[Continued from Part 1]

Anyhoo - that weekend was the 40th Birthday of that Doyenne of Downtown, the legendary Sister Dimension, and here I was thrown head-first (albeit in a Gene Meyer suit) into a house full of A-Gays and their fans.  There was Marc Jacobs on a settee in the hallway; while Debbie Harry was chatting it up, on the next floor, with the two gorgeous androgenes whom I would later come to know as Zaldy and MathuLady Bunny, John Kelley, Joey Arias - there, there, there.  Edwige, Erich Conrad, Suzanne Bartch – there, there, there.  The lady of the house, Beverly Kerzner-Mace, was wearing a fantastic Mugler gown with a spider-web collar, which was no surprise, seeing as Thierry Mugler was there, as well.

But life was a lot more for Armen than martinis and multi-million dollar mansions.  New York gets really expensive, really fast; and after fifteen years of just getting by, he was just getting fed-up.  He worked at the make-up counter at Patricia Field, and became known around the City as the go-to for a fiercely-plucked brow.  He hustled.  He designed a collection of oversized CZ rings for Todd Oldham that was sold at the designer’s SoHo boutique and through M-TV.  He continued working at parties for Suzanne Bartch and (before he murdered  his heroin dealer) Michael Alig.  He even did a couple of gigs for Madonna – the launch of her Sex book (where he was paid to lay on a divan and be fed grapes by a muscle-stud) and at the 2006 MTV Music Awards (where she was given a drag-queen tribute, and Armen was the Goth in the Balenciaga gown with the black birds, à la her “Frozen” video).

Through it all, though, he tried his best to keep his dark wit and hauteur.  Unfortunately he usually kept a martini in the hand not holding his cigarette holder.  And that hauteur had tendency to curdle into something  far crueler.

Anyone who knew him could tell you that Armen was put on this earth to do more than lip-synch at gay bars for tips – but what?  It wasn’t like a performance artist could get a job punching a clock at a nine-to-five.  And this was the true demon in Armen’s life.  That and the fact that over the past decade he’d had a disturbingly large number of his friends die (from such equally tragic means as suicide, murder, overdose, AIDS, and back-alley hormones).

Well, for years, he’d “threatened” to take up the Theremin (the electronic instrument, also known as an etherphone, invented by Léon Theremin in 1928; where the volume and pitch are controlled by the artist’s hand gestures without actually touching the device), and become a world-class musician.  So, a dozen years ago, Billy Erb got me and a few others to kick-in and buy Armen a Theremin kit, and a how-to guide.  And for the next couple of years, he retreated to the apartment he’d taken in Brooklyn, and taught himself how to play the Theremin.

And he got good.  I mean, really good.  But, for the most part, people’s response (both to Armen and the Theremin) was “What is it?”

So, what happened?  You'll have to tune-in for the final installment, to find out.  Until then...

When My Sorrow Died: The Legend of Armen Ra & the Theremin
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The world’s greatest hip-hop collective returns this weekend with the second edition of the history-making WU-TANG CLAN: THE SAGA CONTINUES… THE LAS VEGAS RESIDENCY