You’re not in Kansas anymore! (Part Two)

[cpnews]

Thursday we posted part one of Steve's conversation with Hayne Suthon. They discussed her transition from laywer to restaurant owner, as well as her connection to the girls in the “House of Suthonâ€. If you missed day one, read it now. Otherwise keep on reading for day two.

It is often pointed out by some of the most unlikeliest of patrons that one of the things they miss most about the good old days is the drag queens dancing on the bars. There was a time when having go go dancers, which included drag queens, was required at a great club. Alas, nowadays this is rare or at least relegated to the “gay†clubs. With a few notable exceptions the straight clubs got straighter and the gay clubs actually got gayer. Pacha’s Rob Fernandez pointed out here that it’s easier in today’s market to get straight people to a gay party than visa versa. Lucky Cheng’s has become one of the few places that a working girl who doesn’t want to be a working girl, can work. A grand move to Times Square firmly in the works will ensure a place to strut for these talented folk.

I’m spending a great deal of my day lately talking to owner friends who are preparing for the worst. One owner of a slew of joints that appeal to the broker/bottle sect says they’re coming out more than ever, but they are spending way less. He’s watching his bar averages fall much like the Dow Jones and is considering drastic measures like charging at the door. A high end club operator doesn’t think he will be affected much except around Christmas, which figures to be a disaster. Another tells me he’s begun slashing in an attempt to just survive. Many clubs depend on Christmas season revenues to carry them through the cold and bleak months of January, February and even March, which sometimes comes in like a lion and stays that way. A new trend is firms ganging up on Christmas events, sharing common charges like room rentals. Party planners from multiple firms can rent a nice room and slit the costs, and the mixing of staffs might actually make these usually boring parties fun. Open bars at these fete’s will be cut by an hour or more, and the food will become gone or at least a little less filling. Look for lots of crudités and at best, light buffets. After all, we’re all trying to slim down anyway.

Steve Lewis: Now a lot of people have been sending me mail, I get a lot of calls and people on the street stopping me about visiting Michael Alig in jail. Now I’m not a big fan of Michael because he’s a murderer; not because he murdered somebody because I’ll forgive him for that, but because I don’t think he woke up that morning wanting to kill somebody. I think he was drugged out of his mind and did something or was involved in something and he didn’t do the right thing, he didn’t call the police or an ambulance, he didn’t do the right thing. Instead he decided to cover it up, get rid of the body, and chop it up and all of those horrible things. My beef with Michael, and I’m going to confront him with this Saturday, is that he hasn’t as far as I know, shown remorse. He hasn’t said jeeze, I’m really really sorry, or sent letters to Angel’s family. You and I know Michael from a time when he was a good guy and I remember him being the sweetest guy in the whole world, and he was my partner at times. That’s the Michael that I’d like to remember, and I hope that he remembers when he gets out. Now can you tell me any stories about him and your relationship with him?

Hayne Suthon: Well, first of all, I would like to say that I personally think that Michael is a truly good person and I have watched people turn from a really good person into an absolute monster from drugs, and it’s one hundred percent the drugs. It’s not even some kind of character flaw that’s underlying. Secondly, he has shown remorse to me and I think that Michael is just one of those people that lives in such a fantasy world. He’s really sort of an escapist and an existentialist, and I also think that the drugs are a part of that because I think that he got self conscious of something that became very painful. Maybe it was the fact that he was a reject in high school, whatever it was, and he really went in this wrong direction and now he’s in jail. I honestly think that he’s just not there to make that step and I think that it troubles him. I think there’s absolute remorse, but I don’t think that his failure to write the family a letter is really a true reflection of him not having remorse. I think that it’s something he just can’t get to, if that makes sense.

SL: Well I think he has to get to it.

HS: I agree.

SL: Before he can get out, he has to get to it. In order for him to be walking the streets again and becoming a part of society, he has to get to it, and that’s basically what I want to deal with. I don’t know how he’ll deal with it, but I do know that when I’m going up on Sunday I’m gonna be very nervous. It’s hard to make me nervous as I’ve been through a lot and I’m pretty calm in the face of things. I don’t get stage fright, I don’t worry… nothing stops the heart although I think it will be though seeing for the first time in fifteen years.

