“It Was Like a Caligula Orgy”: When James St. James Took Over South Beach

James St. James needs no introduction. But for the uninitiated, here’s his CV in rapid-fire: 1990s downtown icon and cultural agitator, “club kid” extraordinaire, novelist, art curator, and, more recently, a fixture in the kaleidoscopic World of Wonder cinematic universe. On account of his connection to the late Michael Alig, documented in James’ electric 1999 memoir Disco Bloodbath, much of his life has been up for public consumption. But there’s an important window of time in the story of James St. James that has gone mostly untold, a period when he stepped away from New York nightlife and ventured south to Miami, a city on the precipice of its own world-class transformation. It was a move that would provide him the time and space to invent himself anew—and, as he tells it, a temporary detour that might have saved his life. So, earlier this year, the “party monster” joined us for a candid conversation about his South Beach stint, from sitting at the hotel pool beside Linda Evangelista to running under the early morning Miami sun with Leigh Bowery.

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CHRISTOPHER BLACKMON: You have a beautiful background. I love all the books.

JAMES ST. JAMES: This is just half of the books that I have. My whole apartment is books and clothes, and that’s about it. Those are my friends.

BLACKMON: So, I read Disco Bloodbath about 10 years ago. But one thing I thought that was such an interesting period of your life that’s gone untold is when you leave this fabulous nightclub-downtown thing that you’ve built and go to Miami. Also, it coincides with Miami becoming this world-class city.

JAMES: It was an amazing time for Miami, for South Beach in particular. It’s funny because when you mentioned that I was thinking, “Well, why would anyone be interested in that?” It was a very important time in the building of South Beach, like you said, and I was there right at the cusp. It was a big change for me, and it was a big important step in my life to be able to pull myself out of the bubble and reinvent myself.

BLACKMON: You had gone to high school in Fort Lauderdale, right?

JAMES: Yeah. I grew up in Fort Lauderdale. My father was in Fort Lauderdale, my mother was in Michigan, so there was a lot of back and forth. Fort Lauderdale was always sort of my safe space, so I know South Florida. But when I was growing up there, we didn’t really go to Miami. That wasn’t a thing. It was sort of a dying city in many ways. He [my father] didn’t take us down there a lot, so I didn’t really know that much about it. Then in, gosh, I guess it was ’91, the Club Kids had a party. The Club Kids invade South Beach. It was Leigh Bowery, RuPaul, Michael Alig, Julie Jewels, myself, Larry Tee and Lahoma. There were about 20 of us, and we all went down to South Beach. We had a party in an abandoned theater and it was just fabulous. It was like, the best time I’ve ever had. Afterwards, I remember there was an after-hours club. This was at the time when all the hotels on Ocean Drive were just crumbling. It was all these fabulous old Art Deco places. We broke in, and we had an after-hours party. I remember the sun was coming up and Leigh Bowery was running naked down the beach with that big pumpkin head that he had, that big ruffled pumpkin head. We were just laughing and laughing and I kept thinking, “This is just the best city. This is just amazing.” Then the next night I picked up this guy, and we were going back to his place. I was on the back of his motorcycle. I had long, clown-red hair and jewels on my face and I was in a little tap suit and platforms and no helmet. I remember people were coming out on the streets and applauding like it was a parade. I was thinking, “Well, nobody applauds me in New York. This is really fabulous.” I went back to New York. I was partying too much, and I wasn’t getting anything accomplished. I was working at this magazine called OutWeek. It was a gay magazine. I was doing a column there and then OutWeek closed abruptly. I thought, “I need to get out of New York. I need to stop partying and dry out. Maybe I’ll go to Miami and just try and write”—not thinking to myself that going to Miami to get away from cocaine is kind of counterintuitive. But I did it.

BLACKMON: What year is this?

JAMES: This is the end of ’91, so I’m there for all of ’92. Like I said, it was a magical time. Artists had just started moving in, and there was a big thriving gay scene. Warsaw was the hit club at the time. That was all Muscle Queens and Circuit Boys, but there were also a lot of drag queens that were coming into the scene. There was the Jewish community, which had been there since World War II. They were getting older, and they were just dressed to the nines. They were so sweet and wonderful to the drag queens and the gay kids. There was the Cuban element that was bringing so much energy and fun into the scene. Everybody really got along in a way that I haven’t seen in many cities where everybody was just sort of like, “We’re building the city up again.” That’s when The Delano reopened and The Raleigh reopened, and there was just a revitalization of Ocean Drive. Versace was moving in at that time and reclaiming that castle right there on the beach. The club Paragon was just about ready to open, and I did the door there for about three months before they fired me. They didn’t really like the Club Kid energy, so I wasn’t really a very good fit. But it was fun to be there.

