The Asylum (2 page)

“Wasn't it fabulous! Didn't you love it to bits?”

“Fabulous? You sick fuck! I see women like Little Edie wearing sweaters wrapped around their heads all day long. It usually indicates that they're at the end of their rope and are trying to muffle the voices in their heads. When I watched this movie, all I saw were potential symptoms of schizophrenia and suffering, and all you can see are styling tips. You fashion people are just as twisted as any of my patients.”

I accepted Lizzie's admonishment. There was no denying the accuracy of her brutal assessment of La Mode and me. However, along with feeling appropriately castigated, I also felt a tingle of triumph and solidarity. I was happy to be diagnosed at the wrong end of the sanity spectrum, waving and smiling, and proudly carrying a skinned rabbit in my man-bag.

FASHION DESIGNE
RS
enjoy dating hustlers and porn stars. There's no need to name names. Take a gander at “Page Six” and you will find no shortage of sizzling designer dalliances.

This situation is nothing new. These shady couplings are as integral to the world of style as raw seams and bulimia. We fashion people have an insatiable and irrational craving for both high and low experiences. The luxe versus the louche
.
The classy and the déclassé. The
nostalgie de la boue.
We take our inspiration from both the blighted and the baroque.

Before Mayor Giuliani did his big nineties cleanup, before the glamification of the meat market and before the Disneyfication of Times Square, there was no shortage of sordid nocturnal hangouts in New York City. These charming crap holes were mostly leftovers from the hedonistic seventies and were frequented by feral perverts, drug-addled hustlers, crazed cross-dressers and me . . . and people like me. Who were we? We were style addicts in search of glamour.

If you wanted to run into all your fashion pals and colleagues and do a spot of networking, then all you had to do was follow the unsavory folk, the if-Diane-Arbus-were-still-alive-she-would-be-photographing-me people. I am talking about the outsider freaks and ne'er-do-wells who have always made New York such a rich source of stylish inspiration.

There was Edelweiss, a club for violence-prone tranny hookers and the men who adored them. In a similar vein, there was Sally's Hideaway, located incongruously right opposite the back entrance of the old
New York Times
building. There was L'Escualita, a scorching Latin cabaret disco where arriving patrons were checked for knives before they passed through a turnstile.

I associate L'Escualita with a certain dermatological catastrophe. One time I was leaning against a column enjoying the drag show. The performer exhorted us all to sit on the floor so that those at the back would have a better view. I slid obediently downward. A protruding rusty nail gouged a mole off my back. It hurt.

Half a mile east of L'Escualita was a male strip club, tucked behind the Howard Johnson's coffee shop—fried clams anyone?—on Times Square. It was called the Gaiety.

The Gaiety was chic, petite, very bijou and somewhat roach-infested. The cost of entry was ten dollars, paid through a gruesome little pawn-broker grille. Mimicking Candy Darling in Andy Warhol's movie
Flesh
, we habitués would Frenchify the cost with an indignant “Ten dolluuuurs?”

Inside was a decaying burlesque theater with about twenty rows of seats and a small stage. To the left of the auditorium was a narrow archway which opened up upon a cozy mingling zone known as the “Fantasy Lounge.”

I am proud to say that I was a regular. I spent many evenings gossiping in the red velvet seats and watching the old geezers in the front row getting tea-bagged by the more enthusiastic interactive performers.

For many fashion people, this sordid but undeniably charming boîte was a social club, a place to chill after a week of stress and pinking shears. It was a place where everybody knew your name. Speaking of names: Marc Jacobs, Thierry Mugler, Susanne Bartsch, Calvin Klein, Kerry Warn, Joey Arias, Freddie Leiba, Rifat Ozbek, Henny Garfunkel, Larissa, Luciana Martinez, Edwige, Steven Meisel, Madonna—the names of the illustrious fashionrati who popped into the Gaiety to mingle with
les misérables
and enjoy the strip show was a long and impressive one. Madge loved it so much she elected to use it as a location for her 1992
Sex
book.

The burlesques at the Gaiety were mysteriously overseen by an invisible host who announced the various performers via a fuzzy, malfunctioning public address system. His signature flourish was to always repeat the name of the upcoming stripper—his mouth was always much too close to the microphone—with tremendous and often unwarranted theatrical gravitas.

