by Jarett Kobek
At roughly the same moment, Daniel Rakowitz was brutally murdering the Swiss dancer Monika Beerle in a dilapidated building on the corner of C and Ninth.
One version of the story says that Beerle, who may or may not have had drug problems, invited Rakowitz to live with her. Another version says that it was Rakowitz’s apartment, that he invited Beerle to live with him, that she paid the back rent and assumed control of the lease. Either way, following a short period of cohabitation, Beerle wanted Rakowitz gone, splitsville daddy-o, like oooout of her life.
Who can blame her? Rakowitz must have been hell. The man spent most of his days in the environs of Tompkins Square, arguing for the legalization of marijuana, growing ever more unhinged, telling people that he was the Risen New Lord, a living god whose followers would triumph over America.
The storefront at 335 East 9th Street housed the Temple of the True Inner Light. Anyone could attend Sunday service and be given a free dose of DPT, or dipropyltryptamine, a legal hallucinogenic. The sole requirement for receiving this head-chugging charity was that its recipient must consent to suffer a lecture about the true nature of Christ, some silly nonsense about God’s incarnation within lysergic acid.
There is a story that Rakowitz visited the temple. When he ambled through its garish front, did he admire its tripped-out yellow and red primary colors? Did he stop to look at the plywood covering its display window? And if so, did he take note of the vast mandala painted thereupon? Did he read the words beneath? “The Psychedelic is The Creator.” When he opened the door, did he notice the magic mushroom painted above the address? And did those feet in ancient times walk upon Manna-hatta’s daughters’ green?
Rakowitz ranted at the tiny cluster of true believers. Antichrist, dead animals, 696, fascist uprisings, the exact location of the soul within the human spleen.
The monologue grew dark enough that the adherents brought him outside and checked his bag for weapons. What did they find? His pet rooster, named Rooster, and a German-language copy of Mein Kampf.
So again remember Beerle, spending fourteen days in a cramped two-bedroom apartment alongside this creature. She did the sensible thing, informing Daniel that he must leave, as her sister was soon to visit from Switzerland.
Rakowitz, high on marijuana and tripping on LSD, punched Beerle in the throat. This may or may not have killed her. If it did not, he strangled her with a cord. He dragged her body into the bathroom, abusing it with a knife.
For about a week, the bathtub held some portion of Beerle’s body.
There occurs an influx of people, their number unknown. Some witness Monika’s head on the kitchen stove, where Rakowitz is boiling the meat off her skull. Sylvia or Shawn, the previous roommates? Perhaps Crazy Dave, the building superintendent? Others?
One rumor has it that Rakowitz cooked and ate a portion of Beerle’s brain. Another story was that he boiled her flesh into a soup and then served it to the park’s homeless population.
Perhaps this begs the question of why would anyone accept soup from a lunatic like Rakowitz. It turns out that for all his flaws, he believed in charity. He had a history of cooking large dinners for the encampments.
The unused portions of Beerle’s flesh are flushed down the toilet, her offal joining with sewer waste. Within a week of the murder, stories begin circulating through the neighborhood.
Jon always had a common touch. Rumors gravitated to him. We were in Le Snakepit, across from the park. I bought a gaudy pentagram belt. As we left the establishment, a dirty junky teen, ripped denim and sweat stains, stumbled from Tompkins and called Jon’s name. We waited as this boy crossed the street. He talked with Jon, ignoring me.
“Did you hear that shit, man,” he croaked, “that shit with fucking Daniel, man?”
“Yeah,” said Jon de Lee. “I heard.”
“Wait,” I said. “Daniel who?”
“Daniel with the fucking chicken,” said the junky. “He was in the park earlier today, talking all kinds of bullshit about being a fucking god. Someone says, ‘Does God have the right to take a life?’ and he goes, ‘Of course. I have made that decision.’ ”
“Daniel’s a fucking freak of nature,” said Jon de Lee. “But I don’t believe he did it.”
“You heard about the soup, right, man?”
“Yeah,” said Jon. “Everyone’s heard about the soup.”
