The Night I Almost (Accidentally) Killed Lady Gaga

Here’s a cut chapter from my memoir to celebrate its third birthday!

Aug 25, 2023

Three years ago, I published my debut memoir, Born to Be Public. Three years later, I’m still getting messages from readers far and wide, telling me how much they’ve enjoyed my book, how it has made them laugh, and how it has inspired them. Three years later, I’m still walking into bookstores and libraries and seeing it on display amongst books by authors I used to sit on the floor of the Eighty-Sixth Street Barnes & Noble to read for hours on end because I was too broke to buy them for myself to own. Three years later, I’m still invited to readings, podcasts, and classrooms to read from and talk about this copyedited diary that has—to my shock and surprise—sold more than twelve copies.

Three years later, my life has changed completely.

Ever since publishing a memoir about coming-of-age in the Lower East Side during the late aughts/early 2010s, I keep getting asked if I’ve ever met or run into another person who more famously came-of-age in the Lower East Side a little before me; a certain Lady by the name of Gaga. Ring a bell?

The short answer is: yes. But as fun as this story is, it just didn’t serve the narrative arc of the book, and sometimes you have to make tough calls as the author. Not every great story is gonna make the cut! But to celebrate my homosexual first-born’s third birthday, here is a chapter that was cut very early on in the process—even before it was sold to my publisher. It’s about one of my run-ins with Mother Monster after she had just performed at the Roseland Ballroom in 2014. My best friend, Breedlove, had texted me and told me to come to our old haunt, St. Jerome, in the Lower East Side for the afterparty. What followed remains a core memory to this day.

For context: I had just gone through a devastating break-up, which I would reel from for years to come. I had also recently moved back in with my parents in New Jersey, where my days consisted of chain-smoking Marlboro Lights when I wasn’t working at a local consignment shop. Rest assured, I never strayed from the hijinks that compromised most of my early twenties.

I hope you like and laugh, dear reader.

***

After the very slow, very painful death of my relationship with Roy, I was unmoored. From everything: my mind, my body, my reality. To say I was Not Well is an understatement. Do you remember that episode of Charmed—stay with me here, bitch—when Phoebe, played by Alyssa Milano, is turned into a Banshee? (Banshees are former witches in so much emotional pain that they are transformed into demonic beings with white hair and high-pitched screams. Their victims are the heartbroken, which they kill by screaming directly into their faces until left bleeding from their ears.) When Phoebe is crying over her loss of Cole in the attic of their house, the Banshee senses her grief and turns Phoebe into another Banshee. Then Phoebe leaps out the attic window, screaming at the top of her lungs, and continues screaming all over San Francisco until she reverts back to herself. That was me, except instead of San Francisco, I was in New York. And instead of seeking out grief-stricken victims, I was seeking anything that could be cut up with my corroded-ass debit card and put up my nose. I was screaming when I wasn’t sleeping or talking, though!

ANYWAY, WHO WANTS TO DATE?????????????

I was still living with my parents in Central Jersey at the time, driving up to the city in my Honda Civic that looked just about how I felt. (Two trees had fallen on it the year before, once because of Hurricane Sandy, the other time just because it’s my life.) I would either crash at a friend’s place to drive back to New Jersey a few days later, or I’d come back the very next morning, depending on whether or not I was scheduled to work at the consignment shop. It wouldn’t be until later that year that I would move to the city for grad school, but in that interim, I was perfectly content continuing on the path of self-destruction.

***

In March of 2014, Lady Gaga began her first concert residency at the legendary Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan. She would perform seven shows, which concluded on April 7th, after which Roseland would shutter its doors forever. It was to be replaced by a forty-two-story skyscraper, an, unfortunate, yet unsurprising, affliction affecting many-an-iconic NYC establishment before and since.

Breedlove texted me on the night of March 31st, telling me that the afterparty that night was going to be at St. Jerome, and inquiring as to whether I would like to come? With nothing better to do besides rot on my parents’ patio and chain-smoke Marlboro Lights, I texted back, “Sure.”

Now, I know this may seem like a blasé response to you. Who gets a text like, “Hey, wanna come party with Lady Gaga tonight?” and is like, “I guess,” like they’re making plans to go do karaoke at Applebee’s. Even the most severely depressed person would perk up a bit at such an invitation. But here’s the thing: As depressed as I was, I also have never really thought of Gaga as the triple A-List celebrity like the rest of the world, because to me—and the rest of us—she was just that, one of us. I was more used to seeing her knocking back beers in a sticky bar booth or playing pool at Welcome to the Johnson’s than I was seeing her perform for a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. And while we’ve never exchanged more than a hello and the occasional laugh during the handful of times our paths have crossed over the years, I had never once harbored the desire to ambush her while she’s trying to enjoy a quiet night drinking with her friends to take a fucking selfie. First of all, no one in New York gives a shit about who you are. I’ve literally sat next to Paul McCartney at a party and gotten annoyed that he man-spread. It’s not a big deal. Even if you freak out, like I do every time I see Patti Smith out and about in the Village, you do so internally. But whenever I would end up in the same room as Gaga, it wasn’t like, “Oh shit, that’s Lady Gaga,” it was more like, “Oh, Stef’s in town. Don’t spill Jameson on her like you did at the Ace Hotel two years ago.”