BLACKMON: It sounds like even though it’s fabulous, the city’s still got some kind of conservative streak.

JAMES: There was. But it was the beginning of something that was happening, and everyone felt it. At this time, all the New Yorkers are beginning to come down during season, so I was sort of an ambassador and was able to show everybody around. I don’t know if you know South Beach at all, but Tara Solomon was the queen of South Beach. She still is. She’s just fabulous. Kitty Meow was just a young slip of a thing, still a teenager. She’s now like, the grande dame of South Beach. I was living with a trans girl named China Blue at the time and she was just fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Henrietta was a drag queen who had been around since, gosh, the ’50s I think. In her 80s, she still went out every single night and just dressed magnificently with the big bouffants and the gowns and everything. I did do a lot of writing, and I was able to realign who I thought I was. I didn’t have to be James St. James, the Club Kid. I could just be myself.

BLACKMON: I was just going to ask you that. In Miami, were you James St. James, or were you just James from New York?

JAMES: Well, I was James St. James because when I had come down with the Club Kids, that was my introduction and everyone knew me. Sometimes when you move to a new city and everyone’s like, “Oh, she’s here, and she thinks she’s going to take over at the scene,” and people were sort of nasty about it, but I didn’t go into it with that mindset. I was just there to write. I went out and I did work at clubs and everything, but I also had a day job. I worked on Española at a place called the Starr Hagenbring Gallery. It was the first time in my life that I got up in the morning and went for a jog. I had breakfast. I went to work out. It was a whole other world for me. It really grounded me in a way that I needed.

BLACKMON: When you left to go to Miami, did you think you were going to come back [to New York]?

JAMES: I don’t think I did think I was going back. I thought that I was building a life away from New York. Then when I left Miami and I went out to LA, I was still writing and I went and spent the winter in Michigan. We had a house in northern Michigan that nobody used during the winter, so I went there and just spent the winter writing, writing, writing. At that point, there was something that was sort of pulling me back, and I didn’t quite know what it was. I just knew that there was more to my story there, that there was something that wasn’t finished. Because when I went back, everything had completely changed and had gotten so dark. That’s when I sort of realized that they were on a path careening towards doom. I knew that something bad was happening and that I was there to bear witness and maybe write about it later.

BLACKMON: What did your apartment look like?

JAMES: It was a little one-bedroom. I never really zhuzhed it out because it ended up being sort of temporary. But it was cute. Like I said, this trans girl, China, came to live with me, and she was a bit of a cyclone. But it was fun.

BLACKMON: Tell me about China the Cyclone.

JAMES: Well, I had met China in New York. She was a little Cuban trans girl who just had the craziest sense of style. She was a Club Kid in a way that was just so outrageous. At that point, like I said, I was trying to get away from it. But she came in and moved in with all these outfits and clothes. We would just play dress up all night long and have cocktails and then go out. She really helped refine my sense of Club Kid aesthetics. She passed away a few years afterwards. But god, she was just an amazing, amazing girl. I don’t know if any of your readers who were from South Beach at that time remember her, but she was just China Blue. I met her at Susanne [Bartsch’s] party at Copacabana. She moved in that night and we were just inseparable for about two or three years after that.

BLACKMON: I’m sorry to hear of her passing.

JAMES: Yeah. She was amazing.

BLACKMON: I was reading a book by Rupert Everett. Miami was a refuge for him outside of London and L.A. and Paris, which were his stomping grounds. In the book, he  writes  about the Delano, saying how the rooms were horrible. They were dirty and no one would stay in them, but the pools were fantastic.

JAMES: The pools were! Especially The Raleigh and The Delano, and then later, what was the one, the big huge one they’ve revived from the ’50s, The Fontainebleau?

BLACKMON: The Fontainebleau, yeah.

JAMES: Just an amazing pool. Everybody in town, whether you stayed at the hotel or not, you just went to The Raleigh every day and went to the pool, and you were starstruck by everybody who was there.

BLACKMON: Like who?

