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When I was a kid, my mom read Details religiously. Back then it wasn't a men's magazine or whatever it is now, but a chronicle of New York City Nightlife. She liked the clothes and the photographs and maybe she dreamed of having that outrageous life. I don't know, and it was never something that occurred to me then, but I know that she went to a nightclub for the first time in her fifties to dance salsa with some of the gay men she works with and that she raved about it for days.
I was a magpie of a kid, stealing dollars from my parents here and there and pawing through things that weren't meant for me whenever I could. No one was going to teach me the world, and so I set out to learn it on my own and Details was critical. After all, this was the 70s and 80s in New York City and young teenagers got into clubs all the time without anyone batting an eye. There was a world my parents wanted me to miss, but I refused.
And so I lied and snuck and connived and went to places like AREA and MARS when I could, and read all the gossip columns in Details. I kept up on James St. James. I met Michael Alig a few times. I danced and I lied.
I've had a love of clubs on and off throughout my life. There were the years of Tracks in DC, and the early 90s there were filled with an attempt to recreate the New York club culture of the 80s. But I remember being shocked the first time I went to a place down there and saw you could just wait on line and get in. You didn't have to be chosen. And I didn't understand why.
There were also my years of doing the goth circuit when I came back to New York, and the time spent at MOTHER, which was a great lost world of Rococo furniture, stately manners and sex in the downstairs bathroom. I met people there who were so otherworldly I still weep to think about them. D. who killed himself a few years back on Valentine's Day, and Morgan who wore dresses but rarely did drag and was a Latin teacher; there is a world, surely, in which his life was my own.
But clubs faded. New York got boring. I had lovers who hated the idea of dressing up and going out. I got older and a little more responsible. Money was tight, work was hard, and the people of all those dark worlds weren't mostly all that fun or clever.
Strange times breed good clubs, just like war tends to breed good fashion back at home. Dances of Vice, mostly held over in Brooklyn, has been, over the last year or so, a little bit of both. I haven't quite been a regular, and often I've had a spectacular time because my friends and I were happy to amuse ourselves, what with me running around dressed like Jack and various people hosting cocktail parties before hand. And it's not really a club, because mostly we don't go to dance.
Last night it made about no sense for Patty and I to go. We'd been at the tournament in the morning (which I will write about under separate cover) and the schedule was tight and we were both exhausted. But I wanted a drink after all that and Isengart was performing and the theme was Rococo glam rock and I just really wanted to be there.
So we went.
And it was nightlife as I dreamed of it when I was so small and had huge round eyes. The music as we waited about for the performances was all The Glove and Love & Rockets and The Velvet Goldmine soundtrack, and when Isengart first came on stage it was crouched and crawling along the floor in a gorilla suit, which he eventually stripped off in some ridiculous burlesque fashion and took into a cabaret song.
In general, this whole madness we have going for the 20s and 30s right now is a little fucked. If you ignore all the darkness of that time, it's bullshit, and if you don't, well, you're probably crossing more than a few lines you shouldn't be. It's an uncomfortable fixation, and last night was all about the razor's edge of that.
After Isengart we had Mr. Uncertain, who was a send up of the early-1970s that laughed at his own jokes just a little too much to be perfect and stuffed his pants, but was still delightful and childlike and odd, but I have to assume it made no sense to people who don't know from and love such things. He played the muppets theme song as if written by Mozart.
Them there was Prince Poppycock, who was a Rococo, drag queen-esque (but the illusion was not of femininity so much as elsewise) opera singer. It was a bit like what you had to assume the entertainment at the vampire Lestat's parties was supposed to be like. And yeah, he used a mic and recorded music and stripped to a bit of Figaro, but later sang several pieces with tears in his eyes, including a lovely bit from La Boheme and I was reminded how much I like opera and also why I love nightclubs when he spoke with such gratitude and emotion about being amongst us.
A girl did a burlesque number to Shiny, Shiny Boots of Leather that was dark and hypnotic, and not funny or narrative like burlesque should largely be. Which made it darker, more sexual, less appropriate or even distinct from stripping, but it was stunning and correct to the occasion, and somehow managed to be one of the most shocking things I have ever seen for all that.
Later we got repeat performances from folks. Isengart sending up the very idea of German performance art, by presenting us with a number in which he channeled Dieter (if Dieter were really fucking hot) singing about wanting to be an "ice bear! polar bear!"
But the real hit of the night for me, was when Mr. Uncertain and Prince Poppycock came out to sing Under Pressure. Mr. Uncertain was sort of laughing his way through it, but Prince Poppycock was totally in the moment, and I remember when Freddie Mercury died, remember when all these folks worldly and edgy that made up the secret pantheon of my childhood died, and it was so stunning and ferocious and sad and joyful, and you couldn't not feel it -- some circle clicking shut.
The last number of the night was Isengart leading us all in Rock Me Amadeus. I loved Falco as a kid, falling in love with his insanity on Italian MTV in a hotel in Rome one Christmas and collecting European teen magazines full of interviews with him.
