CHAPTER ONE

The Castle

Just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan lies Bergen County, New Jersey, composed of towns such as Fort Lee, Englewood, Palisades Park, and Edgewater, to name a few. Today Fort Lee, whose splendid location stretches along the Palisades Cliffs, is a mass of high-rises, a spillover from Manhattan, but the Hudson River and the Palisades Cliffs are still as beautiful as I remember them when I was a kid. In the 1950s there wasn’t a high-rise to be seen. The towns were more like villages, old-fashioned and unchanged for decades.

I grew up in Palisades Park, a town next door to Fort Lee, in a typical middle-class neighborhood. Dad worked as a machinist and tool-and-die maker at the American Can Company in Jersey City. His fellow workers said he was a genius and could do the impossible. When everybody else was stumped with a mechanical problem and the situation was considered hopeless, that’s when they called on Dad.

I attended an ancient schoolhouse that resembled a Gothic fortress. It had wainscoted classrooms, green slate boards, and old wooden desks with inkwells. The initials carved on their surfaces by generations of bad boys dated back to the turn of the century. I hated every single day of school and was chronically in trouble for daydreaming and drawing pictures. I managed to pass from grade to grade by devising ingenious methods of cheating on tests with like-minded classmates.

Life in a town like Palisades Park in the 1950s was like living in the country today. As provincial as it was, though, one could cross the bridge to Manhattan and land on another planet, one of taxicabs, skyscrapers, and millions of people moving at a hundred miles per hour. I grew up aware that New York City was the center of the entire world, a place where you could get anything or be anything you chose to be—a place where everybody who was “somebody” lived.

During the holidays, my Sicilian relatives would visit from Jersey City for an Italian feast. After my grandmother entertained my cousins and me with stories of growing up in Palermo, she’d give us pieces of torrone. Each piece of the Italian nougat came packaged in a small, exquisitely decorated box. On the back of each box was a picture of a painting by one of the Italian masters. Each picture was set in a printed gold-leaf frame that highlighted the painting like a miniature masterpiece in a museum. I lined up my empty boxes on my bedroom bureau and was mesmerized by the beauty of these pictures.

No holiday was complete without a hike to Fort Lee, where we spent the day exploring the cliffs. This included a visit to something quite remarkable that would one day change my life and set the stage for my future career. At the very edge of town, perched on a cliff overlooking the river, was an old estate set in its own parklands that cascaded down the side of the cliffs and ended at River Road below. In a clearing near the cliffs’ edge stood a mysterious-looking house in solitary relief against the sky.

The structure resembled a medieval tower. It stood a full three stories high and had a sinister aspect. As kids, we played on the grounds that descended the side of the cliff. They were filled with strange ruins overgrown with ivy and shrubs. Crumbling walls, lookout towers, and a series of open caves or grottoes were carved into the face of the stone cliff.

Appropriately enough, the locals called the place “the Castle.” Every imaginable story circulated about it. One held that a Nazi spy had lived there, photographed battleships on the river during World War II, and was caught and shot.

Time passed. I graduated from the ninth grade barely able to recite the alphabet. It was a foregone conclusion I’d never make it through high school, so I decided to enter a trade school to learn to be a printer. During this period of my midteens, I finally saw the inside of the mysterious house.

After visiting a friend in Fort Lee one day, I was passing through the grounds of the Castle when I was startled to come face-to-face with an eccentric-looking man. He wore a baggy tweed jacket and an old derby perched atop bushy, graying hair. He cheerfully called out a greeting and engaged me in conversation.

“Do you live in the Castle?” I asked him.

“No, I live in the city,” he said, “but I stay here when I’m working for the artist who does.” He then introduced himself as Don Rubow, “artist’s assistant and technician,” and surprised me with an irresistible invitation to see inside the house. Don led the way to the entrance at the side and up a stairwell to the second floor. We then entered a large, airy room with high ceilings and walls framed in antique paneling. Well-worn pieces of vintage furniture graced the room. My eye was drawn to an alcove with a big picture window that offered a spectacular view of the Hudson River and Manhattan.

