Affection, Twentieth-Century Boy

“The object of my affection / Has changed my complexion / From white to rosy red.”

Bonjour, livre! It is I, the happy Frenchman, come to couple words and chronicle my life and times!

Sunday, dusk. Feeling homy and content. Eric and I are boiling potatoes, the only foodstuffs left for the rest of the week, till our checks come from home. We’ve managed before, and we’ll manage again. I like coffee, and I like tea, I like java, and it likes me.

I’m kneeling on the living-room floor in a disordered litter of paper, making collages, white Oxford-cloth sleeves rolled up, the sound of scissor blades gnashing their teeth like an animal, smelling the paste, juxtaposing my wonderful scraps retrieved from the sidewalk. Red meets green and they go electric. That rare artistic exhilaration occurs. I can do no wrong. I draw over everything, parchment lampshades, bills, books, biceps. Work is play.

Charlie Baudelaire says, “Dandyism is the last burst of heroism in the midst of decadence. It is, above all, the ardent need to make oneself something original, contained within the outward limits of convention. It is a kind of cult of the self which can survive the quest of whatever happiness may be found in others. The pleasure of astounding and the proud satisfaction of never being astounded.” Hear, hear. I find conformity cowardly.

Kristian is moving out after his five-week stay, moving to Twenty-third Street with affable Lance Loud, seen in Newsweek this month, eyes closed. Onstage with his luckless quartet, Lance drops to one knee and sings, “Ya gotta be stupid….if you wanna love me.” Kristian says in a snotty voice, “Living in your flophouse was an enlightening experience.” His cynicism wore me down. If there is nothing redeeming in anything, okay then, but I don’t want to be reminded of it. Get off of my cloud. Don’t rain on my parade. My own optimism is a discipline that I practice. I love the guy but he can be too bitchy. Now he can complain about Lance for a change.

I’m reading Vogue. You wouldn’t even know I’m living in the same city as the place where all these glamorous parties are happening. My new crush, Aurore Clément (from Lacombe, Lucien) says in an interview, “You only live once, so have confidence in yourself, and go get what you want, it’s not important if you hit or miss, same in physical relationships with people.” That goes double for me.

We’re always thinking up names for stuff, books, pop combos, etc. DuPrey said I should call my journal I Am an Idiot by Duncan Hannah. I like Trial and Error, Shadow Box, Abstract Espresso, Contemporary Ghosts. But I settle on Affection.

Adrift in tinsel town. I walk through the teeming crowds of fertile Times Square, one great big pulsing abstraction, particles jiggling helter-skelter under marquees, tribes of pastel tootsie-wootsies chewing gum, a colossal oxidized Venus with a sugar-cone torch, little islands of filth and degradation, salt-shaker skyscrapers, small lives, big dreams.

New manifesto: I seek to retain the magical principles of childhood and assert them with an expanding knowledge of the world. I’m trying to become life instead of imitating it. I’m in an impressionable state. Bringing together the diffuse elements of the teen dream. These complex signals tell us who we are and what we might be. Fantasy is reality.

Went to Sonnabend Gallery to see the Jim Dine show. Great draftsman. Tools. Underwear. Then off to the movies. Breathless again. Popcorn and Baby Ruth. Feet up. Take notes. Jean Seberg plays twenty-year-old Patricia Franchini, pregnant with Michel’s child. He’s lying low with her because “there were no vacancies at Claridges.” Piano and bongo music buildup. He shadowboxes. Says, “Women’s hips get me. Here I am in love with a girl and she’s a coward.” He hot-wires a convertible sports car and they drive to Montparnasse, a smoldering Gitanes in his teeth. They pass luminous Place de la Concorde, they pass corrugated Deux Chevaux and dented Dauphine. He says, “I feel tired, I’m going to die.” And indeed he is, the police are hot on his tail, a motorcycle brigade in V-formation. One more cigarette before annihilation.

Mary Jane calls me her “little weirdo honey-bunny.” Says, “Why do you act so nutty? I should keep you chained to the bed like a golden monkey.” She gets up to find a chain. She takes birth control pills now, and that makes her breasts swell and her moods more erratic. At night she prays for dead astronauts, Walt Disney, and other random spirits.

My drawing teacher, Bill Clutz, says, “Ineptness is in this year.” He looked through my portfolio and said what stood out was my romanticism, which saved it from being facile bullshit. Said it was strong-willed. Said it was about hope. The sensual activities of everyday life. Says I’m complicated. Reminiscent of a cartoon character. He should talk! He looks like a rabbit!

