Read Online Poker Face by Maureen Callahan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maureen Callahan
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courting and taking cues from the kids behind the Motherfucker and MisShapes dance parties, and the cool kids, operating as rejects from the mainstream, were suddenly the gate-keepers.
MisShapes was a weekly, Sunday-night gathering of hipsters celebrating themselves and their general level of street cred, DJ’d and overseen by suburban transplants Geordon Nicol, Leigh Lezark, and Greg Krelenstein. MisShapes was for the very young; if you were twenty-six you could easily feel like you’d aged out. Unlike the electroclash scene and Motherfucker parties, MisShapes was exclusive; it was very much about who you knew and what you looked like, and it was most definitely not open to all. It was their playlist that was the most radical thing about the parties: T hey embraced mainstream pop music, playing artists, such as Madonna, who would never be heard at a cool-kids gathering downtown unless it was done with the explicit understanding that this was mocking.
The apotheosis of this came when Madonna asked if she could DJ (for a few minutes) at a MisShapes party in October 2005. The MisShapes went on to do national print ads for Eastport backpacks, and Lezark is now a front-row presence at New York and Paris fashion weeks—such is the wide-ranging currency of downtown New York cool in the early twenty-first century. These were the people Gaga wanted to get next to, impress, study. She may not have had good taste herself, but she knew who did and was determined to get it for herself.
“She was definitely in the scene,” says Michael T., “and making those rounds.”
During this time, Gaga had two confidantes. Lady Starlight was one. Wendy Starland was the other. Both were older than she was, both were in a position to assist her professionally, but neither ever felt exploited. They wanted to help, and they liked hanging out with her. She was fun and sweet, generous and generally bubbly, but unafraid to be vulnerable and needy when it came to her anxiety over boys and her career. She did love to talk about herself to the exclusion of most everything else.
“We would go out all the time,” Starland says. “We’d go out to bars, to concerts. We went to see the Philharmonic. We spoke on the phone, like, three times a day. I’m spending Christmas with her family. She’d sleep at my house, come to me for advice on her personal affairs.” Starland says Gaga had difficulty being alone, hated it, that when she slept over she couldn’t even stay on the couch—that was too solitary. She’d crawl into bed with Starland, who says it was just for company, nothing more. “She was a night owl, but Rob had gotten her into being an early riser.” Often, Gaga would stop by Wendy’s in the morning, coffee and brown-bagged take-out breakfast in hand.
Fusari, however, didn’t fully approve of the friendship: “He didn’t like it when the two of us would go out,” says Starland. “He feared we’d get a lot of attention from boys or whatever.” Still, he’d also ask Starland for advice about his relationship with Gaga.
Whether out of perversion, revenge, or cowardice, sometimes Rob would bring Jane to meet the girls for dinner. “Tension started brewing around that time,” Starland says. “I think Jane started to suspect, and I think she started checking his phone for texts.”
Gaga would also check Fusari’s phone for texts from Jane—if he stepped out of the studio for a moment, she’d scurry over and scroll through his log, and if she found a message from Jane, she’d blow up. Then she’d eventually calm down and realize the absurdity of the situation and apologize to Fusari.
Another friend of Gaga’s from this time period is loath to talk about Fusari: “It honestly doesn’t matter what I tell you about what happened with her and Rob, [because] it’s gonna look bad,” she says. “But she didn’t do anything wrong.”
At the same time, Fusari and Starland wanted Laurent Besencon, who managed Fusari, to
MisShapes was a weekly, Sunday-night gathering of hipsters celebrating themselves and their general level of street cred, DJ’d and overseen by suburban transplants Geordon Nicol, Leigh Lezark, and Greg Krelenstein. MisShapes was for the very young; if you were twenty-six you could easily feel like you’d aged out. Unlike the electroclash scene and Motherfucker parties, MisShapes was exclusive; it was very much about who you knew and what you looked like, and it was most definitely not open to all. It was their playlist that was the most radical thing about the parties: T hey embraced mainstream pop music, playing artists, such as Madonna, who would never be heard at a cool-kids gathering downtown unless it was done with the explicit understanding that this was mocking.
The apotheosis of this came when Madonna asked if she could DJ (for a few minutes) at a MisShapes party in October 2005. The MisShapes went on to do national print ads for Eastport backpacks, and Lezark is now a front-row presence at New York and Paris fashion weeks—such is the wide-ranging currency of downtown New York cool in the early twenty-first century. These were the people Gaga wanted to get next to, impress, study. She may not have had good taste herself, but she knew who did and was determined to get it for herself.
“She was definitely in the scene,” says Michael T., “and making those rounds.”
During this time, Gaga had two confidantes. Lady Starlight was one. Wendy Starland was the other. Both were older than she was, both were in a position to assist her professionally, but neither ever felt exploited. They wanted to help, and they liked hanging out with her. She was fun and sweet, generous and generally bubbly, but unafraid to be vulnerable and needy when it came to her anxiety over boys and her career. She did love to talk about herself to the exclusion of most everything else.
“We would go out all the time,” Starland says. “We’d go out to bars, to concerts. We went to see the Philharmonic. We spoke on the phone, like, three times a day. I’m spending Christmas with her family. She’d sleep at my house, come to me for advice on her personal affairs.” Starland says Gaga had difficulty being alone, hated it, that when she slept over she couldn’t even stay on the couch—that was too solitary. She’d crawl into bed with Starland, who says it was just for company, nothing more. “She was a night owl, but Rob had gotten her into being an early riser.” Often, Gaga would stop by Wendy’s in the morning, coffee and brown-bagged take-out breakfast in hand.
Fusari, however, didn’t fully approve of the friendship: “He didn’t like it when the two of us would go out,” says Starland. “He feared we’d get a lot of attention from boys or whatever.” Still, he’d also ask Starland for advice about his relationship with Gaga.
Whether out of perversion, revenge, or cowardice, sometimes Rob would bring Jane to meet the girls for dinner. “Tension started brewing around that time,” Starland says. “I think Jane started to suspect, and I think she started checking his phone for texts.”
Gaga would also check Fusari’s phone for texts from Jane—if he stepped out of the studio for a moment, she’d scurry over and scroll through his log, and if she found a message from Jane, she’d blow up. Then she’d eventually calm down and realize the absurdity of the situation and apologize to Fusari.
Another friend of Gaga’s from this time period is loath to talk about Fusari: “It honestly doesn’t matter what I tell you about what happened with her and Rob, [because] it’s gonna look bad,” she says. “But she didn’t do anything wrong.”
At the same time, Fusari and Starland wanted Laurent Besencon, who managed Fusari, to
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