“I haven’t heard about the soup,” I said.
“Never mind about the soup,” said Jon.
“Did you know her?” asked the kid.
“I saw her around,” said Jon.
When the junky stumbled away, I pressed Jon, he demurred, I pressed harder. He told me the story, what the neighborhood knew, what the neighborhood didn’t, who’d seen what, who’d eaten what. I couldn’t believe it.
“The rooster guy? Really?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Jon.
“What about the girl?” I asked.
“Her name was Monika,” he said.
“Why hasn’t anyone called the cops?”
“Don’t be so fucking middle class,” he snapped. “The pigs are kicking the shit out of us every goddamned day. Who trusts the cops? What neighborhood are you living in?”
With the riot well in the past, and the media’s attention drawn elsewhere, the city had escalated its campaign against the neighborhood.
There began almost weekly raids on the homeless of Tompkins Square, their settlement now called Tent City. A routine took hold. The police rushed in, destroyed the shelters, arrested a few protesters, and made a retreat. The homeless came back and rebuilt anew. See ya next time, officer.
The squatters fared no better. One grew accustomed to massive police presences attempting to evict residents who were occupying derelict structures.
These collectives fortified their buildings against state intrusion, leading to scenes of open warfare. Siege engines versus punk rockers with bottles and firecrackers. The cops almost always won. Hundreds of people lost their homes.
“We’re living here because we want freedom from the police state,” said Jon. “We’re at war with organized government. We can’t run to the police. If the stories are true, then the neighborhood will take care of it. In the neighborhood’s way.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“What do you think it means?”
I wandered for the next several days, seeking any hint of the murder, about Daniel Rakowitz, about Monika Beerle. I overheard people discussing, openly, details of the killing.
“He cut her head right off, he’s got the head on a stove! Crazy Dave saw it.”
Supposedly, before Rakowitz committed the act, he stood in the park telling people that he would kill Beerle. The day that he did the deed, he came back and discussed his crime. When he split her body apart, he told people. Everyone knew what happened. An entire neighborhood shrugged its collective shoulders. The same old story. Another dead woman on the Lower East Side. More dress suits to hire.
I made Jon take me by Rakowitz’s building. I wanted to see it, I said, for reasons of morbid curiosity, a sick desire to inure myself. “Jon,” I whined, “I want to be exposed to the true brutality of capitaliiiiiism.”
Someone had vandalized the door:
“This can’t last,” said Jon. “Something is going to break.”
He couldn’t have known that what would break was the patience of yours truly. After we said goodbye, I went home and called the 9th Precinct. I explained, calmly, rationally, that a murder had occurred at 700 East 9th Street. I gave them the name of the victim and the name of the murderer. I described Daniel Rakowitz. I asked what would happen.
“I can’t say, lady,” said the man on the phone. “We’ll take it under consideration.”
He hung up.
I’d watched cops from the very same precinct savagely attack and bludgeon the citizenry, but I truly believed that with a murder they might make some effort.
Days ticked by. Nothing changed. Rumors
swirled. Was it possible, really, to trust anyone? The people didn’t care. The cops didn’t care. Who cared about Monika Beerle?
Later, it emerged that others had tried convincing the police, but the authorities knew Rakowitz, considered him a local harmless nut and did not find the rumors credible. Or maybe they saw Beerle as nothing special, one more dead stripper in a neighborhood full of corpses. Who could keep track? There was even a rumor that Rakowitz had worked as a police informant.
Stories like the death of Beerle lose their horror, become amusing, slide into the background tapestry of the neighborhood. Become another craaaazy thing that happened in this craaaaaaazy place.
Classes started. I hardly cared. Weeks passed.
One day, I encountered Rakowitz, walking towards me, coming up St. Mark’s. He wore his denim jacket and jeans.
An acid reflux strike from my stomach up my throat. I jumped out into the street, almost being run over by a Coca-Cola truck. From the safety of the other side, I watched him walk past, oblivious to the world.
