7 Hours at The Black Party
By John Russell
Yeah, you read that right. Seven hours. The thing is, it felt like I was only there for, like, three hours. Also, I know there were people who stayed way later than I did. So no judgment, ok?
This was only the second time I’d ever been to The Black Party, and it had been so long it might as well have been my first. Around 7pm on Saturday I still wasn’t really sure what to wear. My friend Doug—who I don’t think has ever not been to a Black Party—advised me to dress for comfort. “A harness and chaps!” he suggested.
Comfort? Like that was gonna happen.
I opted for a tiny leather vest over a bunch of tarnished chains and beads and charms, with jeans and knee high leather boots with a manageable three-inch heel. Thank God I nixed the five-inch stiletto knee high vinyl boots I’d been considering; I wouldn’t have lasted 45 minutes! Even so, I packed a sensible pair of combat boots in my big old Rag and Bone carpetbag, just in case.
Now, I’m not the kind to guy who usually goes to big circuit parties, but I have to say the energy and enthusiasm The Black Party stirs up in this city is kind of amazing. The line outside Roseland Ballroom stretched down 52nd Street and up Eighth Avenue, everyone giddy with anticipation. Stepping inside was like being hit by a huge, gleaming black tidal wave, all sound and heat and skin. It was the sort of party where it was hard not to run into someone you know, but impossible to find anyone you’re looking for.
After checking our bags and a quick trip to the bathroom to freshen up, my posse and I headed up to the balcony to survey the scene. From above, Roseland’s dance floor was a writhing, churning, storm-swept sea of bodies. Giant neon triangles shone down on the crowd. On the opposite side of the dance floor, go-go boys danced on a huge scaffolding-like set above the stage wearing goggles and gas masks and not much else.
We ordered drinks and popped into Brian Rafferty’s Griffin lounge where he and his crew had just finished up a photo shoot. Josh Sparber’s Love Lounge was harder to find, hidden as it was within the humid pitch-black hallways in which unseen hands groped and caressed unseen bodies.
We made our way back downstairs where we watched a couple of muscle-bound porn stars fuck on stage, a sight that actually seemed to stop some of the revelers on the dance floor in their tracks, each of them craning their necks to see.
A friend was appearing in one of the party’s “strange live acts” around 4am, so we snuck down to the dressing rooms in the catacombs below Roseland to say hi. There we kicked back with Acid Betty and Epiphany, sipping Bulldog gin straight from the bottle and sharing cigarettes with the scores of naked dancers. Around 4:30, my friends and I watched our pal get hoisted above the crowd on a chain from the middle of the dance floor.
Later, I ran into a certain cute party promoter. “Remember last time we were here and we made out?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, we did,” he said.
“Wanna do it again?”
So, I spent an hour or so making out with him and his friend, and running around with them, showing them the secret back stairway up to the balcony, which you now had to wait in line to get to. Some friends left; others arrived in the absurdly early morning hours. Another couple of models or porn stars or go-go boys was suspended above the crowd, where they totally started fucking. My buddy who’d been hoisted above the dance floor earlier finished up his go-go shift and we hit the dance floor together. We parted ways to explore the darkened hallways and backrooms, looking for trouble that I personally never found.
It must have been around 9am when we decided we’d had enough. Glancing back at the dance floor, the crowd had thinned slightly, but Roseland was nowhere near empty. Still, this year’s Black Party was, for me at least, drawing to a close, and I felt at once relieved and disappointed that I’d have to wait a whole year before the next one.
