Inside Studio 54

by Mark Fleischman

  On August 31, 1997, Dodi Fayed lost his life in a car crash in Paris that also killed the beloved Princess Diana.

  As the owner of Studio 54, I was considered by some to be a very eligible bachelor, but as it turned out, I was a lousy date. After a nice dinner out at some chic restaurant, I’d invite my date to join me at Studio 54 for an evening of fun and dancing. But there were always details to be addressed upon my arrival at the club each evening, so I’d settle my date in on one of the VIP banquettes, assign a busboy to look after her, then excuse myself and promise to return shortly. I’d go to my office, attend to the guest list, and then decide how much coke should be divided up for the evening and who should be assigned to do it—both of which were very important. I will explain.

  When guests were invited to my office, they were greeted with a gold straw or a crisp rolled up hundred-dollar bill and invited to partake from one of the many lines of coke laid out on my long curved desk. It was very time-consuming to divide three or four grams of coke into thirty or forty lines of equal proportion—tedious, but a much-loved task for one of my trusted assistants to perform. Making the lines relatively even was important. I had no patience for such stuff, unless it was 5:00 a.m. and I was entertaining an intimate group—then I would gladly do it. Anyway, it was one of the very important details that I had to personally attend to. So, after the guest list was finalized and the coke was divided, I would then start on my party high for the evening. I’d take a few hits of my really good coke, drop a Quaalude or two, then head back downstairs to my date, waiting for me on one of the banquettes.

  And that’s when I would invariably get into trouble—walking through the club. People wanted to say hello, dance with me, meet their friends, meet my friends, ask for my card, give me their card, give me a résumé, promise me the best blow job ever, give me a cassette, solve a staff issue, get them high or get me high. I always intended to return to my dates within thirty minutes or so but there were times that I was gone for as long as one hour. Some women put up with this behavior, but many didn’t.

  One woman who was having none of my nonsense was Chen Sam, the very attractive publicist to Elizabeth Taylor. To put it simply, in order to get to Liz, you had to first go through Chen. I invited Chen to dinner and then we went to Studio 54 and several times I was forced to excuse myself to attend to other matters, leaving Chen alone at a VIP banquette, making her vulnerable to people who knew she was the conduit to Elizabeth Taylor. By 1:00 a.m. Chen let me know that she was furious with me. I apologized profusely as I walked her to the stage door exit and out to my waiting limousine to take her safely home. Before Studio 54, I had always dated women I considered to be my peers—intelligent, ambitious, and attractive women. After the Chen incident, I concluded that any attempt to date a woman like Chen was a mistake. I made it easy on myself and started picking up random, late-night strays.

  Each night around 3:00 a.m. I had the freedom to start looking—that’s when I was able to relax, have fun, and hit the dance floor. A flood of women came on to me. I was having sex everywhere—my office, the locked reception area, the liquor storage room, and the dark corners of the balcony. As the nights went by, the sex, drugs, and never-ending pressure to keep Studio 54 hot night after night consumed me. It was my life and I loved it. I forgot about friends like Bob Shaye, who told me years later, that on several occasions when he wanted to come to this or that event at Studio 54, I didn’t return his phone calls. I was surrounded by a new group of good-looking, well-dressed, famous and not so famous people who loved Studio and became my new best friends. It’s all so obvious to me now. I was living in a bubble of my own design, insulating myself from my former world.

