OUT: “Xmortis V” at T.T. the Bear’s Place

^{Photo courtesy In Your Face Photography}

Leave it to goths to turn a birthday party into a funeral. At “Xmortis V,” the monthly fetish night’s fifth anniversary celebration, thoughts of ManRay (which closed in July 2005) are never far. My buddies and I just can’t help reminiscing about our dearly departed old stomping grounds, Xmortis’s first home. My friend Kim tells me: “This is the next generation.” One look around tells me she’s right.

The strobe-lit club is heaving with folks in leather and latex gyrating to Nitzer Ebb. On stage, the “Wednesday Addams dancers” vogue for a photographer. “It’s the female version of a circle jerk,” sagely observes my friend Alex, who proceeds to get inhumanly wasted.

Soon the music takes a turn for the throbby. “It’s putting me to sleep!” complains a girl next to me. Then DJ Mothra drops Covenant’s “Bullet,” and the floor explodes. No sleeping here.

By 1 am, DJ Chris Ewen’s on deck, and the sauna-hot club is filled to capacity. A pair of visiting NYC friends, Betsy and Jeff, arrive just in time to be the last two people admitted inside. “Everyone says goth is dead, but look at this place!” Betsy says. “There’s your article!” Unfortunately, a third friend is still stranded outside, so we duck out to wait in line with her (but not before dancing to Peter Murphy’s “Cuts You Up” first — we’ve got priorities here).

All four of us are allowed back inside just in time to hear the third-to-last song of the evening: “Alegría.” Fetish play I can handle, but watching people freak-dancing to the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack is blowing my mind.

As T.T.’s empties at 2 am, Kim relays a hot scoop: apparently, a friend of a friend spent half the night talking to Mary Lou Lord and didn’t even realize it. A wifebeater-clad man passes us, crowing, “I’m the only one wearing white!” It’s true. (At least in the immediate vicinity, it is.) Judging from this swarmed sidewalk, goth’s certainly not dead, and it’s not sleeping anytime soon, either.