[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City.

[00:27] Meg: Where we still live and where we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines, and.

[00:33] Jessica: I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: Oh, my God. Jessica, do you think there's a fire in your neighborhood?

[00:38] Jessica: I don't know, but I'm chalking it up to authenticity. The siren. I don't know.

[00:42] Meg: We. Yes, we definitely record in New York City.

[00:47] Jessica: Wow. And it's just getting louder. Isn't that interesting? Actually, a couple of days ago, I pulled up to this building and there were three fire trucks outside. So I found out that they take carbon monoxide alarms very seriously. Mercifully, it was a false alarm.

[01:04] Meg: Thank goodness. I'm glad they do that. Happy New Year, by the way.

[01:07] Jessica: Happy New Year.

[01:09] Meg: And Happy New Year to Alfie.

[01:10] Jessica: Woof.

[01:11] Meg: Yeah.

[01:12] Jessica: Yes. Alfie. Who is making some weird honking noises, but he seems okay now.

[01:16] Meg: So guess who I heard from?

[01:18] Jessica: Oh, God. See, this is when you get a look on your face where I'm like, is probably someone terrible. But we're excited to hear it.

[01:26] Meg: No, it's wonderful.

[01:27] Jessica: Oh, okay.

[01:28] Meg: I haven't on the Instagram. I haven't been doing a lot of the engagement stories for a while. I just sort of dropped off of that a bit. But I did one for the first time in maybe months, and we got quite a bit of engagement, so that was fun. And I was asking about Splash, whether Splash holds up, if anyone had seen it lately. And Original Ben.

[01:51] Jessica: Original Ben. I love original. Hi.

[01:53] Meg: Ben wrote in, and first he said, I don't even believe in the concept of 80s movies not holding up well.

[02:02] Jessica: But then again, he was proven wrong.

[02:05] Meg: Well, I was like, tell me more. What do you mean? And then he said, well, that's not really fair, but I guess I mean it in a few ways. First of all, I don't think it's that a movie doesn't hold up, is that the person watching it changes. And what I'm going to say does not apply to you and Jessica at all. I think a lot of people say a movie doesn't hold up just because it doesn't align with current narrative styles. For example, one of my very best friends who is actually 10 years older than me, always says that movies from the past don't hold up. A specific example I. This is from his friend I rewatched on Golden Pawn. It really doesn't hold up, it's so slow. When really he's just so plugged into the current binge streaming reality tv, no attention span world that he can't tolerate what I love about those movies and what has not stopped being good. Then there are people who say things don't hold up because they are very of a specific time and place. Like, quote, I was surprised by how dated Midnight Cowboy is. It's like, well, yes, it's all about a place that was completely immersed in a very specific time. Now Ben goes on and on because he cares very much about.

[03:25] Jessica: Which you say, with love.

[03:27] Meg: Ben, do. Oh my God, I.

[03:29] Jessica: And Ben pontificates, no, it was wonderful.

[03:32] Meg: Thank you very much, Ben. But getting back to kind of the point that he was trying to make, the thing I can get on that this does not hold up train with is movies where you suddenly realize that the politics are appalling. But even those movies I appreciate sometimes love for serving as time capsules of the ideological messiness of our time. Like Fatal Attraction.

[03:58] Jessica: Well, I, you know, it's interesting. Of course, that's where I thought he was going to go with this. That it's like the value systems are, are funky or, you know, whatever. There's something that culturally and ideologically is not cricket, as they say. But again, that sort of opens the door for, oh, should this movie be canceled and no one should watch this because. And I, I go so far as to say if you look at anything in its, in its context, it holds up. The movies that, quote, don't hold up are the movies that were bad to begin with or like to your point about your favorite movie in the world, Vampires Kiss. That it's a movie you would have hated when you saw, if you saw it in the theater at the time. So I don't know. I think the thing about Splash, which.

[04:52] Meg: We have not seen again.

[04:53] Jessica: We have not seen again, but I do recall is, you know, there is the modern day fairy tale aspect of it where she is literally the little Mermaid and she's making this decision to be.

[05:09] Meg: Do you remember John Candy is in it?

[05:12] Jessica: Yes, I do.

[05:12] Meg: Eugene Levy.

[05:13] Jessica: Yes. And. And they're the evil. Eugene Levy's gonna try to dissect her and do all this stuff. The only thing that I was gonna say about that film is that she is very clearly an object through the entire movie. She's never really a character, never really a person, which is emblematic of so many movies of the time where the characters that women were playing were archetypes. They were not fully Fleshed out human beings. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. So to ask that particular movie to hold up to a current standard of, like, you know, female character development is just. That's never gonna happen.

[05:58] Meg: Yeah. I mean, we could go. We could do an entire episode on this very topic alone. I thought what was really interesting is the idea that it's not about the movie holding up, but how you've changed. I thought that was.