The trappings of an artist’s studio caught my attention. Paints, palettes, and coffee cans filled with brushes were arranged on worktables that stood next to a drafting table splattered with paint. Half-finished sketches and drawings were tacked haphazardly on the walls. A pair of French doors that opened onto a balcony served as a source of light. Across the room, an entire wall was taken up by a magnificently carved antique breakfront that housed a sound system. Another wall was covered with built-in bookshelves filled with volumes. I was enthralled with my surroundings but wondered what anyone could want with so many books.

My host disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of soda. Don Rubow was forty-two, a soft-spoken beatnik-artist-philosopher who lived in Greenwich Village. He explained that the house was inhabited by people from the city who had come here to establish a design studio. He mentioned that they were in the city on business, and he rambled on about art and the equipment used in their work, but I wasn’t paying much attention. Instead, I was looking around and thinking how cool it must be to live in this place.

When it came time to leave, I thanked Don, and he invited me to drop by again. I didn’t need any coaxing. A week later, I approached the Castle through a path in the woods, intending to visit, but just then a car pulled up and parked near the house. I was stunned when the car door opened and a well-tanned, exceptionally handsome man got out stark naked. He proceeded to pull a large towel from the car, drape it around his body, and stride toward the house like Caesar. I remained unobserved and thought it best to come by another time.

I was very bored with my life. The school I went to, Bergen Tech, aka Bourbon Tech, turned out to be nothing more than a repository for every flunky and JD in the county. The place was a madhouse with kids straight out of reformatories and was the perfect incubator for the criminal mind. The standard curriculum for incoming students was:

A) Gambling

B) Smoking

C) Drinking

The good part about the school was that hardly anyone failed—and those who did were held in the highest esteem by the entire student body. The bad part was that you might as well have wiped your ass with the diploma they gave you. Few businesses were foolhardy enough to hire graduates from that school. After two years of technical education, I still had no inkling of how a printing press operated, except to press the button that said on. There was some semblance of a classroom schedule, but before long kids started throwing things at each other and the place exploded into mass hysteria. Desks went flying right out of windows, and teachers had nervous breakdowns.

In 1966, the only thing on my mind was buying broken-down vintage cars, fixing them up with my buddies, and picking up girls. I turned seventeen and got my first jalopy, a backfiring, clutch-slipping Rover, right in time for the Revolution. The hippie phenomenon had been gathering strength and I couldn’t wait to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” British rock groups swept the nation, and events dubbed “be-ins” materialized in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow. Thousands of hippies and flower children turned out to make music, smoke pot, and express themselves through their new philosophical movement, embracing peace, love, and freedom.

That fall, I was driving down Main Street in Fort Lee, ready to turn down the steep hill to River Road, which ran below the Castle. As I did so, I noticed two interesting-looking men walking along the sidewalk in the same direction. One was Don Rubow, wearing his derby. I pulled up to the curb, rolled down the window, and called out Don’s name. He came over and looked in the car. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and, after asking how I’d been, he inquired if I was driving past the Castle.

Before I could answer, both men jumped in, and I renewed my acquaintance with Don as I drove down the street. I didn’t have time to notice Don’s friend, who was in the backseat, but once inside the car, Don introduced him as Tony Masaccio, who lived on the top floor of the Castle. When I looked in the mirror and focused in on him, I was taken aback. He was in his midtwenties and amazingly handsome. I thought he was a movie star and knew I’d seen him before. Then it hit me that he was the one I’d seen from the path outside the Castle earlier that year, the one who had jumped out of the car naked and gone into the house.

We drove down the hill from Fort Lee and turned into the narrow hidden drive that led to the Castle. When we pulled up to the house, Tony surprised me with an invitation to come in. I followed him to the charmingly dilapidated suite of rooms where he lived on the third floor. I passed a bedroom, noticed women’s lingerie flung about and pieces of modern art hung on the walls. Tony went out of his way to make me feel comfortable and offered me a seat on the living-room sofa. He was curious to learn how I’d come to know Don. I told him the story of my uneventful life, how I’d played on the Castle grounds as a kid, that I was currently attending a trade school, and that I would soon be free of it forever. When I asked him what he did, he casually mentioned that he was a partner in a “Madison Avenue advertising agency.” As we talked, Tony walked around doing odds and ends. We eventually wound up in the kitchen, where, under the intense gaze of Mussolini pictured on an old World War II poster on the wall above the table, he proceeded to chop up some peppers and sausage for dinner.

