TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Michael Alig: James, listen, I got this funny, uh, I brought some of my fan mail out, because some of it is so funny.
James St. James: Oh please, yes, read.
Michael: There’s this girl named Meg who lives in, oh gosh, Wyoming, and she says, “Last week we went out dressed up in black fishnets, black knee highs and our hair all funky with feathers in it. I also put some black eyeliner on with wings coming from the corner of my eyes and going down my cheeks. My mom wouldn’t let me out of the house. But I told her ‘Michael Alig does it and it’s Party Monster theme tonight at Jessica’s!’”
James: That’s hot.
Michael: So they’re having a Party Monster sleepover party!
James: So cute!
Michael: Anyway – one of the girls had a shaved head, you know, done up like Jennitalia, and they painted murals and came with their throat slashed and blood dripping all over the place and one of them looked like Junkie Johnathon.
James: How old are these kids?
Michael: Teenagers, I guess.
James: If I would have told you twenty years ago that there would be a trickle down to CLUB KID SLUMBER PARTIES in WYOMING. . . .
Michael: Oh I know I know I know. . . Now, James you can’t put anything derogatory about any of these people that write me, because honestly, honestly, James, these letters are what keeps me motivated.
James: I understand that.
Michael: It’s just a tiny portion of them are crackpots. Most of them are really nice people.
James: Well, read me one from a crackpot, and then we’ll say something funny about him. I mean nice about him.
Michael: This is one from someone who says he’s a former clubkid. He sent me a picture. He says “I always thought back then that you were a special person, and there is no one that can ever convince me that you killed Angel. You shouldn’t even be in prison in the first place.” Isn’t that sweet?
James: “Signed, Keoki.”
Michael: James!
James: What?! What?!
Michael: That was mean.
James: Sorry. Oh, now I’M the mean one?
Michael: I got a letter today from a boy named Bryan, who. . . . You know, I’m really surprised at how these young kids TOTALLY GET what we were doing. He says, “Congratulations on attempting to reinforce self-worth through demolishing conventional styles and attitude teaching a generation of clubkids to transform their self conceptions of love and life by participating in autonomist non-conforming rage.”
James: (Whistles) Wow!
Michael: Good one, huh?
James: Yeah. . . . That’s exactly what you were trying to do, Michael. In your K-hole. It’s funny how he got that.
Michael: I was just writing chapter seven of my book, the first chapter where we. . . .
James: (Groans) You’re still doing that? Michael, nobody cares. It’s been done. By me.
Michael: ANYWAY, JAMES, it’s the chapter where the clubkids start, and I was like. . . . Hmmm. That sounds really good. I think I’ll use that! I can pass that off as my own thought!
James: Read me another one. Hey, wait a minute, do you give people my email address?
Michael: Sometimes. . . . Only if I think they should have it.
James: Because I do get a lot of very strange emails that I can’t quite figure out how they got my address.
Michael: Yep, that’s usually me.
James: Great. Gee. Thanks. Speaking of strange. . . . Did you ever get the girl who. . . .
Michael: Are you talking about the Bible thing?
James: YES! OMG! LOVE HER!
Michael: I never got it!
James: I’ll include that in your next package. Oh, Michael, she rewrote the New Testament with you as Jesus, and me as Jesus’ brother, and she wrote it all in King James English.
Michael: She told me about it!
James: It’s really something. You are Jesus. The club kids are the disciples. Area is the Temple. Dianne Brill is God.
Michael: She sent me five pages explaining, and actually the way she described it, the way she described Jesus, I thought, well, HE WAS exactly like me! (Laughs) No really, the way she described me was like. . . . The way she described it was: king of the misfits, and prostitutes, and cripples. I loved it. I AM JESUS!
James: It’s so fantastic.
Michael: James, do you remember the time we took Anthony Haden-Guest to Bowery Bar. . . .
James: . . . and put him in a K-hole! That was so much fun! And he kept saying. . . .
Michael: “Michael Alig is Jesus! Michael Alig is Jesus!” And he kept drawing crucifixes on the tablecloth. . . And you were getting so mad, you kept saying, “ONE MORE TIME!” And by the end of the night, he’s taking his shirt off and dribbling and drooling, and the managers and waiters kept saying, “What have you done to Anthony?” I keep thinking how funny that was.
James: Oh God, I miss those K-holes.
Michael: Then there’s this girl, her name is, oh, I’m not giving you her name. She says – I love this – she’s like, “I want to send you tons of letters, a letter every two days or more. I don’t expect a response, though, from every letter; I just want the time to go by faster for you. If you don’t want me to write so much then tell me and you won’t hurt my feelings, unless you don’t like me, then I’ll cry.” She says, “For whatever reason, I’m really drawn to you. I need you to help me discover the reason I feel the way I do. You are amusing to me.”
James: (Laughs) “You amuse me, little man.”
Michael: (Laughing) “. . .In your cage.”
James: “Dance in your cage, little man!”
Michael: I think she meant to say “amazing!” But I like “amusing.”
There’s this girl, and there’s a picture of her and her drunk boyfriend in a hotel room in Vegas. And all it says is, “Dear Michael: I love having sex. Girls or boys, I don’t care. I thought I’d let you know that little tidbit about me. I love SEX. SEX. I bet that’s one thing we have in common you and I. SEX. SEX. I’m going to Vegas for my birthday August 20th and I’m turning 26 and I can’t wait because I plan to have lots of SEX. I’ll drink some champagne for you.”
There’s this girl named Crystal, she’s 12 years old. I just found out she’s 12 years old a couple of days ago because I got a letter from her mother and her mother is really cool. You know, it’s funny because now we’re at the point where the mothers are our fans. You know, it’s no longer the kids. The mother is like 32, and she was around for Disco 2000. Now she’s living, like, in Ohio, and she has a 12-year-old daughter who is like a fan of mine and she wants to marry me and she’s sending me marriage proposals and dressing up in her 12-year-old clubkid guise.
So this girl, she’s 12 years old and she wrote the sweetest sweetest – James, it breaks my heart when I read some of these letters – she wrote the sweetest report on me for her 7th-grade class.
James: That is so crazy.
Michael: She said, “When I take your letters in to show and tell. . . ,” and I’m thinking, WHAT IS THIS TEACHER THINKING? She’s bringing in this, like, killer’s letters from prison! This report she did, though, was really heartbreaking.
Recorded voice: YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS.
James: Quickly, quickly! For example. . .?
Michael: Well, she says that her and her mother are kind of like the town weirdos, and everybody stares at them when they go to the grocery store or whatever, because her mom is from New York, you know, and she likes to dress like Britney Spears, or whatever, this is how much it’s trickled down. She says that after seeing Party Monster, she feels like she’s not alone in the world and that. . . . You know, it’s the same story from everyone. It’s always different and it’s always the same. It’s just heartbreaking the way she feels like she has a home with these clubkids, even though she’s only 12 and she lives in Iowa.
(Phone disconnects)
