So she became a staple of the club scene. Cyn, Jenny, Desi, and Whitney made friends faster than a virus finds a new host, and Oona expanded her circle of acquaintances as a result, people to whom she was connected via venues and costumes and drugs, flimsy and fragile as a spiderweb. Though at the core were the five of them.
They established a social routine: Limelight on Tuesdays, Antenna on Thursdays, and occasional weekend outings to the Roxy and Tunnel. Their favorite spot was the World, a former wedding banquet hall with peeling gold leaf and an aura of faded opulence. Going there was a special treat because it opened sporadically and operated without a liquor license. It played house music, hip-hop, rock, and punk, attracting a crowd that erased the boundaries between genders, races, subcultures, and sexual orientations.
“I spilled a drink on Prince once,” Desi boasted one late night at the World, from a balcony overlooking the cavernous dance floor. “Right where we’re standing. Someone shoved into me and I dumped my vodka cran all over his white ruffled shirt.”
While the others gave impatient smiles, having heard the story one too many times, Oona’s eyebrows shot up and she asked, “Did he get mad?”
“Oh, honey, no. He just took off his shirt and threw it over the railing. Walked around bare-chested the rest of the night.”
Oona herself had some smaller brushes with the present and future (in)famous, though she didn’t always recognize them for who they were or would become. When they went dancing at the Pyramid—a shoebox of a club on Avenue A—and she spotted Lady Bunny and RuPaul’s big blond wigs, Oona was tempted to sidle up and tell them they’d be world-renowned drag queens (though they probably already knew that). At the Limelight, a Gothic church turned disco, when a man with clownish makeup and a diaper/corset ensemble offered her champagne, Whitney told her to turn it down. The champagne turned out to be piss and the man was Michael Alig, club promoter and ringleader of the Club Kids, whose antics would become the stuff of legend and nightmares in a few years when he’d be indicted for murder.
“And who is that?” she asked Desi one night at the Roxy, pointing to a boyish man waiting for the bathroom. “I keep seeing him around and he looks so familiar.”
“Oh, that’s Moby. I think he’s a DJ? He’d be cuter if he shaved his head.”
Sometimes there were after-parties at Save the Robots and sunrise breakfasts at 7A or Sidewalks—Bloody Marys more often than eggs since Ecstasy, coke, and K killed the appetite. Then there were underground parties at unconventional venues: Burger King, Home Depot, a subway car. They swarmed like rainbow-colored bees, with Johnny Panda leading the charge. Someone would bring a boom box and tinny techno would punctuate their outlandish cheer. The parties were fun in concept and amusing for the first half hour, the Club Kids dazzling in a mundane setting. Then there was the rush when the police arrived and they scattered before being rounded up for disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, or indecent exposure.
While technology had been her umbilical cord to the world in 2015, this year’s Oona was happy to disconnect from screens (not that she had a choice). The novelty of convenience was replaced by the familiarity of the analog: going to stores instead of shopping online, hailing taxis instead of ordering Ubers, using landlines and pay phones instead of her cell. It was nice to see people out and about living their lives rather than curating them for the Internet or hiding behind their devices. It also made it easier for Oona to drift apart from her mother, to return fewer of her calls.
Yes, Oona was happy to disconnect.
Her days and nights took on a flipbook’s repetition, each image the same with minor changes. One night she came home covered in glitter; another in fake blood. One night she came home with a broken heel; another a broken handle on her Wonder Woman lunch box. She developed a taste for house music, techno, freestyle, and breakbeat, finding appeal in the rhythm. She conjured clocks ticking off the seconds and tracking her pulse, each song an erratic metronome that stated she was both moving and standing still.
Her nights were full of so much sound, silence balanced out her days. She recovered from these outings in her music room, splayed out on the fuzzy carpet, often ignoring her records. Sometimes she’d sneak a wistful look at the guitars, but she never touched them.
“Music should be our biggest high,” Dale often said—so fervent, quixotic, naive.
Sorry, baby, but I need something stronger.
The calendar might’ve put her at twenty-seven, but inside, she was barely out of her teens, with so little accountability and so much disposable income. And so it was the year of color, artificial highs, and staged recklessness.
Building off her silent-film-star haircut, Oona adopted a club version of a flapper look, wearing low-waisted dresses fringed with unconventional materials: chains, dollar bills, bones, bacon strips, syringes. She had long necklaces made of pill capsules and candy, cocktail rings with jeweled skulls and insects trapped in amber. The classic style of a bygone era made modern, warped. Her look wasn’t as extreme as some others, but it still caught the attention of a producer for Geraldo, who stopped her one night at the Limelight and asked if she’d like to appear on an episode about Club Kids. Oona politely declined. She also avoided being mentioned in Michael Musto’s nightlife column in The Village Voice.
Once in a while she wondered if she should be doing something more substantial with her time, but forced her focus on the inconsequential: the next outfit, the next party, the next drug and alcohol combo that would bury her in a blizzard of chemicals.
It was a temporary fix, but she felt at home among these oddballs. That would have to suffice, at least for 1991. Who knew what year would come next? She could be twenty-one and middle-aged again, or even a senior citizen. No telling when she’d revisit her youth, so she turned the year into one long party.
The party got interrupted three times.
The first time was a Friday morning in March. Just after eight, Oona was exiting a taxi dropping her off at home, still in last night’s garish outfit.
Coming up the street, a grocery bag in each hand, was Madeleine. “I thought we could finally have breakfast together. Unless you want to keep avoiding me?”
“I already ate breakfast.” Two Bloody Marys, but surely the tomato juice counted as nourishment.
“You look like you haven’t eaten in months. Cocktail mixers don’t count.”
Is she a mind reader now? Her mother’s sarcasm was like a Brillo pad on Oona’s bare skin. “If we’re gonna fight, can we do it inside?” Trudge trudge trudge up the steps, into the house.
“I come bearing bagels. You don’t bring bagels to a fight. Why don’t you go change while I lay out the food and make coffee. Nice outfit, by the way. Never saw a dress made of duct tape before.”
Oona entered the kitchen a few minutes later, face scrubbed, wearing clothes made of actual fabric. Her mother slid over a plate piled so high with smoked salmon, the bagel beneath it was barely visible.
“I like the new hair. What else is new?” Madeleine asked. Getting only a shrug in response, she said, “I was in Home Depot the other week when it turned into a spontaneous party. I saw you there.” A sharp click as two bagel halves popped out of the toaster. No eye contact as she focused on spreading them with cream cheese.