Just Kids [61]
It seemed that the evening was going well, except that Robert and David kept breaking away, heatedly conferring off to the side. Suddenly David grabbed Loulou’s hand, pulled her off the dance floor, and abruptly left the party.
Robert raced after him and I followed. As David and Loulou were getting in a taxi, Robert cried out to him not to leave. Loulou looked at David, mystified, saying, “Are you two lovers?” David slammed the door of the taxi and it sped away.
Robert was placed in the position where he was forced to tell me what I already knew. I was calm and sat quietly while he struggled to find the right words to explain what had just happened. I didn’t derive any pleasure from seeing Robert so conflicted. I knew this was hard for him, so I told him what Tinkerbelle had told me.
Robert was furious. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Robert was devastated that Tinkerbelle had told me not only that he was having an affair, but that he was homosexual. It was as if Robert had forgotten that I knew. It must have also been difficult as it was the first time he was openly identified with a sexual label. His relationship with Terry in Brooklyn had been between the three of us, not in the public eye.
Robert wept.
“Are you sure?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure about anything. I want to do my work. I know I’m good. That’s all I know.
“Patti,” he said, holding me, “none of this has anything to do with you.”
Robert rarely spoke to Tinkerbelle after that. David moved to Seventeenth Street, close to where Washington Irving had lived. I slept on my side of the wall and Robert on his. Our lives were moving at such speed that we just kept going.
Later, alone with my thoughts, I had a delayed reaction. I felt heavyhearted, disappointed that he hadn’t confided in me. He had told me I had nothing to worry about but in the end I did. Yet I understood why he couldn’t tell me. I think having to define his impulses and confine his identity in terms of sexuality was foreign to him. His drives toward men were consuming but I never felt loved any less. It wasn’t easy for him to sever our physical ties, I knew that.
Robert and I still kept our vow. Neither would leave the other. I never saw him through the lens of his sexuality. My picture of him remained intact. He was the artist of my life.
Bobby Neuwirth rode into town like some easy rider. He would dismount, and the artists, musicians, and poets all came together, a gathering of the tribes. He was a catalyst for action. He would breeze in and take me places, exposing me to other artists and musicians. I was a colt, but he appreciated and encouraged my awkward attempts at writing songs. I wanted to do things that affirmed his belief in me. I developed long balladic oral poems inspired by storytellers like Blind Willie McTell and Hank Williams.
On June 5, 1970, he took me to the Fillmore East to see Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. It was really not my kind of band, but I was moved to see Neil Young, since his song “Ohio” had made a great impression on me. It seemed to crystallize the role of the artist as a responsible commentator, as it paid homage to the four young Kent State students who lost their lives in the name of peace.
Afterward we drove up to Woodstock, where the Band was recording Stage Fright. Todd Rundgren was the engineer. Robbie Robertson was hard at work, concentrating on the song “Medicine Man.” Mostly everyone else drifted off toward some hard-core partying. I sat up and talked with Todd until dawn and we found that we both had Upper Darby roots. My grandparents had lived close to where he was born and raised. We were also oddly similar—sober, work-driven, judgmental, idiosyncratic wallflowers.
Bobby continued to open up his world to me.
Through him I had met Todd, the artists Brice Marden and Larry Poons, and the musicians Billy Swan, Tom Paxton, Eric Andersen, Roger McGuinn, and Kris Kristofferson. Like a flock of geese, they veered toward