By Catie Disabato
January 9, 2010
As the overwhelming success of her “Bad Romance” single and music video portended another stratospherically successful year, Lady Gaga disappeared.
Gaga was gone just as we were truly getting to know her. After the premiere of her “Bad Romance” music video, amidst conflicts with her record label about her delayed second album The Fame Monster, Gaga’s following became increasingly passionate and devout. The creativity and ferocity she devoted to what would have otherwise been standard pop songs caught the attention of highbrow critics and thinkers. She insisted on her (and her fans’) non-conformity even as she sold millions of records. She put a punk rock fuck-the-man ethos into commercial, commoditized music.
Music critic Nitsuh Abebe wrote in his “Eulogy for Gaga”: “Consider instead that the greatest trick Lady Gaga has pulled — the thing that makes her a genuinely impressive pop star — is creating an atmosphere where people can legitimately feel like revolutionary all-embracing gender-queering “little monsters” by listening to one of the most popular artists in the country.”
Gaga vanished during her massive Monster Ball tour, leaving 152 tour dates left unperformed, costing her record company millions of dollars in refund and lost revenue, and disappointing thousands of fans. The loss of her presence, the abrupt end of millions of parasocial relationships, became the greatest and most public loss. “I miss her because even though I never met her I felt like she was always here for me!!!” a typical (though with a marginally greater-than-average grasp of grammar and spelling) YouTube commenter mourned. Gaga often Tweeted her exact location, providing a link to a map with a flag indicating her current position, making her physical person even more present in her fan’s realities than all other pop culture phenoms that came before her. With this kind of unparalleled exposure, the public and her fans took the brusqueness of her disappearance personally.
Gaga was scheduled to play two shows at the Chicago Theater, the heart of the ice-covered Loop theater district. Despite a wind chill of ten degrees below freezing and system-wide delays on the EL, ticket holders arrived early and in droves for the first show on January 8. Girls and boys dressed in glitter, feathers, and leotards lined up outside of will call, giggling and jostling each other in excitement. The dance floor was crowded by 5pm, with sweaty teenagers jockeying for the spots closest to the stage. The coat check was full to the brim.
The show began with a pulsating grid of neon blue lights covering the stage. Lady Gaga emerged from behind the grid and performed “Dance In The Dark,” with a team of backup dancers. When a concert-goer is used to the pop shows of artists like Britney Spears, Rihanna, and Christina Aguilera, seeing Lady Gaga perform is an aurally surreal experience. Unlike the other stars who lip-sync album cuts of their hit songs while devoting their stage energy to dancing, Gaga actually sings while she performs.
As with all of Kot’s Lady Gaga coverage, Kot spent a good portion of his preview re-examining the “phenomenon of Lady Gaga” and attempting to draw some satisfying conclusion about the nature of her appeal, while obviously flummoxed by his own appreciation of Gaga. Like a dog staring, confused, at his own reflection, Kot wrote, “Perhaps, in a long year of job loss and economic decline, America needs an oddity to gawk at like Depression-era Americas visiting Freak Shows. Gaga is no Bearded Lady, but she scratches the same cultural itch.”
After the concert, Gaga went with a small group of friends and dancers (including 27-year-old named Nicolas Berliner) to the bar at the Peninsula Hotel on the Miracle Mile. They kept the bar open until 3:00am, two hours after it’s usual closing time, after which, Gaga retired alone to her private suite.
On January 9, Gaga woke just after 9:00am and ordered a breakfast of fruit, yogurt, granola, orange juice, coffee, and the Peninsula’s signature Truffled Popcorn. Later that afternoon, Gaga decided to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art, again with a group of dancers and friends that included Nicolas Berliner, her assistant Regina Nix, and several other members of the Haus of Gaga. Although the museum was less than half a mile from the hotel, Gaga insisted on driving the sporty convertible she had rented for her 36-hour stay in Chicago. She asked her old friend and collaborator, Lady Starlight to ride shotgun. Although the ride was only five minutes, Gaga did not let the conversation topics stay shallow. She told her friend that she treasured the few minutes they were able to have together, apart from the rest of the crew, and wished they were able to spend more time alone. Lady Starlight suggested a “weekend getaway” for sometime after the tour was over. Gaga encouraged this idea.
At the MCA, Gaga had the opportunity to view pieces by Jeff Koons (including “Pink Panther,” “Rabbit,” and “Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank,”). She also signed autographs for fans and art lovers. While they walked through the galleries of the MCA, Gaga convinced her bodyguards that she would be fine driving from the museum to the venue by herself. She craved “space to think.” Her bodyguards relented and she left the museum alone.
By 5:30pm, her staff and colleagues were beginning to worry. She was late for her call time. Despite her flashy, indulgent persona, her collaborators considered her fiercely professional and unfailingly punctual. According to her Tour Manager, Kelly Applebaum, Gaga “never arrived for anything even five minutes late.” Applebaum called Gaga’s cell phone. Several of her dancers also called or sent text messages to Gaga; no one received a reply. Nix, who should have accompanied Gaga to the venue, was also M.I.A. An hour before Gaga’s set was scheduled to begin, the audience was arriving and opener Jason Derulo’s set was minutes from starting, Nix arrived at the venue, breathless from exertion, “emotionally overwhelmed,” and in possession of Gaga’s cell phone.
Gaga had left the phone with Nix at the museum. When it was nearly time to return to the Chicago Theater and Gaga failed to return to the hotel room, Nix had conducted an exhaustive search of the hotel grounds and nearby boutiques, working herself into an anxious fit. Smelling disaster, Applebaum instructed the theater manager, Lilia Greene, to speak to the audience before the second opening act, Kid Cudi. Greene informed the well-dressed throng that Gaga was suffering from food poisoning and the price of the tickets (minutes processing fees and shipping costs, if applicable) would be refunded. Applebaum immediately issued a press release, news outlets reported Gaga’s absence as a sudden illness, quoting from attending fans’ Twittered regrets as often as they quoted Applebaum’s official statements. Someone logged into Gaga’s official Twitter account, using the iPhone Twitter application, and wrote: “To all my amazing Chicago monsters. I would give anything in the world to be with you right now and not cold & sick & alone.”
A quiet search party – consisting of dancers, security personnel, Lady Starlight, Berliner, and Nix – scoured the dark and icy city. Applebaum’s staff monitored news sources and gossip sites for any genuine Gaga sightings. All of their searches found nothing, false leads at best. They wouldn’t even find her car, abandoned in a driveway in someone’s rarely used beach house near the shore of Lake Michigan, for two weeks. All of her clothes, costumes, and personal possessions were left behind at the venue and the hotel, not a single shoe or pair of underwear was missing.
Lady Gaga did not reappear the following morning.
Lady Gaga did not reappear the following morning.
Author Bio:
Catie Disabato is a writer living in Los Angeles. She co-created and writes for the webseries I Hate LA for Comediva.com and blogs for literature/literary culture blog Full-Stop.net. She is currently working on a novel.
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