I often find myself drawn to the darkest, most disturbing,
bursting-with-salacious-personal-details of memoirs I can find. There’s just
something about a life lived in an impure way that’s so compelling to read
about. When I watched the movie Party Monster and then discovered it was based
on a book, how could I resist?
Disco Bloodbath:
A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland re-released under
the title Party Monster: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland
is a 1999 memoir written by James St. James about his life as a Manhattan celebutante and
club kid. The book specifically chronicles his friend Michael Alig’s rise to
fame and his subsequent fall after the murder of fellow club kid and drug
dealer Angel Melendez.
James St. James (born James Clark) was a club kid of the
crazy Manhattan
club scene in the late 1980s/early 1990s. He was notorious for a lifestyle of
excess that included heavy drug use, partying, and bizarre costumes. St. James was Michael Alig’s mentor in the scene and one
of his closest friends leading up to Alig’s murder conviction.
When Party Monster
was first published, it was a storm of controversy. Apparently people just
weren’t ready for its vivid, striking, often disturbing, and always outrageous
depiction of the hedonistic world of New
York City’s club kid scene. The book is an inside
story of life in clubs like The Tunnel and The Limelight and the drugs, sex,
music, and mayhem that existed during the heyday of the New York City club
culture written by the man that more or less started it.
That’s only half the story though. The other half of the
story revolves around Michael Alig, the gay kid from nowhere special who came
to New York
and blew up the club scene to the hedonistic levels that they’re known for
nowadays. You learn a lot about his character through St. James’ recollections
about him, and even though he’d been high through a lot of it, his descriptions
are anything but lacking. He was a selfish and semi-sadistic kid who let his
sudden fame go to his head. How did all this turn into the murder of a fellow
club kid? Drugs of course. When Angel Melendez got angry at Alig for using all
his drugs without paying, Alig fought back, killing him in the grisly manner
and then dismembering him. From that point to the point of his arrest, Alig
told anybody and everybody he could that he had, indeed, killed Angel. St. James says that he was told a few days after the
murder while doing drugs with Alig at his apartment.
But while St. James's flashy approach is artful and engaging
to this macabre tale of murder, St. James has no sympathy for the victim of the
crime. Alig, after being sentenced to up to twenty years in prison is reeling
with regret and shame. The closest thing to emotion on display is St. James's
obsessive need to document the highs and lows of life with Alig and his own
self-pity at the end of his carousing days with him.
All this is told in a stylish and very campy prose of a
self-proclaimed rather needy diva and Alig’s best friend. St.
James has a way with his words that makes it seem like all this happened just
last week and not drug-induced haze years ago. There are funny parts where you
can’t help but laugh out loud, and the description of Alig’s murder is gruesome
and ghastly to no end. St. James's account of the rise and fall of Michael Alig
is, truly, a most unconventional contribution to the body of true crime. Mixing
outrageous exploits of club queens with the running commentary of a babbling
drug addict, St. James fuses humor and narcotic enthusiasm with pure camp and
the result is a flamboyant and engrossing first-person narrative.
My final thoughts on Party
Monster are that it’s highly enjoyable. St.
James tells two stories: one his own about the club kid life full of all-night
parties and uncountable drugs and one of Michael Alig, the maddeningly selfish,
mostly crazy murderer that not only made St. James’ life, but also ruined it. His
story, despite its gruesome subject matter and frequent, shocking lucidity, has
a chatty and anecdotal quality that's compelling, endearing, and human when it
comes right down to it. St. James’ comes off as shallow and full of
self-importance, but why not? It’s how he’s felt about himself since his club
kid days! It’s an entertaining red full of salacious giddiness, queeny
commentary, and decadent details. If you’re looking for a fuller account of the
Alig/Melendez murder, look elsewhere. It’s an insider’s take on events, not
factual accounts. Treat this book as it was meant to be treated: a
technicolour-lurid portrayal of addiction, self-delusion, narcissism, and
depravity that shows that murder was never so much fun!
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