Fire in the Belly

by Cynthia Carr

  Episalla and activist Barbara Hughes then took the banner into the street and set it on fire. Friends tossed in the placards they’d been carrying. Friends tossed in the sunflowers. They stood in silence, watching the funeral pyre burn.

  The Marys left that evening determined to carry out David’s idea. They all committed to having a political funeral when they died. Within the next year, three of them did. On November 2, the night before the presidential election, the Marys carried the body of Mark Lowe Fisher in an open casket from Judson Memorial Church all the way up Sixth Avenue to the Republican Party headquarters on Forty-third Street. On July 1, 1993, the Marys drove to Washington, D.C., with the body of Tim Bailey, planning to march past the White House, but authorities prevented them from even getting the casket out of the van. A couple of weeks later, they carried the body of Jon Greenberg through the East Village, and he lay in state in Tompkins Square Park, casket open. One of the Marys read the speech Greenberg had delivered at the first of these funerals, in which he spoke of the importance of what they were doing with this final act of empowerment and generosity.

  In the years after David’s death, Tom Rauffenbart sprinkled David’s ashes in places that had held meaning for him. He took some to the beach in St. John’s where they’d had their first sexy romantic vacation. He left ashes at the loft, sealed inside a wall. He sprinkled some in Paris, in New Orleans, in the Great Swamp of New Jersey, at Teotihuacán, and at what was left of the Christopher Street pier. Then in October 1996, he joined in ACT UP’s second “Ashes Action” in Washington, D.C. He got up to the fence and threw David onto the White House lawn.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz is a project of the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. I am also deeply grateful for the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

  I was helped enormously by a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, and by a stay at the artists’ community, Yaddo.

  Fales Library at New York University became my home away from home during the research phase. I benefited from director Marvin J. Taylor’s unstinting support for this project. He and archivists Lisa Darms and Brent Phillips went out of their way to help.

  For their help in Paris, I am grateful to Marcelle Clements, Laurence Viallet, and the Centre International d’Accueil et d’échanges des Récollets.

  Art historian Jonathan Weinberg shared research he gathered while working on a book about the Hudson River piers and while curating the exhibition “The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront.”

  Bill Dobbs provided documentation on “Art What Thou Eat” that I could not have found otherwise.

  I was fortunate to have Donna Mandel and Ann Snitow as first readers of each chapter and can’t thank them enough for their close reading, their feedback, and their encouragement.

  My editor, Kathy Belden, was a champion of this project early on, and I benefited enormously from her enthusiasm, her patience, and her skill in shaping the narrative.

  I also owe special thanks to acquiring editor Karen Rinaldi, who recognized immediately what this project could be.

  Photographer Karen Cattan played an invaluable role in organizing and preparing the visual elements in this book.

  Special thanks to Vince Aletti, Tommy Turner, and Jean Foos (on behalf of the estate of Keith Davis) for sharing relevant portions of personal journals.

  I am also deeply grateful for the sundry crucial ways in which I have been helped and supported during this process by Shelagh Doyle, Tierney Drummond, Karen Durbin, Su Friedrich, Dave King, Amy Scholder, Amy Sillman, Karen Vierneisel, and Marianne Weems.

  Plate Section

  Untitled, 1981. Black-and-white photograph and spray paint on wood, 11 × 19 inches. (Private collection) The dog mask and stencils here are characteristic of David’s early work: the burning house, the military planes, the figure with one arm up as if warding off a blow.

  Untitled (Green Head), 1982. Acrylic on masonite, 48 × 96 inches. (Private collection) This painting, created mostly from stencils, is the first David ever exhibited. He went on to use the Hujar stencil in many other pieces from this period.