[06:09] Jessica: Yeah, I mean, look, the entire John Hughes oeuvre is getting it in the shins right now because we loved it so much and we still desperately want to love it. And you watch it and you're like, that's so racist. Why did I love that? And the other. You know, it's funny that we're talking about this because I was doom scrolling. I was on Instagram for like a ridiculous amount of time a couple of nights ago, effectively ruining my night's sleep. And I saw this one thing that kept coming up, but in different memes. And it was about how appalling it was that in Pretty in Pink, Andy takes that perfectly cute prom dress and makes it into the abomination that it was.

[06:53] Meg: People are completely obsessed with that.

[06:55] Jessica: But why now? Like, what has happened?

[06:57] Meg: That's so crazy. I thought it at the time I was like, that is hideous.

[07:00] Jessica: Yeah, at the time. Why are you making her wear that? Yeah, at the time I was like, that looks like an inverted cone.

[07:05] Meg: And it's so weird because Potts costumes were so great in that movie. So how did the costumer get it so wrong with the prom dress?

[07:16] Jessica: I think that what they were. Look, I'm gonna. This is like a Captain Obvious moment where it was like, how do we take something that was very Annie Potts, Right? Cause it was this 50s dress that was very. If it wasn't exact. No, it was very much like what her dad brought home for her to make the dress out of. And it was like, no, we're in the modern era. So how do you make. How do you take the 50s or the 60s got it. And make it now? But if that's what they thought now was. I'm like, and the Chicago. And the face too.

[07:49] Meg: Like, Molly Ringwald was like, I can't even get it up. I just. I just. This is horrible.

[07:53] Jessica: Yeah.

[07:54] Meg: Why is.

[07:54] Jessica: Why is someone clearly the costume designer doesn't like me and this is the result of a feud. This is. This was a payback. It's horrible.

[08:03] Meg: Oh, my God. We have to get started.

[08:04] Jessica: Okay. This is like my favorite time okay, let's get moving.

[08:20] Meg: So the episode before last, I said that my next story was going to be about a troubled young man. I don't know if you remember that. But then he ended up doing something else. Anyway, the point is this.

[08:35] Jessica: With the non spoilers serial killers that you do, the idea that like this one is about a troubled young man, they're all not. Okay.

[08:45] Meg: I just didn't want people to be disappointed. Pointed that I had forgotten my troubled young man story.

[08:49] Jessica: Oh, no, I. You. You are. Your follow up is outstanding. Troubled young man. I do stories I've done already. You already know what you're doing. It's fine.

[09:00] Meg: Okay, but engagement. Question is, and this isn't 80s, but do you remember when you heard that Michael Hutchins of In Excess died?

[09:10] Jessica: I am absolutely gobsmacked that this is what you're asking me and I will tell you why later. Oh, I remember it extremely. I remember the deaths of most pop stars. I remember. I think I've told you this. I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Michael Jackson died. So yes, I remember. I remember the Michael Hutchins murder. Not murder, excuse me, suicide story.

[09:35] Meg: Okay, and what do you remember about it?

[09:38] Jessica: Well, I mean there's so many, like what the popular response was that people lost their shit entirely.

[09:44] Meg: Well, do you remember?

[09:45] Jessica: It was an autoerotic. It was autoerotic asphyxiation.

[09:48] Meg: Have you ever heard of autoerotic asphyxiation?

[09:52] Jessica: Well, Meg, I was very. I was very sophisticated. No, no, I. I don't think. No, you know what? I did know and you know why I knew? Because one of my favorite movies. Shit, it's a Peter o' Toole movie. I think it's the Ruling Class. The opening scene is an aristocrat hanging himself by accident. Autoerotic asphyxiation. So I knew about it, but I wasn't well versed.

[10:19] Meg: Okie dokie.

[10:20] Jessica: Okay.

[10:20] Meg: All right. My sources are the New York Times and Time magazine. On Sunday, September 28, 1986, 21 year old Dennis Holland had a bad feeling. His little sister Kathleen went to CW Post on Long island, but lived at home. Sometimes Kathleen stayed over with friends on campus, but her boyfriend, Joseph Porto, said he couldn't find her. Now Dennis and his and Kathleen's father, who happened to be a Nassau county sergeant, and Joseph, who went to the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, went to the CW Post campus to look around, but there was no sign of Kathleen. Her friends said she had last been seen heading for a Date with none other than Joseph. When Joseph spoke to police on Sunday, he told them he had no idea where Kathleen was. But by Monday evening, he had a different story. Now, he said that on Saturday night, he and Kathleen were on a date. They had been going steady for nine months since the two were serious at Locust Valley High School. But their date on Saturday had not been going very well. Weil parked in his van in a secluded area.

[11:51] Jessica: It gets so bad so fast. Van, secluded area. It's the boyfriend. Okay.

[11:57] Meg: There's a reason why I'm just taking care of the ugly part at the top. Because it goes somewhere else. But yes. Okay.

[12:04] Jessica: Okay.

[12:04] Meg: It's everything. You think I'm all in. While parked in his van in a secluded stop.

[12:11] Jessica: I'm. I am with you.

[12:13] Meg: Joseph offered Kathleen a friendship ring.

