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
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
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
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 Mallarme 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
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