JAMES: It was Marc Jacobs and [Thierry] Mugler and [Gianni] Versace and everybody. It was just that fashion crowd that was always at the pool. And Linda Evangelista, a lot of those girls at the time were there. It was a total scene. It’s the same thing that was happening in the East Village and SoHo, where because it was this sort of crumbling infrastructure, artists were able to move in and the gay people were able to move in because rents were cheap. It fostered that community feeling. I’m always attracted to crumbling beauty, fading beauty. It’s like that Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard type thing.

BLACKMON: Yeah.

JAMES: I always thought of myself as the Parthenon or something where it was like, “I’m crumbling, but I’m still pretty grand, damn it.” I love that idea of being past your prime but still having an inherent beauty to you. That’s sort of what Miami was. And it’s funny, because every time I go to South Beach, it’s completely different. It reinvents itself more than any other city I think I’ve ever seen.

BLACKMON: Oh, you think so?

JAMES: Well, I went in ’99 and it was all ravers at that point. Then I went back five years later and it was all sort of Euro-Aristo types. Every time I see it, it looks like the crowd completely changes. I just find it fascinating.

BLACKMON: You can’t even walk down the street anymore on Ocean. How did the club scene differ from the New York scene down there? You said it was a lot of Muscle Queens.

JAMES: It was a lot of Circuit Queens. Vizcaya, there was the White Party every year that I think Jeffrey Sanker threw. In the ’90s, you had a flip that happened in the club scene where suddenly the DJs were gods. It was all about the DJ being the big star, and maybe the promoters were the big stars. But you didn’t have club kings and queens and it-girls and stuff in the way that you did in the 1980s. This is sort of the beginning of that, where you don’t have Dianne Brills and Michael Mustos and people like that. It was all about the DJ. There was a feeling that it wasn’t about seeing and being seen on the dance floor because you weren’t going there to be a star. You were going there to dance and sweat and find someone to hook up with. It was more democratic. You know what I mean? And I think that was happening everywhere. I don’t think that’s specific to South Beach, but it was very noticeable in South Beach.

BLACKMON: When you initially left New York to go to Miami, did people think you were crazy?

JAMES: Yeah, definitely. But also when I came back, everyone was like, “You went away to write, and now you’re back. You couldn’t do it. Now you’re slinking back to town.” There was sort of a nasty little vibe when I came back, like I hadn’t done what I set out to do. I was supposed to come back as a big author or something. I didn’t sell that book ultimately, but I did learn how to write long form, and I did learn how to write a book. Once the Michael Alig-Angel thing happened, I was able to take what I learned in Miami and apply it to writing Party Monster.

BLACKMON: So what was that book that you wrote in Miami and L.A. and Michigan?

JAMES: It was called Freak Show. It was a continuation of my columns with OutWeek, where I was just this lost drag queen who was trying to find his way in life. It was just my voice and my everyday. I’ve used parts of it in other books and other things that I’ve done in other columns and stuff.

BLACKMON: Wonderful. You have released that since, right?

JAMES: Yeah. It was something called Freak Show.

BLACKMON: What was the reaction? You said you didn’t sell the book at the time. Why was that?

JAMES: It was a little before its time. My friend, China, was a sex worker, and so part of the character was this drag queen/prostitute looking for god in the gutters. There was like a Sweet Charity element to it. I don’t think in 1992 that that could have ever been sold. I showed it around and people were just not ready for it. I think 10 years later, people might’ve been ready for it. RuPaul hadn’t even come out yet. “Supermodel” hadn’t come out yet. So the idea of drag culture being mainstream was a fantasy. It was science fiction at that time.

BLACKMON: I was hearing some straight guys talk the other day and one of them said, “Yeah, no shade.” I was saying to my friend, “It’s amazing, they don’t even know that that comes from the far West Side of New York with the drag queens that were working the piers.”

JAMES: Today you have the little girls saying, “Slay, slay, mama. Slay, mama. She ate.” What?! The way that it’s ebbed into mainstream culture is bonkers.

BLACKMON: In the most conservative of places, too.

JAMES: Yes.

BLACKMON: Did you ever come across who would become Ts Madison? Because she was a strolling prostitute in Miami in the early ’90s.

JAMES: I don’t know if I came across Ts Madison. I know Glamorous Monique was in every city that I went to. She was in New York. She was in Miami. I think she was out in L.A. when I went out. She was everywhere. She was fabulous. I don’t know that I saw Ts, and I don’t know if Ts has ever mentioned that to me. I’ll have to go back and see how far she went back in those days.

