My last days of disco

Y recently asked me if I'd ever gone to Twilo during my crazy New York club days, before I became an old boring suburban lady. It got me thinking back on those days a bit, which perhaps I never talked about much here.

There was one night that the Cokehead Alcoholic took me to either Twilo or Tunnel, which were near each other on West 27th Street in Chelsea, so I honestly can't remember which one it was. It was fun, but it was also kind of strange for me, because I was more used to the fetish/goth scene of the meatpacking district, which was a much different kind of club scene. The clubs I most often went to, Mother and True were smaller, with a tight community of regular attendees. They definitely did not have a metal detector or pat-down at the door, like Twilo/Tunnel did.

Anyway, the night we went to the T club in Chelsea (whichever one it was) we were dressed in Edwardian fetish/goth attire, having stopped at Hellfire first (an underground sex club in the meatpacking district that was closed down when they built the hotels and gentrified the place). All our velvet and corsetry didn't exactly fit in with the ecstasy-fueled club-kid vibe of the place, so we did get searched upon entry, which was strange. Lots of raver kids, lots of drugs, we didn't stay very long. But I did think that, had I gone with someone else, and were I dressed appropriately and in a different mindset, it would have probably been fun. Sadly, I never made it back to check it out again before it closed.

I'd clubbed in Boston, LA, DC, Spain and Italy before I moved to New York, so I had a pretty good sample for comparison, and I think I caught the New York scene at a perfect moment. Before I got there things were nuts, with Michael Alig killing his drug dealer and club kids appearing on Oprah. By the time I got there, things had mellowed a bit so that it was a nice creative community without too much evil craziness.

To be fair, I didn't just sit on a balcony and watch, I threw myself into it pretty deep, so maybe I had a better experience because of that. I was friends with organizers, I danced in a cage (god I wish I'd saved that picture; they used it for promotion), I worked the door and decided who could and could not come in. I was going out four nights a week, doormen recognized me and I rarely paid to get in. I was fully invested, until I retired from the scene. (And it took a few tries, like Michael Jordan, before I really did retire.)

A few years later, clubs started to fall prey to the triple-whammy of Giuliani's quality-of-life/cabaret law crackdown; the inflated rents of the real estate boom; and the sobering climate of post-9/11 New York. Most of the clubs and parties I went to closed down around 2000-2001, and were replaced by gentrification and high-priced bottle service.

Which is now itself dying, so maybe we're on the edge of another golden age of clubbing. These things do tend to come in cycles. Of course, I'm also pretty old now, so maybe my opinion is for shit.

Pie in the sky

For all the travelling I did this past week, it would have been nice if I had needed this. But the Biker was on another flight, and anyway, I've never understood the point or the logistics of the Mile-High Club. It seems destined for getting caught, and as much as I may be a drunken exhibitionist, I wouldn't want to have to deal with the irate co-flyers waiting in line for the bathroom when I get out.

Only once would I have considered it, on a foiled trip to San Francisco with the cokehead alcoholic. We were supposed to go to SF for Dan's wedding, stay with Ian and Zanne for two days, and then head off to a hotel for two days. The day before, about 14 hours before our scheduled departure on American, he bailed for what I eventually found out was a typical reason: he had to attend a class for an old DUI conviction.

Which he'd never told me about, of course.

The conviction had happened in PA, right before he moved to NY, and the two states have some sort of agreement that let him fulfill his community service and class requirements in NY. But it had taken a while to get it all sorted out, and when they finally scheduled him, the class was starting right before our trip.

He didn't tell me, because he didn't want me to know he had a DUI record. So he went to the first class, which was the night before we left, and tried to negotiate a postponement, as sessions were scheduled for while we were gone. When he couldn't reschedule, he had to call me and tell me he couldn't go on our trip.

Of course, we broke up, the first time of several.

But back to the point of this post . . . when I got on the flight, my seat, and his empty one, were in this little private compartment in front of the Coach section. We were to the right of the plane galley, so across the aisle from us was a solid wall. There was another wall behind our seats, enough leg room in front of us to fit another row of seats, but it was empty, and a wall in front of that space. Then even though there was a wall on the other side of the aisle, there was a curtain on our side. It was a room designed for in-flight sex, the head of the bulkhead.

A totally bizarre, perfectly designed opportunity for Mile-High entry, and me flying all alone.

So I swapped seats with a nursing mother, since I didn't need the privacy, and I didn't want to be taunted with it for eight hours.