Photo by Gerry Visco
“Hey, where are you? I’m bored! I’m leaving in five minutes!” It was my Athenian amigo Stefanos calling me frantically. Greek men are much too impatient. “I’m on my way, I’m on the FDR,” I replied. But really I was still chez moi, applying green eyeliner, dancing to 2ManyDJs, downing a G&T.
How could he be bored at the Players Club mansion where Gemini & Scorpio were holding the Nouvelle Époque Cabaret-Salon? The location alone was enough to intoxicate. He could watch the show—they’d hired talented performers like Justin Bond, Julie Atlas Muz, Ms. Tickle, Trixie Little and the JC Hopkins swing band.
When I arrived, though, I noticed there were more couples than singles. I always find the turn-of-the-century outfits a bit precious, though some of the throwback fetishists pulled them off with panache. Give me some campy 1950s, ’60s or ’70s looks any day. Threading my way through a bevy of adorable two-girl teams on the prowl for dick (though there was a sampling of gay couples and one transgender in the bunch), model and party promoter Shien Lee tried to introduce me to hostess Larisa Fuchs, who told me, “I’m very busy. Jean Paul Gaultier is here!”
Stefanos and I took in the summer air on the lovely balcony, chatted up some nice peeps and left shortly thereafter.
It was obviously time for CosMic cAveRn A-Go-Go, a Williamsburg party that painter Kenny Scharf has been holding where everyone is dabbed with DayGlo paint and the room is chock-full of cartoon art. Not elegant, these costumes were nuts. Kenny draped lime-green netting around his head and was garbed in an orange fishnet top. Muffinhead was a clown in colored polka dots with a pinwheel flower, and Dirty Martini was wearing nothing more than streaks of paint.
It was funky stuff, but people were friendly. A stranger actually walked me eight blocks out of his way to the subway stop—the kind of chivalry that even the 1920s could never offer.
