Nervous Energy, Twentieth-Century Boy

Caffeinated. On my hands and knees working on the kitchen floor. Art-school motor skills. Today I am the master of pubic hair. The shadow I cast is by artificial light. The street below is the color of smoke. The drizzle turned into a persistent rain. But I’m floating on a pink cloud.

It’s hard to unravel people’s origins in New York. They act cagey. Suspicious.

John Berendt came over to my apartment, to have a snoop, look at my work. I gave him a drawing of Alain Delon. Eric was sitting at the kitchen table working on a bottle of Beaujolais, listening to Freddie Hubbard.

Berendt took me to dinner across the street at Rocco’s. Veal francese, with lemon and capers. Mmmm. We went to see the Lindsay Kemp dance troupe (from England) do a kabuki/drag interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. We went backstage afterwards and watched them remove their makeup. Blind Lindsay Kemp said to us, “Everywhere outside of New York is awfully provincial, isn’t it?” One of his dancers is David Meyers, a beautiful blond guy who’s chummy with Hockney’s set. I hit it off with him. So I took Berendt and Meyers to CBGB to see Television. They were soaring in V-formation onstage singing “I gotta fly everywhere in my UFO.”

Jay Reisberg took me to the Upper West Side for an afternoon tea at the Salon d’Art Société (or “the Parlor of the City”). Three guys my age, graduates from Syracuse University, who live in a Victorian floor-through apartment in a brownstone on Eighty-second Street off Central Park West. The pomaded ringleader, David McDermott, a freckled Irish lad who resembles Alfalfa, hails from New Jersey. Then there’s photographer Josef Astor, a tall, bespeckled blond from Akron, Ohio. Finally, George Hasbrook, who has the look of an extra from an old Warner Bros. movie, pencil mustache and all. They are time travelers, living somewhere in the early part of the twentieth century. Playing a crank gramophone, serving sherry, wearing tailcoats, surrounded by taxidermy, being gentlemen. David is a painter who studied with man-about-town Richard Merkin, a very good artist who’s often seen in Esquire, The NY Times, etc., known for his dandyism and erotica collection. David shows me his own paintings of Adolf Hitler, done in several styles. He is mad as a hatter but quite good fun.

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Danny Fields took me to see the flick everyone is talking about, Emmanuelle. Beautiful Dutch girl Sylvia Kristel gets fucked by a wordless stranger in the bathroom of a 747 jumbo jet, in a squash court in her tennis whites, in a Bangkok opium den, and masturbates beneath her cutoff jeans under a picture of Paul Newman. I was pretty turned on, but I was wondering what Danny was thinking. So I asked him as we exited the cinema. “Oh, it was so pretty, it made me wish I was a lesbian.” Ha!

Trying to think up names for the Lance Loud/Kristian Hoffman/Rob DuPrey band. The Bones, the Parents, the Cars, the Aliens, the Little Friskies, Lance Loud’s Problems.

Eric and I threw an afternoon party in our Thompson Street tenement. It was raining, so things were in soft focus. We served Bloody Marys. Makos came with his Polaroid SX-70 and took party pictures. Nineteen-year-old coquette Georgie Warner was a big hit, a perfect nymphet, sporting a new corkscrew coiffure like Aurore Clément. She’s just dropped out of school after only one semester. She was staring at me through big, beautiful eyes that I read as flirtation until all the other guys said they got the same look. What a doll. I had a couple of drinks after a four-week abstinence. School chum Carol is on the phone trying to hustle up a man for the night…John Hersey or Steve Rivers? Who’s the lucky winner gonna be? The drink began to affect me, so I was talking to Craig Gholson, asking him why he never loses his cool like I always seem to do. Maddening, that degree of self-control.

