Then in May 2015—almost exactly a year after he got out—a video of Alig popped up on my Facebook feed. Apparently, Alig's newest project was a homemade YouTube series called The Pee-Ew Show (now called Peeew!), which he'd started in September 2014 with Ernie Garcia, an ex-club kid friend who also goes by Ernie Glam. Described as "a stinky, sit-down comedy talk show satire" on the YouTube profile page, the daily broadcast involved the duo commenting on a grab-bag of trending topics—from new Hot Chip music to Russian prank masturbation videos—with their own party stories sprinkled in. Friends from their old nightlife circles, like James St James and DJ Keoki, would sometimes pop in as special guests.The first day I came home, I had an existential moment. Part of me wanted to hide in a cabin; the other part was telling me to do what I've always wanted to do.
Andy Warhol, then the reigning king of New York's glitterati, was everything Alig and his friends aspired to be. "We were all going to become Warhol Superstars and move into The Factory," Alig told Interview in 2010. "The funny thing was that everybody had the same idea: not to dress up but to make fun of people who dressed up. We changed our names like they did, and we dressed up in outrageously crazy outfits in order to be a satire of them—only we ended up becoming what we were satirizing.""It Was a Beautiful Thing:" Danceteria and the Birth of Madonna
After the crime, Alig continued to throw parties while casually telling his friends that he and Freeze had killed Melendez. According to the Guardian, he even showed up at the Limelight with the word "Guilty" written on his face. Many people assumed he was joking, or trying to pull off another attention-getting stunt. But Alig claimed that Gatien freaked out when he told him what happened several weeks after the murder, responding, "You've just jeopardized a thousand people's jobs. The clubs will be closed down." In April, Gatien's wife handed Alig a severance paycheck. "They thought I was involved in this crime and didn't want to be associated with me," Alig said.When Michael Musto wrote about Alig and Gatien's falling out in his column for the Village Voice, he alluded to the fact that Melendez's disappearance was beginning to turn heads in the nightlife community. Melendez's brother Johnny had been desperately searching for him in clubs all over the city, offering a reward for any tips. In June, the mystery reached the cover of the Voice under the headline "A Murder in Club Land?"I had all the symptoms of a sociopath, but the symptoms associated with a sociopath are almost identical to those of a drug addict.
After eating our ice cream, we parted ways. Leaning against the subway gates as strangers swarmed around us, I asked if he'd encountered any backlash for his plans to re-enter the nightlife game, or if he would reconsider that decision if he knew it would upset Melendez's family. Alig said he hadn't spoken to Melendez's relatives because of the plea deal, but if he knew they were upset by the fact that he was doing events, "it would impact my decisions."Still, he wasn't sure what else he should be doing with his life. "I can't stop making art or thinking of these crazy projects," he explained."Everybody in this country can do whatever they want to do," Alig said with a determined jut of his chin. "I found this out because I had to, moving to New York and not knowing anyone—I had to make things work. It's the same for this show. I have this tenacious part of me that keeps doing it until it clicks." He gave me a raw look stripped of all flamboyant posturing, then disappeared into the subway. It was nearly midnight, and I realized he still hadn't called his parole officer.I can't stop making art or thinking of these crazy projects.
When Alig finally hung up, he took a seat at the kitchen table across from me and explained that he'd convinced Patrick to let him stay there for free, in addition to investing in his upcoming clothing line. "I've found people to take care of me since I moved to New York, and it's got to be a father figure thing—Rudolf [Piper, owner of Danceteria] was the first one, then Frank Roccio at the World, then Maurice Brahms at Red Zone and the [Ice] Palace, then Peter Gatien, and now Patrick." His voice dropped to a whisper as he admitted to a Freudian slip: "I call Patrick 'Peter' sometimes."You can't apologize for something like this. It would almost sound like an insult. It's not something I could say in words.
Running away from the apartment to keep doing drugs was classic junkie behavior, Alig explained: they just wanted to keep getting high and not face reality. And telling his friends about the murder wasn't bragging. "It was unloading," he said. "Everyone I told became part of the conspiracy, so that took some of the guilt away."In what seemed yet another attempt to provide an ethical justification for his behavior, Alig said that he and Riggs finally decided to get rid of the body not just to save their own skins, but to preserve the jobs of everyone working for the Club Kid empire.Going through withdrawals in solitary was crazy. It was the first time in my life that I experienced pure hopelessness—and it gave me more reason to use drugs.