Anthony Masaccio didn’t have to tell anyone that he was Italian. His sensuous Mediterranean look said it all. His olive complexion was the color of wine at his cheekbones. A thick, lustrous mane of black hair framed a broad face with dark liquid eyes, eyes that seemed to swallow you up if he turned his gaze on you. Everything about him suggested wealth and privilege. When he’d light a cigarette, the matchbook invariably bore the logo of the Plaza Oak Room or Café Carlyle.

Despite his charming mystique, his raw glamour, and the fact that he was a descendant of the fifteenth-century artist Masaccio, Tony, aka Tony “Cha-Cha,” was born and raised in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a neighborhood known as a Mafia spawning ground, and he was right at home in bars where everyone had names like Joey, Tommy, Bobby, and Vinny.

Tony grew up steeped in Mob culture and old Italian traditions. His father, a “made” man and gambler, owned a fleet of cabs in Brooklyn. Neighborhood clubhouses and corner bars run by wise guys were a part of everyday life. His family also had ties to the Mafia through his uncle Salvatore, aka “Sally the Sheik,” Mussachio (they were indeed related, but they spelled their names differently). This background had a profound effect on Tony’s personality and manifested itself at times in his speech and mannerisms, which bore the subtle yet unmistakable stamp of the mobster.

Tony explained that the house was a studio for Tom Daly, the artist downstairs. The story was that Tom Daly and Peter Max, the famous poster artist, had met at the Art Students League and were among its brightest talents as commercial artists. They established the Daly & Max Studio and quickly made a hit on Madison Avenue, taking the original art nouveau style, adding a psychedelic twist, and applying it to their illustrations and lettering for the contemporary market.

Tom was first with another brilliant idea, body painting. He painted designs, pictures, and words in beautiful lettering on naked female bodies. He executed a poster of a beautiful blonde with her entire body painted. Wanda, as the poster came to be known, lounges on her side in total darkness. A light from above dramatically illuminates her body, revealing the artwork. Not only did Tom win the prestigious Art Directors’ Award for it, but Wanda became one of the most famous posters in the world.

However, the partnership was short-lived. Peter habitually grabbed all the credit for their success, and it wasn’t long before Tom had had enough. There was a horrendous fight, followed by the end of the partnership. After the split, Tom became established on his own and was one of the most successful commercial artists in the business, his talents in demand by Fortune 500 companies.

In the meantime, Peter Max was busy fabricating his fame by paying publicity agents to get his name in society columns, portraying him as the guru of the hippie art scene. Although he was a poster and commercial artist, Peter wanted to be recognized as a real artist.

“Like Frank Stella or Larry Rivers,” Tony explained.

“And what do those guys think of Peter?” I naïvely asked.

“Are you kidding?” Tony laughed. “They wouldn’t piss on him.”

Tony asked if I spent much time in the city. When I told him I liked to go to Greenwich Village with my friends, he surprised me again by suggesting that we go to the Village together the following evening.

Friday night I returned, picked up Tony, and headed for Manhattan. It was a beautiful fall night in the Village. The streets were filled with people going into the restaurants and clubs that lined the narrow streets.

Tony was cool and sophisticated. He knew all about the contemporary art in the galleries we passed. He knew the artists’ names and where their studios were. It was impossible for me to hold a conversation with him on these subjects, but I was thrilled to just listen to him. His world was exciting, and I wanted to be part of it.

I was puzzled when Tony eventually led me to a dark, deserted area that bordered the Village and steered me toward a single spotlight above a bar named Max’s at Park Avenue South and Seventeenth Street. “Tony!” rang out from people standing at the bar the second we entered. Tony was obviously well known here. I’d been to a few Village joints with school friends before, but nothing that resembled this place!

Max’s Kansas City was the art bar and restaurant where artists, agents, and dealers mingled and made deals. A magical place where aspiring nobodies flocked to meet the somebodies. It was the place to be and be seen in. A collection of contemporary art was always displayed on the walls above the bar or suspended from the ceiling. On almost any given night, Max’s attracted an assortment of celebrities, rock stars, “beautiful people,” and jet-setters, not to mention Andy Warhol and his superstars, who hung out in the back room.

