A Pyramid Club Reunion
In celebration of the new book “We Started a Nightclub”: The Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge As Told by Those Who Lived It, former clubgoers gathered at their old East Village stomping ground for a homecoming.
How is it being back at the Pyramid club?
It was crazy being on that stage again. The footprint’s exactly the same. But it’s 40 years later, I’m a different person, and the world is vastly different. My generation—half of them are gone. The ’80s were this incredible last gasp of Bohemia in New York that coincided with the AIDS pandemic. In fact, I lost my first partner in 1982 when it wasn’t even called AIDS quite yet. So it was a very loaded scenario to be there, and we paid tribute to those who weren’t with us in the room.
Do you have a favorite Pyramid club memory?
Opening night was pretty amazing. I performed the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian in an upside-down bustier and a black half-slip with kind of punked-out hair. And then for New Year’s Eve, Peter Littlefield staged a piece about the end of the old year and ushering in the new one, and we walked through the crowd to the strains of the love duet from Verdi’s Otello. The electricity was really clear in the air and then this big roar happened before the countdown.
That was kind of great.
I was also tripping on acid and had a fever—that’s indicative of the exuberance that kept us in the club and not at home in bed.