Noel and son Peter Jr on an April 2000 Voice cover
Paging through Richard Boch’s new book, The Mudd Club (Feral House, September 12), I was reminded that nothing lasts forever—and more than that, the best things in life shine bright like a comet flying through the sky, then burn out and fade away—remembered for the greatness they achieved and not for what they later became.
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The desire to never die reveals a deeper desire to be undead; to become a mere shell of what once was and hope no one notices that which it now is. In a world where people simply can’t let go, we hold these truths to be self-evident: the fantasy that eternal life exists on earth if we just will, insist, and pretend.
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When I learned earlier this week that The Village Voice was closing it’s print edition, my first reaction was disappointment, then disgust. I, who came of age as the golden age of print was reaching its sunset years, developed a deep and abiding love for the printed page: for the intoxicating scent of fresh ink, the feel of paper between my fingertips, the sheer physicality that I would alternately preserve in its whole, complete state and stack diligently like the collector of some rare form; tear apart madly and decorate my walls in all sorts of patterns that revealed its ability to be both bound object, art object, and artifact in one; or more boldly cut, rearrange, tape or paste, constructing the story I wanted to tell from its tremulous carcass.
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I came of age believing that print was the answer to every problem I faced. It offered an instant pick me up through its combination of pictures and words, a glimpse into worlds I was too young to enter but could fog up the glass from the privacy of my bedroom in the Bronx. I read stories, studied photos, and remembered names—names of people I never realized I would one day meet, but for the fact that New York isn’t always a metropolis—sometimes it’s a village in its own way.
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The Village Voice was a singular voice within the cacophonous harmony of city life: the only paper I respected because it didn’t purport to be objective. It had an agenda, openly. It was about the recognition of New York’s natives, its indigenous arts, its political struggles, its populist loves and hatreds. It didn’t pretend to be a noble in the Fourth Estate; it was composed of revolutionary minds and innovative souls, of people whose greatest joy came from upending the status quo.
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It was the heart of Old York, ya know?
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I went to school pretty much buying time. I loved to learn and I yearned to work but I loathed the system so much. I was that weird kid who blushed in the bookstore when she saw the cover of Irvine Welsh’s book, If You Like School, You’ll Love Work. I mean, I guess…
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I didn’t actually like school. I was insulted by those who stood in the front of the room and asserted their authority, agents of indoctrination who never had a critical thought in their life. But I loved being antagonistic, to put it lightly. I could openly challenge them while drawing masterpieces in my notebooks. I could stumble into class on a Xanax or slounge against the desk a couple of days after dropping an X. I could show up in Technicolor outfits, chomping on gum. I could not be bothered. My grades made me think: I guess an “A” is okay as I tossed the paper into the trash.
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Then, something magical happened back in the Fall of ’96. I started grad school and the folks there introduced me to the idea of an internship. “Wait, I gotta pay you to earn credits so I can work for free for someone else?”
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“Well, you could intern at The Village Voice.”
Bet. I was in. I wanted to write about art so I was assigned to open Vince Aletti’s mail. This was back when people used to send mail. It was great. I had to sort it into three piles, and was allowed to attend anything he wasn’t planning to cover. This came in handy when I met Brian Parks, who was launching the fledgling website and needed stories.
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Whew. I can still remember wandering into Deitch Projects one day after class, to check out this artist who locked himself inside a cage, where he was pretending to be a dog. Surreptitiously I stepped inside. The dog-man didn’t see me but I saw him. He was straight up naked, collar around his neck. There was a padded suit hanging on the wall, inviting me to put it on and get in the cage where we could wrestle.
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I think not.
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Silently I pivoted and hightailed it out of there, with enough instanteously insight to pen the piece. “Maybe throw a ball and see if he will catch it in his mouth,” was the final line to the piece that Brian and I wrote together as he edited my work.
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I was thrilled. $50 in my pocket and my byline in place. I was hitting up MoMA openings, making my way over to Chelsea in its earliest days when Pat Hearn was showing German fashion fetish photography and I was taking notes for Suzanne Bartsch party ideas.
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I was also writing nightclub reviews. Does it get any better than this? Yes! I had an expense account. My cab fare was covered. I was living for it. I must have written 30 reviews, each one rhyming entirely too much, like Mother Goose dropping tabs because why not.
