Life,
Death & Danceteria Mash-Ups
Intro:
As
well as publishing international underground e-zine Skrufff-E, Jonty Skrufff
runs independent press agency Skrufff.com, syndicating music and lifestyle
articles to websites and magazines from Brazil to Australia and Hong Kong and
the UK (he’s also our Useless man-in-London; check his Boy George interview on
page XX). He’s also recently taken up DJing, spinning hi energy
electro-disco-punk at London hot spots including Electrogogo, Golf Sale and
Drama.
20
years earlier though, Jonty lived and almost died in New York City, suffering a
horrific elevator accident at seminal 80s club Danceteria (where he worked at
the time). Crushed and literally dragged between the freight elevator’s base
and the wall of its shaft, he suffered six normally mortal injuries, receiving
the Last Rites some 40 minutes later as he waited outside a hospital operating
theatre for the anaesthetic to kick in. Miraculously, (obviously) he didn’t
die, and two decades on, he’s here to tell the tale . . .
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Danceteria, West 21st Street, NYC:
9.19, 9th September 1984.
‘I don’t want to break my legs!’
I’m hanging by my fingertips from the base of the still rising elevator,
looking down at the garbage packed floor of the shaft, some 15 feet below and
I’m thinking fast- incredibly fast. At this precise moment, time appears to be
standing still as I calculate the options between hanging on or jumping what’s
already a bone-breaking distance to the bottom. ‘The top of the shaft is 12
stories higher’, I think, making the decision pretty simple; ‘I’ve got to
jump (‘but I don’t want to break my legs!’) and I’ve got to jump now
(‘I DON’T WANT TO BREAK MY LEGS!’)
So
I jump.
Almost
immediately, my workmate Micky is peering into the floor of the open shaft, just
feet above me, drawn by my screams from moments before (or rather gurgles, my
lung’s been punctured by some of the fractured ribs). We’re both employed as
Danceteria day staff/ jack of all trade boys and we’ve been in the basement
loading ice before I’ve slipped and been caught.
“What the fuck happened?” he shouts, looking up the shaft at the still
rising elevator ‘Fucking lift’s fucking crushed me, fucking hell,’ I gasp.
“I’m fucked.”
Micky’s
worried the lift’s going to reach the top then come back down and finish the
job (like me, Micky’s English- In England, we call elevator’s ‘lifts’)
but I’m in too much pain to care and my inner voice is telling me ‘don’t
move’ (it thinks my back might be broken).
As
it is, my back isn’t broken and the elevator reaches the top then stalls, so
I’m no longer in any more immediate danger, though as I’ve already told
Micky, I’m definitely, definitively fucked.
Moments
before, I can remember being crushed between the elevator’s steel platform and
its concrete shaft wall though other bits of what happened are already blank. I
can recall being dragged into the tiny space (like a mangler) which causes my
belly’s contents to be physically forced up my throat as the elevator’s
started crushing my waist (my arms, chest and head are inside; my hips and legs
beneath). And then I’ve been literally switched off like a light-bulb, only
regaining consciousness when I’m hanging underneath the elevator’s base
moments later, after somehow slipping through the gap.
In later years, this part of the accident will pre-occupy me intensely (‘Am I
really dead? have I been reborn/Am I the same person or a different spirit?)
Logically, I can deduce that from the second degree friction burns up and down
my spine, my torso’s been gradually pulled into the tiny gap. Yet somehow my
chest, shoulders and head have ended up passing through unscathed. Guesswork
tells me that I must have been dragged up to where the ground floor fire doors
are (they’re set back six more inches) then been disengaged from the lift,
allowing my shoulders and my head to slip through (completely unmarked.)
Back
in the bottom of the shaft, I’m cursing and seriously in pain (though
surprisingly the pain is weirdly tolerable, it’s bad but not that
bad) when a stranger appears as if from nowhere, and says ‘I’ll call an
ambulance’. Smartly dressed and impressively calm, he disappears up the stairs
never to be seen again (my guardian angel?) and soon after, a mobile intensive
care team arrives and the paramedics begin immediately scissoring off all my
clothes.
