Just Kids

  Robert took me over to see the space. There were floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Twenty-third Street, and we could see the YMCA and the top of the Oasis sign. It was everything he needed: at least three times the size of our room with plenty of light and a wall with about a hundred nails protruding. “We can hang the necklaces there,” he said.

  “We?”

  “Of course,” he said. “You can work here too. It will be our space. You can start drawing again.”

  “The first drawing will be of Pigman,” I said. “We owe him a lot. And don’t worry about the money. We’ll get it.”

  Not long after, I found a twenty-six-volume set of the complete Henry James for next to nothing. It was in perfect condition. I knew a customer at Scribner’s who would want it. The tissue guards were intact, the gravures fresh-looking, and there was no foxing on the pages. I cleared over one hundred dollars. Slipping five twenty-dollar bills in a sock, I tied a ribbon around it and gave it to Robert. He opened it, saying, “I don’t know how you do it.”

  Robert gave the money to Pigman, and set to cleaning out the front half of the loft. It was a big job. I would stop in after work and he would be standing knee-deep in the center of Pigman’s incomprehensible debris: dusty fluorescent tubing, rolls of insulation, racks of expired canned goods, half-empty bottles of unidentified cleaning fluids, vacuum cleaner bags, stacks of bent venetian blinds, moldy boxes spilling over with decades of tax forms, and bundles of stained National Geographics tied with red-and-white string, which I snapped up to braid for bracelets.

  He cleared, scrubbed, and painted the space. We borrowed buckets from the hotel, filled them with water, and carted them over. When we were finished, we stood together in silence, imagining the possibilities. We’d never had so much light. Even after he cleaned and painted half the large windows black, light still flooded in. We scavenged for a mattress, worktables, and chairs. I mopped the floor with water boiled with eucalyptus on our hot plate.

  The first things Robert brought over from the Chelsea were our portfolios.

  Things were picking up at Max’s. I stopped being so judgmental and got in the swing of things. Somehow I was accepted, though I never really fit in. Christmas was coming and there was a pervasive melancholy, as if everyone simultaneously remembered they had nowhere to go.

  Even here, in the land of the so-called drag queens, Wayne County, Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, and Jackie Curtis were not to be categorized so lightly. They were performance artists, actresses, and comediennes. Wayne was witty, Candy was pretty, and Holly had drama, but I put my money on Jackie Curtis. In my mind, she had the most potential. She would successfully manipulate a whole conversation just to deliver one of Bette Davis’s killer lines. And she knew how to wear a housedress. With all her makeup she was a seventies version of a thirties starlet. Glitter on her eyelids. Glitter in the hair. Glitter face powder. I hated glitter and sitting with Jackie meant going home speckled all over.

  Right before the holidays Jackie seemed distraught. I ordered her a snowball, a coveted unaffordable treat. It was a mound of devil’s food cake filled with vanilla ice cream and covered with shredded coconut. She sat there eating it, plopping large glitter tears in the melting ice cream. Candy Darling slinked in next to her, dipping her lacquered fingernail into the dish, offering a bit of comfort with her soothing voice.

  There was something especially poignant about Jackie and Candy as they embraced the imagined life of the actress. They both had aspects of Mildred Rogers, the coarse illiterate waitress in Of Human Bondage. Candy had Kim Novak’s looks and Jackie had the delivery. Both of them were ahead of their time, but they didn’t live long enough to see the time they were ahead of.

  “Pioneers without a frontier,” as Andy Warhol would say.

  It snowed on Christmas night. We walked to Times Square to see the white billboard proclaiming WAR IS OVER! If you want it. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko. It hung above the bookstall where Robert bought most of his men’s magazines, between Child’s and Benedict’s, two all-night diners.

  Looking up, we were struck by the ingenuous humanity of this New York City tableau. Robert took my hand, and as the snow swirled around us I glanced at his face. He narrowed his eyes and nodded in affirmation, impressed to see artists take on Forty-second Street. For me it was the message. For Robert, the medium.