[12:17] Jessica: Oh, I thought you were gonna say Quaaludes.

[12:19] Meg: Okay, now you have to stop. Sorry. You actually have to stop because we do have to get.

[12:23] Jessica: Okay.

[12:24] Meg: I'm gonna behave the darkest part of the story. So just.

[12:27] Jessica: I'm actually gonna lean back from the mic. Great. All right.

[12:30] Meg: So Joseph offers Kathleen a friendship ring. But Kathleen broke the news that she actually wanted to date other people. Then Joseph told the police that he strangled her until, quote, my hands got tired. And then.

[12:51] Jessica: That's very forthcoming.

[12:52] Meg: He used his high school graduation tassel to make sure she was dead.

[12:59] Jessica: After that, I assume that was hanging from his rearview mirror. I think that maybe I've just become jaded with all of the murders.

[13:07] Meg: Right. So now I'm telling you. Take this.

[13:09] Jessica: You're telling me shut the fuck up and then I'll tell this story?

[13:11] Meg: Yeah, let's.

[13:12] Jessica: Okay. All right.

[13:13] Meg: Yes.

[13:14] Jessica: So strangled with the tassel.

[13:16] Meg: Horrific. Way to go.

[13:17] Jessica: Clearly.

[13:18] Meg: After that, he drove to the Long Island Expressway near North Hills and dumped her body 30ft into the woods. He made a 45 minute videotaped confession reenacting the murder and led police to her body on Wednesday, after which he was charged with second degree murder. But by the time he took the witness stand in his trial two years later, he had a much different story to tell. Under the guidance of his defense lawyer, Barry Slotnick.

[13:56] Jessica: No.

[13:57] Meg: Yes.

[13:58] Jessica: Barry rides again.

[13:59] Meg: Callback to episode 171 bad defense and USS Westy. Joseph Porto claimed he had lied about murdering Kathleen. He claimed he had been too embarrassed to tell the truth, that it was actually all her idea. He said Kathleen had heard about this thing called erotic asphyxiation and had begged him to wrap a rope around her neck and nearly suffocate her so she could experience a strong orgasm. Joseph claimed that he got excited while helping her and pulled too hard. Does this sound at all familiar to you?

[14:45] Jessica: Hello, Mr. Chambers.

[14:47] Meg: Interesting, right? We're getting there. Kathleen's family was disgusted, quote, rough sex. That phrase wasn't even a part of my daughter's vocabulary, said her father. Just two months earlier, Robert Chambers had used the rough sex defense in his trial in the death of Jennifer Levin. Nassau county prosecutor Kenneth Littman called it the oops defense.

[15:14] Jessica: Wait, wait, wait. Time out, time out. What year was this happening with this particular murder?

[15:20] Meg: Well, the murder happened in 1986, but this is two years later during the trial.

[15:25] Jessica: Okay, so the Robert Chambers defense had already been public, so.

[15:31] Meg: Okay, got it, got it, got it, got it. Quote, it's become open season on women, said this. Nassau county prosecutor Kenneth Lettman. He said that at a press conference. Harvard university law professor Alan Dershowitz said. Was it Dershowitz?

[15:46] Jessica: Dershowitz.

[15:48] Meg: Okay.

[15:48] Jessica: But I love that you're, like, really trying to be like, yeah, I. I am being very respectful of. Of your background. Alan Dershowitz. Yeah.

[15:58] Meg: Okay.

[15:59] Jessica: Yes.

[15:59] Meg: Alan Dershowitz said, quote, the she asked for it defense doesn't work anymore. So now we're hearing the she demanded it.

[16:09] Jessica: Oh, my God.

[16:10] Meg: And Alan would have known, having defended Klaus von Bulow in 1982 in the death of his wife, Sunny. That is a callback to episode 35, wife in a coma. Yes, we called it that. And rabbit holes and glory holes.

[16:26] Jessica: This is Smith's reference. I think it was valid.

[16:30] Meg: We're now going to discuss autoerotic asphyxiation.

[16:33] Jessica: Okay, is this the trigger warning or when is the tr. You were saying there was going to be a trigger warning, and I'm like, there are so many.

[16:39] Meg: Which one? It was at the trigger warning was at the top. This entire story.

[16:44] Jessica: Okay, so we're going to talk about.

[16:47] Meg: Yes. Autoerotic asphyxiation.

[16:49] Jessica: Okay.

[16:50] Meg: It was having a moment. In the 80s, Hustler published an article in its August 1981 issue called Orgasm of death. The article is cautionary and describes the death of one man and the statistic that a thousand teenagers in America die of autoerotic asphyxiation every year. It also describes the sexual high and thrill people achieve. While the article outlines the method of auto asphyxiation, it also warns, quote, it is a serious and often fatal mistake to believe that asphyxia can be controlled beyond a doubt. Auto asphyxiation is one form of sex play you try only if you're anxious to wind up in cold storage with a coroner's tag on your big toe. So that was in the Hustler article. Okay. Nevertheless, a 14 year old boy in Texas, Troy Hercegg, was found by his best friend nude, hanging in a closet with a copy of the Hustler article at his feet. Now, the vast majority of deaths associated with autoerotic asphyxiation were young men. But that didn't stop Barry Slotnick from arguing to Joseph Porto's jury that Kathleen had pressured her boyfriend to participate in this ancient Hindu sex kink. Did you know it was ancient Hindu?

