by Jarett Kobek
Baby looked over the side, peering down. The lamps flickered as if illuminated by gas. There were thousands of spirits, shimmering figures, wandering through the park. What are they? Baby wondered. Are they ghosts? Is Emil among them?
Moving with care down the spiral staircase. Still too high to go home, to deal with Adeline. At the bottom, walking outside. The park returned to normal. The dull light of electric lamps. No shimmering ghosts, only the debris of humanity. The starving, the drug dealers.
He sang a song by Patti Smith. “Pissing in a River.” Baby couldn’t remember the lyrics. Words came out strange, improvised, wrong and broken: My vowels sound heavy, bleating your foul. What door will I hand you? Honey I can’t say. What more can I say to you, to make you stay?
James St. James hadn’t left the door. Baby knew him, slightly, introduced by Michael Alig, who’d said that James was the old guard, positively one of those tired nasty mid-’80s Celebutantes. Desperate for relevance, and proving that an old dog can learn a new trick, Jimmy had transitioned into being a club kid. Michael Alig assured Baby that no one minded, not really, if James was so old.
—Honey, you ran out on me! said James to Baby. Where’ve you been?
—Washington Square, said Baby.
—There’s nothing there but disgusting tramps! You missed Brooke Shields. I escorted her, personally, to the VIP speakeasy! And do you know what she did? She asked for my address! She wants to send me a gift! Can you believe how fabulous she is?
Inside, Queen Rex stood beside a disco ball and a peacock-shaped pane of glass.
—Where have you been?
—Out, said Baby. I couldn’t take it.
A middle-aged man with a video camera approached. He kissed Queen Rex’s cheek, calling out, Regina! Regina! Regina!
—Baby, do you know Nelson?
—I’ve seen you around, said Baby.
—Baby, this is Nelson Sullivan. Nelson is a friend of Christina.
—Oh, said Nelson, I love Christina.
—Nelson’s a club kid!
—I’m more like a club parent, said Nelson. Well, bye-bye, I’m going upstairs.
Almost 4 am. Queen Rex grabbed the arm of a queen named LaHoma van Zandt, a skinny-bodied blonde. She was beautiful. Baby stared at her, wondering if she were really this beautiful or if the drug was altering reality. The most beautiful queen. LaHoma van Zandt. Baby hung on her words, each spoken in a syrupy Southern accent.
—Let’s go to Robots, said LaHoma. It’s less than a block away!
Other people were dragged along, including Nelson Sullivan and James St. James. Everyone except for Nelson was drunk or high. Screaming in the streets. LaHoma wearing her tiny yellow dress, hopping up and down on wooden heels.
—It’s so amazing! she shouted. It’s so funny!
Save the Robots was situated in a storefront on Avenue B. LaHoma knocked on the gray door. The Judas window slid open. LaHoma pushed her face up to the opening. The doorman let everyone in, despite his reservations about Nelson Sullivan’s camera.
—Do you record everything? asked Baby.
—Day and night, said Nelson. There’s just so many gorgeous people here in Downtown and I’d hate to miss a single one.
Thursday when Baby went out with Regina. Friday now. Thankfully no class in the morning. Sleep the whole afternoon.
Baby ended up downstairs, looking at exposed piping and the empty dance floor, which was covered in sand. Still early. People would be arriving until 8 am. Emptiness of the basement, the emptiness of an occupied store-front, giving drug clarity into the nature of the 1980s. A difference from the era of true disco and Studio 54, when proprietors would transform their spaces into works of wonder. Then the idea had been to pull people from their minds, transport them to other worlds.
Save the Robots, The World, Tunnel, Mars, Red Zone, Limelight. Consciously designed to keep the remnants and echoes of their earlier occupants. An old warehouse. A train tunnel. Part of the appeal, to know that the dance space existed only because capitalism had failed. New culture sprouting up like weeds feeding on the old corpse.
Then there was the time when Michael Alig threw a party at McDonald’s in Times Square. Actually, the invite was for the Burger King across the street, but the management had refused to host the illustrious event. Michael Alig improvised, giving a thousand dollars to the people at McDonald’s and making a few unlucky messengers stand outside Burger King to direct human traffic to the new location.