The thing is, her career has always been extension of our friend group. Our friends, namely Breedlove, Darian, and Lady Starlight, have always influenced her work in one way or another. The Born This Way Ball stage was born from an idea that Starlight had about a medieval Gothic castle with a large catwalk that served as sort of a moat, which cordoned off the pit area. The large, fully puppeteered horse that she performed atop to open the show was an idea plucked straight from Breedlove’s mind. In 2011, we all started wearing studded leather jackets, crucifixes, and bandanas—which, by the way, is nothing new or groundbreaking—but when Gaga wore them, or centered them in her look at the time, it became A Thing, just by virtue of her life in the public eye. It wasn’t too long after that when chains like Forever 21 started packing their stores with studded leather jackets, crucifixes, and bandanas. There are traces of us and our little Lower East Side family in everything she does—the song “Heavy Metal Lover” off the, Born This Way, is about St. Jerome and the people inside who made it special; it’s about us.

So, while I have never really known Gaga the bartender/waitress/go-go dancer she once was—she had just started her ascent to global stardom and moved to Los Angeles the year before I moved to New York—she is still, and will always be, just another one of us hellions wreaking havoc on Rivington Street.

***

After I parked my depilated Civic approximately nine-hundred blocks away from St. Jerome because the whole street was cut off, fans and paparazzi and police swarming the entire block, I made my way over, wading through the chaotic fanfare until I reached the door of the bar. Gaga had already gone in, but the melee outside remained, as they would stay there until she left, hoping to get an autograph or a picture before hopping into one of the black Escalades parked across the street. The entrance of St. Jerome was guarded like Fort Knox—security had security. Thankfully, one of the Jerome bouncers with whom I was friendly was also stationed outside, and he was able to grab and pull me in.

I surmised that everyone was in the back room usually reserved for private parties, and also because Breedlove texted me, “We’re in the back.” I moseyed over to the bar to say hi to the bartenders and some other friends hanging out, ordering my usual Jameson on the rocks. After exchanging hellos and double-air kisses, I made my way to the back room, which was behind two outward-opening doors. No sooner had I pushed open the doors did I hear a shriek, which came from…below????? “Oh, no, was I about to turn into a Banshee?” I thought for an iota of a moment before looking down. To my horror, what I found was not a demon hunting its next victim, but none other than Gaga herself, rolling around on the floor of the back room, HER HEAD DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH MY FOOT.

I froze in terror.

Listen, I like to make an entrance, BUT NOT IF IT GETS ME CHARGED WITH INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER. For a very, very brief moment, I thought, “Maybe that’s not actually her. Maybe that’s another chick with long brown hair, wearing a UNIF bra and panty paired with twelve-inch Noritaka platform heels.” Unfortunately for me, that was not the case. Lady Gaga was below me, and I had just almost stepped ON HER HEAD.

It wasn’t her life that flashed in front of my eyes, BUT MY OWN. I could see the headlines: “Lady Gaga Dead at 28, Squashed to Death Like a Cockroach by Mentally Unwell Homosexual.” I saw an army of bloodthirsty twinks, refusing to rest until they avenged the death of their beloved Mother Monster. I saw my own family, needing to go into witness protection and relocate to some tiny suburb outside of Sydney, Australia, lest said twinks decided to go after them, too. Worst of all? Now there would definitely be no sequel to the “Telephone” music video! My heart and conscience couldn’t take it. I had to think of something quickly, so that Gaga would know that I was just an uncouth idiot with nary a plan to hurt her. Should I get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness when she inevitably stands back up to look her assailant in the eye before vanquishing him with just one look? Or, at the very least, throwing a drink in his face? Before I could imagine another worst-case scenario, she was already gone! It was so calamitous that no one had even noticed, except my friend Cate who was standing nearby and still teases me to this day about how, in reality, that couldn’t have lasted longer than two seconds. Gaga was already across the room—standing, no doubt, as a result of her brush with death!!!!!—before I could even blurt out a “sorry.”

***

I know what you’re thinking: What an anticlimactic finish to this story. First of all: what does that say about you? You wanted me to step on her head???? You godless heathen! Seek help! (POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK MUCH? LMAO.) But this is a memory—or rather, a suggestion of what could have been—that has haunted me ever since. So, Gaga, in case you’re reading this (which I would bet a kidney you are not!), I’M SORRY FOR ALMOST CRUSHING YOUR SKULL WITH A SHOE THAT YOU ARE PROBABLY TINY ENOUGH TO FIT INTO.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful compared to that moment. We hung out, danced, and drank late into the night, on into the early morning hours. It was just another night at St. J. Eventually, things started to settle down; friends started to make their departures one by one or in small groups, ostensibly to keep the night going at some other nearby joint. I knew Gaga was about to leave since there are security protocols that are (usually) followed (she is known to go rogue once and a while, leaving security to scramble and panic and activate DEFCON 1 to find her). Her security divided and conquered: a few went out to clear a path to the car, while another two remained behind to flank her as she made her exit. You could hear the fans and onlookers outside abuzz again once they realized she would be making her way outside. At this point, most of us had spilled into the main bar out front since the crowd had died (TOO SOON) down a bit. The friends who remained had claimed empty barstools, while others were crowded into the unoccupied nearby booths. The DJ kept spinning his records, unbothered by the continuous debauchery. It was, after all, nothing he hadn’t seen before.

As I leaned against the end of the bar, slurring my words into a friend’s ear, I felt a tap on my back.

I turned around and came face-to-face—with Gaga herself.

She looked at me with a playful glimmer in her eye and quipped, “At least you didn’t spill whiskey on me this time.” I was too stunned to speak. Before I could say anything, she was gone, and I was left to bask in the glow of a star whose light I was grateful to not have extinguished.

Thank god, because I don’t look good in orange.

SOS (Save Our Serotonin)

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