did look hypocritical.
But there I was: in a little fake fur number, doing the ropes at the Tunnel basement. A “club kid,” of all things!
That’s all six months down the road, though.
In the meantime, Michael’s star was on the rise. Warhol died and suddenly, “going Downtown” lost its cachet. The thrill-seekers moved on. Downtown turned into a frail and weak shadow of its former self. It maybe could have limped along bravely for another couple of years. Or maybe not. At any rate, that’s when Musto, who was perhaps having yet another bad hair day and feeling peevish, effectively killed the scene with his February 1987 Village Voice cover story: “The Death of Downtown.”
Instantly the fun was over.
My celebutante days were gone. Anybody connected with the old scene was considered outdated.
Enter, the club kids.
Now, damnit, let me say this about that: I do not want to chronicle the history of the club kid movement. I have neither the desire nor the wherewithal to accomplish that. I leave it to the professionals.
Rather, I want to paint you a watercolor of my relationship with Michael—a sweeping impressionistic view of the dynamics of our relationship, and how a little thing like murder could forever alter the balance of power.
I really don’t think people actually care about the nuts and bolts of nightclubbing politics, or the ever-changing cast of club kids.
Nobody really wants to hear the incredible true life stories of Jenny Go-Getter and Really Denise.
And I am NOT going to spend hours and pages describing in mind-numbing detail each wacky new look.
Suffice it to say: there was a group of people called the Club Kids that Michael created in his own image, and they all had funny names that he usually chose for them like—oh—“Oliver Twisted” and “Julius Teazer”…
And they—you know—oh, I don’t know—shoved strawberries up their nose and ran around swinging an alarm clock above their head—and called it “a look.”
Yes, the looks were pretty lame in the beginning—just cheap homemade costumes. I used to feel like my mother on Halloween: “And what do we have here? A scary monster, a cowboy, and a pretty fairy princess! Here’s a hit of ecstasy, run along now.”
Their sense of style got better as the years went on, but you could always spot a club kid in the wild if there was something glued to his or her face: sequins? feathers? lug-nuts? a Virginia ham? Yup. That’s a club kid.
I’m not kidding.
They usually had a shelf life of six months; then they’d move back to Iowa, and become Queen of their little scenes there and forever look back on those six months as “the craziest time of my life.”
So there.
That’s it. The History of the Club Kids.
Enough said.
Allow me to continue with Michael’s surprising rise up the ranks.
Now we all know that nature abhors a vacuum, so when the clubs were empty, Michael rushed in to fill the void.
And his parties were … OK … actually fun. Even “Blue.”
I was loathe to admit it, but he had a certain energy that was undeniable.
And when, after the opening night, the Tunnel failed to draw a crowd, its creative director, Rudolf, threw his hands in the air. He had tried his damnedest to book A-list parties (Mamie Van Doren! Cornelia Guest!), but nobody wanted to go to big flashy nightclubs anymore.
It was all about the intimate. The private. It was all about a club called Nell’s, where you sat on an overstuffed sofa with a bottle of claret and discussed your prostate.
Michael had been pestering Rudolf forever to let him do something at the Tunnel, and it was sort of: “What the hell, let’s give it a whirl.”
They had nothing to lose.
“OK Michael, you can have the basement for your little friends, and you can have the run of it. It’s all yours.”
And Rudolf gave him a blank check. Free reign. Go crazy! Knock yourself out!
Rudolf had a typically Teutonic sense of humor. It was a nihilistic, neo-expressionist, German-type of thing. He saw humor in … you know, things like vivisection and gum disease. The sicker and sadder things got, the more inspired Rudolf became. He was perverse and decadent in a legendary sort of way. And he had a very laissez-faire attitude toward, oh, rules and morals and things. “If it feels good, do it.”
Truly, Michael had found a mentor worthy of his mettle.
If Michael wanted a crazy old homeless man to do the door, Rudolf would smile and say he had his checkbook ready.
When Michael wanted to auction off, say, circus midgets or streetwalkers—well, that sounded like fun to Rudolf!