[18:23] Jessica: I'm so blown away right now just by the audacity of Slotnik that I. I'm. I'm remembering the episode where you spoke about him and I'm like, they should have killed him with the bat, Jessica.

[18:37] Meg: That's so bad. This is a quote from Barry Slotnick at the trial. Quote. There was heightened frenzied activity. And in the heat of passion, this terrible accident occurred. One yank, two yanks. And Kathleen Holland was dead. This was a tragedy. We have lost the life of one teenager. And I am asking you not to destroy the life of another teenager involved in this same accident. Porto did not purposefully kill Kathleen Holland. This is not a baseball game. We have a life at stake. Why did he lie? Joseph Porto was covering up the sexual asphyxia. He was ashamed of it. He was embarrassed. He couldn't tell anybody. He couldn't tell his parents. He couldn't even tell his lawyer until about a week before the trial began. So much in that.

[19:33] Jessica: Are we going to try to unpack it?

[19:35] Meg: The one thing that. Well, two things that. Three things.

[19:38] Jessica: Three things.

[19:39] Meg: Three things. Four. Four that stood out to me. One, just how he. He just tries to make it sound like the guy is in fact like playing a game. One yank, two yanks. Kathleen Holland was dead. As though that's how anybody dies of strangulation. Complete bullshit that he says we've lost the life of one teenager and now do not destroy the life of this young man. Which was.

[20:07] Jessica: Which is a theme that we listen to many times. 80s.

[20:11] Meg: My God. And the.

[20:13] Jessica: And also by the way, back to chambers and the church looking after him.

[20:19] Meg: Oh yeah. It's almost like they studied that trial in order to. It was a playbook. And that he even like gives it away by saying, yeah, we didn't even come up with this until a week ago. I wonder why.

[20:35] Jessica: Well, the other.

[20:36] Meg: I mean also the trial happened a month ago.

[20:38] Jessica: What. What immediately comes to me Is it's like, okay, one, and I'm sorry that I'm a child, but I was like, one yank, two yank. Sorry. But, but the fact that he dumped her body, it's like, dude, this is not like, oh my God, something happened. Call 91 1. This is. I don't care how shamed you are, you then take your girlfriend and dump her on the side of a highway. Is that where sexual shame takes. Takes the average person.

[21:11] Meg: And why would you be more embarrassed about having some sort of sex game than you are by murdering and dumping again? But the murder dump was his cover, apparently for the sex game.

[21:26] Jessica: And. But you know what's interesting to me is that at the time, I do think that the shame associated with most things sexual at the time was something that the kids today may not connect with in the same way like it was. I think there were many more. You know, we don't talk about thats around sex. And so even though it's a ridiculous defense, I think that for a jury it might have rung true.

[21:58] Meg: Well, I will say something similar, but with a twist that by saying that they were involved in any kind of sexual activity, she comes off the.

[22:11] Jessica: She's the.

[22:12] Meg: Yeah. So it's just by saying that they were even like making out or whatever, the victim is belittled and therefore not well.

[22:21] Jessica: And even worse than that, she. She literally. I mean, your Dershowitz is saying she asked for it, doesn't work anymore. But this is. She asked for it.

[22:30] Meg: She demanded it.

[22:32] Jessica: She. She. Yes, and that also has the implication that she's sexually more sophisticated than the boy. And so she's. She. They're doubling down on the the whore card.

[22:45] Meg: Well, guess what?

[22:46] Jessica: Guess it gets worse.

[22:47] Meg: Okay, the defense worked. Despite his confession and the fact that Kathleen's body was found fully clothed with no evidence of recent sexual activity, Joseph Porto was convicted of the lesser charge of criminally negligent homicide and was sentenced to one and a third to four years in prison. He only served two and a half years. And according to Reddit, he walks amongst us. He owns a bagel store in North Carolina. Kathleen's brother, Dennis.

[23:23] Jessica: I swear to you, I was just about to ask. Did Dennis decide it was a baseball game, get a bat and cave his head in?

[23:30] Meg: I mean, close, but better. He became a victim's advocate. He was instrumental in securing the passage of an assembly bill that birthed the victim's impact statement. Oh, wow. During the sentencing phase of trials.

[23:46] Jessica: Amazing.

[23:47] Meg: Yeah, good for him. So at least there's that. And he Died young. He had a heart attack, for God's sakes.

[23:53] Jessica: Yeah. Autoerotic asphyxiation to me is just one of those things where it's like if an orgasm isn't enough for you, I don't, I don't know what you're chasing.

[24:01] Meg: Yeah, and that's the other thing. Like girls don't tend to do that. It's a guy thing. So for some reason this jury was like, sure. Like they just bought the whole crazy ass fairy tale story.