  Newly inspired, we walked back to Twenty-third Street to look at our space. The necklaces hung on hooks and he had tacked up some of our drawings. We stood at the window and looked out at the snow falling beyond the fluorescent Oasis sign with its squiggly palm tree. “Look,” he said, “it’s snowing in the desert.” I thought about a scene in Howard Hawks’s movie Scarface where Paul Muni and his girl are looking out the window at a neon sign that said The World Is Yours. Robert squeezed my hand.

  The sixties were coming to an end. Robert and I celebrated our birthdays. Robert turned twenty-three. Then I turned twenty-three. The perfect prime number. Robert made me a tie rack with the image of the Virgin Mary. I gave him seven silver skulls on a length of leather. He wore the skulls. I wore a tie. We felt ready for the seventies.

  “It’s our decade,” he said.

  Viva stormed into the lobby with a Garbo-like inapproachability, attempting to intimidate Mr. Bard so he wouldn’t ask her for back rent. The filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the photographer Diane Arbus entered separately, each with a sense of agitated mission. Jonas Mekas, with his ever-present camera and secret smile, shot the obscure corners of life surrounding the Chelsea. I stood there holding a stuffed black crow I had bought for next to nothing from the Museum of the American Indian. I think they wanted to get rid of it. I had decided to name it Raymond, after Raymond Roussel, who wrote Locus Solus. I was thinking what a magical portal this lobby was when the heavy glass door opened as if swept by wind and a familiar figure in a black and scarlet cape entered. It was Salvador Dalí. He looked around the lobby nervously, and then, seeing my crow, smiled. He placed his elegant, bony hand atop my head and said: “You are like a crow, a gothic crow.”

  “Well,” I said to Raymond, “just another day at the Chelsea.”

  In mid-January we met Steve Paul, who managed Johnny Winter. Steve was a charismatic entrepreneur who had provided the sixties with one of the great rock clubs in New York City, the Scene. Located on a side street near Times Square, it became a gathering spot for visiting musicians and late-night jams. Dressed in blue velvet and perpetually bemused, he was a bit of Oscar Wilde, a bit of the Cheshire Cat. He was negotiating a recording contract for Johnny, and had installed him in a suite of rooms at the Chelsea.

  We all collided one evening at the El Quixote. In the short time that we spent with Johnny, I was intrigued by his intelligence and instinctive appreciation of art. In conversation he was open, and benevolently strange. We were invited to see him play at the Fillmore East, and I had never seen a performer interact with his audience with such complete assurance. He was fearless and joyously confrontational, spinning like a dervish and stalking the stage swinging the veil of his pure white hair. Fast and fluid on guitar, he transfixed the crowd with his misaligned eyes and playfully demonic smile.

  On Groundhog Day we attended a small party in the hotel for Johnny, to celebrate his signing with Columbia Records. We spent most of the evening rapping with Johnny and Steve Paul. Johnny admired Robert’s necklaces and offered to buy one; they also spoke of Robert designing him a black net cape.

  As I sat there I noticed that I felt physically unstable, malleable, as if I were made of clay. No one seemed to indicate that I had changed in any way. Johnny’s hair seemed to droop like two long white ears. Steve Paul, in his blue velvet, was leaning into a mound of pillows, chain-smoking joints in slow motion, contrasting with the erratic presence of Matthew bounding in and out of the room. I felt so profoundly altered that I fled and locked myself in our old shared bathroom on the tenth floor.

  I wasn’t certain what had happened to me. My experience
most closely mirrored the “eat me, drink me” scene in Alice in Wonderland. I tried to access her restrained and curious reaction to her own psychedelic trials. I reasoned someone had dosed me with a form of hallucinogen. I had never taken any kind of drug before and my limited knowledge came from observing Robert or reading descriptions of the drug-induced visions of Gautier, Michaux, and Thomas de Quincey. I huddled in a corner, not sure what to do. I certainly didn’t want anyone to see me telescoping in size, even if it was all in my head.