Baby convinced Adeline to come along, overriding almost all of her objections by pointing out that this party, for once, wasn’t happening in a club.
—I don’t even think there’ll be music, said Baby. McDonald’s sure won’t pump it through their speakers.
—Zowie! Swellegant! said Adeline. You melt me, Jackson.
Adeline’s friend Jeremy Winterbloss had given her a copy of a 1940s slang dictionary entitled The Hepcats Jive Talk Dictionary. Adeline had digested its contents, tormenting Baby for two weeks with its lingo.
—I have no idea what that means. Are you coming or not?
—Don’t summon your hexes from Texas, Baby. Of course I’m going.
—Everything’s copacetic?
—Lamp into my spotters, she said. Ultra copacetic. Everything’s grand.
Baby and Adeline dressed. Baby didn’t understand why Adeline bothered getting done up. She had a boyfriend. She hated club people. Who was left to impress?
They smoked pot and took a cab to 46th and Broadway. When they arrived at Burger King, a crowd of obvious club people were walking across the street. Baby and Adeline followed, assuming that these people were in the know.
In coming years, the club scene would be a mortar of high fashion, the pestle of money crushing every possible problem of accoutrement. Watching the crowd drift across Times Square, Baby couldn’t help but notice the threadbare state of everyone’s outfits. They were like Halloween costumes. Fright wigs and goofy makeup. Everything looked so cheap.
The ground floor of McDonald’s was tiny, with only a counter and queue for food. The upstairs dining room area was accessible via a staircase to the immediate right. Baby knew that he’d arrived at Michael Alig’s party when he saw the bouncer and velvet rope blocking off access to the stairs. Baby couldn’t imagine the indignity of being bounced from McDonald’s.
—If this guy doesn’t let us in, said a voice in the crowd, I’m going to bend him over and fist him. On second thought, now that I’ve got a better look at him, I might fist him even if he does.
No one was denied entry. They were the right kind of freaks. Baby held Adeline’s hand, pulling her upstairs, making sure that she didn’t get lost in the crush.
Baby spotted James St. James, Michael Musto wearing a cow-print fur jacket, Nelson Sullivan with his camera, Michael Alig with his face painted with blue and red dots, Michael Alig’s boyfriend DJ Keoki wearing an ugly silver jacket and a risible hat embossed with silver letters that read KEOKI, Julie Jewels of Project X magazine, Christopher Robin, Olympia done up like Marie Antoinette, and a whole host of other people whose names Baby did and did not remember.
—This rockpile sends me, said Adeline. Gun all the able grables and creampuffs. There must be three hundred indexes! B.T.O.
Regina wasn’t there. Family obligation. She’d called complaining. Baby didn’t mind. It allowed him to include Adeline.
They approached James St. James.
—Hi, honey!
—Jimmy, this is my roommate, Adeline.
—Well, isn’t she just fabulous?
—This cat’s a real snow from Fresno, said Adeline. Ask the cake eater if he’s a boiled owl and if he is, can he mash?
—What? asked James St. James.
—Don’t even, said Baby. It’s too complicated. But Jimmy, are you holding?
They ended up with two tablets of Ecstasy. Baby ate one. Adeline ate the other. Baby momentarily questioned the wisdom of taking drugs in a badly lit McDonald’s
on Times Square. On the other hand, the pot was wearing off.
Michael Alig came up the stairs, carrying boxes of food. Everyone screamed. Michael! Michael! Michael! Michael! He stood on a booth table and threw food at the crowd, like the Anti-Christ distributing loaves of poisoned bread. People climbed over each other, fighting, desperate to get their hands on cheeseburgers and Big Macs and French fries.
So lovely, really, so nice to be with these people. All of them knew Baby. Some better than others, but he knew them and they knew him. Something wonderful about that, about being recognized and accepted, about being part of the thing. Adeline was smiling, laughing, touching him. Baby thought, Oh, wow, it’s her first time doing MDMA. Had things changed so much? Why was there a drug that he’d done before Adeline?
—Why, Baby, said Adeline, I do believe that I’m understanding the appeal of these vile people. They’re all so charming, in their grotesque little carnival way.