Sunday dinner at mysterious Georgie Warner’s apartment. What’s her game? She looked very sexy in an oriental getup. We drank Guinness and ate fillet of sole. I was nervous because of my intense crush on her. She’s so cool. She could have anyone she wanted. I wanted to take her away from the other dinner guests, into a dark bedroom, clasp her by the shoulders and say, “Georgie, let’s settle some unfinished business,” which would be the words she was waiting to hear, and we’d unleash our mutual desire. Instead, we watched a rerun of the Beatles on TV. Then I excused myself to take the train down for the Sunday-night show of Television. I could breathe easier down here on the Bowery than I could with my classy uptown friends. They played “Love Comes in Spurts.” Jovial nihilist Terry Ork bought me about ten drinks, and about twenty for himself. The Dolls were sitting around looking outdated in their tight Rod Stewart suits.

Dancer David Meyers took me to a dinner in Jasper Johns’s studio on East Houston Street. It was a former bank that Jasper bought in 1965, from the proceeds from his maps, targets, flags, numbers, letters, etc. (That guy staked out a lot of territory for himself.) Jasper had the tellers’ windows and stuff taken out, so he had an incredible amount of room. Bradford-born Mark Lancaster, an unsuccessful painter, acts as his personal secretary and housekeeper. Anyhow, Jasper was currently in the Mediterranean or something. Mark served wine, meat loaf, collard greens, then whiskey. He talked about studying under Richard Hamilton with Bryan Ferry at art school in Newcastle. He talked about the early sixties in austere Britain. Very amiable fella. David Meyers talked about his two-year round-the-world tour with the Royal Ballet, his dream dates with Nureyev, and the exultation he gets two hours a day, performing in front of a live audience. As we walked home David made his romantic pitch for me, telling me I seemed like a consumptive poet, pale and thin…and I had to put him off as I have many before him. It would all be so much easier if I was gay. I’d be cleaning up. Darn the luck! I don’t mean to lead these people on, but I’m curious to know them.

Next night DuPrey’s new band the Mumps debuted at Trude Heller’s on Sixth Avenue. Shiny mirrored art-deco wall. They opened for Cherry Vanilla. It was a full house of the beautiful people. Amanda Lear, Bryan Ferry’s manufactured girlfriend, kept combing her blond hair, Nico-style. Leee Childers, with a new black crew cut, is off to Arabia, “to bring some chic to the sheiks.” He massaged my clavicle. Mallory, in a new black rubber trench coat, was buying everyone drinks with her ill-gotten gains. Interview cover artist Richard Bernstein, Fran Lebowitz (walked out in a huff), Wayne County, Norman Fischer, Pat Loud, Chris Makos (too stoned to take pictures), and various toddlers and trendies. Band hit the stage at ten-thirty. They launch into their tricky, wordy songs. Lance’s bull neck was bulging and sweaty, Kristian looked self-conscious and grieved, DuPrey looked Liverpudlian and unsmiling against the brick-wall backdrop, strobe lights flickering on his rock-boy face. They sounded a little like the arty period of the Kinks, with all those elaborate changes. A little contrived. But some songs were so good, like “We Ended Up” (“We ended up in places like this one…”), “Before the Accident,” “Night Owl,” “Kitty Kitty,” and “Stupid.” I wound up covering it for the SoHo Weekly News, taking over Danny’s column as he’s away somewhere. I titled it “Liber-teen Rock.”

Lonely Wednesday. Ork and Lloyd just dropped in, bearing Heinekens and grass, made themselves at home, asked to hear some obscure English platters, so I flipped on Eno’s Seven Deadly Fins, which removed the caps from our teeth. Then Bryan Ferry’s sensational cover of “The In Crowd.” They looked through my sketchbooks as Terry told outrageous stories about his old pal Nick Ray. He talks about Billy Halop, the cute Dead End Kid who went wrong. We talked about how persistence pays off. Ork kids me about never wearing the same outfit twice.

I don’t have the rent money. Gulp. Here I sit, presiding over all the appliances. The drapes are closed. I don’t answer the phone. I’m trying an experiment in being alone. I like it. I ain’t been to school all week except once to draw a gypsy, which I made into an Egyptian. I took sanctuary in a nearby cinema.

