canvases, and a bit of respite provided by the Rolling Stones. On my birthday Robert came to see me by himself. He brought me a new record. He put the needle on side one and winked. “Sympathy for the Devil” came on and we both started dancing. “It’s my song,” he said.
Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed.
It leads to each other. We become ourselves.
For a time Robert protected me, then was dependent on me, and then possessive of me. His transformation was the rose of Genet, and he was pierced deeply by his blooming. I too desired to feel more of the world. Yet sometimes that desire was nothing more than a wish to go backward where our mute light spread from hanging lanterns with mirrored panels. We had ventured out like Maeterlinck’s children seeking the bluebird and were caught in the twisted briars of our new experiences.
Robert responded as my beloved twin. His dark curls merged with the tangle of my hair as I shuddered tears. He promised we could go back to the way things were, how we used to be, promising me anything if I would only stop crying.
A part of me wanted to do just that, yet I feared that we could never reach that place again, but would shuttle back and forth like the ferryman’s children, across our river of tears. I longed to travel, to Paris, to Egypt, to Samarkand, far from him, far from us.
He too had a path to pursue and would have no choice but to leave me behind.
We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.
I needed someone to talk to. I went home to New Jersey for my sister Linda’s twenty-first birthday. We were both experiencing growing pains and we comforted each other. I brought her a book of Jacques-Henri Lartigue photographs, and as we leafed through the pages we had a longing to visit France. We sat up through the night plotting, and before we said good night, we had promised to go to Paris together, no small feat for two girls who had never been on an airplane.
The idea of this sustained me through the long winter. I worked overtime at Scribner’s, saving money and plotting our route, charting ateliers and graveyards, designing an itinerary for my sister and me, just as I had planned tactical movements for our sibling army.
I don’t think this was an artistically productive time for Robert and me. Robert was emotionally overwhelmed by the intensity of facing the nature he had suppressed with me and found through Terry. Yet if he was gratified in one sense, he seemed uninspired, if not bored, and perhaps couldn’t help drawing comparisons between the atmosphere of their life to ours.
“Patti, nobody sees as we do,” he told me.
Something in the spring air and the restorative power of Easter drew Robert and me back together. We sat in the diner near Pratt and ordered our favorite meal—grilled cheese on rye with tomatoes, and a chocolate malt. We now had enough money for two sandwiches.
Both of us had given ourselves to others. We vacillated and lost everyone, but we had found one another again. We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.
I decided the time was right to go away. My extra hours at the bookstore without vacation paid off, and they gave me a leave of absence. My sister and I packed our duffel bags. Reluctantly, I left my drawing materials behind so I could travel light. I brought a notebook and gave my camera to my sister.
Robert and I pledged to work hard while we were apart, I to write poems for him and he to make drawings for me. He promised to write and keep me abreast of his pursuits.
When we embraced to say goodbye, he drew back and looked at me intently. We didn’t say anything.
With our small savings, Linda and I went to Paris via Iceland on a prop plane. It was an arduous journey, and though I was excited, I was conflicted about leaving Robert behind. Everything we owned was piled in two small rooms on Clinton Street in Brooklyn manned by an old super who was definitely eyeing our stuff.
Robert had moved out of Hall Street and was staying with friends near Myrtle Avenue. Unlike myself, Robert was not driven by travel. The prospect of being financially independent through his work was his primary goal, but for the meantime he was dependent on odd jobs and his student loan money.
Linda and I were overjoyed to be in Paris, the city of our dreams. We stayed at a fleabag hotel in Montmartre and combed the city in search of where Piaf had sung, Gerard de Nerval had slept, and Baudelaire was buried. I found some graffiti on the rue des Innocents that inspired me to draw. Linda and I found an art supply shop and lingered for hours examining beautiful French drawing papers with exquisite watermarks of angels. I bought some pencils, a few sheets of Arches, and chose a large red portfolio with canvas ribbons, using it as a makeshift table on my bed. With one leg crossed, the other dangling over the side, I drew confidently.
I dragged my portfolio from gallery to gallery. We joined a troupe of street musicians and busked for change. I worked on my drawings and wrote and Linda took photographs. We ate bread and cheese, drank Algerian wine, contracted lice, wore boatneck shirts, and shuffled happily through the backstreets of Paris.
We saw Godard’s
One of the highlights of our days was our trek to the American Express office to send and receive mail. There was always something from Robert, funny little letters describing his work, his health, his trials, and always his love.
He had temporarily moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, sharing a loft on Delancey Street with Terry, with whom he still had an amicable friendship, and a couple of Terry’s friends who had a moving company. Work as a mover afforded Robert pocket money, and the loft had enough raw space for him to continue developing his art.
His first letters seemed a bit down but brightened when he described seeing
Sometimes he seemed lost. I would read his letters, wishing I could be home by his side. “Patti—wanted to cry so bad,” he wrote, “but my tears are inside. A blindfold keeps them there. I can’t see today. Patti—I don’t know anything.”
He would take the F train to Times Square, mingling with the cons, pimps, and prostitutes in what he called “the Garden of Perversion.” He took a picture for me in a photo booth, wearing the peacoat I gave him and peering from beneath an old French naval cap; it has always been my favorite photograph of him.
In response I made a collage drawing for him called
He wasn’t merely jerking off. He was filtering this world through his own aesthetic, criticizing a movie called