“Let’s serve cat food as hors d’ouevres.”
“Have at it!”
Nothing was too shocking.
The Tunnel basement operated on the Chaos Theory. Insanity prevailed. There were peanut races, three-legged drag queen races, and many, many toasts made with the ever-present ecstasy punch. And the drug dealers who supplied the ecstasy were instantly acknowledged as “superstars,” and became much coveted guests at all the best parties.
Michael hired all the local loons.
There was Ffloyd, the Human Money Tree: the music would suddenly stop and Ffloyd would run through the room, naked, with a hundred one-dollar bills taped to his body. He ran in one door and out the other. A free-for-all ensued and whatever you grabbed was yours to keep.
That idea proved so popular, it morphed into the $1,000 Drop. Michael would stand on a table and toss a thousand dollar bills to an often violent mob. Of course, he usually pocketed $990 and passed the remaining ten on to tip-challenged friends. But two hundred blue-faced freaks still screamed and cried and clawed and climbed to get to Michael; why, you would have thought the New Kids on the Block were masturbating on stage, the way everybody carried on.
And above it all, Michael stood and drank in the attention, smiling like the cat that ate the canary.
I remember once, Michael had a pool party and bought lots of little kiddie pools and filled them up with water, and after the ecstasy kicked in, everybody got naked.
And Michael—buoyed by all the attention, and so carried away by his own spunk—broke the main water pipes and flooded the basement until it really was like a pool: a giant, filthy, germ-ridden cesspool filled with hundreds of naked drug addicts.
Now if THAT isn’t fun—I don’t know what is!
I think Michael was given a stern reprimand for that one. He promised never to do it again. He didn’t have to, because next week Lady Hennessey Brown promised to set her pussy on fire and lactate on the audience.
There was always something bigger and better on the horizon.
There was the “Celebrity Club,” a weekly event hosted by three newcomers that Michael had imported from Atlanta: Larry Tee, Lahoma, and a shy, retiring wallflower named RuPaul. They were trashy and flashy and dressed in the most amazing vintage ’70s outfits—when that was still a radical concept.
Each week a different “Nightclubbing Legend” (read: Old School) was named Celebrity of the Week.
It was Michael’s way of getting the old guard to come to his parties, albeit one at a time.
By honoring someone like Michael Musto, he was showing the old guard who had previously snubbed him, how fabulous he was doing without them. I think he secretly hoped they would start crying and apologize and become club kid converts on the spot.
That never happened as far as I know.
Instead he usually ended up gushing over them for an hour or so, fawning over them to an impossible degree—and then savagely humiliating them near the end of the night.
He might pull off your wig, or pinch you really hard—leaving bloody welts—or he might destroy your outfit, or pee on your leg, or get on the microphone and tell the crowd you had AIDS.
Needless to say, very few “celebrities” returned for an encore.
The summer of ’87 galloped by, and I’ll be damned if an authentic subculture hadn’t taken root and blossomed in the Tunnel basement. That was when Michael’s star really began to rise, and his creations, the club kids, took to the stage for their first appearance.
The club kids were much hated and feared in all corners of the city. You might laugh at them. You might turn up your nose at them. But after a New York magazine cover story with Michael smirking at you from a thousand newsstands, you talked about them incessantly. People who had never seen a club kid—wouldn’t even know one if it flew up their nose—had an opinion on Michael’s latest outrage or Nik Nasty’s latest look.
The children had regained the night, and their enthusiasm, and the feeling that they were breaking all the rules and doing something REALLY NEW, kick-started New York nightlife.
Of course, kids dressing up and going to nightclubs is hardly groundbreaking. But to many people, it was a welcome respite from the ritual-obsessed, self-important scene that had preceded it.
I, myself, was torn. It’s true that I loved the Old School (I’m just an uppity old queen at heart). I loved the old-time pomp and pageantry. The privilege and presumption. But, you know—by this time, Old School was, like, so last season. Really just OVER. It was either adapt or die, and I am nothing if not resilient.