Spending time with the ever-fascinating David Walter McDermott. A high-idealed lunatic. He did a thing at art school where he was “the man who forgot to put on his trousers,” and walked to school through the Syracuse slum with his knee-high socks, garters, brogues, boxers, etc., everything but the pants. When this was pointed out in drawing class, he shrieked and ran home.

Went to a big party last night in a phantasmagorical pleasure palace on West Twentieth Street. There was a leopard lounge that put my crummy boudoir to shame. Barbara Nessims on the wall. (She used to be Marc Bolan’s lover.) Norman held out white cocaine for everyone to sniff. Someone flashed a tit. Richie Gallo flashed a cock. A neon light sculpture put an electronic dawn on the shattered guests. Bowie hid under his enormous black hat. Thought of his song “Watch That Man” that goes, “Shakey threw a party that lasted all night / Everybody drank a lot of something nice…” A tiny Japanese television set was perched on top of a Greek column. Modern art.

Mary Jane is mad at me because there was another drunken night where Craig Gholson passed out and threw up in his sleep, and she found me kissing his pretty girlfriend, Susan Morris, who works at The New Yorker. I also had my hand under her white silk blouse playing with her exquisite breasts. Mary Jane took me by the wrist and dragged me away. Bad dog. Woof woof, bow wow.

If I admit I’m an alkie, then I gotta quit. And who wants to? My hangovers sometimes last for three days now. I’m twenty-two, my liver must be sixty by this point. Got a pain in my armpit. Is that the big hello of coronary thrombosis? Emphysema? My cold bones clatter against each other.

Big blizzard hits Manhattan. I bundle up, put a hat low over my eyes, and head south, past Prince, Spring, and Broome. No cars. No people. Just me in snowbound SoHo smoking a joint. I felt as if in a dream, the white flurries whipping at the industrial warehouses. At Canal I ducked into the red-and-white Pearl Paint. I got mesmerized by all the colors. I wanted to get everything…I spent sixty dollars on materials. An investment in myself. I flirted with the salesgirl. I’d seen her somewhere before. Very arty. Got a couple beers at Fanelli’s on my way home. Trudging through the deep snow. Manhattan seems benign in the whiteout. A fairyland. Couldn’t hurt a fly.

Our lease is up in April. I’m tired of the cranky neighbors who make their threats about the noise. We have to tiptoe on the slanted floor at night. The twenty-five thousand cockroaches. The toilet that runs constantly, the stuck drain in the tub, shower don’t work, hot is cold and cold is hot. I’d like a proper bathroom. I can’t sit up in my loft bed. Ten electrical cords stuck into one jack. That’s what’s called an octopus. The surly bums on the corner calling me “faggot.” Maybe I’ll move in with beautiful Mary Jane.

I found a note in my pocket that said, “Call Ron for Bernstein party,” and a number. I called. Art dealer Andrew Crispo answered and asked if I was Duncan Hannah. “Yah, have we met?” I asked.

He explained he and Ron (?) had met me at the Larry Rivers party and they very much wanted me to come to this one. Okay.

First an opening at the New School, curated by J. C. Suares, of David Levine, Ed Sorel, Brad Holland, and Ralph Steadman. Suares ogled Mary Jane and said with a leer, “You’re not leaving her behind, are you?” “Nope, she’s coming with me.”

We high-tailed it to Gary Lajeski’s Tower Gallery at seven p.m., just as a junked-out Genevieve Waite was leaving. Her Broadway show closed after two performances. Richard Bernstein was showing his iconic airbrushed photos of celebrities. He looked like a Jewish David Essex. Many Factory people were inside, Loud and Makos getting in everyone’s photos. Fat Pat Ast, slick Fred Hughes, sexy Hiram Keller, shy Andy Warhol, theatrical Diana Vreeland, crazy Tinkerbelle, grotesque Divine, winning David Jo, run-down Leee Childers, who I haven’t seen since Club 82 (“the sperm cellar,” as Leee called it) turned into a black club. Dotson Rader asked Lance what my status was; Lance said I was taken, Dotson said too bad, because “he’s the most beautiful boy on earth,” and because of my profession I would have to turn to men eventually. He warned Mary Jane not to let me drink too much, or else he would be taking me home. A bit presumptuous, but then he sees humanity as hustlers.