BLACKMON: I listen to her podcast, which is really funny. She brings up stories from that time period all the time. So if you were running around, you guys probably crossed each other’s paths and just didn’t know it at the time.

JAMES: Probably. I used to keep a lot of diaries, but I don’t think I have any from Miami. I don’t know what happened, but there was a period in the ’90s where I stopped. I guess maybe because I was doing columns and things like that. I was writing out my life, but I just didn’t do it personally for myself.

BLACKMON: You’ve had such a varied life. When you look back on it, what does that Miami period represent for you?

JAMES: They were a lifesaver. I think that had I stayed in New York, I probably would’ve gone down that same dark path that a lot of the Club Kids went down with heroin and things like that. So many of those kids aren’t around anymore. I needed to get out of that, and I needed to go someplace where I could just breathe and center myself. I just had to go someplace and learn to turn the next page in a way that I’ve been able to do over and over again since then. That was the first time that I was able to say, “Okay, this is fabulous, but I’m going to do something else now. I don’t need to stay doing this same thing again until it’s not there anymore.” I don’t quite know how to explain that, but I was able to turn the page and move on to another phase in my life in a way that I don’t think a lot of the club people were able to do.

BLACKMON: I forgot to ask earlier, what was the fashion like in South Beach at that time?

JAMES: Well, it’s funny because there were boutiques that were opening up on Collins and Washington. Every single day, there’d be a party for another place that opened up. I remember there was La Copia and, oh gosh, a lot of little tiny boutiques that made real fabulous club clothes and drag outfits and things. On Española, there were a couple of little designers that were just coming up. There was a lot of cheap club fashion that was out there that was really fabulous and fun, feathers and sequins and paillettes and bangles and beads. At the same time, that was when Versace had moved in, and there was a lot of Mugler and [Jean Paul] Gaultier. The high fashion people were coming in, but then you had the Muscle Queens who were just out in their little thongs and little leather outfits, too. So it was a wonderful mix of fashion in a way that maybe was not happening in early ’90s New York. It was probably more fabulous there than it was in New York at the time.

BLACKMON: It sounds like a hard place to leave.

JAMES: It was. I made so many good friends down there that I still talk to this day. It is a magical place to visit. I wouldn’t give up that period of my life for anything. When it was time to go, it was time to go off to another adventure, and I’m glad that I did.

BLACKMON: My last question, then I swear I’m done. That was such a wonderful vignette you shared of Leigh Bowery with the chiffon. I just wanted to know if you had any other really searing, long-lasting memories from Miami that you wanted to share.

JAMES: There was a place called the Deuce, which was an after-hours club that was just scandalous. Everybody ended up there, from motorcycle gangs to Club Kids to drag. It was just fabulous. There was a place called The Wall, and it was a wall on the beach where it was just like a thousand men having sex every night at 4:00 in the morning.

BLACKMON: In Miami?

JAMES: In Miami.

BLACKMON: I’ve never heard of that before, ever.

JAMES: It was scandalous. You go and it was like a Caligula orgy. It was past The Delano and The Raleigh, probably around 30th Street, maybe.

BLACKMON: Wow.

JAMES: Yeah. Then in North Miami Beach, there was a hustler bar that we would go to. It was boys walking around, boners out. You would pay one dollar, or five, and you could just do whatever you wanted with them. They just walk from patron to patron around the bar, pulling it out. It was insane. Then you could take them home for $20.

BLACKMON: AIDS hit New York like a bomb. At this point in Miami, was it not as bad?

JAMES: It is. But if you remember, in New York in the late ’80s, as it was just decimating the scene, there was a real proliferation of jerk-off clubs. “Lips above the hips, boys” were the signs everywhere. You would just go in and there was no penetration involved and no exchange of semen. That was also the time that the bear cultures really started hitting, where being a big boy was in for the first time in probably 20 years. So there was a lot of sex that was happening, because you can’t stop sexual urges. But the way that it was done was very different.

BLACKMON: But that hysteria wasn’t in Miami, it sounds like.

JAMES: No, it wasn’t. Ostensibly at The Wall, you weren’t supposed to have penetration, but there was penetration. There’s just something sexy about South Beach in a way that maybe New York isn’t.

BLACKMON: Interesting. Thank you so much, James.

JAMES: Well, thank you so much because I haven’t thought about this in years. I’d forgotten how much fun it was.