9 Hours at “Click + Drag” and 9 Hours at “Hustlaball”
By Jeff Chatterton
People ask me all the time what it’s like to work in nightlife. It must be pretty glamorous, they say. It must be fun to get paid to party... (Insert heavy sigh here). While this is all true, it is also hard work, and this weekend was a perfect example.
On Saturday, I worked at Click + Drag at Santos Party House, a legendary party started in 1996 by Rob Roth and Chi Chi Valenti at the seminal nightclub Mother. Located in the Meatpacking district (when there was still meat being packed) Click was a weekly gender bending, cyber/fetish party that explored the relationship between technology and nightclubs. Over the years, the themes first explored became a reality. Computers and technology now shape the way we see the world around us, and instead of seeming like a sci-fi dream, Click now exists in a world where “The Future Is Now”. How one of those 1996 glitter covered cyber-faeries would have reacted to seeing an iPad for the first time! After a brief move to FUN in 2000, Click + Drag closed up shop and laid in wait, for almost eight years. In 2008 Click + Drag was reborn as an annual bachannal at Santos Party House.
I arrive at Santos at 9pm. I worked my first Click + Drag the year before and had been brought into the fold this year as the door person. I was honored to be considered for the role, as the gatekeeper strictly enforces the legendary dress code. Scurrying inside I find members of the Joshua Light Show setting up a massive elevated platform with light projectors capturing swirling colors from dyes in water, a perfect visual for this years theme, “The Age Of Aquarius”. I duck into the dressing room to find Mother Of Us All, Chi Chi Valenti, putting the finishing touches on her costume. I begin to get myself ready, out of my street clothes and into something more appropriate (and much less comfortable).
Eventually I decide to base my entire outfit around the stunning tall green mohawk wig that Chi Chi let me borrow: wearing riding boots, shredded army print long underwear, a silver sequined tank top, an emerald green cape, and layers of silver necklaces. Sounds like a lot, but I am still fairly conservatively dressed compared to the rest. The wig, Chi Chi tells me, is probably thirty-five years old, and had belonged to Gennaro Palermo, who did the door at Mudd Club with Chi Chi in the late seventies and died in 1986. To say I feel pressure to be on point is an understatement.
The night begins and I drink my first Red Bull. From my periphery I hear the bouncer tell a costumed woman that she can’t come in without ID, even though she is dressed properly. I peer around the corner and see a shocked looking Debbie Harry, not quite sure how to react. I leap over the ropes and say “She’s ok! She’s ok!”, simultaneously thinking that “ok” is so not a big enough adjective to describe one of my favorite artists of all time, not to mention a part of the Click + Drag family, but, “ok” it is.
Slowly the freaks start trickling in, and I maintain my post at the front door, telling anyone who isn’t dressed to code that they unfortunately couldn’t come in. “I am wearing a costume!” screams one girl at me, showing that she is wearing heels. I point to the clusterfuck of gay boys in panties, platform stilletos, covered in glitter and wearing accessories made from rhinestones and animal skulls. “No, you are not” I say.
The night rolls on, but I’m outside so its mostly a blur of faces coming and going... mostly coming. The costuming is unbelievable, and at least 90% of attendees are in full regalia. From the door I hear the performances... Amber Martin and Lady Rizo, Rumi from the Cockettes, The Pixie Harlots. Well, they sound great? I’m a little sad that I don’t get to see them.
Before I know it, its 3:30am and we’re closing down the door. I run inside for a couple shots of Jack Daniels and a quick bounce around the dance floor to see DJs Johnny Dynell, Texxx, and Angelo Tursi, chat with an Rob Roth, and kiki with my clusteruck of gay boys. As the night winds down I feel a strange twinge of sadness. Another year, over. There’s something about Click + Drag that can only be described as magical. The costumes, the music, the people... especially the people! “A gathering of tribes”, Rob calls it, and he couldn’t be more right.
I head back into the dressing room and start to put my Muggle clothes back on. The last thing I remove is the giant green mohawk, which is pinned to my scalp, that I have become strangely attached to over the course of the evening... both emotionally and physically, I guess!
I leave the club at about 5am, exhausted but also exhilarated.
* * *
If I spent Saturday night looking at the stars, then Sunday night firmly proved Oscar Wilde right by reminding me that we are all in the gutter.
I arrive at Club Rebel at 9pm for Hustlaball, the rentboy.com sponsored sleazefest, now in its twelfth year of globe hopping parties. I’m still worn out from the night before but ready for the night to begin. If only it would ever begin. Hustlaball at Rebel is a massive undertaking, with 4 dancefloors, live performances, a dozen or so go-go boys, lewd acts, hookers, porn, and the drag diva that brings it all together, Chi Chi Larue.
Speaking of Chi Chi... where is she? Its about 9:30, the party starts in 30 minutes, and Ms. LaRue is stuck outside, the bouncers won’t let her in! I’m only working the party as “Bottle Service”, but the former club manager in me can only sit on my hands for so long before I take it upon myself to start harassing the security. “We need a manager before we can let anyone in” they say. “Which manager? I’ll get them myself!” They can’t provide me with a name, so I find Sean, head of Rentboy and unfortunately the guy with a thousand other things on his plate as it is. Chi Chi (as well as DJ Pierre Fitch) are ushered inside, and the doors open.
I find out that the Bottle Service section that I’m working is in the main room, which doesn’t open till midnight. I arrived at nine! I use my free time to explore the many floors and areas carved out by the Hustlaball crew. In the Chandelier Room, Scott Ewalt is spinning some fun and cruchy disco, while Robyn Byrd and Mike Dreyden interview people on the red carpet. Upstairs in the VIP lounge Chi Chi Larue is spinning and chatting to guests, go-go boys are popping up on every available platform, and DJ Leomeo is spinning on the 2nd floor.
At midnight the doors to the main room open up with Hector Fonseca on the decks and when a flood of guys stream in, I realize that doing Bottle Service across a packed dance floor isn’t going to be easy. I can’t even see the tables. As the groups are seated, a few of them order bottles, and the bar realizes that they don’t have at least half of the bottles on the menu. I apologize profusely but one of the tables is clearly pissed, as though I did it somehow to spite them. We buy them a round of drinks and they refuse to look me in the eye for the remainder of the evening. Another table doesn’t want to order a bottle, and the other tables disappear after about twenty minutes. Clearly no one is interested in sitting in one spot while there are live sex shows, massage tables, go-go boys, and 4 rooms of hedonism, I don’t really blame them, but it makes my job somewhat useless.
I’m not selling any more bottles, but because I’m “working” I’m not allowed to have a drink. I wander around some more. and more, and more. At about 3:30 we ask the manager (maybe the same one who we were waiting on to let the DJs in?) if the bottle servers can finish, as the party is almost over. He says he’ll be right back.
Its now 4:30. We’re waiting to finish up, the party is over. I’m exhausted and starving. Finally I track down the manager (this guy is too busy to be just one person!) in the office but he’s on his way downstairs to talk to the cops. Turns out there were two overdoses tonight and they want to know who these people were and how they were associated to the party. (Between you and me they were both guests of one porn star, but my lips are sealed).
So we wait. and wait. Finally, he finishes talking to the cops at about 5:30. We do our paperwork in about fifteen seconds and head to the bodega around the corner for a sandwich. Did we really just wait two hours to initial a piece of paper?
There you have it. Two parties, two days. Eleven djs, seventeen hours... and Two Chi Chis.