Michael Alig and his club kids had gone through a phase where they ran around town with whistles hanging from their necks, blowing them throughout the clubs. Baby caught the tail end of this period and was glad for its demise. The sound drove him crazy. But here the whistles were again, blasting away inside McDonald’s.
Right before the food fight, Baby and Adeline started a conversation with Kenny Kenny and Armand. Kenny Kenny had served as the doorman at every club in town. Her head was completely shaved other than a red topknot kept under a silver hat. Looking at the knot, Baby shuddered, thinking of the pinhead girls from Tod Browning’s film Freaks.
Adeline talked at Kenny Kenny and Armand for several minutes, the four of them sitting together in a booth. Baby couldn’t keep track of it. Across the restaurant, they were singing “Happy Birthday.” Whose birthday was it? Armand said something to Adeline about Louise Brooks. Baby interrupted them, as gently as he could, trying to steer the conversation toward something interesting. As he spoke, he found himself even more boring than Adeline, watching himself from the outside, watching him bore his audience, wishing that he could stop it but being unable.
—All right, okay, you’ve got to understand, said Baby, that Thomas M. Disch . . .
—Not him! said Adeline. I haven’t thought of that dreadful man and his dreadful books since our old Bank of the Metropolis!
—Anyhoo, said Baby, Thomas M. Disch is one of the finest writers who emerged from the Science Fiction New Wave. Probably his best book is The Genocides, which is about an alien invasion of Earth by these giant trees that colonize every square inch of the planet. Most humans have died, and the ones that haven’t are being hunted by these flesh-incinerating machines. Anyhoo, the novel follows the last group of survivors, this creepy community of Bible thumpers with a freakish patriarch who is either Noah or Lot, you pick, and the whole thing is very Biblical in this queered way. Most of the action takes place underground, when the people escape the machines by running into a cave and becoming, basically, worms that live inside the plants’ root network. Oh yeah, I forgot, the plants are kind of edible.
—How does it end? asked Armand.
Armand’s face. Baby couldn’t stop. He had to answer.
—Badly. Everyone dies. The plants are the food for a race of beings who never appear in the book. They used Earth for their farmland.
—Honey, said Armand, that’s about the most boring thing I’ve ever heard.
—Why would you even bother? asked Kenny Kenny. I mean, books? Who reads? Who cares? We’re at a party and you’re talking about books?
Adeline stood up, letting them out of the booth. Michael Alig was behind them, watching, his furrowed brow bending the painted dots.
—I overheard your charming little story, said Michael Alig. It reminded me of Dark Shadows. Have I ever told you about the Leviathan?
FOOD FIGHT. A melee erupted, fried food tossed in every direction. Adeline threw a Big Mac across the room, hitting the right side of a queen’s face. The queen spun around to see the origins of this missile, but as she attempted to trace the trajectory, another hamburger hit her in the nose. French fries fell like arrows at Agincourt.
Everyone had to leave, under threat of the cops being called. Michael Alig yelled that they couldn’t call the cops, not really, they had a business arrangement. But everyone was gay, in drag, high. No one wanted to deal with cops.
Then there was the time when Baby started noticing how many bald women hung around the clubs. Why are they all shaving their heads?
Then there was the time when Michael Alig explained how to rule the world.
—Don’t be such a bitch, he said. Shut up and fucking listen! Think of Andy Warhol. What did Andy do when they wouldn’t let him inside? He said, Who cares? Then he looked at what he had around him, which wasn’t anything other than a bunch of fucking faggots, queens, and speed freaks, and Andy said, these fucked-up faggots are the center of the world. This is where it’s happening. There’s nothing out there in the real America, where people work for a living, and live in suburbs, and make straight babies and own stupid ugly disgusting cars. The center of the world is here, on 47th Street, in this filthy fucking building filled with these filthy fucking people! It’s the rest of the world that’s outside. And Andy was right. No one has to spend their whole life as a fucking victim! Anyone can change the world. You just decide that you’re what’s hot, you’re the new fabulous thing, and then tell other people. And keep fucking telling them! They’ll laugh at first, because stupid ugly people always laugh at everything, but if you repeat it enough, sooner or later they’re going to come around and they won’t be laughing. Because if there’s anything that’s true, it’s that no one wants to be left out of the party. They’ll ask for invitations. They’ll want drugs. They’ll want to fuck beautiful young boys. And you’ll be the one with the invitations, you’ll be the one with the drugs, and it’ll be your boyfriend they’re trying to slip the tongue. You’ll have all the power. You say yes or no. You decide who makes it and who’s as nasty as old dog food. That’s how you take over the fucking world! It’s the simplest fucking thing. America is the original nightclub. All it takes is time and patience and a good doorman.