  To compliment that late-night feeling we were becoming known for at Studio 54, I would usually hand DJ Leroy Washington my list of personal requests for the remainder of the evening, always heavy on the R&B and other stuff that I really liked dancing to. Some personal favorites: The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” The Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut,” The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men,” Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer’s “Enough is Enough,” ABBA’s “Lay All Your Love On Me,” Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack,” Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster,” Lime’s big hit “Babe We’re Gonna Love Tonight,” Eurhythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” Nile Rodgers’ “Le Freak,” James Brown’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” and “I Feel Good,” Rick James’ “Super Freak” and “Give It To Me Baby,” and Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music White Boy,” which sort of became my theme song. Leroy would work his magic finding the perfect way to put it all together—playing my requests—while keeping the others on the dance floor happy, too. I’d be out there, in the midst of a thousand people, dancing and interacting with almost everyone, strutting my stuff, and I was pretty good at it. I loved music so much, I’d cruise around by myself moving to the beat, meeting folks, giving hugs, checking out women, hoping to set myself up for a sexual encounter either in my office, some obscure dark spot in Studio, or perhaps later that morning in my apartment in the hot tub. Women of all sizes, shapes, and nationalities were invited to my bed—often two at a time. It was the 1980s, and it was all about excess—not “less is more.” The man of the 1970s was a sensitive hero type and the 1980s man was an unapologetic man of action. I dove into every sexual adventure with reckless abandon.

  Potassa was a transvestite and a regular at Studio 54. She was tall, exotic, and absolutely gorgeous, with a thick Spanish accent, long fingernails, tight dresses, and a penchant for mentioning that she was a protégé of Salvador Dalí. She was always pestering me for a bottle of champagne while digging her sharp nails into my arm, reminding me, “Mark, Dahling, Stevie always took care of me.” And it’s true, Steve was known to tell the bartenders and managers, “Give Potassa a bottle of champagne whenever she wants it.” Steve delighted in watching her take unsuspecting, straight guys up to the balcony and blowing their minds and their dicks with her very talented mouth. The girl could swallow. Potassa made the rounds of all the hot nightspots in the city. She was a regular in the entourage that Salvador Dalí was known to travel around town with. Dalí always had a lot of “women” with him. Trader Vic’s was his favorite bar to begin his forays into the night. He and his girls loved the rum-laden concoctions, The Scorpion being a favorite, as it was for me a few years earlier. Sometimes my good friend Antonia de Portago would join them and they would all arrive at Studio with fresh gardenias in their hair, a telltale sign of where they’d been.

  One night we were all hanging around the main bar and Potassa introduced me to Daniella, a real beauty. At about 5:00 a.m., she and I left Studio 54 and went to my apartment. After some champagne, I started fondling her magnificent breasts, concentrating on her nipples that reminded me of luscious strawberries. She pulled down my zipper, smiled, then knelt before me and started to suck me off. Damn she was good, but I didn’t want to come just yet, so I dropped down to the floor and, pacing myself, I slowly removed her panties and then, Oh shit! What the fuck—a tiny curled-up penis! Mood kill!

  Fortunately, “she/he” had the good grace to make a joke about it: “Oh, honey, I thought you knew what you were getting into,” waving her hands in an effeminate way. It cut the tension, diffused my embarrassment and made things considerably less awkward for me as I called her a taxi.

  As 1982 progressed, I ended up with two sex kittens living in the guest room of my penthouse. The first was Bobbie, a strikingly pretty blonde with a great body. Billy Smith, who booked up-and-coming recording artists like Madonna—before she became “Madonna”—and performed to prerecorded tracks on Studio’s famous moving bridge, introduced her to me. Always smiling and moonfaced, Billy was a slippery character, but he got the job done. And when he heard I was looking for a secretary, he introduced me to Bobbie.

  She was a nice Midwestern girl from Chicago. I told Billy that I wanted someone who was smart
, could take dictation, type, and answer a very busy phone—politely. Bobbie could do it all with great efficiency. I needed a secretary because, during the day, I worked out of my duplex penthouse surrounded by an assortment of people, often finding that my schedule had me booked almost right to the minute before I had to leave for Studio 54. On the day I interviewed Bobbie, it was at my apartment. I dictated a letter to her and she typed it perfectly. Because there were other people and employees in the reception area as well as the living room upstairs, and I wanted to speak privately with Bobbie about hours and salary, I thought nothing of moving the interview to my bedroom suite. We sat on my bed to discuss everything as there was nothing else to sit on.

