So many aspects of Michael Alig’s existence smack of a heavy-handed metaphor for New York City. As though he was created for the sole purpose of being a twentieth century beacon of what happens when someone is so whole-heartedly conned by the “glamor” of New York. By all its “wonderful” possibility. Its endless options (quote unquote–the only option ever was drinking and drugging yourself into oblivion to convince everyone that it was all worth it to move there). Of course, the caveat here (as it is in every other situation) is that you must be young to enjoy the full benefits and luxuries. Alig was just that when he embarked upon NYC life at one of its indisputable zeniths: 1984.
After abandoning South Bend, Indiana (another classic “gay boy leaves small town for the Big Apple” narrative seemingly plucked right from Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy”–in fact, that song was released in ‘84), Alig, like Elizabeth Grant after him, attended Fordham University. With a quick stint studying architecture, he decided to let his homo cliche freak flag fly at full-mast by transferring to FIT. Among that “circuit,” as the legend goes, he met “Keith Haring’s boyfriend” (does that mean Juan Dubose, Juan Rivera?–one of the many potential randos Haring might have “been with”?–who knows?). Shown the ins and outs of New York nightlife, it was as though this boyfriend was the Aladdin to Alig’s Jasmine, showing him a whole new world. One in which he could see endless nights of fun and debauchery–a world where the party never had to stop. Especially if he could be the one in charge of curating it. It didn’t take long for him to dispense with such square notions as finishing college; he dropped out to instead become a bus boy at Danceteria.
Bus boy transitioned easily enough into party promoter, with Alig soaking up knowledge while in the field to intuit how to put on the perfect memorable (or better still, unmemorable) “soirée.” And, when you have a gift, you have a gift. You try not to deviate too much from what has been working for you so well, even if it means you risk getting “trapped in the past” as a result of not quite changing with the times (why do you think Madonna has lasted so long?–and in her early days of New York, she, too, was looked upon as a club kid).
Alig would deviate in certain ways, sure, like opting to have a 60s-inspired “happening” sort of party–something Andy Warhol would have been on board with. Indeed, it was said by New York troll Michael Musto (willing to appear in an interview about anything regarding NYC) that Alig was responsible for revitalizing the downtown scene in the wake of Warhol’s ‘87 death. Thus, it couldn’t have been defunct for very long with Alig and his “Outlaw Parties,” liable to crop up in abandoned warehouses, subway stations or (in another Madonna connection) Dunkin’ Donuts. America runs on party monsters, after all–or at least it did before the internet came along, and people found it more amusing there than “on the scene.”
But Alig’s place in the sun would recede long before the internet overtook everything. And while he might not have been one for “trying something new” really (other than changing locations and costumes), he did try plenty of “different” things and extremes in terms of his ever-amplifying drug use. After gaining more “responsibility” (by way of being told to go forth and be as irresponsible as possible) upon being hired by Peter Gatien as The Limelight’s resident “party monster” (a.k.a. organizer), Alig’s free rein and status as the “must-have” and “go-to” for any party worth its drug weight in fun most assuredly went to his head. And considering his histrionic personality, that was precisely what he wanted to “achieve” for himself all along. If such a “feat” can be called “achievement.” For that is yet another trap of New York. Being led to believe you’ve “made it” with such basic and petty confirmations (for a town that claims to be so extraordinary) as “a lot of friends” (all fairweather, to be sure), local fame (the most middling and meaningless kind of all) and “turning your passion into a career.” Thus Alig as a symbol for the proverbial, “I will sacrifice myself to the city at any and all costs in order to be deemed one of its ‘key players’” mantra is not without its distinction. There is such a cut-and-dried classicness to this cliche, which, like most cliches, is one because it’s so damned accurate.
It’s even complete with the fact that his once great den of debauchery–the beacon of New York nightlife that he helped create–The Limelight, was long ago turned into an ill-advised “shopping mall” (billed as Limelight Marketplace) complete with a gym inside (once upon a time, it was David Barton, as of 2017, it became Limelight Fitness). As most New York businesses re-inhabiting the spaces of “institutions” do, the gym currently operating in the ex-church/nightclub proudly touts, “Limelight’s rich culture dates back to the 1800s through its original stained glass windows to its timeless exposed brick walls. It’s a place where many have come to repent their sins through prayer, parties, and workouts. Limelight’s past has transitioned flawlessly from a church to an iconic nightclub and most recently into a 23,000 square foot training haven, which caters to both novice and advanced fitness acolytes.” It goes on to talk about the many other Limelight Fitness benefits that have absolutely nothing to do with the structure’s “rich culture.” For, as we all know, gyms are the antithesis of culture.
One wonders about Alig being released from prison in the current climate. The utter shock of being summarily emptied out into a city that had disappeared. At least the “real” city as Alig had once known and thrived in it. And, more importantly, been young in it before aging away in a prison cell. This isn’t to say any pity should be taken upon Alig, it’s simply that there are so many devoted to New York people of his nature. Not willing to fathom that the New York they’re thinking of does not exist, and maybe never did. Maybe it was all just a beautiful tincture of youth and ketamine combining to create such an indelible experience. One that needn’t be bothered with remembering in real time so long as the photographers were there to document it. And document they did, especially if you managed to stand out in a crowd of “exotic birds.” For example, RuPaul and Amanda Lepore were just some of the club kids in the Alig orbit. Indeed, they were something akin to the 90s version of Warhol stars despite being very much their own people and not in any way “created” by Alig.
