Paris in the early '90s
In honor of Pride 2023, a tribute to my gloriously wild youth
It was raining on a Sunday afternoon circa 1990 in Paris when I heard that the legendary party hostess Susanne Bartsch was throwing one of her epic bashes in some formerly iconic discothéque, now merely a tourist trap - was it Le Palace, or am imagining more for the sake of more?
In any case, approaching the bronze and glass entrance of the fleetingly resurrected den of iniquity I had no idea what to expect, having never been before to one of these mythical soirées, since the Bartsch coven was based in New York and I was a student in St. Martin’s
My experience of serious partying at the time was not negligible, having debuted as an international superstar on the legendary dance floor of Dschungel at the tender age of 17, getting my social education from rumors about David Bowie passing out in the toilets, getting cruised by rude punks with spectacular blue mohicans, but more importantly, never going back after discovering the other side of midnight in the after-hours decadence encouraged within the strict boundaries of an artificial paradise simultaneously created and contained by the still-standing Berlin wall
But that’s another story
I’ve never lost the childlike wonder that drove my wanderlust as a dazed suburban boy who, some years before, had beaten an improbable path all the way from dusty, parochial Athens to the seething bowels of Leicester Square, which back then was the deranged epicenter of a spectacularly burning London
Amidst the art deco movie palaces, past the throngs of tourists streaming from the musicals of Soho theaterland to the pubs of Covent Garden, between the more mainstream Café de Paris ballroom and Burger King, was a seedy boîte de nuit usually frequented by traveling businessmen and escorts, except on Thursdays: that was the night when the tacky basement was taken over by the weekly circus of unapologetic histrionics and Felliniesque costume drama that was Taboo
Not exactly a nightclub, this cult-like gathering was more of a generalized accident, an after-midnight court full of divinely inspired lunatics, all of them volunteers from the desert of cheerfulness and chosen as test subjects for an advanced social experiment researching the outer limits of orgiastic abandon and fashion as an extreme sport, a carnival gathering whose anthropomorphic deconstructions defied any premeditated interpretation, boldly elevating personal style to the level of poetic performance art
This chaotic playground was ruled as much as conducted by the metaphysical manifestation of a higher reality embodied in the unforgettable figure of the aesthetic hierophant Leigh Bowery, himself an instance of radical singularity that personified my raison d’être and galvanized an entire generation of aspiring freaks whose ranks I enthusiastically joined
Constantly afraid I might be identified as an interloper who didn’t really belong and thus paranoid about being thrown out and never readmitted to this sacred sanctum of glorious catastrophe, I mostly lurked in the background, my nervousness repurposed as a tactical retreat, allowing me to stay invisible enough to live out vicariously the extreme fantasies of a pathologically shy yet insatiably curious youth of 17, remaining unseen yet obsessively observant
From the darker recesses of velveteen settees, whose synthetic plushness was soaked in decades-old sweat and were permanently encrusted under a layer of cheap, coarse children’s party glitter, I gawked at the slightly yet significantly older twenty-somethings who were leading the madness, already an avid voyeur, but not yet old enough to be a participant myself
These being the days before the Internet, I only had read some fleeting bylines about Bartsch and her troupe of merry nightlife disrupters, mainly from local lifestyle mags like The Face which had reported about a show that “The Empress of Downtown New York Nightlife” had organized as a promotional event for her East Village boutique
It was advertised as a runway extravaganza including all the London fashion designers that were important at the time and later became seminal, such as BodyMap, Judy Blame, John Crancher, and of course the great Bowery himself, who was the absolute star of everything spawned by the ever-expanding bang of that eternally glimmering moment, just like he remains massively influential forty years after his death and will continue, forever, amen
But that’s another story
I had become precociously adept at crashing parties and stealthily navigating the precarious twilight world of the club scene during the intervening years between Taboo and this specific sojourn in Paris
After all, at age 22 I was already a veteran of the cavernous gay club Heaven, under the arches of Trafalgar Square, not to mention other early iterations of what was later to explode as the rave scene - Monday’s Schoom and Wednesday’s Pyramid come readily to mind, but also other, smaller nights, most of them temporary autonomous zones which bloomed in accelerated time-lapse and withered just as quickly, momentarily efflorescent and barely experienced, since the stroboscopic frenzy of mercurial trends and speeding tribalisms never allowed my memorial gaze to linger for long before the spotlight swiftly moved onto the next flash-lit tableaux vivant of revelers frozen in the deliquescent bliss of chemically induced transcendence
( A few words about the Audible Present soundtracking the scenes I am describing:
Techno was not a word yet but the music was becoming increasingly electronic and abstract, moving away from the warm tones of Chicago house and the glitzy locomotion of Ian Levine’s hi-nrg gay anthems
The mainstream was dancing to the pulsating sentimentalism of Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s hit machine, a pop factory pumping its camp hetero-friendly diva anthems from the leather bars of Earl’s Court to the Top of the Pops TV chart, while the fractured Latin Freestyle electronics of Chris Barbosa, Omar Santana, Carlos Berrios et al. were strictly a New Jersey and Miami phenomenon, rarely crossing over the Atlantic and then only as dubs, since the impassioned girl group vocals of Exposé and Sweet Sensation were deemed too cheesy by European DJs, who then still preferred their girl group schmaltz a tad whiter)
But that’s another story
As a pathetic substitute for an official invite to the Bartsch gala, I was nervously clutching a paper flyer which thankfully no one bothered to look at, the doormen obviously amused by my faked self-confidence
Propelled by my shameless bravado, which was augmented by my cute twink looks and a meticulously styled outfit of casual yet meticulous nothingness, I swept uninvited but unstoppable past the decidedly ironic red velvet rope, a kitschy remnant of the location’s past “Studio 54 door policy” decor
My eyes adjusted slowly from dusk to disco lights, just as the cocktail hour was ceding its heure bleue melancholy to a nonchalant evening darkening Paris outside, the almost too beautiful city, whose mood tonight was slightly more blasé than its usual detacheé coolness after the intensity of a very special fashion week drawing to its exhausted finale
Amidst other unforgettable moments, a few days before, le tout Paris was stunned by an epic Thierry Mugler show which included Madonna, Grace Jones, and George Michael as members of the audience, while Diana Ross reigned as queen of the runway, surrounded by a cabal of supermodels like Naomi, Linda et al dancing along with nightlife personalities such as Dianne Brill and Lady Miss Kier.
