by Jarett Kobek
Another story went around, about a performance that occurred not that long before the overdose. Christina was on stage at the Pyramid, her top off, singing “I’ll Keep It with Mine,” a song written by Bob Dylan and recorded by Nico. I can’t help it if you might think if I am odd / If I say I’m not loving you for what you are / But for what you’re not.
An audience member didn’t appreciate her rendition. He booed, he heckled.
Christina picked up the microphone stand and threw it at his face. People said that she’d taken out one of his eyes. Baby could not believe it. Too outlandish. Many people said that she’d been brought up on attempted murder charges.
She overdosed in June. Everyone said that Nelson Sullivan was broken up. Baby never had a chance to ask him about Christina. On July 4th, Sullivan died of a heart attack. He was forty-one years old.
Then there was the time when Limelight hired Michael Alig to put on a Wednesday night party called Disco 2000. How things change! Baby remembered this one time when Michael Alig was banned from Limelight for owing someone $700.
The owner of Limelight was Peter Gatien, a middle-aged Canadian who wore a patch over his left eye. He’d owned a string of successful clubs in other cities before buying a deconsecrated Gothic Revival church at Sixth Avenue and 20th Street. Gatien’s previous clubs all had been named Limelight. The church took the same name. Opening in 1983, it limped through a few mediocre years before collapsing into the utterly passé.
Gatien turned to Michael Alig. Go ahead, he said, you’re one of the young things making the most noise. Take the dead night of Wednesday. I’ll bankroll you.
—I finally have what I’ve always wanted! said Michael Alig. All of my dreams are coming true!
Michael Alig disappeared, entering into furious preparations for his premiere in late August. Rumors swirled. Something about costumes, the club as carnival, like Larry Tee’s Celebrity Club but on a whole new scale. Putting away of childish things. This would be different. This would be formalized. The real deal.
On opening night, Baby received a telephone call, making sure that he’d go.
—I wouldn’t miss it, Michael, said Baby. Regina’s going, too. Every-one’s going.
—Even that bitch Musto said he’s coming, said Michael Alig. I hope he doesn’t spoil everything!
—It’ll be fine, said Baby. Trust me.
—Oh, said Michael Alig, what do you know? Why should I trust you? You’re nobody!
Baby called Queen Rex. Her mother answered. Baby hadn’t met Regina’s mother, but they’d spoken countless times.
—¿Aló?
—Hola, said Baby. ¿Regina es allí?
—¿Quién es?
—Es Bebé.
—Baby, said Regina’s mother, laughing. Baby! Baby!
Children screamed behind her.
—Baby, Regina no es home. Regina es . . . es . . . at . . . at . . . disco!
—Gracias, Mami, he said, hanging up.
Baby ate two tablets of MDMA. He went into his closet and gathered every belt that he owned. He asked Adeline if he could borrow all of her belts.
—Why ever do you want them?
—I’m going to make a costume, said Baby. For the first night of Disco 2000.
—Are you high? she asked.
—Yes, said Baby.
—On MDMA?
—Yes, said Baby.
—I wish you could stand on the rock where Moses stood and take a look at yourself. Something has gone very wrong. You aren’t the young man that I remember.
—Times change, he said. You can’t repeat the past.
—What do you mean you can’t repeat the past? asked Adeline. Of course you can.
Baby put on a base layer of black clothing and tied the belts over his arms, legs, and torso. In the mirror, the effect worked better than he’d imagined. He looked like a Rainbow Mummy.
—I hope this isn’t too Leigh Bowery, he said to himself.
Baby took a taxi up to 20th Street. Kenny Kenny was at the door. Baby skipped the line. Limelight was made anew. Michael Alig had rented live monkeys, which were scattered around the lobby, shitting and screaming in cages. James St. James had been given a cage of his own, wearing stage makeup and a sign over his head: WARNING: DO NOT FEED THE DRUG CHILD. He cried out for a bump! Just a bump! Any bump!
And then there were the costumed characters. Clara the Carefree Chicken, an oversized yellow avian with a predilection for off-beat dancing, pushing people around in stolen shopping carts, groping their genitals. Hans Ulrich, the leather dog. I. C. the Bear. Handmade signs announced these creatures’ names.