I followed Tony, and we joined his friends at the crowded bar. He knew everybody, from artists with paint all over their jeans to big-shot advertising executives in three-piece suits, and beautiful women, one after the other, came to him for a chat, a whispered secret, or a discreet squeeze of his ass. Everybody loved Tony.

Although I was underage, it was no problem for Tony. He ordered me a drink and we headed toward a booth. Then he leaned over and casually asked me if I had gotten laid lately. Drawing a blank on that score, Tony then asked, “Well, have you turned on yet?” I had to confess that I hadn’t. Tony smiled and gazed nonchalantly around the bar. Then he excused himself to make a phone call.

Twenty minutes later, after a string of very strange-looking people made their entrances, passed our booth, and went straight into a room at the back of the restaurant, a beautiful, willowy girl with sandy blonde hair and droopy blue eyes joined us.

Kathy was Tony’s girlfriend and often stayed at the Castle. I had only seen girls like this on the glossy pages of fashion magazines and was speechless in her presence. When she took her coat off, she revealed long, graceful limbs extending from a slinky minidress. Kathy worked in a Village boutique, had her own apartment on Perry Street, and did some modeling on the side. In answer to her somewhat puzzled look when she sat down with us, Tony explained that I was a local kid from Jersey.

After a Kansas City steak dinner, we left and headed up the West Side Highway to Fort Lee. Back at the Castle, we relaxed in the living room. Kathy put on a Tim Hardin record and opened a bottle of wine. I was totally dazzled by both of them and by our night at Max’s. When Tony suggested that I return the next day for a dinner party to meet Tom Daly and spend the weekend, I could hardly believe my ears. Kathy also insisted that I come and sleep over on the sofa.

I was a silly kid who barely weighed a hundred pounds. I had absolutely no business being with these people. It was inconceivable that sophisticates like Kathy and Tony would be interested in the company of a screwball like me.

When I arrived the next day, Tony welcomed me like a long-lost friend. An Edith Piaf record played as Tony, barefoot and in jeans, showed me to the kitchen, where he was preparing a pot of lasagna. Bottles of wine, wedges of cheese, and a box of pastries were scattered about. The aroma of homemade tomato sauce filled the rooms.

Kathy invited me into the living room. She was wearing one of Tony’s shirts and a pair of panties in which her long slender legs were beautifully displayed. Books on art, fashion, and photography were lying on the coffee table. Kathy curled up on the sofa while I made myself comfortable in an easy chair. We chatted, and she showed me the first book on art I had ever looked at in my life, a book about Aubrey Beardsley, who lived in the nineteenth century and was famous for his erotic drawings.

At sunset, the view outside turned shades of blue as lights were coming on across the river. Kathy lit the candles on the table, and it was time to call Tom Daly. Soon there was a knock on the door, and in walked a man with a head of wild red hair that shot out in all directions. He was draped in a full-length black velvet cape and looked more like a rock star than an artist. With him was Jean, a superthin sexy model with a boyish haircut. She was wearing a yellow minidress with large black polka dots and holes cut in it.

Introductions were made, and Tony proceeded to serve one of his superb Italian dinners. I was completely out of my element. Their conversation about the art world and New York City was way over my head. I pretended to understand and smiled a lot. When the evening ended and Tom and Jean went downstairs, Kathy brought me a pillow and a blanket and then opened her robe and flashed me her beautiful naked body before disappearing into the bedroom with Tony.

The next day Tony invited me to come back during the week and stay over again, when he and Tom would turn on with pot. I still hadn’t ever smoked grass and couldn’t wait to try.

On the appointed night, I was there. Tony and I went down to Tom’s floor. The room was lit with candles and I felt as if this was a secret ceremony, my official initiation to the Castle. Daly was splendidly arrayed in a magnificent antique embroidered silk robe, and he lounged back in his old easy chair with the air of an oriental potentate. With him was Joyce, a pretty, blonde art student and poet who worked for Tom in the afternoons, and another girl who was her friend.

Tony officiated by lighting some joints and passing them around. Joyce put on a record and sat next to me. She explained that the idea was to take a long drag and hold it in as long as possible. It wasn’t long before a sense of complete and exquisite pleasure like nothing I’d ever experienced pervaded my being. We listened to music, laughed, and passed joints late into the night.