And the kids were fun. They had a delightful sort of je ne sais quoi. What they lacked in wit and intelligence, they made up for in chutzpah and exuberance. YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, some of them were a little too perky. Annoyingly so. Preternaturally so.
But if that’s the worst you can say—not a bad world to live in, huh?
Sigh.
It was all so sweet and innocent then. Your only goal was to look like a Muppet and collect as many drink tickets as possible. It was a relatively drug-free time: heroin was strictly for, oh, jazz musicians and slumming British aristocrats; ketamine was still just for cats; and nobody could even pronounce, much less score, this new thing: Rohypnol. The scene was still very oh-so-social. The worst drug calamity, the worst-case scenario, was that you accidentally took too much ecstasy and were actually nice to a Bridge-and-Tunnel person.
Hi-ho.
Michael was at a point in his nightclubbing career when he felt he needed to mold somebody into his special “superstar.” If he was truly going to be the next Andy Warhol, he needed to find an Edie Sedgwick. He needed someone with glamour! … presence! … beauty! … to offset him at some of the tonier parties he was getting invited to.
So he chose a terrifying old drag queen named Christina.
Mind you, Michael didn’t create Christina. Nobody created Christina. Nobody could ever dream up something like her. My theory is that someone on God’s Assembly Line had done too much Special K. She was an abomination of nature, like those frogs born with eyes in their throats.
She was a real piece of work: a crazy old buzzard with a body like Pa Kettle and a face like a hatchet … a bad blond wig … and no lips to speak of, just a thin red line … testicles falling well below her hemline, knocking against her knees. And pointy, stretched-out boobies from past hormone dabbling.
Her story goes like this: she was born into a good family in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. She was a he, who was a former teacher. After some nasty allegations involving several students, the family bought him a Park Avenue loft in New York on the condition he never return to Pittsburgh and never saw them again.
That’s the story, anyway. He became “Christina,” a freaked-out dominatrix with dreams of Warholian glory.
She was a ticky-tacky, bottom-rung nightmare of the first degree. You’d rather swallow a bucket of snot than spend ten minutes with her.
Run, bolt, make a beeline to the door. Hide under the bar, fake a seizure, anything to get out of the room: “Oops! Anal Leakage! Gotta go!”
But she was Michael’s first superstar, and for sheer shock value, she reigned supreme. She and Michael were the Wes Craven version of Edie and Andy.
She got attention, all right. In fact, she reinforced Michael’s basic loathsomeness—now we wanted to hide from both of them.
It put that extra zip in our heels.
But that was just the effect Michael loved.
Because she made no sense, and because she reveled in her supposed insanity, you never knew where you stood with her. You never knew when to take her seriously.
Her steady stream of nonsequiturs had a rehearsed feel—but they were unnerving nonetheless.
One night she was carrying a doll, and saying over and over in her guttural faux-German accent: “I jus haad a baby and I’m awlready zick to dess off it!” Then she would throw the doll on the floor and step on its head.
Once, in a desperate plea for the attention of her idol, she snatched Andy Warhol’s wig. It happened at a book signing at Rizzoli’s, and he was so devastated, he wrote in his diaries, that forever after he could only refer to it as “the incident.”
Another scarier, weirder, believe-it-or-not story:
“Sometimes I kidnap leettle children and SET THEM ON FIRE!”
Oh, that wacky drag queen—what will she say next?
Until one night, I was at her house (I can’t imagine what I was doing there) and BY GOD, IF THERE WEREN’T TWO LITTLE CHILDREN SLEEPING IN A LOCKED ROOM. Who were they? She wouldn’t say. Why were they there?
Silence.
As a babysitter, she lacked a certain warm, reassuring quality. I can’t imagine many parents being comfortable leaving their babies in her charge.
Certainly this wasn’t Auntie Christina reaffirming her familial ties.
So what could it be? Where did she pick up two eight-year-old children?
Somehow there are things I’d rather not know. Call me irresponsible, but I’m sure there was a PERFECTLY LOGICAL EXPLANATION. Maybe she was tutoring on the side, between dominatrix gigs. Maybe they were very tired Girl Scouts, napping between cookie sales. I scanned the papers for reports of burned babies but found nothing. Oh well.