[24:14] Jessica: There are a bunch of men I've slept with that I'd like to choke. So I think that the whole idea of autoerotic asphyxiation is not about sex, it's about death. It is, it's flirting, I think. It is. It is flirting with death. It's.

[24:30] Meg: I'm gonna, I thought it was actually like a physiological.

[24:32] Jessica: No, it is, it is. I'm saying, I'm saying as an overlay on top of that, no pun intended, that there is a death thrill that goes along with. I'm going to hang myself to see if I can get off. Oh, yeah, I'm going to look it up and I'm going to come back to you with this. But I think that that is part of the, you know, sex is danger. The danger makes it more fun.

[24:57] Meg: What do you think Barry Slotnick was doing in the burbs?

[25:03] Jessica: Why was he defending someone on Long.

[25:05] Meg: Island at this point in the game?

[25:07] Jessica: He was, he was hiding from people who were trying to hit him with bai bats with nails in them.

[25:12] Meg: He was already a very sought after lawyer.

[25:16] Jessica: So why was he doing this?

[25:19] Meg: Why did he go and take Joseph Porto's case?

[25:22] Jessica: I don't know. What is the answer?

[25:23] Meg: Well, there's a blog I found that suggested the Portos of Bayville were very well connected.

[25:36] Jessica: Do you think there was jury tampering?

[25:38] Meg: I don't think they needed to.

[25:40] Jessica: Well, when you say well connected, I think I thought you meant like mobbed up.

[25:44] Meg: Yeah, the portraiters weren't in the mob.

[25:47] Jessica: But they were mob adjacent.

[25:48] Meg: Mob adjacent. And that's how they were able to get such a high profile lawyer. And why that high profile lawyer was like, sure, I'll do you a solid.

[25:57] Jessica: I'm, I'm just taking it one step further and saying, I wonder if they were like, you know, we're gonna make sure that really nothing. We're gonna do a belt and suspenders here.

[26:09] Meg: No, sadly, I think it actually says more about mores of that time and the jury didn't need to be Bought off because they believed what Barry Slotnick said about the shooter.

[26:20] Jessica: She demanded it. Last episode, I talked about something that came up because of a conversation I had with the delightful photographer Michael Helsband.

[26:39] Meg: This is true.

[26:40] Jessica: So I had the great and good fortune to be in his studio last week and I saw some photos and one of them was of this person, who to me is one of the most fascinating people of the 80s. And so I'm going to talk about this person.

[26:56] Meg: Have I mentioned this person's name today?

[26:58] Jessica: No.

[26:58] Meg: Okay, because I was going to guess because I looked at a lot of his photographs today, you know, to post on Instagram or whatever.

[27:05] Jessica: Well, I'm gonna start by reading some descriptions. I found this online and it made me laugh so hard. These were actually in YouTube comments. This guy was saying that after he showed his female friend videos of this person. These were her comments about him.

[27:23] Meg: Okay, so this is clues, right?

[27:25] Jessica: But it's to me, this is pure comedy. So he said, this person said. When I showed a friend this guy, she said these things about him. He feels like a parody of a real person. Like an over the top vampiric villain serving as an out of place reference to some real world musician in an old Ravenloft adventure. Next. He looks like he lives in an evil lair shaped like a giant piano.

[27:54] Meg: I think I know who it is.

[27:56] Jessica: Every photo of him looks like a still from a 1940s horror movie where it eventually turns out he was a corpse all along. He looks like he has a spaceship that takes people to the dust dimension and on and on.

[28:10] Meg: Can I guess? Yes, Mick Jagger.

[28:12] Jessica: No.

[28:13] Meg: What?

[28:13] Jessica: Not even remotely. He apparently owns no outfits that don't make it look like he's about to drop a chandelier on someone and then fly above a crowd of panicked onlookers. No, it's not Mick Jagger we're talking about. The short lived but astoundingly interesting Klaus Nomi. That was my second guess.

[28:37] Meg: Not because of the description, because I saw his photographs.

[28:41] Jessica: So we're going to talk about Klaus Nomi and who he was and why he's relevant and all of that stuff. So Klaus Nomi was a fixture on the downtown scene, but America saw him for pretty much the first and only time. In 1979, David Bowie was on Saturday Night Live and he did a performance of the man who Sold the World. And he had two people and he was wearing a crazy outfit and he had two people flanking him. One, the downtown soon to be legend performer Joey Arias. Arias. Excuse me. And the other Klaus Nomi. And in fact, the outfit that David Bowie was wearing, which was a giant exaggerated shoulders, cinched waist, giant flared out hips suit with a huge clownish bow tie, was actually Klaus Nomi's usual kind of outfit. So. And Klaus Nomi looked exactly like what this person described. White makeup, white face paint, a crazy widow's peak, black hair. You know, of course, you and I have talked about this in the past, that people did not have good hair products at the time. So God knows what was making his hair stand on end. Little bow lips like a 1920s actress and crazy arched eyebrows. And Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias lift Bowie up, bring him up to the mic and he starts singing. And they sing back up. Michael, when we were talking about him, he said he was so astonishing looking and so cool. I thought Michael was already looking at the downtown scene a lot and photographing and he's like, I thought this was gonna be his big break. And it wasn't. He never had a big break. But we're going to talk a little bit about why he was so iconic and how his influence has carried through to the present day. Everything about Klaus Noemi made no sense, or in fact, I should say nothing about him made any sense. He did not fit in where he was from. He was from Germany, born in 1944, and a huge lover of opera. He was obsessed. He was never properly trained, but an opera lover and a singer and very gay. And in Germany in the 50s and 60s, there was no room for someone like Klaus Nomi to express himself in any way. And there was still. I forgot what the name of the law is, but it's. It was illegal to be gay. So Klaus Nomi was not going to stay in Germany. He lived in.