I lay back on the sofa to enjoy the sensation of being high for the first time. I remained awake as long as possible, gazing through the window at the stars, wanting the feeling to never end. I imagined the house was a rocket ship shooting us through the universe.

A whole new world was opening up to me through Tony. He circulated in the downtown art scene. He took me to SoHo, an area of lower Manhattan filled with streets of neglected turn-of-the-century warehouses. Artists had recently discovered it as a new place to live and work. Galleries, cafés, and boutiques were moving into the area. It was very exciting, and one could feel the energy on the streets. Tony knew many of the gallery owners and took me to the studios of his artist friends. I loved spending every minute with Tony, and for the first time I saw creative people making things happen for themselves, the way they wanted it and not depending on the Establishment for a career.

Until this time, I barely knew Tom Daly, and I wanted to see some of his artwork. One day, while on my way up the staircase to visit Tony, I heard music and noticed Tom’s door ajar. I stuck my head in to say hi. Tom was lying on the sofa, smoking a cigarette and listing to the soundtrack from the movie A Man and a Woman. He waved me in and, when I expressed my wish, he began to show me a few of the posters he’d created. Then Tom casually asked if I cared to smoke a joint.

“Sure,” I enthusiastically replied. “Do you turn on a lot?”

“Now and then,” he answered. “And what about you? Was that your first time the other night?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought it was great.” At that Tom laughed, went to the breakfront, and produced a brick-shaped, foil-wrapped stash. I watched in astonished delight as he proceeded to break off a chunk and hand it to me as a gift.

“Well, what are your plans after you finish school?” Tom asked. “What are you going to be?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t have any plans to be anything. Besides, who needs a job anyway? We’re on the verge of a revolution.”

That was fine with Tom, but he suggested I at least learn the rudiments of joint-rolling to be prepared for the future. He got papers from a drawer and demonstrated his method, showing me how much grass to use and how to roll it. After I made my first prototypes, Tom suggested we test them out to see how they worked. Thus began my first insights into one of the most unusual individuals I ever met.

Tom Daly was above all a sensualist. His main goals in life were getting laid and getting stoned. Despite his twenty-seven years, Tom was really a teenager who could masquerade as an adult when the situation demanded. Otherwise he enjoyed going out in public dressed up in outrageous getups and freaking people out. At his zenith, Tom drove a new convertible Mustang, a moving mass of dents and scrapes, the result of sideswiping the trees lining the narrow road that led up to the Castle.

He was unmaterialistic, with no desire for the sorts of things most people want. His only indulgences, apart from sex and pot, which he bought by the kilo, and scotch by the case, were his installation of a thirty-foot phone wire that allowed him to pace around the room in frantic conversations with his agent, and the acquisition of books for his treasured library.

When Tony came downstairs, Tom and I were sharing a joint and laughing. He had pulled out a book and was showing me the work of his favorite artist, James Ensor. Ensor was an early twentieth-century Belgian painter who was obsessed with depicting people in bizarre carnival costumes—not unlike the ones Tom wore himself. Tony was heading to the city to collect Kathy and asked if I wanted to go along. As we pulled out of the driveway, Tony asked me what I thought of Tom.

“He’s really far-out!” I exclaimed, showing him the pot Tom had given me.

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Tom’s a complete maniac.”

As we were pulling up to the tollbooth on the George Washington Bridge, Tony extended his hand as if to pay the toll clerk, but instead slammed the accelerator to the floor while he flung his empty fingers in her stupefied face. As we raced away laughing, I could hear the woman’s screams halfway across the bridge.

I never actually saw Tony go to work at his “Madison Avenue advertising agency.” Indeed, his business in the city rarely seemed to extend beyond picking up Kathy (using Tom’s new Mustang) and occasionally dropping Tom’s portfolio off at an agency.

When I accompanied him, the three of us usually wound up in Little Italy, eating scungilli at the bar in Vincent’s on Hester Street with Tony’s hoodlum friends. Kathy was amused by the crush I had on her and sometimes, without the least warning, she’d put her arms around me and start kissing me right in front of Tony. He didn’t mind at all. In fact, he enjoyed watching the blood rush to my head as I’d almost pass out in a swoon.