Her inability to be controlled was out of step with Michael’s later “superstars,” who followed him blindly.
Slowly, Christina began to unravel.
Michael threw a birthday party for her at the Tunnel, and EVERYBODY WHO WAS ANYBODY came, just to be perverse.
Michael and his minions pushed the birthday cake into her face—during the final chorus of “Happy Birthday to You”—and
POP
She snapped.
Think Carrie at the prom.
Nobody caught on fire, and we all lived, but just barely.
She snapped and grabbed a machete that she just happened to have in her handbag. Raving and swinging wildly, all covered in cake, she forced everyone in the club into a corner.
There was a standoff.
Should we laugh or should we scream? Hundreds of club kids trapped by a homicidal hag queen. Well, it sure made a nice story to tell in the locker room the next day.
It took three guards to wrestle her into submission.
This is the stuff of nightclubbing legend.
Near the end, Christina’s behavior frightened off even Michael. She became increasingly violent.
The corker was a performance she gave at the Pyramid club, singing “My Funny Valentine” àla Nico.
The audience wasn’t exactly bowled over by her charismatic stage presence and soaring vocals.
They booed her.
Wrong move.
She took the microphone and POKED OUT THE EYE OF AN AUDIENCE MEMBER.
Poked it out.
PLOP
The police were after her for various and sundry other infractions as well, so she was forced to move from her Park Avenue apartment. She landed at the Chelsea Hotel and spent her last days pretending to be Edie Sedgwick or Nancy Spungen or somebody.
Her last phone call was to a videographer friend who regularly videoed parties on the club scene.
“Nelson, come film my suicide.”
He declined, and ten days later the Chelsea tenants complained of a bad smell coming from her room.
Thus ended a tragicomic legend. Michael lost his first superstar, but by then he had already moved on—to other superstars, yes, but also to another club, another party. A place called the Limelight offered him a job, and he accepted.
I don’t think any of us could have foreseen what happened next.
DISCO 2000
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BOYS AND GIRLS OF ALL AGES! FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS! THE RIDE IS ABOUT TO BEGIN! WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, I GIVE TO YOU NOW … THE ONE … THE ONLY … THE LEGENDARY …
DISCO 2000!
Do you feel it? The page is ablaze, these words are on fire—a whole new world is about to burst into existence!
The excitement is palpable. Are your fingers trembling in anticipation? IT’S HERE: each page richer, wilder, stranger than the last.
Michael finally had it all—the money, the dream, the space—and it was finally ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. And it was More! Michael! than even he could guess.
Disco 2000. The Autobahn of Nightclubs. No rules. No speed limits.
His place in the sun was finally secured, thanks to one Peter Gatien and his nightclub, the Limelight. This was the fruition of all Michael’s years of work, and the knowledge and insight he had gained. That, and his uncanny intuition, and that razorsharp third eye of his that could locate and extract the basest element in us all … and exploit it, ON STAGE, ALL FOR HIS DREAM.
Too much wasn’t enough. Over the top wasn’t even trying.
There was to be a weekly cast of characters. Club mascots, easily identifiable …
We rented animal outfits that we never intended to return—a chicken, a dog, and a bear. Those, and the banana and Coke can outfits that I graciously donated from my own wardrobe, were to set the immediate tone of the club.
The chicken, christened CLARA, THE CAREFREE CHICKEN, was to become our biggest star—the most beloved superstar of all time! She was tossy, saucy, and full of sass.
Clara was big and yellow, with a handsome red comb that could be construed as a mohawk if you so desired. She never said a word—smoked a bit of crack now and again— but never spoke a word. Her body language said it all: she danced the Funky Chicken as if to the manner born. She gave everyone a friendly peck hello. She fussed and clucked over the regulars … and when Keoki recorded an original song, called “Dizzy Chicken,” Clara spread her wings and took to the stage.
What a chick! She was riveting! Her timing was impeccable.