As usual I’m wearing my regular daytime street gear of black combats, slashed
T shirt and seriously distressed Doc Marten boots (they’re held together with
masking tape). Nothing too extreme, though my heavy liquid eyeliner, jewellery
collection (over 100 bracelets, necklaces and chains), nail varnish and wing
mohican haircut with braids prompts the ambulance men to write me up in their
accident report as a ‘white male transvestite, aged 20.’ This will later
cause much amusement to my real drag queen friend- I might be in the habit of
wearing fishnets, leather miniskirts and full make-up by night but I’m not a
tranny by any means- I’m a dressed up punk with the attitude of ‘if I’m
gonna’ wear a little make-up why not a lot? And if I look better in it
occasionally why not wear liquid eyeliner all the time? I’m also
enthusiastically into girls, chasing the many opportunities coming my way from
being one of the few straight cross-dressing clubbers then in Manhattan
(there’s no competition).
Firing questions at me (‘what happened? what’s you’re name? where do you
live? do you have insurance?’) the ambulance guys are TV (television) style
slick and efficient, quickly, if uncomfortably, sliding a hard backed stretcher
under me, strapping me onto it then carrying me out through the club’s main
entrance. A small crowd of clubbers have gathered (Danceteria’s opened just
minutes before) and it’s as I exit the club that I first ponder death.
‘I’m dying a glamorous death, I must look fantastic,’ I
muse, observing the ring of curious faces watching me. The blood bubbling out of
my mouth is surely complimenting my makeup and presumably ivory white
complexion, I think, though as far as dying is concerned, I don’t care at all
(all I want is to stop the pain). And to this end, I’m cursing, or
alternatively, begging the ambulance men.
‘Drug me, fuck, drug me, shit, knock me out, fuck, drug me, please,” I
plead, though they either ignore me or say ‘we can’t, not until you’re at
the hospital, you’re going straight to surgery’. Otherwise they keep on
firing questions; ‘Do you take cocaine? (‘No’), Who’s your next of kin?
(‘Micci [my girlfriend], ‘What’s your address? (Ludlow Street and
Houston’) Do you have any last messages? (‘No’), are you sure you
haven’t used cocaine tonight? (‘No!’) Apparently, if I’ve done cocaine
that day, they can’t give me anaesthetic straightaway (meaning they can’t
operate immediately so I’ll die) but fortunately I’ve always viewed coke as
a yuppy drug that doesn’t really work, so I’ve (almost always) just said No.
Five minutes later we’re at St Vincents Hospital in the West Village, hurtling
through floodlit corridors on a gurney, which reminds of being on TV again,
though the pain remains real. And t hen I’m outside the operating room,
waiting to be gassed.
‘Count back from 10’, the anaesthetist says just as a white-haired nun
shuffles into view.
“Are you Catholic?” she demands.
‘No’ (I think about her religion with that razor sharp clarity of thought
again; I was raised Catholic, but at this precise moment, I her faith and her
God mean absolutely nothing to me at all).
‘No, I’m not’, I truthfully reply.
“Do you want the Last Rites?’” she continues, undeterred. Her persistence
sparks another flood of thoughts about religion which conclude with the
comforting revelation that death, at least mine, doesn’t matter- at all).
“No, I don’t want them”. The nun starts praying anyway. (‘I said, No. .
.’ ) Then I’m switched off again as the anaesthetic takes effect.
Three days later I wake up in an intensive care unit, tubed up to a life support
machine and surrounded by friends. Micci my girlfriend is there plus Laurie- my
planned secret date for the night of the accident (Micci had been out of town,
Laurie’s a gorgeous model I’ve been flirting with who years later ends up an
LA grunge star). Immediately, I understand I have to make a choice, and knowing
I don’t really knowing Laurie, grab Micci’s hand, prompting Laurie to depart
saying ‘that’s one way to get out of a date’- ouch! I learn that I’ve
survived six usually mortal internal injuries (liver, spleen, pancreas, gall
bladder, colon, severed bile duct), and I am something of a medical miracle
(additional injuries include one broken arm, three fractured ribs and loads of
second degree burns all over my back- the flesh has been literally burned off by
friction). A team of world specialist surgeons have cut and diced me for over
eight hours, taking no less than four different body parts out, though they’ve
stitched me back together, somehow, into one fully functioning piece. And pain,
I understand, is relative; I feel better.