If Tony wasn’t enough, I reached a new level of cultural enlightenment when I began spending time with Tom. Up until this point, I hadn’t read a book in my life, and the only time I’d been to a museum was on a school trip. I assumed that the appreciation of such things as art and literature was for people of superior intellect who dressed in tuxedoes, went to the opera, and ate caviar.

Tom changed all that. Almost every night I was at his place smoking dope with him and listening to his stories. Tom was a storehouse of knowledge. He knew everything about art, history, and literature. I thought he was brilliant. He had the answers to everything—and if he didn’t, he’d make them up. He was just the kind of person I wanted to meet. Before long, he had me reading books by Voltaire, Balzac, and Dostoyevsky, and appreciating art by masters with heroic names like Titian, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo.

Stumbling on the Castle was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. It was a center of cosmic energy. I was deliriously happy. I couldn’t sleep nights, thinking about the Castle and my new friends. My mother couldn’t understand what had happened to me. Every weekend, there was another party made up of guests that Tony invited from Max’s. These always included a few top fashion models, artists, actors, and even rock stars. As a practical contribution, I showed Tom and Tony around Jersey and served as chauffeur, especially at night coming home from Max’s when they were too drunk to even walk to the car.

And Tom was the best friend anyone could ever want. Not only did he let me smoke all the pot I wanted, and not only did he give me a copy of the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette for my birthday, but he was positively dedicated to getting me laid as well! What more could any teenager wish for?

Nineteen sixty-seven promised to be an exciting year. The Vietnam War was tearing the country apart; that spring, protests, rallies, and be-ins were held in Central Park. I finally graduated from school and was good for absolutely nothing. Tony, Joyce, and Tom, black cape and all, surprised me and came to my graduation. They sat right in the first row of the auditorium and cheered when I got my diploma. Afterward, they took me to Max’s for dinner.

The prospect of going out and finding a job with a bogus diploma in order to run a printing press for the rest of my life was never even a consideration. For the time being, I had no intention of doing anything except hanging out at the Castle and studying art. And what better place to advance the curriculum than the Metropolitan Museum of Art? For Tom and Tony, it served as the ideal pickup joint. I tagged along on their field trips every Sunday afternoon. Not only did I finally see paintings like those I remembered from the torrone boxes, but, curiously enough—and what would prove to be an important factor in my life—I developed an interest in the early European furniture I saw on display there.

I had no idea how I was going to use all this new knowledge about art, but through these expeditions I lost my fear of museums and galleries and was now able to hold a conversation on the subject. In addition, Tom allowed me to watch him paint as much as I wanted. He showed me how an ever-developing series of drawings became a finished work of art. It was fascinating for me to watch the creative process unfold before my eyes. I had always assumed that paintings were created by an artist guided by some supernatural inspiration, instead of by a process of simple progressive steps.

In the late sixties, the Vietnam War was America’s worst nightmare. No sooner had I graduated than the draft was ready and waiting with an order to report to Newark, New Jersey, for classification. If I passed the mental and physical examinations, I would be inducted on the spot, shipped to boot camp, and on my way to Vietnam.

I needed a plan fast, and Tom had the answer. He gave me a satirical instruction book titled 101 Ways to Beat the Draft, which he’d bought for me in a head shop in Greenwich Village. It was filled with ridiculous suggestions designed to convince the doctors at the induction center that you were unfit for service. It suggested you talk to yourself, roll your eyes, prick holes in your arms, wear a dress, etc. However, the book warned that a rejection on these grounds came with a derogatory classification on your draft card. According to the book, 1-Ys were handed out to “physical wrecks and psychological misfits.” And the 4-F was reserved for the “incorrigibly wicked.” The book also warned that potential employers were required to check your draft status, and that a derogatory classification made your chances of getting hired very slim.

I read the book but had no idea of what I would do when the time came. I racked my brain trying to figure out a way to be undesirable. It was obvious that 99 percent of the suggestions were absurd, but it was the principle that was important.

It was a dreary gray morning when I and the other inductees were loaded onto an army recruiting bus in Hackensack, New Jersey, for the ride to Newark. It was a depressing journey through an endless industrial landscape of rusting factories, oil refineries, and garbage dumps.

The bus pulled up to a dirty nondescript building in a run-down part of town. We were ordered out. Once inside, we were directed to a classroom where an old windbag in a military uniform treated us to a patriotic sermon. Then they handed out an aptitude test. It was about four pages long, containing math, science, and history questions.