HS: I’ve been to see him a couple times and we had a few conversations. We did communicate very regularly, but it’s just that with the internet, I don’t write letters anymore. I mean I love to write, I think that I’ll write a book one day once I’m done with all this stuff.

SL: You have to write a book about transvestites and…

HS: About everything. My life and my point of view. I’ll write that book, but I have to like be in Cape Cod and everything has to be settled here and my daughter has to be in college.

SL: I’m writing two books right now. I shouldn’t say I’m writing, I’m preparing to write two books right now, which is really strange. I’ve always said no to it, but now I have been convinced to do it. I’m writing a fictional book and a non-fiction book. I’ll be writing them at the same time so I’ll see if I can get it straight.

HS: I mean there’s so much I could write about my life and my restaurant, my fourteen year old daughter…

SL: Let’s talk about this: How crazy were you?

HS: Even as kid I was crazy. I remember I stole a car from my parent’s country club once.

SL: But so how can you balance the craziness and become a lawyer and all that?

HS: Because I was always a good student. I mean when I was in high school I was crazy and wild and did everything I could so that was bad, and I skipped my senior year. But I was always able to balance academics with craziness. With regard to Michael for example, he started getting really crazy into drugs when I was pregnant which was 1993, and so that’s when I lost track of him and that’s when he really went off the deep end. So my memories of Michael were that of him as the perfect gentleman, and I know I’m kind of transgressing here but…

SL: Well that’s true, prior to drugs he was an angel; he was a great guy.

HS: And that’s how I remember him.

SL: I like to remember him that way. Unfortunately, when he started with drugs it was like Darth Vador, it was like Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vador. It was as simple as that, it’s the easiest way to look at it.

HS: My ex-husband, who probably doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, doesn’t have a temper, is always sweet; he had a horrible drug problem. He’s completely sober now, but he had me arrested while I was going through breast cancer, going through chemotherapy; he was an absolute monster. My sister for example, will never forgive him because she cannot let go of what that person has done regardless of what they were and what they have become. In her mind, when somebody does something like that, she can’t get past the fact that it might have been the drugs. She’ll think the drugs are fifty percent and that there’s some fifty percent inherent character flaw, but because of what I’ve seen with my ex-husband, I know that drugs were one hundred percent of the problem, which is frightening.

SL: Now you have all these crazy people walking around your place, incredible personalities, who mainly have not been able to live in a straighter world, or a corporate world, or a world where you get up and go to work at 9 o’clock in the morning. This is the world I live in, the world you live in; some really bright people live in this world. How do you draw the line with the business? How are you able to say, okay, you guys can’t step over this line? How do you discipline, how do you set rules up with people who don’t live by the rules?

HS: They just have to live by the rules because the restaurant has to function. We may turn a blind eye to some things because we have waitress who have been working with me for fifteen years. She’s dressed herself to the nines, she’s individually entertaining every single person at her station, and getting the drink orders, and getting the food orders. So if they drink a little bit but they can get their closeouts done, then that’s fine. We have one woman that’s always drunk; she’s so smart and so funny and she always has the perfect clothes on. Her name is Gretchen and from time to time she’ll turn to me and say, “Don’t even tell me anything, I’ll fire myself, I’ll fire myself.’

SL: So she fires herself.

HS: I mean probably one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen is when the girls closeout their checks at the end of the night. It is wet your pants funny. It should really be on some sort of reality show.

SL: Let’s talk about that. You’ve just been cast for a reality show. What’s the name of it?

HS: NYC Cougars.

SL: NYC Cougars, and you’re a cougar…

HS: Yea, I guess. I mean I don’t mind dating my own age, but I was with my ex husband for about eight years, he was twelve years younger then me. My boyfriend now is ten years younger then me. Since I was about twenty-four years old I’ve been dating younger guys. I went from way older with like lots of money, to lots of fun, no money and way younger.

