The Cult of Celebrity

Monday. 11:15pm. Nighttime at The Ritz and the half empty bar is waiting for half in the bag Bianca del Rio to take the stage, such as it is. It seems like a million years ago that I dragged Bobby there and, primarily for my own amusement, encouraged him to enter Bianca’s drunken dance off contest, which he mistook for some genuine opportunity to win cash and fame. But that was just October of last year and about forty tons of snow ago. Not seeing the place through Bobby’s fresh eyes on his first ever trip to NYC, the walls did not vibrate with the same excitement as before but Bianca’s aggressive bray rattled the glassware enough to break the reverie for me.

Kugie and I had finished up a bland meal of Mexican at the nondescript place up the street from Arriba x2, which was “closed for cleaning” (although the appliances sealed in plastic said otherwise) and naturally wandered down to The Ritz to cheer on Bianca. The two of them are just back from Mardi Gras and while Bianca had her game face and enough make-up for six other game faces on, you could tell they were both still a little rough around the edges. Bianca practiced material on us, old and new, and at one point I think was making a subtle dig at me, which is rare for Bianca since her digs are never subtle.

“Oops! I think you dropped a name.” she called out, bending down to pick up an invisible celebrity moniker. “That’s a good bit, but I guess it probably wouldn’t work so well on the radio.” And then she looked straight into my heart.

For the most part, I confine my name dropping to my writing because when you drop them on a page, they tend to stay put. Names dropped in the ether of radio tend to float away, untethered and disconnected, and fade off into the shadows of memory. But print lives forever, more or less (my apologies to shuttered newspapers everywhere), and rarely more vividly than in Michael Musto’s column for the Village Voice. Barely twenty-four hours after abandoning Matt and Bianca at The Ritz, her words were fresh in my mind as I attended Musto's 25th anniversary party in a swanky Fifth Avenue penthouse on the fringes of Chelsea.

Everyone laments that NYC nightlife is just not what it used to be. We traded a cleaned up city and safer streets for evenings as dull as a butter knife. The last mayor erased the sex from the place and our current mayor monetized it. They turned the peep shows into Disney stores and the hustlers into baristas, working at the Starbucks on the corner instead of working the corner itself. Even Musto’s wonderful party was the ghost of Studio 54 past. There were silver balloons and flashing lights and loud middle-aged women flashing their tits, but the gays were encased in tight sweaters with Reagan era precision, while bartenders in button-downs dispensed coke in a glass instead of on a glass table.

As I arrived, two hours after the early 8:30pm starting time, I was met with a rush of fabulousness flooding out of the building. “Well, I’ve missed all the fun.” I thought to myself, already wary of going to a party where the only person I definitely might know was working the door. But upstairs, a familiar face lurked around every facelift. It started with a drunken Jesse Archer rushing me in the dark, aggressively manhandling me in a welcome way. Moments later, I almost walked past Zach, who was seconds away from being furious about it. But as I explained to filmmaker Brian Sloan who was standing with them and later adorable comedian Shawn Hollenbach, when I am in a loud bar, the noise dulls my vision somehow and, mixed with the darkness, makes it impossible to recognize anyone I know.

Frank and Jim and Mike were there from work. And the eternally lean Ken. And Enrique from the Face 2 Face spa. But most importantly, Chris and Cub were there. Chris was working, quizzing people on their favorite and least favorite thing about Michael Musto for a feature I assume he was writing about the party. "He never writes about me," was my quick answer for either one of the questions posed. I felt bad that Chris told me he was interviewing “notable people at the party” while I was standing right next to indie movie star Jesse Archer, since that is usually the kind of thing that happens to me. But moments later, a pushy photographer was shoving me out of the way to get a picture of Michael Urie and two people I had never seen before, so the universe corrected itself very quickly.

Mike and I wandered upstairs to see the roof garden which it didn’t occur to me until that moment was actually outside. But Tony Phillips pointed it out when we met halfway on the stairs like one of those mother daughter confrontation scenes that is a classic movie staple. At the top of the stairs there was a rack of identical red robes and people were donning them before heading outside. I had no idea until that moment that the cult of celebrity had actual cult robes. I wondered if there was going to be some kind of secret ritual outside that we would witness. Perhaps this is how Tara Reid and Mischa Barton lost their careers, penthouse garden religious gay sacrifices in exchange for Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall or Tom Ford directing “A Single Man.” Fair trades all.