—Baby! I love your costume!
—Regina! Darling!
They hugged.
—Isn’t it wonderful? she asked.
—I’m really really really high right now, said Baby. Is it as amazing as it seems?
—What did you take? she asked.
—Ecstasy, what else?
—A girl over there has Special K. I haven’t done it, have you? It’s all the rage. All the kids say it’s divine. Should I get us some?
—You go enjoy, said Baby. I don’t like mixing pharmaceuticals. I should find Michael.
—He’s upstairs, said Queen Rex.
Baby made his way across the club. Michael must be pleased with the turnout. Baby darted around a pack of six or seven kids. One grabbed him by the arm.
—Baby! said a female voice.
He looked at the woman. She was petite, wearing a long silver wig, big ugly black boots, thick black belt, and a camo bikini. He sighed, not wanting to deal with another groupie.
Having written several articles for Project X, Baby was experiencing increased visibility. He hated it. Honey, said James St. James, that’s the terrible price of fame! Baby didn’t want fame. He just liked writing.
—Hellllooo, he said.
—Baby, it is me, said the girl.
—Who’s me? he asked.
—Me, Baby. Jae-Hwa, Sally.
Baby scrunched up his face. Beneath the makeup, beneath the wig, beneath the bikini, beneath the silver. He saw her. It’d been almost four years, the spring of 1987. Then she’d dressed sub-preppy, with no style. A lot of khaki slacks and pink sweaters and self-cut hair.
—Sally! What are you doing here? asked Baby.
—I am a real club kid now, she said. Ecstasy is in my blood. Do not call me Sally anymore. Call me Sigh.
—Sigh? asked Baby.
—It is my new American name, she said. I have been reading your articles.
Baby asked Sigh if she’d graduated. She hadn’t, she wouldn’t ever graduate. She’d been thrown out of Parsons in her junior year. She’d struck up an interest in clubbing and stayed out every night, partying through the semester without producing any work.
A portfolio review was scheduled in the final week of classes. Overcome with despair, Sigh roamed the Parsons building on Fifth Avenue, stumbling across a stack of paintings in the basement. She stole the artwork and presented it at her review. The scheme would have worked, she said, except that one of the faculty members happened to be the person from whom she’d stolen the work. Those are my paintings, he said.
—Yet my father is rich, she said, so I continue to party!
They danced together, for a while. Drugs making the music much better. As always.
He said goodbye to Sigh, knowing that they’d run into each other again. She glowed with it, with the intangible aura of someone hooked on club life. The aura of an indigo child. Certain people were made for nightclubbing. But Sally! Who knew? He couldn’t wait to tell Adeline.
Other people recognized him, stopped him, talked with him. Air kisses and hugs and declarations of how fabulous they found his belts.
In the Chapel, beneath stained-glass windows, Michael Alig held court, surrounded by Michael Musto, LaHoma, Peter Gatien, and a bunch of kids that Baby didn’t recognize. Gatien turned toward Baby, unnerving void of black eye patch.
—Th
e attendance isn’t really what I wanted, said Michael Alig, but it’s close. We’ll get there. This is my moment, Peter. I’m sure of it. This is the big one. No one can ever take this away! Not even you!
Then there was the time when Baby went by himself to Red Zone. It was Saturday night and Baby ate two tablets of MDMA before taking a cab to West 54th Street.
Getting out of the car, he spun on the pavement and bumped into this gorgeous guy. The guy smiled at Baby. Baby smiled back. They talked. The guy’s name was Erik. Baby told Erik about listening to an LP of the Shangri-Las’ Greatest Hits, a record that he’d bought for $2 at the Salvation Army. Oh God, thought Baby, why the fuck can’t I just fucking shut the fuck up?
—There are the obvious songs, said Baby, like, uh, ‘Remember’ and ‘Leader of the Pack,’ but the one that I love the most is ‘Past, Present and Future.’ It’s not even really a song, it’s more like a long monologue addressed to an unknown boy that goes through the three stages of the title’s temporality. But where she kills you, where she gets you so hard, is when she tells the boy, twice, ‘That will never happen again.’ It’s the finality of it. It’s the doom of relationships. It’s the human fucking condition. It’s so awful. It’s such a sad thing thinking of those girls.
