Four months had passed—since the last Alegria.  Withdrawal had been a bitch, but now, at last, Halloween weekend had arrived, bringing with it the first ever Saturday night Alegria.  SOLD OUT said Friday’s email blast from Ric Sena—ALEGRIA HALLOWEEN 4: SOLD OUT.  Ever since Friday, the boyz had been arriving in New York.  The Alegria host hotel was fully booked.  All day Saturday, tm’s flew back and forth: boyz searching for tix—but more importantly: what to wear.  On Sixth Avenue and 16th, at the original home of David Barton Gym, Ricky’s Halloween was doing bang-up biz.  The line for checkout ran the length of the store’s center aisle.  Alter egos in profusion: a nearly endless parade of sluts, hos, pimps and hustlers. 

And then the next big question: when to arrive?  Should we arrive with the masses, between the hours of midnight and two, when the line stretched down the block—or wait until three or four, knowing that even at that late hour there’d still be a full twelve hours of party.  Unable to delay gratification, powerless over our addiction, we opted for the former—and arrived at one-thirty in the thick of cowboys, Indians, gladiators, ghouls and courtiers. 

The adrenaline rush was palpable in the crush of arrivals.  Everyone was feeling it: the anticipation, the long wait about to be rewarded, the preparation for lift-off, four months of foreplay about to climax.  We headed up the first stairwell to the sounds of Depeche Mode’s “Precious.” “Things get damaged, things get broken…”  Woe is the current state of the world—and yet here were the mass of us coming together to make it right, if only for the night.  The Alegria family, a gathering of Alegria tribe members, the faithful—ready to play all night and day in the House that Ric and Abel Built at 530 West 28th Street. 

Their house, our house—  We parked ourselves along the catwalk as the costume parade commenced.  We stood, cameras in hand, at the foot of the staircase that leads down to that long entrance hall facing what was once the Reed Room—and now was packed with the overflow from the Main Room.  The grand entrances—like guests arriving at a Venetian masquerade ball at some Grand Canal palazzo.  Everyone smiling for the camera, giving good face, serving it up.  Boyz from all over, waiting for their Alegria—and now it was happening.  Boyz speaking Portuguese, and probably half the entire membership of the South Beach Equinox, instructors included.  And as the boyz mugged and hugged and kissed their way along the catwalk, Abel werked in Madonna cooing, “Just one kiss on my lips...”  And there came Joe Caro in military mufti—with bff Chris bejeweled in a splattering of Swarovski crystals that flickered over his face.  And Michael Stanley, and then Ric Sena himself, hurrying down the catwalk, wearing a shirt that said simply STAFF.  Something right about that: an implied camaraderie and a gesture of support for his crackerjack team of players who put together this extravaganza we know as Alegria.  The deejays, the bartenders, the tech people, the light crew, security, and maintenance—all working together as one well-oiled machine.  Smooth, very smooth—a testament to a promoter who cares about his guests. 

The boyz poured in, kept on pouring in. From the Main Room, Abel slipped on “Free,” (“You’ve got to live your life…), sampled with “I Just Can’t Get Enough,”—and then Cher’s “A Different Kind of Love Song,” followed by “(It’s Gonna) Be Alright.”  This was palliative music, music for the inner soul: lyrics and beats designed to highlight what was good.  And so into the maelstrom, we ventured—into the spider’s web of connections, all of us bound together for the night. 

Immense spiders and bats dominated the Main Room.  Dozens of spiders with red egg sacs and bats with glowing red eyes.  A spider perched upon the Alegria globe.  And at the room’s far end stood a Victorian house with porch: the Bates house from Psycho, or the home of Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird.  All around us, gongs sounded as a basso profundo voice warned of the night ahead.  Green lasers and white flashes—and nefarious bartenders in blood-spattered and starched white tuxedo bibs.  Suddenly, there was the feeling that everyone was prey.  An African beast roared as he passed behind us; a ringmaster cracked his whip.

The house was packed.  The floor was a pulsing sea of glistening skin.  The grand staircase was nearly impassable—boyz dancing on every step.  Upstairs, we ran into more friends, nearly all of who wore a look of barely-contained jubilation.  There was Hilton, and Kevin, Adam and Glenn, and David Morgan, Michael and Olivier, and Karen and Michelle.  Everywhere in the house, Alegria friends were reconnecting. The joy of touch, and of seeing again those with whom you’d had such a good time—at the last Alegria.

And over in the booth, the masterful Abel presided over it all with his delicious chugging beat.  He mixed in pieces of “My Imagination” with “Revolution,” both of them seminal Alegria anthems—because not unlike the way RENT-heads can see that Broadway musical over and over, or how a fan catches every Madonna tour, to hear Abel at Alegria is to hear him anew, playing out a musical journey which is the same as the last Alegria only insofar as there’s always an end.  The man is inspired by his audience—by the legions of boyz who know how to hook onto his beats with every pelvic thrust. 

And then there was a production number—as if the beautiful crowd wasn’t diversion enough.  In front of Boo Radley’s house, four or six progeny of Frankenstein and Batboy danced menacingly along the porch overlooking the floor.  With their lacquered pompadours and their batwings cutting through the air as they danced to “Beatzz,” they could have been guests for the bash at the home of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.  And later, there was Amuka, singing her string of hits.

Meanwhile, the house got darker.  Abel brought in Kult of Krameria’s “100%”.  The lights stayed indigo—with flashes of red—and above us, there was the almost-screech of thundering bass.  “Make It Last” melted into “I Need Somebody,” and “Playing with My Mind,” and later, the soulful and so deliciously chunky, “Looking For Men.”  No one left the floor. 

Then it was time for the six o’clock jump.  In the Pink Elephant Room, Eddie Elias controlled a smaller club of his own with Taylor Dayne’s “I’m Not Featuring You.”  We met a Rumanian from Transylvania.  And there was a Transformer in front of us, with an entire bag of special effects: a phosphorescent skull, light sabers, and strings of colored lights. 

On through the morning in the Main Room, Abel played his contagious propulsive beat, the energy never flagging, and the floor remaining a mass of happy, sweat-slick boyz.  Lest anyone forget, Abel made his mark in South Beach—and the man knows endurance.  There’s an apocryphal story about Abel deejaying a cruise—with Joe Caro amongst the revelers—and one late morning, out on the seas, long after all the other party boyz have gone home to play in their staterooms, Joe Caro remains the lone partier—and Abel keeps plating song after song, unwilling to call it quits, not until Joe Caro admits defeat and leaves the floor first. 

Hats off to Abel—the man who keeps on keeping on, making his boyz hungry for the next Alegria—and while we’re at it, hats off to Ric Sena, for making Alegria the benchmark against which all other parties will long be measured.

In years to come, those YouTube and MySpace clips from past Alegria events will be scrutinized with as much fascination as is currently reserved for incunabula—but nothing will ever rival experiencing an Alegria party firsthand.  The next Alegria happens in New York on Sunday the 30th of December, 2007.  Savor the joy now.