While chatting on deck with Chris and Cub and lean Ken, that sexy Mark came up behind me and started groping me, a move I pulled later on an unsuspecting Shawn Hollenbach. When it comes to inappropriate touching, the gays love to pay it forward. Mike came by again, raving about the view we couldn’t yet see but I was a disbeliever. Mark and I agreed: we have seen the Manhattan skyline before. But then curiosity overtook us and I shoved past some drag twinks and sixty-something hags only missing a cauldron to huddle around to get to the upper deck for a look of my own.

Suddenly, the Empire State Building loomed before us, towering over the center of midtown like a beautiful middle finger telling the rest of the world to fuck off. But you know, in a really glittering and spectacular way. To the side was my beloved Chrysler building, a fabulous gay pinkie jutting out for spite. You can forget in the city, caught up in dodging filthy puddles and erratic taxis that as annoying as it is, the tourists have the right idea when they just stop and look up for a while. The view however is better from a penthouse, even if the party and the city isn’t what it used to be.

After trying to take a crappy iPhone photo, the chill of the night air overcame us and Mark and I stepped down off the upper balcony. We had reached the heights we were going to reach and it was time to head home. It is easy to romanticize something you never saw, or perhaps never was. Studio 54 was a shitty movie and I am sure the club itself had an off night or two. In 25 years of reporting on nightlife in NYC, I am sure Michael Musto saw his share of duds. Not everyone is a star, not every party is a legend in the making. In our new austere century, all we may have left is the hangover of remembrances of flings past, but you have to keep putting your game face on. Seeing the Empire State Building reminded me that even as the rest of the city changes and changes again, some things are eternal. And spectacular.

The Big Chill

It’s cold. And I know that no one moves to New York for the weather. But still. It is worth mentioning that it is cold. Yesterday, it snowed. In the middle of October. My carefully drawn cotton cobwebs decorating my Douglas Sirk-inspired Cape Cod were laced with real live snowflakes, two weeks before Halloween. It’s most frustrating because we didn’t even have a summer this year. It was just one long rainy spring with five warm days in August, and now this.

In the elevator tonight after the show, Father Dave gently chided me that my fabulous grey wool fall coat wasn’t equal to the weather. It is one of my few possessions that I would actually put into the fashion category. Normally, that coat, with its family von Trapp precision cut, lasts me well into December when I replace it with a bulky snow parka, shades of Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. I don’t even know where my leather gloves are. Father Dave is right. I have been caught unawares by the weather.

Not that I have any great love for Bowery Bar and the Stepford gays that swirl around inside it like lost guppies, but I do have an annual tradition of visiting on the last bearable Tuesday evening of autumn. Now I fear I have already missed my window. Where will the gays go, now that Fire Island was a soggy, damp huddle around a firepit and their only viral infection this summer was Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.?” Frost has already descended on the Central Park ramble and they will soon, I have no doubt, open the Highline for ice skating.

Monday night I ran down to The Ritz to see Bianca’s show and hang out with Matt Kugelman, the only good thing that has ever happened to me at Bowery Bar aside from that accidental blow job I got a couple of years ago. I don’t know what happened. Matt and I had a good rhythm going of partying down, pulling it together and then partying down a few days later. I blame the self-imposed end of my blog. The unexamined nightlife is not worth living, I guess.

I told Bianca to put Bobby in the show and he was definitely a crowd pleaser. I wish I had taken some pictures. It was fun, but even The Ritz, usually a reliable screeching twink explosion was down to a dull roar. Then again, it was a Monday night, so I suppose they can be forgiven for lacking their usual Saturday night specialness. After all, how can I complain about a slow evening as the nightcap to a weekend where I hung out with more hung porn stars than you can shake a dick at and slept with one of them?

But as I turn around in bar after restaurant after bar in this town, I am starting to think I am not the only one whose party persona is as worn and threadbare as the fashionably unemployed men that populate the grainy/fabulous black and white images of 1930s Manhattan, fedoras pulled low over unshaven grim faces, suit collars turned up against a chilly economy. Perhaps I have been underestimating the financial deathblow our country has been blown. Or maybe I am not the only one craving a solid night of rest in the city that never sleeps.

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