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Suddenly my life made sense. It was destiny. I was already living the life—what could be better than to let people know about the scene? I can remember getting ready, alternating between bumps of coke and K, whirling around my friend’s apartment. Wait, maybe I wasn’t even covering a club that night—who really knows.
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The mid-90s were a blur, but my Voice ID’s bring it back. For some reason or other, I had to have two made, not that I lost em. Meg Handler snapped my photos: the first one looked like a mugshot from the Boogie Down, all blonde curls cut short after bleaching caused breakage that required me to start again. Bold, brick red lipstick, lips pursed like “What!?” A Gaultier jacket that wasn’t mine, the patterns perfectly defining the times, and I was probably wearing tight jeans and those high-top K-Swiss that were the same color as Timberlands.
In the second ID, taken just a couple of months later, I was someone else: short, straight brown hair, soft make up, warm magenta top. All soft, smiling, peaceful. It occurs to me now, I was at home and my face reflected this.
Because, by then, I had reached a new height. While sitting in the smoking room (flossy), I met Frank Owen. I complimented his shoes and he stuck his leg in the air, saying, “Dolce,” and I nodded with approval. We started talking, I mean he started talking and I sat, enraptured with the words he spoke, all fast-paced British pitter-patter talking about …
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Michael Alig! Peter Gatien! Lord Michael! Limelight! Honey Trap—
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—wait. Did you say Honey Trap? I was there and wooo, I met this boy. Wait, let me stay on topic.
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Frank was working on an expose. We had mutual friends/sources. He invited me to join him for an interview with Peter Gatien at the Tunnel, where I sat in silence watching this exquisite game of cat and mouse.
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I had no idea journalism could be so thrilling. I was absolutely overwhelmed. Things had taken a dark turn when the body of Angel Melendez washed ashore earlier that summer.
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“Read this,” Frank said to me one day, passing along a fax that had the handwritten confession of Michael Alig. My stomach lurched.
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None of this was my scene—but I was close enough to watch how history unfolds in real time when you’re standing on the frontlines. It reminded me of the moment when Vince Aletti gave me a tour through the morgue, showing my the stories he had written back in the 1970s when he started at The Voice as a music critic, covering the disco scene.
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Like. Wow. Do you hear Wu Tang? Can it be that it was all so simple then?
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I have no idea. Twenty years have passed since that fateful moment of my life, where I got to do things like call Bill Clinton’s drug czar to interview him for a piece on their anti-drug advertising campaign.
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“’This is your brain on drugs’ was a highly successful ad,” he told me.
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I laughed. “You’re kidding right? It was a joke.”
“What do you mean?” the publicist for the Drug Czar sounded hurt.
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“C’mon everyone was laughing about that ad. Everyone made fun of it.”
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“Well, what would you do?” the publicist asked, accusingly.
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I remember thinking it was weird that the publicist was asking for my advice, but I couldn‘t resist. “I think I’m close in age to the target audience you’re trying to reach,” I said, trying to suggest that age was what we shared, rather than say, habits. “I don’t know enough about the subject to speak on it, but I would focus on rehab instead. Like, why is methadone addictive?”
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Nothing like a strawman argument to end an interview.
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I’m just skating along here, gliding on the surface of things, trying to remember the details that are surrounded in a succulent haze of weed smoke, strobe lights, and stiletto heels, vodka cranberries, random prose, and dancing past dawn.
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I don’t think The Voice made me want to be a journalist; I think it made me realize I was one without actually having to go to school or work inside the system. It made me aware that as unlikely as I am, there is a place where I’m not the only one. That there were generations of us, from Nat Hentoff to Greg Tate, Stanley Crouch to Ellen Willis, Michael Musto to Donna Gaines—not to mention legends like James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, e.e. cummings, and Ezra Pound.
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The Voice was my paper of record. In 1980 alone, it put The Times Square Show and breakdancing on the cover. I wasn’t even reading it then and yet—these are the works that would come to define vast swaths of my life, not to mention the singular importance of the printed object not just as news—but as artifact.
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Upon reflection, I can’t be mad that a comet has come and gone any more than I can shake my fist at the nature of the Universe. One of the things I learned from my life in the clubs is that it is to leave when the party is going then to stumble out when everyone on the train is heading to church.
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