For the next seven days I remain in intensive care, bolstered by the dazzling
kindness of friends and even strangers from the city’s nightlife world who
continually visit and raise my spirits. I’ve been playing guitar in a
garage/goth band called Latex Sex Camp, whose last gig was at Danceteria just 5
nights before the accident, so I know lots of the punks and characters in New
York clubland and lots of them (far more than I’d imagined) know me.
And every night, when the visitors and nurses have gone, I enter a strange
netherworld (presumably courtesy of the fantastic Demarol/ morphine shots
they’re giving me every four hours) in which I surf above the city, hanging
out at clubs and stealing crates of fruit juice off of the backs of lorries.
I’m on a Nil By Mouth diet regime and end up going without liquid for seven
days, so I’m bursting with thirst, both in my nocturnal dreamworld and daytime
reality. Each dawn I return to my hospital bed, where I’m joined by visitors I
regard as distinctly unwelcome guests; unknown silent waifs and strays who I
assume are recently deceased clubbers, waiting around to see if I’m going to
join them. New York nightlife at this point is plagued with death; AIDS is just
starting its horrific cull, while drug overdose fatalities and murder rates are
at historical highs.
One week on, I’m out of danger, the night ghouls have vanished and I’m
(somewhat grudgingly) having to re-engage with life and all its day to day
struggles. Spiritually, I’ve changed irrevocably, understanding death
(‘there’s nothing to fear’) and more importantly life (‘make the most of
it, while you’ve got it’). Saved by the skills of St Vincents’ truly
magical doctors and nurses, I’m also aware of being part of some bigger force
(hopefully) that’s kept me alive to fulfil some destiny. Days before the
accident, I’ve been startled by a huge black wolf dog, watching me from the
roof of a tenement building on the Lower East Side, so much so that I’ve
warned a friend at the scene; ‘that dog’s looking at you, take care’.
Years later, I learn of ancient folklore of black dog apparitions being
harbingers of doom, though in hindsight, I believe I already knew that the dog
was looking at (and coming for) me.
I’ve also been saved by my desire to rediscover the sheer wanton pleasure that
I’ve previously been indulging in, 24/7, since arriving fresh off the London
plane just four months earlier. My British accent and punk lifestyle have opened
the doors to a fantasy club world that’s come close to my definition of
paradise on Earth and I’m keen to rediscover it as soon as I can. Of course,
like The Eagles’ New Kid in Town fable, I’ve already lost paradise forever,
though some years later I’ll find a similar sense of excitement and
possibility when I dive headlong into rave culture. In fact, rave culture will
quickly inspire me to take up music journalism and eventually to set up Skrufff
in 2001.
20 years later (and three since I started Skrufff) the Skrufff team includes
like-minded souls like Barefoot Doctor (Skrufff’s in-house Taoist healer/
agony uncle) and Useless mainman Larry Tee and also helping out (and central to
the project and overall vision) are my London partners Benedetta (my best friend
and ex-wife) and her fantastic boyfriend Tom (Skrufff’s official jeweller).
Tom and Benedetta also happen to own Skrufff, our spiritual mentor and
undoubtedly the world’s prettiest Staffordshire Bull Terrier. And speaking of
dogs, I haven’t seen any otherworldly canine apparitions since 1984, though I
always keep an eye out for the next time the black dog returns.
Jonty Skrufff
http://www.skrufff.com (Subscribe to
Skrufff-E here; - we love it, Conrad & Larry)
http://www.ministryofsound.com/radio/DJShows/Skrufff-Jonty-Biography
(Click here for Jonty’s DJ mixes etc)