Then It Fell Apart

by Moby

  If this be my last night on Earth

  Let me remember this, for all that it’s worth

  I had been chasing after the gilded horrors of the world, when all I really wanted was this: this moment, with Sylvia’s honest voice and some plaintive, repetitive chords. No matter what I did to destroy myself or betray my creativity and beliefs, no matter how aggressively I prostituted myself, music still waited patiently for me.

  I sat alone in my small studio while the world brayed outside, and kept listening to Sylvia’s voice:

  If this be our last night on Earth

  Remember us, for all that we were

  52

  NEW YORK CITY (1983)

  New York City was everything, and it was only a forty-eight-minute train ride away from Darien. I escaped to New York as often as I could to see my favorite bands, to spot punk-rockers wandering into art galleries, to look at goth and new-wave T-shirts I couldn’t afford.

  By the end of my senior year of high school I had taken the train or driven to New York with my friends to see Fear at the Mudd Club, Echo & the Bunnymen at the Peppermint Lounge, Depeche Mode and the Cure at the Ritz, Bad Brains at CBGBs, Kraut and Agnostic Front at A7, and Minor Threat at Great Gildersleeves. The one club we still hadn’t been to was Danceteria. I’d seen ads for its six floors of music in the Village Voice and the New York Rocker, and judging from those weekly newspapers I was sure it was the greatest place on earth.

  It was one week before high-school graduation, and I felt safe and free. I was going to UConn in the fall, and until then I had nothing to do but play music, listen to music, and make enough money doing yardwork to buy a few records.

  On the Saturday before graduation some friends (Dave, Jim, Chip) and I borrowed Dave’s mom’s station wagon and drove to Danceteria to see Mission of Burma and Bad Brains. As we left Darien we listened to a cassette I’d made of Mission of Burma songs; when it ended, we put on the Bad Brains ROIR cassette. The haunting guitar solo in “Banned in DC” was playing as I-278 rose out of Hunts Point, and suddenly Manhattan was in front of us, like an angel’s dark tiara. This was the magic moment whenever we drove to Manhattan, when we realized that Connecticut was behind us and we were, in fact, going to New York City.

  We parked near Danceteria and looked at our reflections in the car windows. We were going to the best nightclub in the world, so we’d dressed accordingly. Jim was wearing a Misfits T-shirt and a leather jacket. Dave was wearing a Devo T-shirt under a flannel shirt. And even Chip, who never wore anything other than old polo shirts, had put on a T-shirt with a picture of Mick Jagger as Frankenstein. I had a green sleeveless T-shirt that I’d written “ALIEN NATION” on in Magic Marker, and I’d tied a gold-and-red striped thrift-shop necktie around my head.

  We didn’t know if we were going to be let in – we were underage – so I pretended to be disaffected and British. I walked up the doorman and said in a terrible accent I’d learned from Monty Python and Benny Hill, “Yeah, are Mission of Burma playing tonight?”

  The doorman looked at me, said, “Yup,” and opened the front door. And we were in.

  There was a schedule posted at the bottom of the first flight of stairs: Mission of Burma were going on in the basement at eleven, while Bad Brains were playing on the main floor at midnight. There was a new-wave video lounge on the third floor, and hip-hop and disco DJs on the fourth and fifth floors. It felt like we’d found four golden tickets and gained admission to a new-wave Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with black walls and sticky floors.

  It was 10 p.m., so we decided to check out the video lounge. Kids dressed in dark gray and black were scattered around the room, sitting on cheap stools, while the VJ played Bauhaus videos. If Danceteria had been nothing but this, a room with skinny new-wave kids watching goth videos, we would still have been the happiest people on the planet. We had seen some new-wave and punk videos at the Rocks in Your Head record store on Prince Street and on the screen at the Ritz before bands performed, but MTV hadn’t made it to Connecticut yet, so even a quick glimpse of a music video felt exotic.

  We sat and watched “Third Uncle” and “Kick in the Eye” and “She’s in Parties.” And then the VJ played “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Joy Division were my favorite band of all time, and I didn’t know that they’d ever made a video. We watched in rapt silence as the room disappeared and Ian Curtis sang one of the most beautiful songs ever written. It was a simple video, just the band playing in a long, empty loft, but it was the first time I’d ever seen him sing. By the end of the video I thought I was going to cry.