I played hooky and scoured the Strand for dusty treasure. Crawling on my hands and knees in the basement, I found a book on contemporary British art called Private View, with Peter Blake, Hockney, Procktor, and Kitaj. My forefathers. They graduated from the Royal College in 1962. I was ten then, sitting in my room drawing battleships and bombers, race cars and spies. Now it’s a dozen years later, and I see their work as a touchstone to my own development. They were inclusive of the pop world around them, not sweeping it all away like today’s minimalists. They had room for shooting-gallery graphics, cheesecake, tigers, drawing on modern life quite literally. A breath of fresh air in the increasingly pretentious art-world climate. I’m also turned on by Rauschenberg’s assemblages of multiple sensations inside one format.

I wake from a vivid nightmare in my loft bed, heart pounding, listening to the clanking pipes, the creaking floorboards, the canvas shades rustling, the rattle of the old windowpanes. All amplified into murderous fear. It’s the downside of having your subconscious filled with crime films. I grab my hatchet and go down to investigate. No one there.

Movies Watched

Benjamin (Clémenti/Deneuve)

Mickey One

The Sicilian Clan

Le Départ (Léaud)

Steppenwolf

Love and Anarchy

Stavisky

Le Violons du Bal

The Servant

The Hireling

The Glass Key

This Gun for Hire

Every Sunday I model for one of my teachers, J. C. Suarès. He’s a very successful thirty-one-year-old Egyptian-born illustrator, art director for The New York Times and Screw, carries the biggest switchblade you ever saw, smokes cigars, talks dirty, has a big mole on his face. Friends with Fellini! (Fellini called in tears, complaining he was too fat to find his penis!) He lives in a fancy garden apartment on West Sixteenth Street. He pays me ten dollars (and lunch) to stand in front of him in my motorcycle jacket while he sketches away in a kind of Matisse/Picasso style, asking me my opinion on things. He says he’s keeping in touch with the younger generation.

J. C. brought his pal Ralph Steadman into class to tell us funny stories. He said he fought for his country. “Where?” I asked.

“In bars.” he said. Steadman told us future graduates to “insist on your point of view! Fight for your work! Above all, be total!”

I often see Elaine de Kooning in the Parsons painting studios, talking seriously to her students, chain-smoking in her capri pants. A relic from another bohemia.

Went to an opening at Marlborough Gallery for Larry Rivers’s new Chinese coloring-book paintings. Great people watching. Everyone checking each other out. Drummer Elvin Jones was in the corner, grunting unintelligible guttural remarks. Helmut Berger was dressed as a Cossack (YSL). Sylvia Miles, Gerard Malanga, Richard Bernstein, Eric Boman, fur designer Larissa. The print room had an early Rivers, The Boston Massacre, some Diebenkorns, a couple of Kitajs. The reception had the reassuring drone of a beehive. Mallory arrived, said her aunt died and “left me a sum,” which I happen to know is not the case. She works five days a week in a massage parlor. So does Velvet. They went pro, to supplement their super-groupie lifestyle.

We went to the after-party at Seventy-fifth and Central Park West. Could hear the music from the street. One to two hundred people were in a giant apartment belonging to Peter Brown from the Robert Stigwood Organization. A very elegant, classical setting with pop art on the walls, smelling of wealth and expensive leisure. Jackie Curtis was crying on Lance’s shoulder in the bedroom; she looked like Bozo the Clown. Satyr Larry Rivers had his arms around my sexy school chums Carol and Shelly. Carol detached herself and came over to me with that “look” in her sultry eyes. We’ve fooled around in the past. “I wanna make out,” she said alluringly, and I thought, Why not, I’m drunk, I don’t see Mary Jane around, why not grab a quick one? So we ducked into a bathroom and locked the door. Grope, grope. Then we resurfaced into the fray. A Chinese screen fell over on Carol, but a guy called John Berendt caught it before she was squashed. He led me through the party because he wanted Terry Southern (author of one of my favorite books, Candy) to meet me. We finally found Terry passed out stone cold behind an enormous mauve velvet couch. Very much the worse for wear.

Snooping around the bedrooms, I see one of my heroes, Oklahoma boy Joe Brainard, sitting shyly on a velvet loveseat in front of a vanity, wearing a brown velvet suit, green silk tie, and sneakers. He of the fancy brushwork, the Morandi of Pepsi bottles, sleeping lurchers, hot fudge sundaes, wildflowers, and spread-eagled Nancy (Sluggo’s pal). So I got up my nerve and approached Joe, telling him how I felt like I knew him already because of I Remember. He mumbled, “Oh, really.” I put a bunch of questions to him—who did he like? etc. I said he was one of the only funny artists around. He didn’t have much to say, squirmed a bit. He seemed afflicted with some secret sorrow. He asked about my work and told me he’d been very lucky when he started out, because he had a lot of friends who helped him out, showing right away, didn’t have to drive a cab, etc. I was going to ask if I could visit him on Greene Street, but then he was gone, like a ghost.