Erik reached out and touched the side of Baby’s face, fingers running along the line of jaw, thumb on cheekbone.
—I’ll be your girl if you say it’s a gift, said Erik.
And it was here that Baby, which is to say me, myself, it was here, after many moons, that I found my path back to personhood.
JANUARY 1991
Adeline Comes Back from a Trip with Jon
Jon dropped me off outside of my 7th Street quarters. We exchanged pleasantries. Jon drove off to New Jersey. I unlocked the front door. Down the block, a drunken lout was vomiting his lungs into the gutter. New York City. Home.
Climbing the stairs, I imagined Baby and Erik losing all sense of self, delirious with delight at having the space to their selves and indulging in a reckless carnival of homo acrobatics. My one hope was that they’d emerged from their lust and cleaned up the semen and lubricants.
The apartment was untouched, spotless. Imaginate my surprise. The Captain rubbing his winsome against my legs. Louder purrs I have not heard. I dumped my bags on the kitchen floor and stooped low to pet his head, happy for the consistency.
“Baby?” I called out. “Baby? Are you home?”
My bed displayed no evidence of anyone screwing out anyone else’s brains. I lay down. The Captain climbed beside me, his left paw and head on my stomach.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes of peace. The front door opened. I remembered my bags, and was about to warn Baby not to stumble over them, when there came the most wretched crunching sound of my adult life: “Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine! Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiine!”
Sensation in the lower stomach, clenching with nervous energy, the shock of it. I wanted to hide, but where? I swallowed and trudged into the kitchen.
There she stood. Crazy as a daisy. Sally in the alley. Mother. Baby was beside her, keys in hand, shit-eating mouth.
“Mother,” I said. “Why ever are you here?”
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” said she, her appalling new haircut making her face too round, “I hadn’t heard from you in so long! So I came out here! Baby was nice enough to let me in! I’m so happy to see you!”
She threw her claws around my back. Too shocked, too appalled to say anything. Too stunned to push her off.
“I don’t expect much from her,” said I to Baby. “From you I expect decorum. I expect some modicum of loyalty.”
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” said Mother. “Don’t blame Baby! I ambushed him in the street! What could he do!”
“I can contemplate several things,” I said. “I can think of several things indeed.”
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiine,” said Mother. “Something’s different about your voice!”
“Where are you holed up?” I asked. “The Plaza?”
“Of course, Adeliiiiiiiiine!”
“I’ve only now returned home from a long trip,” I said. “I’ll meet you tomorrow at 4 pm in the lobby. Don’t be late. I won’t mount an expedition to find you in the bar.”
“But Adeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” said Mother, “I thought we could get dinner!”
“We can’t,” I said. “You must leave. Tomorrow. 4 pm. The Plaza lobby.”
She departed. Not without passive aggressive protest, insisting that Baby walk her to the street. He obliged. I pressed up against the kitchen counter. Footsteps announced his return.
“How was Graceland?” he asked, smiling.
“Tacky,” I said. “Why the fuck did you let Mother inside our apartment?”
“She literally jumped me on the street,” he said. “No one’s more shocked than I am. I didn’t have any time to think. You know how she can be.”
Back in my bedroom, lying on my bed. I’d returned from the South with no small amount of placidity, the last five hours of driving filled with resolve earned through new experience, exhausted by travel, as if I’d sweated out all mental poisons. As blank as unused paper.
That was gone, ruined, stolen by Mother, a malign spirit summoned from the past, ink staining the paper. I’d journeyed two thousand miles, changed my way of thinking.
Yet one can never change because there is always another desperate to recall one’s old self. Too much change, too much transition into a new person, and this other will lose sense of their own identity. One becomes their unit of measurement.
I excavated Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief. I lowered the stylus upon the second cut. “Reynardine.” Ethereal sound coming off sparse guitar, spectral voice of Sandy Denny moving through protoplasmic transmission. I’d listened countless times and couldn’t begin to speculate as to the song’s meaning. I hadn’t the slightest. I fell asleep reading The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.