A highlight to remember was the incomparable Willi Ninja, the Nijinsky of Harlem Vogue balls, whose mesmerizing body-locking and breathtaking death drops on the Mugler catwalk destroyed instantaneously any doubt that high fashion is anything else but a religious ritual in the name of collective appreciation of beauty
But that’s another story
When I entered the once glamorous but now merely glitzy Parisian disco I was relieved to find the amusingly faux luxe ambiance still reassuringly empty: neither the notorious hostess nor her exotic cohorts had arrived yet, so I was free to roam the premises and get at least on visually familiar terms with the space and the staff before the guests arrived
The crowd was expected to appear fashionably late for what was supposedly a matinee attraction, thoughtfully timed by Miss Bartsch earlier than the usual party rendezvous, a considerate choice that implied, poignantly, the early Monday flights awaiting to take most of the peripatetic fashionistas back to their far-flung origins, like Cinderellas returning from the ball in jet-fueled metal pumpkins
I don’t exactly recall when the club filled up, but it must have been sometime around ten o’clock: usually dinner time for this incorrigible stay-up-late milieu, yet unquestionably nighttime in terms of comportment and intentions
I do remember the indelible moment when I found myself sliding between two immensely tall and devastatingly thin creatures which I later identified as Zaldy and Matthu, an astonishing duo of post-drag fierceness teetering on vertiginously high heels, their lithe bodies covered head to toe in glossy red latex, their heads slick like mannequins sporting waist-length ponytails that swung severely, like whips cracking to the rhythm of their angular dance moves, sinuously coördinated to mirror each other
Easily 7-feet tall on their towering footwear, both dominated the dance floor with their spontaneously improvised choreography, embodying a dual mirage of self-defined otherness whose meta-human glamour boldly proposed an alien concept of beauty, as improbably seductive as it was unapologetically transgressive, its unique impact multiplied to the power of two, an instance of radical singularity appearing uncannily as a pair of twin replicas
Suzanne herself was dressed in a spectacular outfit consisting of an embroidered royal-blue velvet corset, her décolletage dripping with crystals and diamantè, her feathered headdress swaying above the guests like a dixhuittieme wig made of ostrich feathers, their trembling spines arching gently as she air-kissed and greeted each arriving celebrity: Jean Paul Gaultier, Romeo Gigli, Madonna and too many others to mention mingled with interplanetary showgirls while nude satyrs danced on podiums, their loins girthed with skirts a lá Josephine Baker except that enormous dildos were flopping merrily in lieu of bananas
A friend of mine, caught up in the naughty spirit of ribald debauchery that had soon overtaken the ecstatic crowd, decided to play a practical joke: he told writer Bob Colacello (Andy Warhol’s ex-secretary and former editor of Interview magazine who at the time was a contributor for Tina Brown’s excellent Vanity Fair) that I had a lot of cocaine on me and was very happy to share, which of course was a blatant lie since I could barely afford a drink at that age
My definitive memory of that indescribably surreal and glittering night was being chased around the club by the legendary scribe, who remains to these days one of my favorite authors
I ended up locking myself in a bathroom stall trying to avoid Bob, who was drunk and high out of his mind, banging the cubicle door and screaming loudly for all to hear:
“I know you have some, why don’t you give me some?”
The inconsolable journalist was gently pacified by a pretty French boy, who smiled and winked at me when I finally dared to open the toilet door, his glinting hazel eyes staring thirstily at my t-shirt printed with one of Jenny Holzer’s “truisms”:
“Protect me from what I want”
But that’s another story
Original Text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou Exclusively for the Psychonaut Elite, Berlin 2019
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25Georgia Pismisi, Kore Noa and 23 others
Relishing article