SL: Funny thing about me, when I was seventeen years old, I was dating forty year old woman. I was with thirty-five to forty-five year old women, and you can tell I was thirty yrs old. And then I met an eighteen year old, and now for the rest of my life I’ve been dating absolutely way younger.

HS: I have an interesting point on this as well. It’s kind of like the gay thing. How it’s a fact that they always manage to get the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ that matches? You know what I mean? And like, how do they always have these relationships? Well, I have these two gay friends who are both tops, and they say it’s a real issue. Ya understand, they usually get someone who somehow matches. With regards to this, I was thinking about this last night, I went out to dinner with some friends from New Orleans, and they invited an attorney in New York to dinner. We started talking and I said to the attorney, ‘Where did you go to law school?’ She said, ‘Tulane.’ I said, ‘What year?’ and she said ’84, meanwhile I graduated in ’83. So we were in law school together. And I said, ‘You know, I think it’s this whole deal with regard to older women, it’s no longer so taboo and so weird. Back in ’83, that was when there was a control parody in the professional world, such as lawyers, doctors, accountants, producers. And so there was this parody between men and women within their professional life. And now, younger men think nothing today of women my age, which maybe even ten years ago, it was an issue.

SL: No, I agree. Have you thought about opening up a place called Cougars.

HS: Well we’re having a party on Tuesday.

SL: That’s right. So, you’re doing a party called Cougars…

HS: Cougars, Cubs and Drag queens, Oh My.

SL: And Tyler is your GM. Tyler I remember is the club kid name of Bella Bolski.

HS: Exactly.

SL: And Bella had a little joint down on Norfolk for a couple of years now. And now he’s working for you, and he again has straightened out his act.

HS: He probably had one of the worst drug addictions I have ever seen with anybody, with many issues that go back to his childhood. What he’s done, in terms of getting sober and maintaining sobriety is amazing. And not just maintaining sobriety, but every single day I see him making progress not only with whatever drug addiction he might have, but also in growing as a person. He’s been addressing really painful issues that he had in high school. I gave him the job because I cared about him as a friend. I said, ‘You know, God knows what he’s going to do to you. He might go crazy, he might backstab me again, and I just gave it a leap of faith. It sort of turned into this spiritual healing. He’s so grateful for me, and I’m so grateful for him. He’s done so much more then any GM’s ever done for me.

SL: Well, he’s worked for me many times, and he got fired many times. He’s always been somebody I’ve always cared for, and always done favors for, and always someone I consider to be family. Where is this party Cougars?

HS: It’s going to be at Wai Kiki Wally’s.

SL: That’s the side entrance to Lucky Cheng's on 2nd Street between 1st and A.

HS: And then it’s going to be on the roof deck, which is sort of legendary for its’ barbecues, and that’s going to be from 7-10pm, and then after that were going to go to Lucky Cheng’s and do karaoke with the cubs.

SL: A cub is somebody younger that dates a cougar?

HS: Yes.

SL: So what’s the TV show going to be like?

HS: I don’t know. It’s more documentary style. They’ve chosen five people. We’re at four, and they’ll choose one more person.

SL: Any other women I know besides you?

HS: Probably not. I think the Post is going to do a feature on the party. They did one feature on it already, which was a few weeks ago. This one is to announce the fact that I’m on the show, and it’s going to explain a little more about the premise of the show and such. We had a staff meeting with all the directors rushing out to meet my new date, with my ex-husband, who just got hired as the director.

SL: Oh my God, so wait a second. Out of this, are you going to get yourself a young boyfriend, and live happily ever after? Is this what’s going to happen here?

HS: There’s nothing wrong with an old rich guy, to tell you the truth, as long as I have some young ones on the side.

SL: Ha, that’s amazing. That’s a good philosophy, this should be a t-shirt… As long as I have some young ones on the side.

Good Night,

Mr. Lewis

Interview conducted and written by Steve Lewis.

Interview has been edited and condensed by Jessica Tocko.

More...