Just Kids [49]
I asked him why he just didn’t take his own pictures. “Oh, it’s so much trouble,” he’d say. “I can’t be bothered and the printing would cost too much money.” He had taken photographs at Pratt, but was too impatient with the time-consuming process of the darkroom.
Meanwhile, searching out male magazines was its own ordeal. I would stay in the front looking for Colin Wilson paperbacks, and Robert would go in the back. It felt a little scary, as if we were doing something wrong. The guys running those places were grouchy, and if you opened a sealed magazine you had to buy it.
These transactions made Robert edgy. The magazines were expensive, five dollars apiece, and he was always taking a chance on the contents. When he would finally choose one we’d hurry back to the hotel. Robert would unseal the cellophane with the expectation of Charlie peeling back the foil of a chocolate bar in hopes of finding a golden ticket. Robert likened it to when he ordered grab bag packages from the back covers of comic books, sending for them without telling his parents. He would watch for the mail to intercept them, and take his treasure to the bathroom, where he would lock the door, open the box, and spread out magic tricks, X-ray glasses, and miniature sea horses.
Sometimes he’d luck out and there would be several images he could use in an existing piece, or such a good one that it would trigger a whole new idea. But often the magazines were a disappointment and he’d toss them on the floor, frustrated and remorseful that he’d wasted our money.
Sometimes his choice of imagery mystified me, as it did in Brooklyn, but his process did not. I had made cuttings from fashion magazines to make elaborate costumes for paper dolls.
“You should take your own pictures,” I’d say.
I said that over and over.
Occasionally I took my own pictures, but had them developed at a Fotomat. I knew nothing about the darkroom. I got a glimpse of the printing process from watching Judy Linn work. Judy, having graduated from Pratt, had committed herself to photography. When I would visit her in Brooklyn, we would sometimes spend the day taking photographs, I as her model. As artist and subject we were suited for each other, because we shared the same visual references.
We drew on everything from Butterfield 8 to the French New Wave. She shot the stills from our imagined movies. Although I didn’t smoke, I would pocket a few of Robert’s Kools to achieve a certain look. For our Blaise Cendrars shots we needed thick smoke, for our Jeanne Moreau a black slip and a cigarette.
When I showed him Judy’s prints, Robert was amused by my personas. “Patti, you don’t smoke,” he’d say, tickling me. “Are you stealing my cigarettes?” I thought he would be annoyed, since cigarettes were expensive, but the next time I went to Judy’s, he surprised me with the last couple from his battered pack.
“I know I’m a fake smoker,” I would say, “but I’m not hurting anybody and besides I gotta enhance my image.” It was all for Jeanne Moreau.
Robert and I continued to go to Max’s late at night on our own. We eventually graduated to the back room and sat in a corner under the Dan Flavin fluorescent sculpture, washed in red light. The gatekeeper, Dorothy Dean, had taken a liking to Robert and let us pass.
Dorothy was small, black, and brilliant. She had harlequin glasses, wore classic cardigan sweater sets, and had gone to the finest schools. She stood before the entrance to the back room like an Abyssinian priest guarding the Ark. No one got past her unless she approved. Robert responded to her acid tongue and acerbic sense of humor. She and I stayed out of each other’s way.
I knew that Max’s was important to Robert. He was so supportive of my work that I could not refuse him this nightly ritual.
Mickey Ruskin allowed us to sit for hours nursing coffee and Coca-Colas and hardly ordering a thing. Some nights were totally dead. We would walk home exhausted and