  Still stunned that we’d been allowed into this miraculous place and that we’d seen an actual Joy Division video, we walked down the narrow stairs to the basement, where we waited for Mission of Burma to come on. I’d seen them at Pogo’s in Bridgeport, and I’d taped some of their records from my relaxed Scandinavian friend Jacob’s collection.

  The basement wasn’t crowded, so I went to look for the bathroom. Down a dark hallway, next to the men’s room, was a door that said “Dressing Room.” The Vatican Commandos had played a few shows in bars, but I’d never seen an actual dressing room before. I worked up my courage and gently opened the door. Six or seven people were sitting around a table at the far end of the room. Roger Miller, the guitar player, said in a friendly, booming voice, “Welcome to Burma headquarters!”

  “What? Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to back out. This was a real band’s dressing room, and I’d clearly crossed a holy line by daring to open the door and step inside.

  “Hey!” said Peter Prescott, the drummer. “Come on in!”

  I walked up to their table like a tremulous mouse.

  “I’m Roger and this is Burma,” Roger said, gesturing to the band.

  “Hi, I’m Moby,” I said. I wanted to be cool, but not knowing how much time I had with my heroes before somebody strong and official kicked me out, I blurted, “I just have to say how I love your band so much and I can’t wait to see you play again.”

  “We have a show?” bassist Clint Conley said, laughing and pretending to look at his nonexistent watch.

  “Damn, thanks for reminding us,” Peter said.

  They were talking to me. And being kind and funny. Was I allowed to laugh or respond? “Okay, I’m nice to meet you thanks see you on stage thanks!” I said, nervous and blathering my way back out the door.

  I ran to the front of the stage, where my friends were standing. “I just met Mission of Burma!” I yelled.

  “What?”

  “Really! I went into the dressing room and talked to them in person!”

  The band walked onstage, to mild cheering from the forty people in the basement. There they were, the same people I’d spoken with moments ago in their dressing room. “That’s Clint Conley and Roger Miller and Peter Prescott!” I said to my friends, pointing. “And Martin Swope is the guy who does tape loops. I don’t know where he is.”

  “Calm down, Moby,” Chip said. “They’re just people.”

  But he was wrong. They weren’t just people – they were heroes who made records and went on tour. Chip and Jim and Dave and I were “just people,” as we were in the audience. Mission of Burma were on a stage in New York City, so clearly they were far more than “just people.” Their set was beautiful, and just as emotional and loud as the one I’d seen them play at Pogo’s the year before. They ended with “Academy Fight Song” and walked offstage, with me yelling and banging on the stage, while the other members of the audience clapped politely.

  My friends and I raced up the stairs, making it into Danceteria’s main room just as Bad Brains walked onstage. “Hello, boys and girls,” H.R., the singer, said, and then the band launched into “I.” The crowd exploded, a hundred skinheads and punk-rockers moshing and joyfully beating the shit out of each other. We threw ourselves into the crowd, falling down, standing up again, pushing and being pushed, as Bad Brains sped through song after song.

  I loved other hardcore bands, b
ut nobody even came close to the ferocity and musicianship of Bad Brains. Doc the guitarist and Darryl the bassist were locked into a powerful groove, although they were hidden behind their swinging dreadlocks. Skinheads were diving, while H.R. did backflips onstage. Their set ended with “Pay to Cum,” the first song we’d ever heard of theirs on WNYU.

  As they walked offstage it dawned on me: this was the greatest night of my life.

  “Should we go home?” Dave asked as the room emptied.

  No, we shouldn’t. We should live at Danceteria, find its DNA, and weave it into our own chromosomes. “Let’s look upstairs?” I suggested.

  We walked upstairs, past the video lounge, where the VJ was now playing a Roxy Music video, and into a hip-hop club. When the Clash had played at Bond’s Casino in Times Square they’d had Grandmaster Flash open up for them. So now we loved hip-hop because one of our gods, Joe Strummer, loved hip-hop. The four of us stood shyly by the wall and watched the crowd dancing. We weren’t familiar with any of the songs, but it was clear that something special was happening.

