“It’s all about the ecstasy and pussy,” Xtapussy impresario Marie Karlberg explains—beyond that, things get a bit blurry. And sweaty. Over the past year, Karlberg has emerged as a cult nightlife hero, fighting for her fellow females’ right to party with a roving, ravelike affair she’s been throwing with two friends, artist Stewart Uoo and stylist Hayley Pisaturo—kind of a nineties-club-kid blowout updated for the gif generation. The crowd is equal parts straights and gays, men and women (and everyone in between), but Karlberg stresses that the ladies rule the roost, encouraged to do whatever with whomever on the dance floor: “People really just go into their own bubbles and let everything go.” But there has been the occasional kerfuffle. Like when one woman got so empowered … she had to be taken away in a straitjacket. “I don’t know what drugs she was on,” Karlberg says.
A roster of D.J.’s, mostly of the obscure, European variety, play trance and techno. The parties are thrown sporadically, at the whim of Karlberg and her crew, and the venue’s always changing—a loft in Soho, a gallery in Williamsburg, a disco in Bed-Stuy. There’s no list: “Anybody is welcome,” Karlberg insists. “Anybody except the cops.”