I see Mary Jane crying, and David Croland saying to her, “Don’t cry, baby, it’ll be all right.”

John Berendt took us over to his classy apartment on West Seventy-sixth Street for a brandy. He pre-interviews the guests on The Dick Cavett Show. He asks me my life story. Mary Jane in a huff about the locked-bathroom incident. I’m in the doghouse again.

Home, listening to “Memories” by Robert Wyatt. Off a beat-up import LP called Rock Generation. “Memories can hang you up and haunt you / All your life, you know / Get so you cannot stay / And yet cannot go.”

I’m doing my homework, listening to Fauré and nursing a bottle of Bordeaux. Eric walks into the living room, his finger outstretched in his coat pocket, and says in a foreign accent, “Giff me za microfilm…I know you have it…Hand over za microfilm, now!”

“You read too many comic books,” I say. Eric turned a trick for fifty dollars recently. Who says love won’t pay the rent? Poor Eric, he is the most unlikely hustler ever.

Christmas in Minneapolis, less to do with Jesus and more to do with breaking the law. A little family stuff, tennis with Dad in an indoor court, listening to my ancient grandfather Bunny Rathbun telling his well-worn stories over a big glass of bourbon. One story about returning a stolen diamond ring to a St. Paul prostitute on Xmas Eve of 1912 gets a look-in every year, but he tells it well. Beats the Three Wise Men. I have to answer a lot of stupid questions like “How’s school, Dunc?” “You like it out there in New York City?”

One night my father handed me a Scotch-and-soda and said, “Dunc, you know on the way to work this morning, I was thinking that there is a communication breakdown between us. To understand me, you have to know one thing. In 1957 I had a nervous breakdown. I was paralyzed with fear of who-knows-what for three days. All I did was sit and cry. Of course I was embarrassed. But my dad diagnosed that it was something in my chemistry, something in the Matré”—his mother’s maiden name—“genes. All the Matrés, at one point or another, broke down in a similar way.” He looked sad, and told me he still worries all the time, can’t relax, plagued with insomnia. He hides it well.

I drove over to the Minneapolis Art Institute to view the new exhibition of contemporary art, including a couple of Schieles and a fabulous 1960 painting of Dick Tracy by Andy Warhol, complete with scumbled pencil and oily drips, back when Andy was still trying. So much charm in that painting. His portrait of Popeye from then is another winner. Now he’s got assistants doing much of the work, and suffers because of it. But, of course, that’s part of his point.

Parents left for a sail around South America in a large sailboat. They left me the house for six days, including a note a mile long about things not to do in their absence, and of course I disobeyed each and every one of them, and some more besides.

So, the big event coming up is old pal Kramer’s wedding to my ex, Eden. The first of any of us to make that marital gesture. They’re both completely mad, so this should be interesting. Plus, all us groomsmen are prodigious drinkers, so this will be an Olympian celebration.

Kurt’s new apartment on Hennepin. The hashish and Pernod flowed. Kramer singing, “I’m gettin’ married in the morning / Ding dong the bells are gonna chime…” We were in the bathroom with the shower on scalding to make like we was in Venezuela (I don’t know why, maybe to get our wrinkles out). Kramer eventually jumped in the tub, receiving second-degree burns on his arm, which began to blister immediately and had turned black by morning. As the apartment was slowly demolished, the landlord complained repeatedly, a neighbor entered with a sidearm in a hip holster, toting a double-barreled shotgun in the crook of his arm, and finally the police, who cleared everyone out. In other words, a good party. As Patti Smith would say, “relentless adolescence.”

Wedding day. Filling up our plastic hip flasks for the long ordeal ahead. We drive through the wintry landscape to Kramer’s house, climb out of our filthy khakis and into our thirty-dollar rental tuxedos, doing up our studs. A fleet of autos left for the Methodist church, where Eric Li was playing Chopin on the pipe organ.

The priest caught us passing around a flask in the antechamber. He crossed his fingers that this unholy ceremony would go off without a hitch. We filed out, spacing ourselves three feet apart, hands folded in front of us, chins raised in sober (?) salute. Crosby said later it looked like a police lineup after a debutantes’ ball: five shadowy, sinister visages dressed in our casino duds, packin’ rods. Staring out at the squaresville crowd like gangsters.

Priest says, “If there’s any man who objects to this wedding, speak now or forever hold your peace.” Kramer turns to us with a dirty look, smirks at priest. Kurt whispers to me, “Hey, don’t that babe do a strip o’er dere in Nordeast? Yah, that’s Fifi la Fou!” Beautiful Eden is crying in her off-white lace gown. My old gal, who shared carnal relations with me, above the Pizza Box, less than one year ago, marrying that wild-haired lunatic, voted most likely to self-immolate. Ain’t life funny? Then it was “I do” time, and we filed out.