Then, like that, in an instant, weeks into September, the police picked him up, and asked if he’d killed Beerle. He admitted that he had. They asked where the remains were. Rakowitz brought them to the Port Authority, where he opened a locker. Inside the locker was an army duffel bag. Inside the duffel bag was a plastic bucket. Inside the bucket was Beerle’s skull, her bones, and a whole lot of cat litter.
Jon came over, telling me the news. I lay across my bed, reading a copy of People magazine that someone’d left at Parsons. Don’t ask why I’d brought it home. I haven’t the slightest.
“I thought you’d be happy,” he said.
“She’s still dead,” I said. “It’s one of those things.”
Baby was in the kitchen. He’d been the one who heard Jon shouting in the street, and the one who’d gone downstairs.
“Listen,” said Jon. “Do you want to see it?”
“See what?” I asked.
“The apartment,” he said.
I shouldn’t have, but I did. I said yes. We walked the few blocks, through the park and the latest iteration of Tent City. It seemed fuller than ever. No one cared that Monika Beerle was dead. No one cared that Daniel Rakowitz was insane. It was around then that the sensation rushed up at me, emerging from the concrete of New York. At last I understood that life was not a game which one could win if it was played with enough skill.
The graffiti remained on the building’s front door. I was too disturbed to wonder why the door wasn’t locked. We climbed several flights of stairs and came to the apartment. Someone had written on Rakowitz’s door: IS IT SOUP YET? And WELCOME TO CHARLIE GEIN’S SPAUN RANCH EAST. Flowers hung, crisscrossed with police tape.
“People have been coming in and out of here all day,” said Jon. “We just have to slide under the tape.”
A month later, the Village Voice ran a six-page article about the crime. Called “Blood Simple,” it was written by Max Cantor, the actor who played Bobby in the film Dirty Dancing.
The meat of the text came from interviews with Sylvia and Shawn, confirming the worst rumors. They weren’t living in the apartment, but Sylvia did see Beerle’s head on the stove. She had refused to turn in Rakowitz. That’s friendship.
“Jon,” I said. “I can’t. I thought I could but I can’t.”
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll check it out.”
He opened the door and disappeared inside. For the briefest of moments I saw the interior. Another tiny East Village apartment.
1988, 1989, 1990
Some Things That Happened to Baby
During His Nervous Breakdown,
Presented in a Random Order
Then there was the time when Baby went to an after-hours party at Cave Canem. He’d come back from California with indisputable evidence that he was terrible at being gay, that his social skills needed work. It was a moment, he resolved, to be with other men, to learn how to be around those who were openly celebratory of their faggitude. Men who weren’t afraid of their desires, who didn’t hide their selves away.
As was his wont, Baby solved this problem in the craziest possible way.
He called Michael Alig.
Cave Canem was on First Avenue near the corner of 2nd Street, next door to the Ortiz Funeral Home. Around 4:30 am, Baby followed a trickle of humanity inside, going to the basement level, where a dance floor sat beside a four-foot-deep pool of water. Baby wondered if the exposed ersatz columns were Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian.
The DJ played an old song. For the first time in Baby’s life, he listened to the verses: Some boys take a beautiful girl / and hide her away from the rest of the world / I want to be the one to walk in the sun.
Willfully misinterpreting the lyrics, Baby imagined the vocalist to be in possession of a superhuman ability that allowed her to walk on the sun’s molten nuclear surface.
—Baaaaaabyyyy, cried Michael Alig. What do you have on? You don’t look very fabulous!
Alig was wearing a bikini mail-ordered from 1965. His face was painted with bright yellow makeup.
—I don’t feel very fabulous, said Baby. California broke my heart.
—Jesus Christ, said Michael Alig. You’re such a drag! Did you come here just to be depressed? I thought girls wanted to have fun!
He gave Baby a pill.
—Here, take this, he said. It’s pink, it’s fabulous!
—What is it? asked Baby.
—Who cares? It’s mother’s little helper!
Baby swallowed the pill, chalky like uncoated aspirin, sticking in his throat on its way toward his stomach.