[31:40] Meg: Yes, I have a question.

[31:41] Jessica: Yes.

[31:42] Meg: I just. I realized I. What I know of Klaus Naomi is as a character and a person on the scene. But I'm not clear on what his act was.

[31:53] Jessica: What was his act? Well, I'm gonna tell you.

[31:54] Meg: Okay, cool. He sang. I'm gathering.

[31:57] Jessica: Yes, he did. I'm just gonna give you a few other little tidbits about Germany, because it will become relevant. He arrived in New York in the mid-70s from Germany. He had no industry connections, no formal opera career path, limited English, and he was an outsider looking for a place to exist. Germany offered him nothing. He couldn't and did not enter a conservatory. He didn't have formal vocal training. Opera was a hierarchical, class coded, institutionally rigid thing. It was his big love. He would never fit in and he would Never have access. He was queer, he was eccentric, he was not elite. He couldn't do any of the things that he wanted to do, which was to perform, to be seen and to sing. He sang in countertenor, operatic countertenor. And he was always deadpan, dead faced. Now, so what was he? He was in the best way. That is emblematic of everything we've talked about regarding the downtown scene in New York at the time. He was everything all at once. He was performance art. He was the original. Performance art really began in the way that it could be commercialized. With Klaus Nomi. He looked insane, but fabulous. He drew from the 20s and the 30s and clowning, which we all know. Unfortunately, David Bowie was very into and mime not his greatest moments. And he understood the power of video. He did a lot of videos of himself singing, doing whatever. He was a fixture at the Mud Club. He made himself seen and on the scene and so people started gravitating towards him. And that was eventually how David Bowie came across him and of course, eventually stole from him, because that's what he does so very well or did. Sorry, David. That performance that he did on Saturday Night Live, which should have been, you know, a launch pad, it wasn't because it was so weird. It. It was. It defied explanation. And because it was David Bowie, he got away with it. But no one would know how to classify him, what to do with him. It was just a one off that happened and there was no way to make it into something commercial with Bowie. And we also know that at the time, Bowie had just been in Berlin. He was finished with that period of his life. He was taking everything that he could and Klaus Nomi was useful and then moved on. But what Klaus Noemi did, he created the whole scene of performance art downtown. He was doing it at cbgb, at the Mud Club, with other East Village performance artists. He was hanging out with Karen Findlay before she was Karen Finley. He was hanging out with New Wave and no wave musicians and borrowing from them to turn his love of opera into something that might be more palatable to avant garde listening audiences. He didn't sell a lot of records. He wasn't important because he was commercial.

[35:27] Meg: I was, yeah, I'm interested in hearing some recordings you have to see.

[35:32] Jessica: I'm going to send them to you. Remember, we're gonna do a throwback now to an early episode where I talked about the true fairy of rock.

[35:43] Meg: Rock's true fairy.

[35:45] Jessica: Rock's true. God bless you for your memory, Joe Briath.

[35:49] Meg: Yeah.

[35:49] Jessica: Joe Briath was as random and one off and indefinable as Klaus Nomi. They were just coming at it from slightly different avenues, but they were both people who David Bowie borrowed from.

[36:05] Meg: Interesting. Yeah.

[36:06] Jessica: And Joe Bryeth did a lot of the crazy costuming and mime and dance and all of that that Bowie stole from, you know. What? Well, I don't know. Remember in the 70s, like Marcel Marceau and fucking Shields and Yarnell. Throwback Shields and Yarnell, like they. Like. I don't.

[36:28] Meg: No, it had a moment, I would say probably early 80s, late 70s. Early 80s, yes.

[36:35] Jessica: Anyway. But the core of Klaus Nomi was that he wanted to be seen because he wanted to sing opera and he wanted to do it in this sort of outsider art way because he knew that he could never do it on the stage. He worked at the New York City Opera, he was an usher and he worked backstage and he learned and experimented from what he saw when he worked there. But he was perfect for the time because New York, no wave, new wave and experimental art downtown was mixing music, fashion, drag and performance art, which was exactly who he was.

[37:15] Meg: He was also just to say what you talked about last week as far as the kitchen was concerned, and hip hop for that matter, doing the same kind of thing, like having all these different.

[37:27] Jessica: Interdisciplinary.