  The gagging cow drawn on the wall of the Ward Line Pier, 1982–83. (Photograph © Andreas Sterzing)

  Science Lesson, 1981–82. Spray paint and stencil on room mural, 96 × 168 inches. (Private collection)

  Junk Diptych, 1982. Spray paint on masonite, 48 × 96 inches. (Private collection)

  Peter Hujar Dreaming/Yukio Mishima: St. Sebastian, 1982. Acrylic and spray paint on masonite, 48 × 48 inches. (Private collection)

  The deconstructed cartoon drawn on the wall of the Ward Line Pier, 1983. On the piece of wood attached to the wall, just right of the cartoon, David wrote: “I prepared myself for this world the way one prepares a couch or bed for an expected lover.” (Photo © Andreas Sterzing)

  Tuna, 1983. Acrylic and collage on supermarket poster, 40 × 30 inches. (Private collection)

  Untitled (Pampers), 1984. Acrylic on poster, 44 × 32 inches. (Private collection)

  Screaming Bird Lid, 1983. Acrylic on garbage can lid, 19 inches in diameter. (Private collection)

  Fuck You Faggot Fucker, 1984. Black-and-white photographs, acrylic, and collage on masonite, 48 × 48 inches. (Private collection)

  Fish Totem, 1983. Acrylic on found wood. (Private collection)

  David’s work in 1985 was all about dead families and imperiled children. Top, a detail from Installation #5 at Art in the Anchorage. A blue skeleton (not visible) at the other end of the table is eating a baby. (Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York) Below, the dead family from the film You Killed Me First, a collaboration with Richard Kern installed at Ground Zero Gallery. (Photograph by Marion Scemama)

  Some Things from Sleep: For Jane and Charley, 1986. Acrylic on masonite, 48 × 72 inches. (Private collection)

  Dung Beetles II: Camouflage Leads to Destruction, 1986. Acrylic, spray paint, and collage on masonite, 67 × 80 inches. (Private collection)

  Something from Sleep II, 1988–89. Acrylic and collage on canvas, 36 × 36 inches. (Private collection)

  Water, 1987. Acrylic, ink, and collage on masonite, 72 × 96 inches. (Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Wind (for Peter Hujar), 1987. Acrylic and collage on wood, 72 x 96 inches. (Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York)

  Detail from Wind (for Peter Hujar), 1987. While David did many photographic self-portraits, this is the only one he ever did in paint.

  Untitled (Hujar Dead), 1988–89. Acrylic and collage on masonite, 39 × 32 inches. (Private collection)

  Two images from The Sex Series (for Marion Scemama). Both are Untitled, 1989. Gelatin-silver print, 16 × 20 inches. (Courtesy of P.P.O.W Gallery, New York)

  Where I’ll Go After I’m Gone, 1988–89. Black-and-white photographs, acrylic, spray paint, and collage on masonite, 45 × 64 inches. (Private collection) David’s face appears at lower left.

  Fear of Evolution, 1988–89. Black-and-white photographs, acrylic, string, and collage on masonite, 42½ × 36½ inches. (Private collection)

  I Feel a Vague Nausea, 1990. Black-and-white photographs, acrylic, string, and text on board, 60 × 48 inches. (Private collection)

  When I Put My Hands on Your Body, 1990. Gelatin-silver print and silk-screened text on museum board, 26 × 38 inches. (Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York)

  Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz at Home, NYC, 1990. (Courtesy of Nan Goldin)

  Footnotes

  a When Huncke had nowhere to go after a jail stint in 1949, the kindhearted Ginsberg took him in, and soon Huncke and two burglar friends were storing stolen goods in the poet’s apartment. After the burglars crashed a stolen car filled with more stolen goods, and some of Ginsberg’s papers, the police arrested Ginsberg. Powerful friends among the Columbia University faculty managed to g
et him time in a mental hospital instead of a prison.

  b Pat’s divorce from Bob Fitzgerald was amicable. They were clearly just headed in different directions.

  c He’s also the central character in four others: “Boy in Coffee Shop on Third Avenue,” “Young Man in Silver Dollar Restaurant,” “Young Boy in Seafood Restaurant—NYC,” and “Boy in Horn & Hard-art’s on Forty-second Street.”

  d He’d started drawing what he called his “Arthur Rimbaud lightning bolt” in the journal as soon as he got to France, perhaps to mark possible material for this, or just to mark auspicious entries. The bolt was his symbol for what he called “the vision behind the eyes.”