“Oh, that Dizzy Chicken!” It was an instant club kid anthem.
Peter made two thousand pressings of the song and used them as invitations. I still have my copy, do you?
Clara’s carefree image became part of the Disco logo.
Skroddle Loddle Doo!
Then there was Hans Ulrich, the Leather Dog, who appealed to a more “select” (some would say “subversive”) group of people. He may have lacked Clara’s free-wheeling joi de vivre, but he had his own loyal band of followers—backroom boys with certain carnal kinks that he, alone, satisfied.
And I.C. the Bear—a chilly Polar dude that never really caught on with the masses. He gave up club life after only a few months and was last seen floating on a glacier in the Baltic Sea, supporting his heroin habit with a complicated scheme involving pickled herring and large-breasted Eskimo women.
But they were all there opening night. And WHAT AN OPENING NIGHT!
The colorful menagerie of big, furry, and fantastical creatures certainly gave the club a cartoonlike aura, but this was certainly no place for children. Or rather, it was the ideal place for children—“Come one, come all! The Piper is calling for you!”—just make sure Mom and Dad never find out.
This is your introduction to the future. You’re in for a wild ride. Check your soul at the door.
Like Willy Wonka at his chocolate factory, Michael pushed and nudged and planted the seeds of change. Go ahead. Touch. Taste. Try it all nothing is what it seems, but most likely it’s what you’ve always secretly yearned for. Nobody will judge.
Go ahead.
Drop those inhibitions.
Drop that acid.
Drop your pants.
Drop a few names, darling.
And please, drop a few coins into Michael’s coffer.
Oh LOOK! There’s me!
I’m in a cage, on the wall.
Arrows point to me and a large sign reads: “DANGER! DO NOT FEED THE DRUG CHILD! SEE WHAT A LIFE OF SIN AND EXCESS CAN DO TO YOU! HE WAS ONCE AS YOU ARE NOW! BEWARE!”
My hair was matted, my clothes were dirty, and there were dark circles under my eyes. This wasn’t a costume. But I couldn’t have done better had I been working with a team of professionals.
I cried out, pitifully: “PLEASE! Just one bump! One little bump, I beg of you …” It was a spirited performance. I’m a stickler for Stanislavsky, you know … The crowd really felt my jones. I got many, many sympathy bumps, and soon enough I was so high, I broke free from my exhibit and joined the seething, liberated throng.
There were drag queens and drag kings and freaks of all kinds. Club kids in all their frippery, wearing tiaras and flower pots on their heads. Futuristic Geisha Gangsters stood next to a pair of beaded jellyfish, who were learning all about a new unisex masturbation machine made from six cow tongues attached to a rotating wheel.
Dan Dan, the Naked Man, wearing nothing but a chiffon veil, seemed to get along just fine without it. He watched as two debutantes rode Danny, the Wonder Pony around the dance floor, sidesaddle.
Woody, the Dancing Amputee was onstage, doing lascivious things with his stump, to great acclaim.
There were raver boys and pixie girls and the plucky Baroness Sherry von Koeber-Bernstein, who has been wearing a new and different plumed chapeau every night for thirty-seven years. She brought her fifteen-year-old niece, and they both politely declined the complimentary lines of cocaine but happily indulged in the buffet of Cheez Doodles and Ring-Dings that Lahoma thoughtfully provided.
Even Old School clubgoers faced up to their inborn fear of being seen entering the once terminally tacky Limelight. But, by gum, they filtered in and gawked and gaped with the rest of New York.
Michael had done it.
We still debate whether or not Dianne Brill bestowed her trend-confirming décolletage on opening night. Michael insists that yes, she was there, and she was simply bewitched by the ravishing muscle man in my banana suit.
I think it’s more Dianne-esque for her not to gamble on what could turn out to be a colossal bomb. After all, the Limelight had never been hip, and Michael was still considered rather nouveau. No, she wouldn’t chance it. She would man the switchboard the following day and study the reviews with a magnifying glass, before she plotted out the strategy for her multimedia covered entrance that would insure the club’s position in the Pantheon of Painfully Hip.