  Robert, most likely high himself, searched the hotel until he found me, and sat outside the door talking to me, helping me to find my way back.

  Finally I unlocked the door. We took a walk and then went back to the safety of our room. The next day we stayed in bed. When I got up I dramatically wore dark glasses and a raincoat. Robert was very considerate and didn’t tease me at all, not even about the raincoat.

  We had a beautiful day that blossomed into an unusually passionate night. I happily wrote of this night in my diary, adding a small heart like a teenage girl.

  It’s hard to convey the speed at which our lives changed in the following months. We had never seemed closer, but our happiness would soon be clouded by Robert’s anxiety over money.

  He couldn’t get any work. He worried we wouldn’t be able to keep both places. He continually made the rounds of the galleries, usually returning frustrated and demoralized. “They don’t really look at the work,” he complained. “They wind up trying to pick me up. I’d rather dig ditches than sleep with these people.”

  He went to a placement service to get part-time work but nothing panned out. Although he sold an occasional necklace, breaking into the fashion business was slowgoing. Robert got increasingly depressed about money, and the fact that it fell on me to get it. It was partially the stress of worrying about our financial position that drove him back to the idea of hustling.

  Robert’s early attempts at hustling had been fueled by curiosity and the romance of Midnight Cowboy, but he found working on Forty-second Street to be harsh. He decided to shift to Joe Dallesandro territory, on the East Side near Bloomingdale’s, where it was safer.

  I begged him not to go, but he was determined to try. My tears did not stop him, so I sat and watched him dress for the night ahead. I imagined him standing on a corner, flushed with excitement, offering himself to a stranger, to make money for us.

  “Please be careful,” was all I could say.

  “Don’t worry. I love you. Wish me luck.”

  Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?

  I awoke and he was gone. There was a note to me on the desk. “Couldn’t sleep,” it said. “Wait for me.” I straightened up and was writing a letter to my sister when he came into the room in a highly agitated state. He said he had to show me something. I quickly dressed and followed him to the space. We bounded up the stairs.

  Entering the space, I did a quick scan. His energy seemed to vibrate the air. Mirrors, lightbulbs, and pieces of chain were spread on a length of black oilcloth. He had begun a new installation, but he drew my attention to another work leaning against the necklace wall. He had stopped stretching canvas when he lost interest in painting but he kept one of the stretchers. He had completely covered it with outtakes from his male magazines. The faces and torsos of young men wrapped the frame. He was nearly shaking.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s genius.”

  It was a relatively simple piece yet it seemed to have innate power. There was no excess: it was a perfect object.

  The floor was littered with paper cuttings. The room reeked of glue and varnish. Robert hung the frame on the wall, lit a cigarette, and we looked at it wordlessly together.

  It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys. Robert infused objects, whether for art or life, with his creative impulse, his sacred sexual power. He transformed a ring of keys, a kitchen knife, or a simple wooden frame into art. He loved his work and he loved his things. He once traded a drawing for a pair of riding boots—completely impractical, but almost spiritually beautiful. These he buffed and polished with the devotion of a groom dressing a greyhound.

  This affair with fine footwear reached its summit one evening as we returned from Max’s. Turning the corner off Seventh Avenue we came upon a pair of alligator shoes, aglow on the sidewalk. Robert scooped them up and pressed them to him, declaring them treasure. They were deep brown with silk laces, showing no trace of wear. They tiptoed into a construction, which he often disassembled for the need of them. With a wad of tissue stuffed in the pointed toes, they were not a bad fit, though perhaps incongruous with dungarees and turtleneck. He exchanged his turtleneck for a black net T, adding a large cache of keys to his belt loop and discarding his socks. Then he was ready for a night at Max’s, without money for cab fare but his feet resplendent.