Got a ride in Peter Brown’s station wagon to the after-party on Seventy-sixth Street. I’m exhausted from a full day of booze and no food. Never been good at pacing myself. Entered a big apartment, where there was a huge block of ice carved in the shape of a heart, lit by pink fluorescent tubes, melting very slowly. Had my photo taken with Fred Hughes, Tony Zanetta, Lance, Wayne. I sat down only to discover that I was unable to get back up. Transsexual Amanda Lear sidled over and asked why I was so drunk in her crazy German accent. “Just am,” I explained. She scolded me for a while with a big smile, lots of white teeth in there, then started joking about her jealous boyfriend, Bryan Ferry. She was wearing a sheer chiffon blouse that exposed her shapely silicone breasts, which I’d already seen in Lui magazine (being a guy who does his homework). She said she was recruiting models for Salvador Dalí, he’s painting angels, and to give her my number so she could get in touch about that. I did. Whew. Time to go.

Rainy Sunday night. Reno Sweeney. Anita O’Day onstage singing some junkie scat. At the table next to us were Colacello, Warhol, Keller, and Amanda Lear. She was telling them how disgustingly drunk I was the other night. Andy turned to me and said, “Oh, I always thought you were British” (?). They left without finishing their drinks. Never understood how anyone could do that. It’s the Scotsman in me.

The following afternoon she called, told me to meet her at 5:30 at the St. Regis for drinks with Dalí. I took the subway up. In the lobby was a young man slumped into a Louis XVI chair, wearing a raccoon coat, emerald-green suit, snappy shoes, and a ruffled shirt. A misfit like me, I thought. He looked up and gave me a smile. I smirked back. It was Rod Stewart!

Amanda entered the lobby, took me by the hand, and led me to Dalí’s table in the crowded King Cole Bar. She started telling me her life story. Super-narcissistic. She’s about thirty-five. She didn’t pause for a breath, looking around to see the effect she was having on the businessmen in the room. “You’re just like Bryan—your innocence and shyness is just a mask,” she said, wagging a finger at me, as if I was a secret degenerate.

Then there was a silence. We looked to the doorway, and there, arms spread wide, sporting a gold cape, was Dalí. He announced to the room loudly, “Dalí…is here!” He headed towards us, his cane propped in front of him like a sword. Amanda stood up as he kissed her hand, and they began babbling in a mix of Spanish, French, and English. I noticed his cape had real bees sown into the weave. It was all there: the ridiculous mustache, the bulging eyes (filled with cataracts by this stage of his life), the long, greasy hair. I stood to shake his hand. He sized me up. Appeared satisfied. “Will you model for Dalí?” he said.

“Ah! This is good! Dalí does not paint angels with hair on their chest!” Then he considered another point. “But are you a professional model?”

“Ah! This is also good. Dalí does not paint professional models! But then, what is it that you do?”

Dalí threw his hand over his heart and said, “Ahhhhh, then you LOVE Dalí!”

Taken aback by this lunatic, I answered, “Oh, yah, we’re all crazy about you down at art school.” A total lie. We all think he is the worst. He said he was glad I was skinny and pale and European-looking. “You will make a beautiful angel for Dalí!” And with that, he made his grand exit, while the dumbfounded businessmen looked on.

Amanda took me upstairs to her dark room (the Dalí entourage lives in the St. Regis when they’re in town). She showed me her portfolio and her song lyrics. She took a Polaroid of me. I felt like a ten-year-old. I was completely thrown off by this exotic creature with the inside-out dick. I don’t want to find out more. She began to change for her next engagement, shooting me naughty looks. “Should I wear this? Or this?” Uh-oh.