[37:28] Meg: Yeah, interdisciplinary.

[37:29] Jessica: Using an academic term makes it feel so cheap.

[37:32] Meg: But yeah, it was to create an entire culture.

[37:35] Jessica: Yeah.

[37:36] Meg: And.

[37:36] Jessica: And I. And we've talked so many times about, you know, I keep on putting this in verbal quotes, the downtown scene. Why was it so fascinating at the time? We have, We've already covered. Nobody had any money. Everyone was living together in these shitty squats and they were borrowing from each other and there were no rules. There wasn't anything that they had to adhere to. And they at first were not trying to get record deals, they were out there just playing. And a lot of them came from art school or, you know, other artistic disciplines and then found themselves in music. And Klaus Nomi, he did an interview on a TV show in Belgium, and I'm going to read little bits of what he had to say about himself at the end. But he was androgynous. He. He. He quite naturally didn't fit in any place. And the. The New York City of that time in the East Village was the, you know, the island of misfit toys. So it was a safe place to experiment.

[38:45] Meg: Did he always wear that same distinctive makeup?

[38:48] Jessica: Very close to it. It wasn't the white pancake makeup all the time, but he never Fully jettisoned the look. I'm gonna send you the links to all of these things that I found on YouTube. But in this interview in Belgium, he's wearing a trench coat that's very exaggerated and he still has the cupid's bow lips makeup. He's not over the top. He's very sweet and kind of demure and just in drag. Just happens to be. Is like, is it drag? Is it not his iconic look. And again, this is what I saw in Michael's studio. I was like, oh, my God, I love this guy. It was a really angular tuxedo and everything about him was angles and geometric shapes which added to his not quite human look. Now here's the big joke of all time. So I was watching him singing, doing one of his videos on YouTube. And I've known this per. Who this person is for quite some time, but I was just like, oh, it's Klaus Nomi. Okay, I know I. You know, whatever. And I'm listening to the song and I realize his last name is Know me. And I was like, okay. Like, you know those things online where you're like, I was today years old when I figured out that I was like, I'm so embarrassed. And all of my cool cred just went directly down the toilet. So his self awareness was amazing and only highlighted how crafted he was. You're giving me a funny look.

[40:30] Meg: No, no, I'm just imagining. With the German accent.

[40:33] Jessica: With a German accent. Everything was.

[40:35] Meg: Which I can imagine people would think was a character.

[40:37] Jessica: It sounds like Chairman. Like it was like this. Everything was, I am Klaus, Naumi, Naomi.

[40:44] Meg: But it sounds like a character, but it was genuine.

[40:47] Jessica: Yes. It was really an outgrowth of who he was. And leaving Germany was what gave him the opportunity to do this reinvention. So the point of what I've been saying so far is really, this is a guy who embodied what all of the things we've been talking about regarding downtown was. He was an outsider, literally. He was an outsider artistically. He was an outsider creating art that was never gonna be truly commercial. He was an outsider because he made himself look like, whatever that woman said, like a vampire with a chandelier that's gonna come and get you. He. He learned English basically when he got here.

[41:27] Meg: Whoa.

[41:28] Jessica: So everything about him and he got.

[41:30] Meg: Here in the 70s, is that mid-70s. So he was already in his 30s.

[41:34] Jessica: Yeah.

[41:34] Meg: Wow.

[41:35] Jessica: So he's. He is this amazing mixture of completely self created person, self created character and. And figured out how to use what was happening at the Time, punk, pop, new wave, no wave. To find a home for what he really, really wanted to do, which was sing opera. And I can't wait for you to hear because it's astonishing. Like, it's just. It's so cool and so batshit crazy. The story does not have a great.

[42:10] Meg: Ending, I think I know.

[42:13] Jessica: So as we know, it was in 1981 that the CDC first reports an opportunistic disease amongst gay men. He did the interview looking great in Belgium in 1982, and he died in August of 1983. He was the first person on that scene to die of the recently named aids.

[42:41] Meg: And I'm sorry, did you say where he died? Was he in New York?

[42:44] Jessica: In New York. Very tragic because cut short, but in a way, kind of, you know, if you have to write the movie of this, kind of amazing that he encapsulated everything he was seen. He probably went as far as he could with what he was doing and then, you know, flamed out, which is horrific. But while it's a terrible story, it's also kind of the perfect story. Here's some things that I was really affected by that he said in his interview. And I, of course, am now going to do it in ze accent.

[43:19] Meg: Oh, I'm so happy.