I never saw her there that night, and I would know—the metal plate in my head vibrates if she’s anywhere in the immediate vicinity. Trust me, I would have hunted her down and drooled on her toenails. She wasn’t there.
But Quentin Crisp was there, and he was shocked, I think, by the parade of streakers who wiggled and jiggled their way from bar to bar.
I think that when Michael is on his deathbed, and he looks back on his long and staggeringly varied life, this, all of this will be the moment he holds dearest to his heart. The joy he felt on this, the opening night, will be his last living comfort.
And I believe I was just as happy for him and his success as he was.
Watching him, as he beamed and bantered and tossed about a never-ending supply of drink tickets, he never stopped moving and he greeted each and every person with a personalized bit of patter, whether he knew them or just pretended to. He circled each room twice and firmly stood to the right in every picture, thus assuring psychological top billing.
He was now at the tippy-top of an impenetrable clique, with a complex hierarchy of superstars. He understood the intricate rules of the system’s infrastructure, and reveled in the game.
Michael Alig, bless his little black heart, was now the establishment.
Now, Michael will have you believe it was his party that single-handedly opened the mind of the world and ushered in the all-accepting ’90s.
I don’t know if I’d go THAT FAR.
He did give a few flashy drug dealers and a handful of bedraggled old drag queens their fifteen minutes of fame.
And Disco 2000 certainly let a whole generation of teenagers see homos and weirdos and sickos up close and personal, in all their majesty and splendor. And they learned that often times the very same kids they pick on in high school are the ones holding the drink tickets, the drugs, and the guest list at the coolest club in New York City.
And maybe it caused them to rethink just who the “cool ones” really are.
And certainly many, many trends started with the club kids. Although, try as I might, the fake nose fad I pushed for several years, never caught on. And, thankfully, no one bought into Michael’s “feathered genital” idea. And he eventually stopped painting those damn blue dots on his face! FOUR YEARS OF BLUE DOTS! And he is still convinced it might catch on any day now.
Certainly the outlandish looks we cooked up didn’t fly in Peoria. But it was the gist that trickled down. Colored hair, platforms, “cyber punk,” piercings … Think Dennis Rodman, and you’ll realize “trickle down” isn’t necessarily a good thing.
With such a hot potato in his hands, the pressure was really on. He couldn’t afford to fumble now. He had to top each new week, with MORE! MORE! MORE!
He placed an ad in the Village Voice looking for freaks with unusual talents.
This is perhaps my favorite image of Michael. I like to picture him behind a desk, in lederhosen and bifocals, looking down the line of bearded ladies and fire-eaters that spilled out into the hall, down the stairs, and out the back door.
No, let’s replace the bifocals with a monocle, as he marches up and down, inspecting the motley crew of wanna-bes and circus rejects. Armed with a pad of paper and a keen eye for fresh freaks, he is merciless in his quest for the biggest, weirdest, wildest …
“Only three nipples? Grow another dozen and we’ll talk!”
“Queerdonna, huh? You’re a four-hundred-pound crossdresser who lip-synchs to Madonna? Maybe you can open for someone on a slow night.”
“A bearded lady? Dye it green and sit naked in a tub of lime Jell-O—we’ll talk on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“NO, there is nothing freakish about sucking yourself off. I’m going to do it myself on my lunch hour. Don’t waste my time!”
I can’t remember if he ever got his dream booking: Lori and Dori, the Siamese twins connected at the head, who played country-and-western music. Those were the lofty heights he aspired to. Only the best for Disco 2000.
There were two performers he found that not only made the cut, but made nightclubbing history …
The first was known only as the “Pee Drinker,” an apt name and an apt description of his particular forte.
Michael loved that. Of course, Michael loved anything to do with bodily functions.
The Pee Drinker would stand on stage, with his trousers around his ankles, and fill two or three plastic cups with hot … steaming … piss. Then, while the audience squirmed and winced and tried not to look, he guzzled them down with gusto. He then licked his lips, shook his penis, and took his bows.