  There’d been forty people watching Mission of Burma in the basement. There’d been a hundred moshing to Bad Brains. But there were even more people packed into this sweaty room, dancing and cheering for every song. They were black and white and Asian, male and female, straight and gay. The DJ played “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash, and I got excited because I’d heard it on the radio.

  “This is ‘The Message’!” I yelled to my friends. “I know this song!”

  “Should we go upstairs?” Chip asked.

  The floor above the hip-hop room was a gay disco. It was darkly lit and full of people and fog. We didn’t know anything about gay culture, apart from kids in our high school saying we were gay because we liked Devo. The men and women were dancing and touching each other on the dance floor. The DJ segued into Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” and the crowd, maybe two hundred people, screamed in a way that I’d never heard people scream. It was a sound of joy and feral release, a message from a perfect planet far away beamed straight into my heart.

  “Let’s go,” Chip said.

  I couldn’t. I moved into the room, toward the music and the strobe lights. It was late and my friends were tired and uncomfortable and wanted to go back to Connecticut. But I was home.

  53

  NEW YORK CITY (2007)

  I was at the annual gala for the Museum of the City of New York, telling Ivanka Trump about my Valentine’s Day. I tried to make it sound as normal as possible, mentioning dinner at Candle 79, cocktails at the Angel’s Share bar on 9th Street, and gifts of earrings and a book of Sufi poetry, but leaving out my crippling panic attacks and the prodding role of my therapist.

  I had met a wonderful woman named Nicole a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, and as per usual, I started panicking after our first date. I wanted to end things and run away, but my therapist, Dr. Lubetkin, reminded me that unless I stayed and worked through the panic, I’d never get better. I kept going to therapy, but it didn’t seem like I was making much progress. I’d been seeing Dr. Lubetkin for ten months, and liked him because he was good-natured and not afraid to tell me when I was being crazy. But I hated that he tried to get me to confront my panic, when every part of me wanted to flee.

  “If you weren’t crazy and panicking, what would you do?” he asked.

  “I’d make Valentine’s Day plans with Nicole,” I said, defeated.

  “So do that.”

  After Valentine’s dinner and drinks Nicole spent the night at my sky castle. When she left in the morning the panic attacked me viciously, making my muscles ache and my teeth grind. I knew that the moment I broke things off with Nicole, the symptoms would abate. But Dr. Lubetkin had repeatedly told me that for cognitive behavioral therapy to work, I needed to stare down my panic, so for all of February 15 I tried to deal with it. The pain got worse and worse until finally, on February 16, I gave in.

  I called Nicole, explained to her that I was having crippling panic attacks, and that even though we’d only been on two dates, I needed to end things. She cried, and I felt like the worst human being on the planet, just repeating “I’m sorry” over and over. I hung up and hated myself for once again hurting somebody. But my broken brain got what it wanted, and the panic was gone.

  This had been my cycle for decades: date someone, have panic attacks, cut the relationship short, end the panic. I wanted to get close to someone and not be crippled by anxiety. Or at the very least I wanted to make choices in my life that weren’t controlled by panic. I’d tried therapy and medication, but year after year the panic only got worse.

  Sometimes to make myself feel better I talked about my dating life as if I were normal, as I was doing with Ivanka Trump now. I didn’t know Ivanka very well, but over the last few years I’d run into her at fundraisers and parties and she’d always seemed pleasant and polite. She smiled kindly when I told her about my Valentine’s Day itinerary, but I had no idea if she was humoring me or if she was actually interested in my emotionally redacted story. Her boyfriend had been out of town, she told me, so she’d spent Valentine’s Day alone.

  A tall, thin man came over and took Ivanka’s arm. “Oh, Moby, this is Jared, my boyfriend,” she said.

  I’d met Jared before; he was the publisher of the New York Observer and I’d been to parties he’d thrown uptown. They went back to their table to rejoin Ivanka’s dad, who looked like a bloated orange masseur in a tuxedo.

