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 freakedout 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 non sequiturs 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” à la 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.
Not even him.
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 razor-sharp 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.
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br /> 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 . . .
Party Monster Page 5