The phone rang. It was Bryan Ferry, on tour in Toronto. She was teasing him about the “nice boy” she had in her room. I could hear him getting upset—what boy? Why is there a boy in your room? She was laughing at him, saying not to be jealous, he’s just waiting for me as I dress for dinner, he’s just a pretty boy, ha ha. More squawking from the receiver, Amanda enjoying this immensely, tormenting him like a cat with a mouse. I felt sorry for Bryan, my hero; he’s jealous…of ME! Fortunately, she had a dinner to get to, so I was spared any further spider-and-fly scenario.

I was walking home on Park Avenue ruminating on sexual identity and thinking about what I would order at Bun n’ Burger when John Berendt sidled up and took me somewhere fancy instead, for cold trout, duck à l’orange, and crème caramel. Nothing like a free feedbag! He was amused by my story and asked what does turn me on, anyway?

First splashed out on dinner at Lüchow’s, which has been there for a few hundred years, with the same waiters, too. Schnitzel and spätzle all around. The Academy was buzzing with “Roxy types” in the lobby. All of my friends were there. Ferry was menacing, squinty-eyed, twisting away, in good voice. Icy charm. Andy Mackay doing the duck walk in his green jumpsuit. Futuristic fifties. Triumphant headliners delivered the goods. Doesn’t get any better than this.

Afterwards Mary Jane and I stood by the stage door waiting for the man of the hour. He and Amanda appeared, flashbulbs went off, and they ducked into a big black limousine, roaring off to the El Morocco club. We walked south, past the giant Cooper Union building, past the Colonnades (which houses the new hot spot Lady Astor’s) to CBGB, where the Mumps were opening for Television. Blondie and the Ramones looked on from the wings. There’s definitely warring cliques in CB’s, now that the audience has grown and bands are getting signed to labels. Some of the innocence is lost.

The phone company burned down, so I am incommunicado. When it was turned back on, my first call was from Amanda Lear.

“Don’t be ridiculous, you have to come up, The Legend of Lylah Clare is on, it’s my favorite movie, I want to watch it with you. Don’t you adore Kim Novak?”

Then she blew up at me, told me that the Dalí modeling was off, and that I should learn to grow up. Slam. So that’s that. Bye, weirdo.

Never believe what an artist says, only what he does. Teachers tell me to pick one idea and stick to it. Then start on a series of variations on a theme. Do it over and over; then the viewer knows you really meant it. I don’t do that—too many ideas swimming about in my head. As old Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.” The cracks in my head let more and more come in. I do research in the library, studying the last twenty years in the art magazines, receptive to this, discarding that. Takes a long time to hone your sensibilities. Each new wonder leads me deeper into the wilderness. The more you know, the more you realize how much more there is to know. It’s a lifetime profession, an endless process.

I got my hair cut at Mingus and Mary Jane dyed it L’Oréal blue-black. I’m moving up to her pad in Chelsea, a nice quiet block. So I’ll be bidding farewell to Little Italy. I’ll be a college graduate then, and will have to seek some kind of employment. Groan.

I was in a local gallery, and I spied with my little eye…owl-eyed and bleach-blond David Hockney! He was with his best pal from the Met, bearded Henry Geldzahler. I eavesdropped on their conversation. I passed him and said “Hello.” Hockney paused, gave me a crooked grin, and said “Hi.” So much to ask him, so much to tell him, that I remained mute. I watched as Hockney and Geldzahler went across West Broadway. Henry posed in front of a Grand Union, and David took pictures of him. Pop! Henry poked David in the ribs and pointed at me. Caught gaping! Blush. Someday I’ll be his peer, I hope. It’s a drag being a fan. That unequal-footing feeling.

Went up to the Hippodrome to see the New York Dolls, now that Londoner Malcolm McLaren has got ahold of them. I’ve seen him hanging around CBGB in a sharp powder-blue teddy-boy suit. He dressed them up in red patent leather and hung some kind of Soviet banner behind them. Old wine in new bottles. Or is it the other way round? Anyhow, three of the five Dolls have pretty heavy smack habits. Not good.

I went out drinking with Richard Lloyd, and tottered home at two-thirty a.m. Crawled up into my loft bed and found a grumpy Mary Jane asleep there. In the morning she explained why she was grumpy.