A stuffy reception, aided by hashish consumption in the men’s room. Then on to my parents’ house for a blowout. Kramer was pissed off he couldn’t come too. “Sorry, pal, you’re marinated now,” we said. Thirty people showed up. A crazy girl fresh from a nuthouse started to scream at everyone about nothing in particular. Juvenile Jimmy Clifford tripped a giant Viking one too many times, and the surly brute picked him up by the lapels of his dinner jacket, threatening him with a severe beating. Clifford squirming, saying, “Look, buddy, don’t get shook, it’s just a joke.” The lunk wouldn’t have it. Someone came to find me, told me Clifford was about to get pummeled, so I wandered out, sized up the fella, a good foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me, and said, “Excuse me, but as the host, I feel I must ask you to leave. Nothing against you, but it’s just that you’re causing a disturbance, and this party was intended to have a festive atmosphere. I’m afraid you’re endangering that, so there it is.”

The brute blinked, set Clifford down, and left with a bewildered look on his face. Much applause from the hedonists. You see, these tuxedos do something to you, bring you a certain sense of forceful grace. Put character and reason in your demeanor. Anyway, we drank the house dry by three a.m. I had to take a piss, went to the can, steadied myself with the towel rack over the toilet, saw about six Duncans in the mirror, fell backwards into the tub, where my mother was keeping her plants moist while she was gone, banged my head on the soap dish, crunched all the plants flat, snapping them at the base. Poor fronds. I struggled to get up, but the world was spinning too fast that night. Too loaded, man. I suppose I was as drunk as I ever could be, so I gave up. Conked out.

Next day the groomsmen were shaking all over, and I was no exception. Heart going thumpity-thump. All I could do was pace. Delirium tremens. I threw up a little blood and stomach lining. I swore if I lived through this I’d give up demon alcohol. Who wants to be dead? Plenty enough time for that at a later date. New Year’s Eve tonight. Will I make it to 1975?

I fly back to La Guardia on the General Mills jet, with my jolly corporate-exec uncle. He gave me a barbiturate from his pocket, so I read Françoise Sagan peacefully. Caught a crystal-clear bird’s-eye view of Manhattan from my window. Oz!

Television was making a rare appearance at their old club CBGB. They’ve come a long way in the past ten months. Once the most underground of the underground, now they sport a chic notoriety. The Velvet Underground of the seventies. Eno produced their demo (which they found too stylized). They signed to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. Their manager, Terry Ork, says, “They’ve got no bass, no drums, no rhythm, no lead, but music aside, they’re the greatest.” So it was like old times, all the glitter kids from the now defunct Max’s Kansas City (yup), David Johansen gulping down chili with Syl Sylvain during the opening band’s set, Blondie and the Banzai Babies, featuring the creamy former Playboy bunny Debbie Harry. Hatchet-faced Johnny Thunders made a guest appearance on his Gibson Melody Maker. Doing that one braying lick he’s got.

I asked Lance Loud how have all the parties been lately. “Great! I am the parties!”

I asked him if his new motorcycle jacket was from the shop on Christopher Street called the Leather Man. He said “I am the Leather Man!”

Scrawny Patti Smith was boogalooing in the aisles during Television, pumping her fist, screaming, “Yah…yah!”

There was a rumor going round that Television was going to can their drummer. Verlaine wasn’t happy with Billy Ficca’s busy, irregular timekeeping. So he asked me what I was like. “Dave Clark,” I said. He weighed this in his mind solemnly, nodded, and said he’d set up an audition to try it out. I’m not such a fancy drummer. But then Hell’s not such a fancy bass player. Some might say that Hell is not a bass player at all.

So Friday I went down to Ork’s Chinatown loft, where Television rehearsed. A bleary-eyed Richard Lloyd opened the door, tugging mismatched socks on his dirty feet. Their equipment was scattered about. Posters of Last Tango and Il Conformista on the wall. Roxy albums on the dusty floor. Lloyd, Hell, Verlaine, and I unwound with a Hendrix-type instrumental. Then we began with their songs, which I knew by heart. I laid down a much heavier beat than Billy was used to doing, eliminating all his skittering, nervous fills. I kept it simple. Hell was grinning at me, and I was having a ball, actually playing with Television! Especially thrilling were those white-heat crescendos they excel at. After one of ’em, where I had laid down a particularly slinky bit of syncopation, Verlaine winked at me and said, “That was something else.” I screwed up on the numbers that had a lot of changes. It was good, but not to be. Verlaine kept Billy. And made me swear that Billy must never hear about my tryout.