And another circle clicked closed, because all that stuff I fantasized about twenty-five years ago? Right here. Right there. Waiting so patiently for me to get caught up after all these years. Night after night.
all photos by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marchek
I was a magpie of a kid, stealing dollars from my parents here and there and pawing through things that weren't meant for me whenever I could. No one was going to teach me the world, and so I set out to learn it on my own and Details was critical. After all, this was the 70s and 80s in New York City and young teenagers got into clubs all the time without anyone batting an eye. There was a world my parents wanted me to miss, but I refused.
And so I lied and snuck and connived and went to places like AREA and MARS when I could, and read all the gossip columns in Details. I kept up on James St. James. I met Michael Alig a few times. I danced and I lied.
I've had a love of clubs on and off throughout my life. There were the years of Tracks in DC, and the early 90s there were filled with an attempt to recreate the New York club culture of the 80s. But I remember being shocked the first time I went to a place down there and saw you could just wait on line and get in. You didn't have to be chosen. And I didn't understand why.
There were also my years of doing the goth circuit when I came back to New York, and the time spent at MOTHER, which was a great lost world of Rococo furniture, stately manners and sex in the downstairs bathroom. I met people there who were so otherworldly I still weep to think about them. D. who killed himself a few years back on Valentine's Day, and Morgan who wore dresses but rarely did drag and was a Latin teacher; there is a world, surely, in which his life was my own.
But clubs faded. New York got boring. I had lovers who hated the idea of dressing up and going out. I got older and a little more responsible. Money was tight, work was hard, and the people of all those dark worlds weren't mostly all that fun or clever.
Strange times breed good clubs, just like war tends to breed good fashion back at home. Dances of Vice, mostly held over in Brooklyn, has been, over the last year or so, a little bit of both. I haven't quite been a regular, and often I've had a spectacular time because my friends and I were happy to amuse ourselves, what with me running around dressed like Jack and various people hosting cocktail parties before hand. And it's not really a club, because mostly we don't go to dance.
Last night it made about no sense for Patty and I to go. We'd been at the tournament in the morning (which I will write about under separate cover) and the schedule was tight and we were both exhausted. But I wanted a drink after all that and Isengart was performing and the theme was Rococo glam rock and I just really wanted to be there.
So we went.
And it was nightlife as I dreamed of it when I was so small and had huge round eyes. The music as we waited about for the performances was all The Glove and Love & Rockets and The Velvet Goldmine soundtrack, and when Isengart first came on stage it was crouched and crawling along the floor in a gorilla suit, which he eventually stripped off in some ridiculous burlesque fashion and took into a cabaret song.
In general, this whole madness we have going for the 20s and 30s right now is a little fucked. If you ignore all the darkness of that time, it's bullshit, and if you don't, well, you're probably crossing more than a few lines you shouldn't be. It's an uncomfortable fixation, and last night was all about the razor's edge of that.
After Isengart we had Mr. Uncertain, who was a send up of the early-1970s that laughed at his own jokes just a little too much to be perfect and stuffed his pants, but was still delightful and childlike and odd, but I have to assume it made no sense to people who don't know from and love such things. He played the muppets theme song as if written by Mozart.
Them there was Prince Poppycock, who was a Rococo, drag queen-esque (but the illusion was not of femininity so much as elsewise) opera singer. It was a bit like what you had to assume the entertainment at the vampire Lestat's parties was supposed to be like. And yeah, he used a mic and recorded music and stripped to a bit of Figaro, but later sang several pieces with tears in his eyes, including a lovely bit from La Boheme and I was reminded how much I like opera and also why I love nightclubs when he spoke with such gratitude and emotion about being amongst us.
A girl did a burlesque number to Shiny, Shiny Boots of Leather that was dark and hypnotic, and not funny or narrative like burlesque should largely be. Which made it darker, more sexual, less appropriate or even distinct from stripping, but it was stunning and correct to the occasion, and somehow managed to be one of the most shocking things I have ever seen for all that.
Later we got repeat performances from folks. Isengart sending up the very idea of German performance art, by presenting us with a number in which he channeled Dieter (if Dieter were really fucking hot) singing about wanting to be an "ice bear! polar bear!"
But the real hit of the night for me, was when Mr. Uncertain and Prince Poppycock came out to sing Under Pressure. Mr. Uncertain was sort of laughing his way through it, but Prince Poppycock was totally in the moment, and I remember when Freddie Mercury died, remember when all these folks worldly and edgy that made up the secret pantheon of my childhood died, and it was so stunning and ferocious and sad and joyful, and you couldn't not feel it -- some circle clicking shut.
The last number of the night was Isengart leading us all in Rock Me Amadeus. I loved Falco as a kid, falling in love with his insanity on Italian MTV in a hotel in Rome one Christmas and collecting European teen magazines full of interviews with him.
And another circle clicked closed, because all that stuff I fantasized about twenty-five years ago? Right here. Right there. Waiting so patiently for me to get caught up after all these years. Night after night.
all photos by
marchek