“And
now
, directly from a sold-out run at the Manhole in Detroit, we bring you . . . Anton . . .
Anton
 . . .
ANTON!
”

The young man in question, whose name was probably Kevin, would saunter on stage and begin to flaunt himself, disrobing in time to the music. By today's Internet porn standards, the performances were quite tame. The only outré moment occurred at the end of the show when all the lads came on stage for the hard-on finale.

After the show, the invisible host encouraged us audience members to decamp to the Fantasy Lounge for refreshments and the opportunity to meet and mingle with the various “performers.”

The complimentary snacks consisted of a bowl of fruit punch, served in a banquet-size cut-plastic bowl with cups dangling around the perimeter, and a mound of pretzels dumped unceremoniously onto an oversize vacuum-formed silver plastic charger. I never partook of these offerings. You never knew where they'd been. Ditto the dancing boys and hustlers.

One night I got chatted up by a nice lad, a West Point cadet, who was straight but “needed extra cash for the wife and kids.” He zipped up to New York every weekend for a little relaxation at the Gaiety.

Every lad at the Gaiety had an equally preposterous backstory: “I'm not really sleeping in the Port Authority Bus Terminal and living out of vending machines. Oh no. I'm a goal-oriented West Point cadet with a wholesome wife and kids waiting at home.”

With visions of moi being strangled and thrown in the East River, I declined his offer of “a night of fun.”

Not everyone shared my sense of caution. My roommate Henry, for example.

Henry and I were not lovers. (Perish the thought!) He was more like a big sister, a big, generous, recklessly fabulous, you-won't-believe-what-she-did-now sister.

Henry was—and remains to this day—a much-in-demand fashion publicist. Older and more established than I was, he always impressed me with his breezy confidence and his international savoir faire. He is Eddie
and
Patsy
and
Bubble combined.

The Gaiety boys were always responsive to Henry's brand of sassy badinage. His cheeky, blunt manner brought out the best in even the most sociopathic stripper. When they clustered around him, I felt like I was watching Mae West being inundated by horny sailors on leave.

It was inevitable that Henry would fall for one of these grifting Adonises. And fall he did.

Cue the lights. Enter Danny.

Some hustlers are so rough and butch it is hard to tell that they are gay. Danny was one such person. Gay is the last word which sprang to mind. Danny was a circus act of chest-beating masculine gender performance. When, years later,
The Wire
became the addiction du jour, those corner boys reminded me of Danny. He embodied the scariest bits of Spanish Harlem, the Bronx and Bed-Stuy. He was terrifying. But not to Henry.

From the moment Henry strolled into the Fantasy Lounge and met Danny—their eyes locking across a bowl of fetid punch and a mound of stale pretzels—they became a unit.

Sometimes when a foncy person (Henry) meets a street person (Danny), the foncy person keeps the street person at an arm's length. With a commendable egalitarian spirit, Henry enthusiastically integrated Danny into his life—and mine.

Danny hung out at our apartment. Danny ate brekkie. Danny yelled at the telly. Danny threw things out of the window. Danny came to chichi cocktail parties hosted by Henry's fashion friends. Danny even came on vacation with us.

Miami was our usual destination. As soon as we arrived, Danny would jump into the rental car, sans driver's license, and roar over the causeway. With James Brown's “Party Time” blasting, he would speed up dramatically and then slow down and make the car dance in time to the music by thumping the accelerator.

It's pahty tahme! Thump! Thump! Thump!

It's pahty tahme! Thump! Thump! Thump!

I have vivid memories of jiggling up and down and lurching backward and forward, with a pregnant Susanne Bartsch in the backseat, begging for mercy in the name of her unborn child. I sat in the front seat, preparing to barf into my vintage resort tote and whimpering audibly. And Henry? He was screaming with laughter. He was having a ball.

We always stayed at the Raleigh in South Beach. Today it's a super-glam, dreamy, Kardashian-ish joint. Back then it was undergoing a slow, yeasty, moldy renovation. However, the crappy carpets and the disintegrating plumbing were more than made up for by the incredible pool. The deco-aquatic Busby Berkeley fantasia provided the backdrop for many of the eighties and early nineties Versace print advertising campaigns. The fashion crowd loved it, as did Mickey Rourke, who was often to be found lounging poolside with his beloved Chihuahuas on gold and leopard-print leashes.