[43:20] Jessica: So I'm originally from South Germany, but I live most of the time in Berlin. I started as a tenor, as a lyrical tenor, but it was not enough for me. I can't keep it up. I was like, I'm going like. I'm kind of going like Dr. Ruth for this. I needed to get out of the limits. And I had a fascination with rock and roll that was coming from Britain and from America. I originally listened to classical music, but a friend of mine turned me on to rock and roll. And that was why I wanted to go to New York. So what a perfect place to be. He worked at a patisserie, and he said, of course I worked at a patisserie. Everyone wanted to work at a patisserie. That was the only place to be. He said. It was just the way I dressed up. That's who I was. It wasn't as extreme as what I do in my show and in New York when everybody got dressed up, and in London it was the Sex Pistols and punk and everyone started dressing up and putting on makeup and so forth. And that's why. And when I created the image that I have now, I would spend most of my time drawing costume designs. And it finally occurred to me I could wear them. I eventually released Music first in the United States, then in Europe, and he did shows in America, in New York. And this is my favorite also. Keep this in mind in the Midwest. Hmm. Now, can you imagine what they thought of him in the Midwest?

[44:47] Meg: I think that there's small underground clubs all over the country. And I have a feeling he wasn't like, you know, main stage Midwest. Am I wrong?

[44:58] Jessica: No, probably right. But you know what it makes me think of is, did you know that before his major plays were produced that Oscar Wilde did a tour of the American West?

[45:10] Meg: I did know that.

[45:11] Jessica: And that cowboys loved him.

[45:13] Meg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[45:14] Jessica: So I.

[45:14] Meg: He's already famous then, but for different.

[45:17] Jessica: Things, like for his aesthetic essays and all of that. So I just love the idea of like Klaus Nomi as a latter day Oscar Wilde being like, it's fabulous. Come see this. It's good. Yeah, yeah. He said his connection to David Bowie was in theatrics. He's an antithetical artist as well. It inspired me and I inspired him. Now, great, lovely, fun story. Now I read all of this and I was like, this sounds like something that I'm very familiar with. This sounds like a story, his story. Young guy from Germany, he was in West Berlin. He left Germany. There was nothing for him there. He was gay, he came to the United States. He was inspired by punk, he was inspired by pop. Does this sound familiar to you? In the 90s, John Cameron Mitchell was interviewed about who his inspirations were for Hedwig from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. And while David Bowie's story in many ways was used quite literally, Klaus Noemi was named as one of the other main influences for the backbone of Hedwig's character.

[46:32] Meg: Very cool.

[46:33] Jessica: So if you are a fan of Hedwig und se Angry Inch, you have Klaus Noemi to thank. So I encourage everyone to check him out on YouTube. It's a mind bender. And he looks amazing. And I just wish that everyone downtown could go back to being like, fuck it, I'll try anything. I don't need a record label. Or maybe they are like that. I don't know. What are the kids doing today?

[46:58] Meg: I think there's an element of that happening. Absolutely.

[47:01] Jessica: Well, you would know more than I would as a performer.

[47:04] Meg: You know what? I will absolutely post a lot of the links that you send me. We'll do like a whole week of blasting. Klaus von Neumi, Klaus Gnomi. Oh, shit. Why did I do that?

[47:15] Jessica: Well, because you're thinking Klaus von Bulow. Because we were talking about Dershowitz Are the Germans involved in the stories today?

[47:34] Meg: Was that the tie in. Is that our tie in German? No, we can do better.

[47:41] Jessica: Well, I. I like the idea that we in both segments had the. What is the meaning?

[47:47] Meg: Accent.

[47:47] Jessica: A bad German accent. What is the pronunciation? I think that it's kind of tough to. To bring someone as delightful as Klaus Nomi to such a horror story. Auto erotic, maybe. Whether or not we even. It even happened. We don't even know the autoerotic.

[48:14] Meg: Obviously it didn't. Jessica.

[48:16] Jessica: Well, I'm. Look, I'm just. I think this one has me stumped. Like, they're not even in the same location.

[48:22] Meg: Exactly. And the vibe is so different. Yeah, I think we have to stick with German. Bad German accent.

[48:30] Jessica: Okay. Dershowitz und Klaus. It's a bad tie in, but it's the best we had.

[48:35] Meg: Yeah, we're getting kind of sloppy on our tie ins. Well, wait. Remember what we were gonna do?

[48:39] Jessica: Oh, no. What?

[48:41] Meg: Ugh. We were gonna ask people for a tie in. Oh, we can't come up with one. We ask them to.

[48:48] Jessica: How marvelously lazy of us. Let others do the work for us.

[48:53] Meg: There you go.

[48:54] Jessica: Please.

[48:55] Meg: All right, so I will definitely post that on the Instagram. Please write in and tell us the tie in. That is eluding us. That is an ask. But I also kind of had another ask. I would love for us to push past 85 reviews. 85 reviews.

[49:10] Jessica: If we could get to 90 is.

[49:12] Meg: Great, by the way. I'm super happy for them. And we're five stars.

[49:15] Jessica: If we can set a short term goal of 90. 90.

[49:19] Meg: And you know what you could do if you do review us? Also send us a little message on Instagram. And I will. I mean, not that I'm trying to buy you off or anything.

[49:27] Jessica: Oh, I'm happy to say that we're gonna buy.

[49:28] Meg: We have merch, people. Like, I can send you a hat.

[49:31] Jessica: You'll get mystery merch. I don't even have the hat.

[49:34] Meg: Is that true?

[49:35] Jessica: Yes. So have more merch than I do.