“I went to bed about eleven. Your friend John Berendt started buzzing from downstairs very late, demanding to be let in, and I kept telling him you weren’t here. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I gave in, and buzzed the door. He arrived with this creepy-looking English guy with a very round head. They were both extremely drunk and demanded to know where you were. As if I know!”

“How should I know? Just some riffraff Berendt had in tow. He was very rude. It was horrible.” She went off to school in a huff. Then Berendt called.

“Yep. I went to his opening at the Met, we were introduced, and were getting along, drinking champagne, and he said, ‘Let’s get out of here and have some fun.’ So we went to a bar I know, and he said, ‘Don’t you know any attractive, dissolute young painters?’ So I said, ‘Just one, but he’d be perfect. He’s in the Village, let’s go find him.’ We found your unfriendly girlfriend instead. Where were you?!”

“Out drinking with a pal. How was I s’posed to know you were gonna show up with Francis Bacon?”

“Well, you blew it. He was a scream. That guy can drink like no one you ever seen! Called you a cunt! Chance in a lifetime.” Then he rang off. How weird to think of Bacon standing in my slum kitchen. Well, maybe not, considering.

It’s spring. The girls are flying low. I’m a poor stray cat and the world is my saucer of milk. I walk into Washington Square Park, stomping grounds of the Beat Generation twenty-five years ago. Now populated by troubled nutcases raving with anguish. Met my new pal Craig and we went up to the Met for the Bacon show. I liked his small self-portraits the best, but mostly find him tricky and pompous, with those big gold frames and decorator colors. I like the myth, though. Down to Knoedler for Hockney drawings. The colored-pencil drawings of his friends are gorgeous. And those spidery Rapidograph drawings as well. That guy can draw like a motherfucker. Then on to Antonioni’s new film, a beautifully existential vacuum with the very delectable Maria Schneider. The Passenger was marred by the casting of Jack Nicholson, who is a creepy ham, and far too American. What about Jean-Louis Trintignant? Wouldn’t he have been just right?

Television say they’ve broken up. Verlaine (twenty-six) wants DuPrey on piano. Hell wants DuPrey on guitar. But he sticks with the Mumps out of loyalty. He’s a bon homme.

Had a treat in my painting class. The model was the beautiful Annette, who slept with me and DuPrey on the same night last summer, when it was hot like the jungle. All the boys were going nuts over her reclining nude form on the stand. I painted away on that creamy form that I had carnal knowledge of. Her stomach leading to her thatch. She stared at me the whole time. At the break, she put on her kimono and came over to me, whispering about our past lives and stuff, her huge, unblinking eyes never veering from mine. So my fellow classmates’ (and teacher’s) jaws dropped at my obvious familiarity with this somnambulist goddess. My peer-group rating went way up among this oil-paint-spattered crowd.

J. C. Suarès had been telling me to take my portfolio to the Times. I didn’t think I was ready. He asked me to bring my collage books to class. He told the class to get to work, and told me to follow him.

“Just shut up and follow me,” he answered. Down eleven flights in the elevator. Into an uptown cab, to The New York Times. Up to the art department. Into Steve Heller’s office (op-ed page).

“Okay, a horizontal spot, five columns wide, on opera for Friday at ten a.m. You can use our picture collection.”

Let’s see…fifty dollars a column…that’s $250! “Great,” I say. Then J. C. leads me down the hall to Ruth Ansel’s office (she’s art director for the Sunday Magazine).

She eyed me suspiciously and said, “Let’s see what you’ve got.” She flipped through the pages and said, “Okay…I’ve got a full page on an article about how they’re teaching pop culture in colleges, called ‘Pop-Eyed Professors.’ How’s that?” she said.

“Good!” (Another $250.) There was a spot that went with it. (Another $100.) So within the week I was in the Times twice, with my large-ish rubber-stamp signature there for all to see. And dispose of the next day in the trash bin. It was a very good start to my new occupation.