Then there was the time when Adeline graduated from Parsons, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Baby asked if she planned on inviting Suzanne.
—Mother doesn’t belong here, said Adeline.
—She pays for everything, said Baby. I can’t think of anything lonelier than not being invited to your daughter’s graduation.
—Why must you always take her side? asked Adeline.
—I lived with her for the better part of a year, said Baby.
Don’t speak to me of Mother.
When the day did roll around, Adeline didn’t attend the commencement ceremony. She wanted to mark the occasion in her own fashion, deciding that simply the very best way to celebrate would be to eat MDMA and watch a movie. For this outing, she brought along her querulous Russian friend, Minerva. And Baby.
The latter noted, silently, disgruntled, that Adeline’s disapproval of his friends did not extend to those times when she desired intoxicants. At such moments, the dreadful club folk were pure swellegance.
Baby scored four tablets of MDMA, giving one each to Adeline and Minerva, eating two himself. Of late, he’d upped his dosage. The cause of increase was this one time when he drank some Ecstasy Punch at Limelight. Party promoters employed this noxious brew as a marketing device, crushing a huge number of tablets into a watery fruit-flavored drink. Distributed for free. Baby ended up with an overload, bringing him to an enlightened understanding regarding the psychic parsimony of eating only one pill. MDMA was not LSD. He need not fear it.
Despite her lack of familiarity with the television program on which the film was based, Adeline decided they should see Tales from the Darkside: The Movie. She’d read that it starred Debbie Harry, lead singer of the defunct band Blondie. This casting was recommendation enough.
The film was playing at the Loews 34th Street Showc
ase. A relatively recent addition to the city, the theater was a squat building with three screens. During Baby’s first few months in New York, he and Adeline had attended a screening at the Showcase of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, projected in glorious 70mm. Baby now had no memory of that film beyond the aging faces of its protagonists and a dim recollection of humpback whales traveling through outer space.
Playing one of the basement theaters, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie was unusually bad, even by the dubious standards of the horror genre. A portmanteau film, its scant framing story begins with Debbie Harry living the façade of a normal suburban wife. It is revealed that beneath the veneer, Harry is a witch with an eight-year-old boy caged in her kitchen. She plans to host a dinner, going through the trappings of food preparation, with the child intended as the main course.
She gives the boy a book entitled Tales from the Darkside. Surprised by his disinterest in the tome, she informs the boy that the book was a favorite from her own childhood. Crazed with the desperation of the damned, the child suggests that he read Debbie Harry stories from within the book. She readily assents. Baby couldn’t imagine why she would. The book is hers, she’s been reading it for decades. Why would any of the stories be interesting? Even worse, the child can barely speak. There is no appeal in his elocution.
Each of the three tales dissolves into its own short narrative film. The first is about a mummy brought to life by career opportunists. The second is about a hitman hired to kill a cat. The third is about a man who witnesses a gargoyle committing murder and then strikes a deal with the creature to avoid his own death.
The drug disrupted Baby’s ability to follow the narratives in any linear sense. Flashes of images came at random, disjointed. The mummy’s head cut off and burnt in a fire. The smile of the gargoyle. An old man’s face covered in blood. An interracial marriage. Zombies.
A twist of the old man’s lip, beneath the stage blood, reminded Baby of the time when he’d met Quentin Crisp at Tunnel. Crisp’d written a book called The Naked Civil Servant, a memoir of his life as a flame queen in London around the time of World War II. Through the machinations of fate, he’d ended up as the club scene’s elder statesman.