  This event, the annual fundraiser for the Museum of the City of New York, was one of the most exclusive in the Manhattan social calendar, and the room glowed with money and candles. I was alone at the bar and feeling like a fraud, so I ordered another vodka and soda. The Trumps and the Bloombergs and the Clintons and the Rockefellers and the Hilfigers were all here, in black suits and evening dresses, making conversations at tables that had cost them more than towns in West Virginia.

  A tall, beautiful woman in a black dress stumbled up to the bar and ordered a vodka gimlet. “They’re all bitches,” she slurred.

  “Ha, what?” I said, not sure if she was talking to me or the drunken air.

  “They’re all bitches,” she said, gesturing at the room full of soft money. “A year ago they were my best friends. Now they won’t talk to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I got divorced, and now they’re all afraid I’m going to fuck their husbands.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, uncertain what to say to this stranger.

  “You’re sweet,” she said, looking at me like I was a lost child. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I’m with them,” I said, pointing out my friends Celerie and Boykin, who were sitting with Senator Joe Lieberman a few yards away.

  “You know, this is a fraud. The women are all terrified and the men are all impotent.” She drank her gimlet bitterly. “Fuck them.”

  I looked at hundreds of immaculately dressed and perfectly pedigreed New Yorkers, drinking and laughing. I didn’t see impotence and fear, I saw atavistic confidence, passed down from the Mayflower through New England governors and New York bankers and into this gilded room.

  “My husband shot me,” she said, gesturing to a scar on her arm.

  She had my full attention.

  “I was cheating on him, and when he found out he locked me in a room at our house in Amagansett and shot me. Cheers.” We clinked glasses.

  I’d been to dozens of events like this and the conversations had never previously gotten deeper than the price of a Rothko at auction or which crappy Hampton someone was going to for the weekend. I didn’t know if this woman was older or younger than me; she just looked adult, well-bred, and like she’d been born knowing the difference between show jumping and dressage. When she’d walked up to the bar I’d thought she was pretty in a generic Upper East Side way, but now that she was being honest I could see how beautiful she was.

  “Do you want to leave?” I asked.

  “I should stay,�
�� she said, finishing her drink. “No, I shouldn’t. Fuck them, let’s go.”

  We walked out of the ballroom and down the long museum corridors, filled with costumes from the history of New York City: Revolutionary War waistcoats, ballgowns from the nineteenth century, powdered wigs, livery vests.

  “How did you get your name?” she asked.

  “Well, my real name is Richard Melville Hall, but my parents thought that Moby was a cute nickname for a baby related to Herman Melville. Forty-one years later, I’m still saddled with my infant joke nickname.”

  She laughed and we stepped outside into the cold air. “Richard Melville Hall,” she said, as if she were tasting my name. “So you’re a WASP?”

  “My ancestors were on the Mayflower,” I said, “but cleaning the toilets and scraping the barnacles off the bottom of the ship.”

  We got into the car I had waiting for me and I asked the driver to take us to The Box, as I didn’t know where else to bring a fancy grandee from the Upper East Side. “So you’re a cool musician. Why were you here tonight?” she asked.

  I liked this woman and her unaffected honesty, so I told her as truthfully as I could. “I was born in Harlem, but I grew up poor white trash in Connecticut, ashamed that my family had no money. Now, sometimes the beautiful people who wouldn’t talk to me in high school invite me to their parties. So I go because it makes me feel like I finally have some worth.”

  “Trust me,” she said, “you don’t want to be friends with these people. You have more legitimacy than they’ll ever have. You make things. They’re just leeches. I should know – I’m a leech too.”

  “You’re not a leech,” I said.

  “Thanks, but I’m a leech. The only creative thing I’ve ever done is hire a decorator.”

  We pulled up to The Box and walked inside, past the crowd of people waiting on the sidewalk. My friend Simon had opened the club a few weeks before, hoping it would be a degenerate fin de siècle place where uptown billionaires could mingle with downtown performance artists, and I was one of the investors. It had been an auto body shop when Simon rented it, but after a few million dollars in renovations it looked like a small, beautiful, and slightly run-down nineteenth-century theater.