Just Kids [53]
I wasn’t certain what had happened to me. My experience most closely mirrored the “eat me, drink me” scene in Alice in Wonderland. I tried to access her restrained and curious reaction to her own psychedelic trials. I reasoned someone had dosed me with a form of hallucinogen. I had never taken any kind of drug before and my limited knowledge came from observing Robert or reading descriptions of the drug-induced visions of Gautier, Michaux, and Thomas de Quincey. I huddled in a corner, not sure what to do. I certainly didn’t want anyone to see me telescoping in size, even if it was all in my head.
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 Midnight Cowboy, but he found working on Forty-second Street to be harsh. He decided to shift to Joe Dallesandro territory, on the East Side near Bloomingdale’s, where it was safer.
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