New Year's Day in the early nineties.

Danny insisted that we leave the poolside glamour and go fishing. This surprised me. I hadn't pegged him for the Ernest Hemingway type.

We pahty tahmed our way down to some harbor or other where Henry, Danny, and I boarded a little rented cruiser and headed out to sea. This, I mused, would be a key moment in what was clearly turning into a
Dateline NBC
story. “The three friends went fishing under a cloudless sky. But only one of them made it back to the port. His name was D . . .”

But Danny was incapable of much activity on this particular morning. He was knackered. Having been out till the wee hours, he collapsed into a deep sleep. With his strapping godlike physique and his dusky complexion, the recumbent Danny looked like an exhausted Nubian from the orgy scene in
Fellini Satyricon
.

We reached our destination. Henry alerted the sleeping Danny to this fact by slapping him across the face with a smelly sardine from the bait box. I braced myself for a horrible maritime confrontation. The idea of provoking Danny with a decomposing fish seemed nothing short of suicidal.

Danny leapt to his feet and assumed a posture that suggested he might be about to get Ripley on Henry's ass. Henry stared right back at him, threw another fish and cackled with mirth. Danny paused, wiping fish slime off his face, and then he laughed too.

While Henry curled up with a
Vogue
, Danny and I grabbed our rods. He proved to be a proficient fisherman. Much of his energy went into mocking my ineptitude and my sluggishness.

“Faggot! Hurry the motherfuck up!” said Danny. “The other fuckers are going to eat your fucker.”

Danny was correct. Each time I reeled in a fish, all that remained of my catch was a dangling head.

“Where did you learn to fish?” I asked.

“Some Fresh Air Fund bullshee-eeet.”

By the time we chugged back into the harbor, Danny was in possession of a whole passel of mackerel and bluefish. His prize catch was a three-foot, hideously stinking sturgeon or grouper-type fish which bore more than a passing resemblance to Winston Churchill. Danny clutched it as if it were a newborn baby.

Later that day I was lounging by the pool, chatting with Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele.

Carlyne is one of the legendary eccentrics of fashion. She is blonde, tanned, and wears an enormous number of gold bangles and, as if that were not enough, she single-handedly popularized the use of the phrase “
J'adore!
” The global usage of this phrase—there is even a perfume named J'adore!—can be traced back to the flamboyant Carlyne.

She has always brought great nuance to the use of this phrase. You can tell how much she adores something by how drawn out her delivery is. Under normal circumstances the “
j'a
” is usually followed by a slightly extended pause . . . then comes the “
DORE!
” But when Carlyne really, really, really adores something, an explosive “
J'AAA
” might be followed by a full minute of nail-biting suspense and then relief! Like a giant washing machine suddenly emptying, out pours the “
DORE!
” This signifies that the object of her affection is causing her to have a stroke.

Suddenly I heard a contretemps across the other side of the pool.

Carlyne and I looked over to see Danny.

“
J'AAA
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
DORE!
” shrieked a greatly amused Carlyne, hurling both bracelet-encrusted arms heavenward, having let out her most extended
J'adore
ever.

Danny was on the opposite side of the pool, carrying his massive prehistoric-looking prize fish. He was walking from lounger to lounger. His goal? He wanted to turn Winston into some hard cash.

Sunbathers were being roused from their slumber, not with a spritz of Evian and the offer of a piña colada, but by Danny asking them to “check this mother out.”

We watched in amazement as he reached Donatella Versace. Back then, before the construction of the famous Versace mansion, Donatella would sleep at the Fontainebleau (the closets were bigger) and lounge by the pool and oversee her shoots at the Raleigh. Danny tapped her on the shoulder and shoved Winnie in her face.

“Hey! Lady! Check this out. A hundred bucks.”

Her visage was a picture of disdain. She waved him away with the hauteur of a great Italian principessa.

When Danny reached me, I politely declined and asked him what he had done with all the other fish.

“She wrapped them in my
Women's Wear Daily
s and stuffed them inside the minibar,” yelled Henry, who loved to refer to Danny as “she” and who was watching the unfolding Benny Hill scene with great amusement from behind a gigantic rubber plant.