Dumb luck is a skill one can cultivate like any other. In the sad days before Jeremy Winterbloss and Минерва packed up and moved out to Northern California, I’d been wandering along Fifth Avenue, my brain addlepated with misty thoughts of Blackberry Lane. A voice cried out my name. It was Luanna Potrero.
We exchanged pleasantries. Her graduation occurred the year before my own, and she’d fallen into print illustration, doing spot work for magazines in Midtown. I inquired as to the pay rates. She said they were fantastic.
“I can get you work,” she said. “I’ve got more offers than I know what to do with.”
I hugged her, sinking my fingers into the excess of her flesh, and thanked her kindly. I said I’d think about it, which was only dissimulation and pretext.
That very night, reader, I gave her a ring-a-ding-ding and informed Luanna that I wasn’t the kind of girl who’d pry the equine mouth and count teeth.
Perhaps you wonder why. Ain’t ol’ Adeline fixed for life?
Consider the long haul after graduation, strung out with anxiety. I could Nostradamus the future. I’d graduated with a degree in Fine Arts, and my family was lousy with beaucoup bucks.
These twin maladies typically produce one of several unfortunate dénouements. A terrible marriage. Substance addiction. Country home in New Canaan. A Francesca Woodman suicide.
So I said yes, of course, obviously, Adeline will raise high the banner of the righteous. She’ll do the work.
Luanna had a studio in the West 20s, from which she and a rotating band of illustrators pounded out material at a healthy gallop. There was no house style.
My linework soon appeared on the newsstands.
She had arranged everything, talking with editors, doling out pieces, taking her cut off the top. Our arrangement was flexible. If I wished to disappear for a week and become a Californy transplant gone to seed down in Dixieland, I needn’t do much but call my friend and let her know.
The money was good enough that I was
able to sever most ties with Mother and her deep reservoirs of filthy lucre. This isn’t to say that your faithful friend wasn’t still eating a certain amount of the family’s pie.
A year before his death, Daddy had gone and visited his trusts and estates lawyer, and established a certain payout for both Dahlia and myself. Barring incompetence on the part of the trust’s administrators, we’d both pull in some cash for the rest of our lives.
But it wasn’t Mother’s money. That was the key. Great God All Mighty, I was free at last.
Which was, of course, the reason for her impromptu visit. Mother was rather shaken when she realized that without the IV drip of her liquid assets, I wasn’t very much beholden.
Thus the ambush, darlings.
The next day I took a cab to Central Park. The driver let me out by the statue of William Tecumseh Sherman. When last I’d looked upon the general’s likeness, it was a dull rotted color. Now it blazed with a bright gold leaf that defied the winter late afternoon. I couldn’t fathom why the authorities of Central Park had transformed Sherman and Wingèd Victory into disco icons.
My period was upon me. The stress of Mother had thrust me into my heavy flow. The morning was spent plagued by cramps, shitting out my guts.
The woman was not in the Plaza lobby. Despite my vow, I went on an expedition and found her imbibing in the Oak Room.
“Adeliiiiiiiiiiine,” she said. “Have a drink with your mother.”
“How many have you consumed?” I asked.
“Only three so far,” she said.
“Bloody hell,” I said. “Why not.”
I ordered a vodka tonic. I suppose there was symmetry in it. How insane Mother was! She believed in the appropriateness of our setting, in the righteousness of stewing herself in the Oak Room beside her deeply estranged daughter.
“Did I ever tell you about the first time that we stayed in the Plaza? I think it must have been in 1970,” said Mother. “Your father and I flew out to New York. I didn’t know anything about the city, but your father insisted on the Plaza! He said only the best for his girl! Your father had some business with the university. Don’t ask me what! After he was done with that, we went to Madison Square Garden and we saw Blind Faith. You remember Blind Faith, don’t you, Adeliiiiiiiine? It used to be your favorite album when you were an infant. You made us plaaaay it and plaaaaaay it. You’d cry so much if we turned it off!”