That was considered shocking in the early days. Scandalous, even—can you imagine? How young and easily amused we were back then. Later, the poor Pee Drinker was reduced to entertaining stray Jersey girls at a back bar, drinking piss in exchange for free beer.
We were on to more sophisticated outrage by the mid-’90s.
The performance that will forever resonate in my head, the one I still can’t believe, can’t stop talking about, can’t stop thinking about, dreaming about, screaming about, was a gal named IDA SLAPTER.
Just your average, typical trailer-park trannie from Austin, Texas.
Nice enough. Chatting with her at the bar, you probably didn’t give her your full attention—seen one Southern drag queen, seen ‘em all— huh? But it’s those seemingly normal exteriors (the beehive hairdo, the pennyroyal house dress, the stubble beneath the pancake … ) that hide TRULY DERANGED minds. Watch out for the average—they’re usually hiding something big.
On Christmas Eve On stage
Ida stripped naked and pulled a full string of LIT CHRISTMAS BULBS, one at a time, out of her ass.
She made her way slowly across the stage.
POP! And twinkle!
POP! And twinkle!
Until you couldn’t help but be swept up in the pure joy, the awe-inspiring grandeur of the season. A twenty-four-foot string of lights coming out of Ida’s butt, really reminded you of the true meaning of Christmas.
AND IF THAT ISN’T ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU PAUSE AND MARVEL AT HER SPIRIT AND DETERMINATION …
Listen to the whole story, from its miraculous conception to its majestic delivery.
“Light bulbs up the ass, no big deal!” you say. “On a good night I can fit a Butterball and two sweet potatoes up my bum!”
Aye—but here’s the rub:
How did these bulbs come to shine so brightly? They weren’t plugged into an electrical socket …
An hour before her performance, Ida lay spread-eagle on the ground, and she had a helping hand (and how) slowly, carefully, millimeter by millimeter—INSERT A BATTERY PACK INTO HER UPPER INTESTINE.
If that isn’t a true showbiz trouper, why I’ll eat my Ann Miller wig. And they call Gary Collins the hardest working man in show business!
And all this glorious anarchy belonged to Michael—lock, stock, and barrel. He was revered far and wide as the king. And being king is good. From now on, Michael is free to live in his own magical kingdom. He has the money, the connections, and the clout to indulge any of the many psychotic disorders that he calls “fun.”
Close your eyes and pick one of the seven deadly sins. Now open them, and SURE ENOUGH, there’s Michael, in the middle of it. Waving you in to join him.
And being king means that reality can simply be dismissed. And the OUTSIDE WORLD NEED NEVER TOUCH HIM. All those little things like bills and rent and food and outfits were all magically taken care of by the Patron Saint of Downtown Superstars, Peter Gatien, and his helpful staff of grunts.
Do you see a perfectly understandable onslaught of delusions of grandeur sometime in the near future? After all, he is lauded and applauded and rimmed clean, everywhere he goes…. Please note his complete inability to deal with even the simplest of life’s problems (“blue ecstasy tonight or pink?”)… And tell me: is that “Selective Denial” thing a blessing, or a bag on his head? … now dig his mind-blowing way of seeing the world: inside out and from such a lofty height. It must be rather confusing to be so savagely observant, yet stuck on a pedestal, so far removed. He has a complete and utter grasp on a world that exists only for him. And when he visits our world, he will make no concession to our customs and beliefs.
Most imporantly though, note his COMPLETE AND UTTER FAITH that, no matter what: he is the golden child, he is the chosen one, and nothing can ever touch him. Silly little things, like public sex with a fourteen-year-old, and breaking into the neighbors’ apartment to pee on their furniture … are magically shrugged off. It’s unnerving.
And potentially destructive.
But—
That’s the price you pay when you give inmates control of the asylum.
When you let the wolves guard the hen house, there’s bound to be a few chicken dinners.
And when you give a psychotic infant unlimited power and privilege?
It can level a whole generation.