—I see some people who really matter, said Michael Alig. People who aren’t glum glusses! I’ll check in with you after the drug takes effect, Baby girl, and we’ll see if you aren’t a little less sour.
People filtered in, the music played louder. Baby stood by the railings. A girl came over, smiling and saying hello. He couldn’t remember if he knew her. He looked at her for a moment too long.
—Have we met? he asked.
—We haven’t talked, she said, but I’m in your philosophy class.
—Oh, said Baby. Yes. Yes, you sit in front. I always sit in back.
—Why are you here? she asked. Don’t you have school in a few hours?
—Don’t you?
—Sure, she said. But I’m a bad student. I’m destined to fail.
Her name was Regina. In the clubs, she preferred Queen Rex, a nom de guerre bestowed upon her by Michael Alig. She told Baby about Cave Canem, the name of which was Latin for “Beware of the Dog.” A decade earlier, the building was a famous gay bathhouse, its interior done up like a tropical paradise. City officials shut it down during the dark days when they believed that AIDS was a transmittable cancer. The new owner, Hayne Suthon, from New Orleans, had convinced her family to buy the building. The premise being that stewardship of a restaurant would curb Suthon’s wild nature and transform her into an upstanding citizen. Such dreams were short lived. Hayne filled the pool with water and let Michael Alig promote parties.
—How do you know Michael? asked Queen Rex.
—We met a while back, said Baby.
—Why haven’t I seen you around?
—I’ve been out of town. How do you know Michael?
—I’m one of his club kids, said Queen Rex.
—What the hell is a club kid? asked Baby.
—Didn’t you see the story in New York? Michael made the cover. We’re all his puppets. Where’ve you been?
—Los Angeles, said Baby.
—Gag, gag, and triple gag, said Queen Rex.
Queen Rex convinced Baby that they should dance. During the second song, an uptempo track about sex, the drugs took hold. People never looked so beautiful. Music never sounded as good. The bathhouse walls radiated remarkable light.
More people filtered in, a different crowd. Outrageous people who kept shouting out Michael! Michael! Michael! Through the waving limbs of the dance floor, Ba
by saw these people surround Alig, as if he were Christ and they his disciples. He really must be famous now, Baby thought. Why the hell did he return my call?
Queen Rex hugged Baby. Baby hugged back, a clean hug, an easy clean hug.
The music and the lights and the Roman walls came together in an overwhelming burst. Baby felt happy that he’d come to Cave Cavem, that Michael Alig invited him. Very happy indeed to meet Queen Rex. Or Regina. Whichever. Would he call her Regina at school? He supposed that he would.
People stripped off their clothes and jumped into the pool. Ghost images trailed before Baby. He knew it was the drug, but he also imagined that it was a psychic resonance of the bathhouse days, that these people splashing against each other, screaming, with dirty water the only barrier between their embraces, all of this worked as an erotic sorcery summoning up the ghost of Old New York, of the days when men fucked freely without fear, of a time when his sexuality wasn’t being equated with death.
—Why, he asked Queen Rex, are they doing this?
—People need to do something, said Queen Rex.
—But aren’t they worried? he asked. Aren’t they worried about AIDS?
—No one has sex anymore, said Queen Rex. Sex is so passé. It’s everything but. I’m going in the pool. Are you coming in?
—Maybe in a minute, said Baby.
Queen Rex stripped out of her odd leather costume. She jumped into the water. Her hands ran over a man’s body. A couple grinded against each other. Baby stood three feet away, brain spurting neurons, intoxicated by his lack of concern. The ’80s are the decade of fear, he thought. But the ’80s are almost over. Is this what the ’90s are going to be like? Drugged-out people almost fucking in dirty swimming pools?
—Baby! shouted a voice beside him.
Michael Alig. The bikini top off, hair and skin soaking. Makeup smeared down his face.
—Baby, said Michael Alig, what kind of bitch comes to a person’s pool party and then refuses to get wet?
—I’m a rabid dog, said Baby. I’m afraid of water. I’m that kind of bitch. Cave canem.
—That’s so hilarious, said Michael Alig, because I’m famously rabid and I’m not afraid of anything.