  Things were really different in those days. Today, if I even suggested moving an interview with a woman or a man, for any reason, to a room with a bed in it, I could be sued for sexual harassment. I’d already told Bobbie she was hired and sex with me was never a prerequisite for any position offered by me in any of my business ventures over the years, but during the course of our conversation, her demeanor became more than a bit flirty. Then she mentioned she was looking for a place to stay. I did have a guest room but it’s one thing to have someone work in your house—it’s quite another to have them live in it. I had to think about that.

  Some women, back then and now, are comfortable with and take pleasure in using sex to get what they want. So I was not surprised, and went with the flow, when Bobbie leaned over toward me, rubbing her breasts against me. I put my arm around her and kissed her. It was slow at first—deep, explorative, sensual—but as her breathing began to quicken and my hands found their way to her breasts, I felt her hand between my legs. She had the most incredible natural breasts—perfectly well-proportioned and soft. After that, it didn’t take long to get to the main event. I stripped off her clothes while she peeled me out of mine, and when I got inside of her, it was lush and heavenly. I loved it. I rolled over and thought about her being in need of a place to live and said, “Yes, you are welcome to stay in my guest room. Absolutely.” It was unintentional and with no real forethought that this new arrangement would work out to be an alternative to bringing home strangers at five o’clock in the morning.

  Bobbie worked as my secretary in the afternoon, and also became a part-time bartender in the VIP area at Studio 54. It was a good spot for Bobbie—it didn’t demand the furiously fast pace of the main bar, thus it gave her the opportunity to experience the scene without the pressures of being in the thick of the action, service-wise. She sold some drinks, but mostly accommodated people with drink tickets, which was always a good gig for tips. She was very happy. One night when we were playing after-hours, I asked her, “Do you like other women?”

  “I’ve tried it,” she said coyly, “and I liked it.”

  I kept that in mind when, a few weeks later, I met Sara in the VIP area, a nice Jewish girl with a wild zaftig body type. She was rubbing against me as we talked, and I may have kissed her—the details are a little fuzzy. I do remember that it was a Friday night, because I invited her to come to my apartment the following Saturday afternoon. During the week, my place was always sheer pandemonium. Promoters, secretaries, and assistants would be running around, in and out, between noon and 8:00 p.m. Those that worked nights would then change clothes and continue on to the club. But come the weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, my apartment was off-limits. I needed a place to retreat into for some kind of down time, to recharge from the mayhem that surrounded me all week.

  Anyway, Sara came over early Saturday afternoon. Bobbie was in her room on the lower level. I brought Sara upstairs to the living room, where we immediately started going at it on the couch. We were kissing and things were getting really hot, so I started undressing her. She looked at me, eyes wide, and said, “But your secretary is downstairs! What would she say?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, and continued to strip both of us naked.

  I got on top of her and we had sex on the large curved couch. Being inside her was divine. I loved her curvy body and her large breasts. I loved her smell and the way she moaned.

  After we were done and putting our clothes on, she told me she was looking for work. “I’ll be a domestic—I’ll do anything,” she said. I thought it over—it wasn’t an unreasonable request. I was always hiring people but still in need of additional help around the apartment with all the entertaining I was doing. Then she added that, in addition to work, she was looking for a place to live. There was an extra bed in the guest room, but first I wanted to see if she and Bobbie would get along.

  “Let’s go downstairs and see if Bobbie is into a threesome,” I suggested.

  Sara was horrified. She’d briefly met Bobbie on her way in and mistakenly perceived her to be, in her words, “high falutin,” since she was an “executive secretary.” But I assured her everything would be fine, and I called Bobbie on the intercom to invite her up. When Bobbie arrived, I formally introduced the two of them and we all did some coke and as an afterthought we dropped some Quaaludes. I then said to Bobbie, “Would you like to join us for a threesome?”

  Lucky me—Bobbie was game.

  The three of us went into my bedroom suite where I had a big Jacuzzi tub. I suggested that we all get undressed as I filled the tub, and once I got the jets going, we all hopped in. Our tub play was pretty mellow—getting acquainted in the new scenario. We then dried off in big, fluffy bathrobes and went into the bedroom, where we all climbed on my California King Bed. I ensconced myself between them and said, “Let’s do it.”