Among the litter, the human debris, and the wreckage of lost souls that Michael left in his wake at Disco 2000, was one Jennytalia—CLUB KID EXTRAORDINAIRE! GIRL OF THE MINUTE! NEW AGE EDIE SEDGWICK! PUNK ROCK GO-GO GIRL! EVERYBODY’S FAVORITE RIDE AT DISCO 2000!
Now don’t get me wrong, I love her to death, don’t have a bad thing to say about her. She’s a peach. She’s a saint, that girl. But let me just say this about that:
She was bald, back when that was really something.
And she pierced her own cheeks with large walruslike tusks, and, hard to believe, that too was once considered unconventional.
So she was a trendsetter.
She had a certain presence. Star Quality. She never said much, and what she did say never made much sense—but it didn’t really matter. Her liquid blue eyes would fix on you, her boobs would bounce beguilingly—and you were under her spell. Sixteen years old, and the doorgirl at the hippest haunt in town, gave her a certain cachet, notoriety.
When she appeared in a Calvin Klein ad—well, who didn’t? It’s the ’90s! My great-aunt Melba was the original CK Be girl—things got crazy.
We all went to Paris one year (Michael didn’t—there was a “No Smoking Crack” ordinance on transcontinental flights in those days), and Jenny modeled in the Jean Paul Gaultier show.
That clinched it for her.
She was a legend in the making.
All she had to do was follow in Michael’s footsteps a bit longer, and become, in succession, a crack addict and a heroin addict—EDIE, NICO, JENNYTALIA!
But club kid stardom always takes its toll.
Who will ever forget the sight of her sitting in a trash can, trying to open a can of beans with a butter knife—because she was hungry and broke and she had given Freeze all her money so they could complete their week-long crack binge?
It wasn’t all sequins and cocktails, kids.
One day I wandered off somewhere, and got a little lost. Through an extremely odd set of circumstances, I ended up in Miami Beach working as a shoe salesman. But, that’s another story entirely.
When I returned to my senses and came back to New York, I found that Disco 2000 was still hot, and Michael was still on top, but the scene had changed. It was darker and druggier than I remembered. Heroin had made its comeback, and Special K, Rohypnol, and GHB were everywhere. Coke and ecstasy were considered passé—dinosaur food.
Now it was all about being super sloppy and out of control. The looks to look for were: “Damaged” and “Plague-ridden.” Sores and bruises. Ripped and ragged outfits.
I guess in order to stave off boredom, the now terribly jaded club kids had resorted to massive self-destruction. They went to great lengths to shock and disgust the public at large.
Contrary to popular opinion, Michael didn’t champion this change. In fact, I think it rather frightened him. Up until the early ‘90s, he was a control freak, who only dabbled in a bit of ecstasy now and again.
Nowadays, the only way to stay in with the in-crowd was to play their game. Had he resisted, he would have been left behind with the other ’80s relics.
So, in the beginning, he would take a bit of something here, a sniff of something there, and greatly exaggerate their effects.
“Oh ho! Look at me!” and he would fall down, very proud of himself, indeed.
He painted circles under his eyes and bruises on his body to fit in: “Look, I’m just like you!”
“I’m a crazy drug addict!”
But then something began to happen.
He stopped and listened and found the demons in his head were quiet, quelled. Heroin shut them up.
There are people who contend that it was the drugs that drove Michael mad.
I think the drugs held him together a little bit longer. He was already mad. He was always insane. He escaped into drugs to keep the monsters at bay.
Speaking from experience, there are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but free fall forever inside their heads.
It’s a spooky thing to be left alone inside an angry innerverse.
Drugs redirect the fall. They cushion it. Give you a parachute. Or maybe just a flashlight and scuba gear. I don’t know how you look at the inside of your head—what metaphor you choose—but for those of us with endless yawning stretches of interior and nothing but nothing to stop us from getting lost in it, drugs can be wonderfully helpful.
For a time.
Sure, with Michael, near the end, they exacerbated his downfall. But for many years, they cushioned it. And the downfall was inevitable, believe me. He was crazy to begin with. The drugs just made the ride more fun.
If we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, we might as well make it a party on the way down.