Then again, maybe it is, a mixed emotion, part fondness,
part regret. Thinking about the Mudd Club, Danceteria, all the other clubs and
bars I used to hang out in from the late 1970s into the 1990s, it occurs to me
that we were all seeking an elusive sort of excitement. Sometimes we even found
it, for a night.
If you were to ask me, would I want all that time back, all
those nights spent drinking to excess and pursuing women, I would say, “Of
course.” Perhaps I might have done something useful with that time, read more,
written more, had fewer hangovers. But I wouldn’t want absolutely all of it
back.
The places I’m talking about were for the most part in Lower
Manhattan: Barnabas Rex, Puffy’s, the Mudd Club, then all the places in the
East Village, Le Canapé (where we used to close the shades after 4AM and drink
past the dawn), Telephone, Counterpoint. Then later, uptown there were City
Grill, O’Neal’s, Josephina, the old oak bar at Café des Artistes. All gone now,
my favorite drinking establishments. Maybe you really can’t go home again, at
least not from the same places.
As for writing, Dark
Angels may have been initially conceived in the Mudd Club, but the
nightclub depicted in the novel more distinctly resembles Area and MK, two conceptual
creations of the 1980s. The plot has nothing directly to do with that era, as
it takes place in the near future, but there are certain parallels. Remember
what Avenue C used to look like?