Naturally, you couldn’t tell that to Alig, who likely believed he was pulling the strings of every club kid and reveler around him. As Alig’s “star” and following grew bigger, so, too, did his head. Big enough, evidently, to think that, as a white male, he could get away with murder. And, to be honest, he very nearly did. Had the little problem of the body not materialized (like Taylor sings, “No Body, No Crime”). After a dispute with said body–once upon a time, that body being an animate Angel Melendez–about a long-standing unpaid drug debt, Alig and his friend, Robert “Freeze” Riggs, jointly ended Melendez’s life. According to Riggs’ confession after the body was discovered, “On a Sunday in March of 1996 I was at home… and Michael Alig and Angel Melendez were loudly arguing… and getting louder. I opened the room and started towards the other bedroom… at which point Michael Alig was yelling, ‘Help me! Get him off of me.’ [Angel] started shaking him violently and banging him against the wall. He was yelling, ‘You better get my money or I’ll break your neck.’ I grabbed the hammer… and hit Angel over the head…” Three times, to be exact. Yet Angel was still alive. It was Alig’s final touches that finished him off, at first trying to suffocate him with a pillow and then, while Riggs was out of the room, wielded “some cleaner or chemical” (maybe at first with a hypodermic needle, maybe not) into Melendez’s mouth and taped it shut.
It reeks of just how wrong things can get at what Joan Didion once referred to as “the fair” in her famous leaving NY essay, “Goodbye to All That.” And there is no doubt that Alig “stayed at the fair too long.” As so many do, and can never seem to objectively see before something irreversibly traumatic happens. Or worse still, they can’t seem to process that they have aged, forever seeing themselves as the youth they were when they first arrived. As the club kid Alig wanted to be for eternity. Worse still, he couldn’t have possibly fathomed how much the phrase “trigger warning” would be used as a means against everything deemed even remotely offensive by a subsequent generation of both regulars and club-goers. Case in point, a petition being started in 2017 to prevent him from appearing at an L.A. club called Sex Cells, with the reasoning, “For us, and for many LGBTQA individuals, nightlife spaces are and always should be safe spaces, and nothing else. They are not places where violence is encouraged or romanticized. We cherish and celebrate the sacred and fleeting nature of life. We believe these safe spaces must be maintained, and that any challenge to the nature of positivity and safety must be kept at bay from our nightclubs…” There might be a point, but for fuck’s sake, it’s not like the murder happened at a club. One can only picture Alig’s combination of eye-rolling combined with the piercing pain of ostracism. After all, throwing parties was all he knew how to do.
After seventeen years spent in the clink, Alig couldn’t have fathomed that he was no longer “relevant.” Deemed a source of darkness where once he was viewed as a light source to any party. Again, he is a mirror of the average New York trajectory. When one arrives, it’s all “gaiety” (in the 1940s sense) and possibility. Wonderment and amazement. As time wears on, the rose-colored glasses are lifted, and you start to see something else in the city, something that’s being reflected back inward–illuminating, ironically, a loss of one’s own inner light.
New York was the monster that begat this party monster. In point of fact, New York has spawned some of the worst monsters of the past few decades: Weinstein, Trump and Epstein. But regardless of whether one is born there, New York is just as capable of making monsters out of those who come from afar, hoping to seek their fame and fortune. Even Alig’s logic about being so overt regarding confessing repeatedly to the murder was not from a place of compuction, so much as wanting more attention–a new and higher level of it. Thus, in, quelle surprise, an interview in prison, he explained, “I know why I blabbed. I must have wanted to stop me. I was spinning out of control. It’s like the old saying ‘What do you have to do to get attention around here–kill somebody?’”
At the age of thirty, it was as though the Wonderland reverie of his twenties had come to a dark and abrupt close, confessing to the murder on October 1, 1996. The party was officially over, and its denouement seemed to come at poetic moment: the end of the 90s. Clubland and New York were about to go dark soon enough, and for myriad reasons (not least of which would be 9/11). And yet, like a moth to a flame, Alig returned to the city after his release. As though wanting to remain in the nexus of where he was at his worst, his most diabolical would get him back to the place he wanted to return to: the glory days. The past. That has long been the crux of why so many people stay in or revisit New York, forever trying to re-create some blip in time that cannot be.
So whether Alig was simply over it and figured, “Fuck it, I’ll do myself in the way they used to before everyone was goddamn ‘triggered’ by everything’ or he just wanted to enter a blissful and abyssal haze to escape from the boredom of this post-Clubland life, the point is, he made an exit in the most Alig way possible. And one that speaks to the sentiment of the moment, for as he once said of heroin, “You would be surprised at the level of dissociation involved. You use it exactly in order not to feel. It cuts off all feeling…” In short, the perfect fix to keep one (non-)functioning in NYC.