I decided this would be my starting point and deliberately scored low. In fact, I scored so low that I was ushered into an office for a chat with the shrink.

The doctor began by asking me a few questions about the extent of my schooling and background. Finally he wormed his way around to the aptitude test and said he thought it rather unusual that anybody could score so low.

“I thought I did pretty good!” I answered.

Satisfied with that, the shrink turned his attention to questions of a more personal nature.

“Have you ever taken any drugs?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“What kind?” he wanted to know.

“Pot, acid, and speed,” I confessed.

“How often?” he inquired.

“Every day,” I assured him.

The psychiatrist studiously noted all my responses on a pad and then asked me in a frank manner, “Have you ever received psychiatric help or been admitted to an institution?” At this point, I exploded with indignation. “Whadda I look like?” I yelled. “Some kinda degenerate?!”

He calmly recorded my response in his growing report. He thanked me with a smile and directed me to a waiting room, where I sat for an hour with two other interviewees. They looked like zombies and were oblivious to their surroundings. If they were acting, they were doing a beautiful job.

Finally my name was called, and I was ordered into a room down the hall where I found a serious-looking officer seated behind a desk. He looked up at me and picked up a piece of paper. “I’m sorry, Ken,” he said, after glancing at the sheet, “but the Armed Services aren’t interested in your service at this time. You’ll be receiving your classification in the mail in a few weeks.” I tried to look disappointed and left. I couldn’t wait to get out of that building.

Weeks later, when my draft card came in the mail, the classification 1-Y was stamped on it in bold letters. It was the perfect complement to a diploma from Bourbon Tech. Together they virtually guaranteed I’d be thrown out on my ass if I even approached an employer for a job. I knew I had struck out big-time and had no idea where I was heading in life. But during this period I also came to realize that the more I studied paintings, whether in Tom’s books or at the museums, the more I understood how they were painted. It was as if they were breaking down into their simplest elements right before my eyes.

At this point, looking at paintings was the only thing that made sense in my life. Somehow I understood the logic behind their creation. I felt an irresistible force driving me, telling me that I could paint them too.

My artistic career began that summer when I explained my feelings to Tom. He went around the studio and gathered up some old tubes of paint and a few brushes. He suggested that I follow the example of the old masters and begin by painting copies of masterpieces. Hunting around through some books, Tom came up with a portrait of Christ by Rembrandt.

It was my first try, but I executed the Rembrandt with a genuine understanding of color, tone, and texture, as though I had always understood how to handle paint and brushes. I was very excited and couldn’t wait to show it to Tom. I raced to the Castle. Tom was amazed when he saw it and called my mother to tell her how impressed he was. My mother was delighted that I had found such nice people at the Castle, people who were finally giving me some direction in life.

Tom lost no time finding more prints for me to copy, and with each consecutive painting I learned more. Soon painting became a compulsion and I couldn’t wait to start another one. For me, this was a major turning point. Painting gave me a purpose in life. Now I didn’t feel so bad about my 1-Y and promptly burned my draft card at the next antiwar rally in Central Park.

Next, Tom gave me books on two artists whose work we had enjoyed looking at under LSD. Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel were two early Flemish artists who specialized in bizarre allegorical paintings. In fact, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that Bosch was probably on an acid trip himself when he painted his pictures. As for me, I didn’t need any prompting at all to begin copying their work as well.

One day Tony showed up at the house with two girls he knew from the back room at Max’s. The girls were Andrea Feldman and Geraldine Smith, two of Warhol’s superstars from his films Trash, Imitation of Christ, and Bad. Andrea, spaced out on drugs twenty-four hours a day, lived in a state of complete fantasy. She claimed to have taken LSD over four hundred times. Geraldine, in contrast, was cool and in complete control. Beautiful, thin, and sexy, she had dark red hair and a sculptured face, and she arrived in a fishnet minidress that left nothing to the imagination.

The girls needed a break from the city. They promptly moved into an empty room at the Castle and I made friends with them right away. They were great fun—and soon we were cruising around in an old Mercedes-Benz I had just restored, getting stoned and going to the Dairy Queen for milkshakes, little realizing that my fate was being sealed and life would never be “normal” again.