  The night of the shoes, as we came to call it, was for Robert a sign that we were on the right path, even as so many paths crossed each other.

  Gregory Corso could enter a room and commit instant mayhem, but he was easy to forgive because he had the equal potential to commit great beauty.

  Perhaps Peggy introduced me to Gregory, for the two of them were close. I took a great liking to him, to say nothing that I felt he was one of our greatest poets. My worn copy of his The Happy Birthday of Death lived on my night table. Gregory was the youngest of the beat poets. He had a ravaged handsomeness and a John Garfield swagger. He did not always take himself seriously, but he was dead serious about his poetry.

  Gregory loved Keats and Shelley and would stagger into the lobby with his trousers hanging low, eloquently spewing their verses. When I mourned my inability to finish any of my poems, he quoted Mallarmé to me: “Poets don’t finish poems, they abandon them,” and then added, “Don’t worry, you’ll do okay, kid.”

  I’d say, “How do you know?”

  And he’d reply, “Because I know.”

  Gregory took me to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, which was a poets’ collective at the historic church on East Tenth Street. When we went to listen to the poets read, Gregory would heckle them, punctuating the mundane with cries of Shit! Shit! No blood! Get a transfusion!

  In watching his reaction, I made a mental note to make certain I was never boring if I read my own poems one day.

  Gregory made lists of books for me to read, told me the best dictionary to own, encouraged and challenged me. Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, my new university.

  “I’m tired of looking like a shepherd boy,” Robert said, inspecting his hair in the mirror. “Can you cut it like a fifties rock star?” Though I was greatly attached to his unruly curls, I got out my shears and thought rockabilly as I snipped. I sadly picked up a lock and pressed it in a book, while Robert, taken with his new image, lingered at the mirror.

  In February he took me to the Factory to see rushes of Trash. It was the first time we had been invited, and Robert was filled with anticipation. I was not moved by the movie; perhaps it wasn’t French enough for me. Robert circulated easily in the Warhol circle, though taken aback by the clinical atmosphere of the new Factory, and disappointed that Andy himself did not make an appearance. I was relieved to see Bruce Rudow, and he introduced me to his friend Diane Podlewski, who played Holly Woodlawn’s sister in the film. She was a sweet-natured southern girl with a huge Afro and Moroccan clothing. I recognized her from a Diane Arbus photograph taken in the Chelsea, more boy than girl.

  As we were leaving in the elevator, Fred Hughes, who managed the Factory, addressed me in a condescending voice. “Ohhh, your hair is very Joan Baez. Are you a folksinger?” I don’t know why, as I admired her, but it bugged me.

  Robert took my hand. “Just ignore him,??
? he said.

  I found myself in a dark humor. One of those nights when the mind starts looping bothersome things, I got to thinking about what Fred Hughes had said. Screw him, I thought, annoyed at being dismissed.

  I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. I realized that I hadn’t cut my hair any different since I was a teenager. I sat on the floor and spread out the few rock magazines I had. I usually bought them to get any new pictures of Bob Dylan, but it wasn’t Bob I was looking for. I cut out all the pictures I could find of Keith Richards. I studied them for a while and took up the scissors, machete-ing my way out of the folk era. I washed my hair in the hallway bathroom and shook it dry. It was a liberating experience.

  When Robert came home, he was surprised but pleased. “What possessed you?” he asked. I just shrugged. But when we went to Max’s, my haircut caused quite a stir. I couldn’t believe all the fuss over it. Though I was still the same person, my social status suddenly elevated. My Keith Richards haircut was a real discourse magnet. I thought of the girls I knew back in high school. They dreamed of being singers but wound up hairdressers. I desired neither vocation, but in weeks to come I would be cutting a lot of people’s hair, and singing at La MaMa.

  Someone at Max’s asked me if I was androgynous. I asked what that meant. “You know, like Mick Jagger.” I figured that must be cool. I thought the word meant both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Whatever it meant, with just a haircut, I miraculously turned androgynous overnight.