  Bobbie then licked her fingertips, pulled her knees up, spread her legs, and said, “Let’s go.”

  On the nights that I was flying solo, I have to say it was nice to know that I had a good, solid option waiting for me at home. Actually, they were both at the club, so sometimes we’d all hop in my limo at 5:00 a.m. and stop for gyros in Times Square. We’d fuel up with food, then fuel up with coke. It helped give us all a reboot, tired from working, drinking, and partying all night. When we arrived home we’d shower, melt into terrycloth robes, jump into my bed, have sex, and pass out. I didn’t have to entertain them or call them a taxi in the morning. We’d get it on and they’d return to their room. I was grateful. It was an easy, peaceful way to end it all and surrender to sleep. I was insanely happy.

  Chapter Twenty:

  Roy Cohn Brings the Feds

  to My Door

  Movie premiere events were always exciting and fun to host and we did a lot of them. Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was memorable. Arnold was adored by the press from the very beginning, especially after earning a Golden Globe for his role in the film Stay Hungry with Sally Fields and Jeff Bridges. He followed that with Pumping Iron costarring Lou Ferrigno. Word leaked out earlier in the week that Arnold was scheduled to be at Studio after the premiere of Conan the Barbarian so the club was packed to capacity. Michael O. once again created an unforgettable scene inside Studio 54 to entertain our guests and enhance the theme of the evening. The club was decorated with huge styrofoam mountains and good looking guys in loincloths walked around and Barbarian women circulated at the bar and on the dance floor. Michael O. installed several huge cages in key spots throughout the club. Inside each cage was a beautiful girl, practically naked, struggling for freedom like a caged animal.

  The vibe was electric in anticipation of seeing Arnold live in the flesh. Outside, on Fifty-Fourth Street, his crowd of hardcore fans waited, hoping to see him get out of his limo. Arnold always made a point to acknowledge them. I was in my office, in my private bathroom, doing a quick hit of coke when security informed me that Arnold had arrived and was being escorted via the underground passage to my office. A few minutes later, there he was, standing in front of me, larger than life—and I mean larger than life—with Maria Shriver on his arm. They were all over each other, very affectionate. Arnold was in the mood to party and wanted to take Maria down to the dance
floor. He requested that he leave his jacket in my office. “But of course,” I said. They took off with security and I was left standing alone, holding a sport jacket the size of a small country.

  My lawyer, Roy Cohn, asked me to host (and pay for) a birthday dinner party in his own honor. Given all that he had done for me over the years, and all that he could do to me if I got on his bad side, I of course graciously agreed. Roy invited a powerful group, including Barbara Walters (who cohosted), Donald Trump, the infamous socialite Claus von Bülow, and dozens of judges and politicians, many of whom had never been to Studio. The dinner took place on the dance floor. Everything was black, including the walls, tablecloths, napkins, balloons—the enormous gold candelabras held eighteen-inch black tapered candles. The dinner was bathed in a deep blue and purple light, accompanied by selected classical music with a few arias mixed in, making it feel like a party for a Mafia Don. It was very dramatic, and very Roy. He loved it. It was low-key in the beginning, almost somber, but after many toasts and much good wine the laughter grew louder. Moments after dessert, our tech crew quickly and silently removed the tables and chairs, replaced by our comfortable banquettes. Everyone was startled at first, but before long they were all on their feet and dancing to the spectacular music and light show.

  While Roy’s party was typical of many of our high-profile black-tie dinner events, the evening proved to be problematic, as a result of the enormous amount of press coverage it received. Several months later, two large, no-nonsense G-Men showed up at my apartment, flashing badges and identifying themselves as agents from the Treasury Department: “We’re here to investigate” is all I heard, and I almost shit in my pants. “Yes, we’re here to determine the value of Roy Cohn’s dinner party with regard to his taxes and whether you intend to send him a ten ninety-nine form. He is required to declare the value as income.”