Photographs by Michael Alexander

Some people wait for the annual excuse of Halloween to dress up in wild makeup and costumes. Not so the glorious freaks that came out for the second-ever reincarnation—not “reunion,” as we had originally termed it (see below)!—of the legendary ’90s soiree Click + Drag at Santos Party House this weekend. Of course, TONY was there; and Michael Alexander’s fantastical photos of the grandeur and debauchery, above, capture some of the polysexual perversity on copious display.

Click + Drag began in 1995 as a tentacle of the exuberantly creative weekly party Jackie 60 (which later morphed into Mother); and its unique cyber-goth-fetish-queer aesthetic soon earned a loyal following of its own. For those of us who remember it then, this weekend’s bash was a Mother lode of trips down memory alley: Presiding over the decadence, once again, were Click + Drag demiurges Rob Roth and Chi Chi Valenti; Valenti’s husband, Johnny Dynell, was deejaying for much of the night; the forbidding Hattie Hathaway welcomed visitors at the door.

But this was no mere trippy nostalgia trip. There were many new faces and new artists as well—including Our Lady J, who performed a musical floor show backed by a yellow-robed choir. “Method go-go” dancers gyrated onstage as downtown luminaries—Justin Bond, Lady Rizo, Jeff Whitty (in a Rejuvenique Electric Facial Mask)—prowled the floor; the statuesque Sequinette presided over the downstairs bar in a tableau vivant that suggested a portrait of some lost saint of glamour. And the astounding variety of the guests—walking, dancing art displays—gave the night a continuous jolt of vitality and originality. The theme may have been “The Second Coming,” inspired by Yeats’s foreboding poem, but the mood was far from dark. There was a feeling of wild community in the air, sharing a common love of the extreme. It was hard, in attendance, not to be happily dragged along by the forceful extravagance of one of New York’s most thrillingly creative cliques.