  e He did make a separate small collage (two by three inches) called Madonna and Child with Gun. In comparison, it seems a joke.

  f “The Waterfront 2 A.M. New York City” appeared in the posthumous Waterfront Journals.

  g When Arthur made this film (Abuse) a year or two later, David appeared in it for about ten seconds, giving a man-on-the-street interview on the topic.

  h McGough and McDermott lived in the early 1980s in a building on Avenue C with no electricity or telephone and dressed as Victorian or Edwardian gentlemen. See http://www.revelinnewyork.com/peter.

  i The building’s front door is on Tenth Street, facing St. Mark’s Church.

  j It did not reopen in its next location until 1982.

  k Pier 34 was at Canal Street. Pier 28 would have been the one near Spring Street.

  l Gracie Mansion is the name of the New York City mayor’s residence.

  m “ When we were so far from the jungle / That it was completely out of sight, / We encountered those souls / Walking along the pier. / Each of them looked at us / As in the evening men are wont / to stare at one another / under a new moon light, / and sharpened their brow / like the old taylor, / squinting at the needle’s eye.” From canto XV, stanza 5, in the translation on Galietti’s website, http://www.romanhattan.com/film.html.

  n This Spanglish pronunciation for “Lower East Side” was often applied to Alphabet City.

  o Michael Hardwick had been arrested for having consensual sex with another man in his own bedroom. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the anti-sodomy law under which he had been arrested, ruling that the right to privacy did not extend to sexual conduct if it involved homosexuals.

  p Two other prints were traded, one going to Keith Davis, for example, in exchange for some design work.

  q When David moved to 529 East Thirteenth at the end of January 1986, his rent was $425. In April it was $550. In May it was $850. By 1987, he was paying $901.

  r For one activist’s account of the struggle over East Village gentrification, see Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood (Autonomedia, 1999).

  s Ideally this was a group of five to fifteen people with shared history and goals who could reach consensus quickly, function autonomously if they wished, and watch out for each other during large demonstrations.

  t Seven scenarios are described here because the bridges were used in two of them.

  u The mask protects the photo paper from the enlarger’s light. David would have had to create a mask for each circular inset or any other image he embedded, then burn those in while another mask protected the background image.

  v The phrase “Silence = Death” preceded the formation of ACT UP, which then made furious use of it. See http://www.actupny.org/reports/silencedeath.html.

  w Probably Totem 3 (1983) on page 123 of the “Tongues of Flame” catalog.

  x The piece would not have been worth three thousand dollars in 1990 but was probably worth more than six hundred.

  y People with AIDS sometimes took Ritalin to combat depression and fatigue.

  NOTES

  Archive

  The David Wojnarowicz Papers (MSS 092) at the Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University. Citations for “Fales” refer to the Wojnarowicz Papers unless otherwise noted.

  The Truth: An Introduction

  “an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season” http://washingtonscene.thehill.com/in-the-know/36-news/7223-boehner-and-cantor-call-for-closing-of-smithsonian-exhibit.

  “I ain’t particularly radical” DW to Glantzman, October 1, 1990, in author’s possession.

  “a metaphor for social structure” DW to Blinderman, October 22, 1988, in author’s possession.

  “selling it back at an inconceivable mark-up” Edit deAk, “Urban Kisses/Slum Hisses,” in ABC No Rio Dinero, ed. Moore and Miller, p. 34.

  “the last outsider” Vince Passaro, “The Last Outsider,” New York Times Book Review, March 12, 2000.

  “All this in my work” Fales Series 3B, Box 5, Folder 215b.

  1 Where Something Broke

  Dolores filed for divorce Dolores J. Wojnarowicz v. Edward T. Wojnarowicz, M99-56, Superior Court of New Jersey, Monmouth County.

  the court ruled that it could not decide a religious difference of opinion Wojnarowicz v. Wojnarowicz, 48 N.J.SUPER. 349, 137 A.2D 618 (1958).

  “brown stuff” came out of her ears and mouth DW, Close to the Knives, p. 152.

  “take it in the yard” and make David “watch him shoot it” “Biographical Dateline,” in Tongues of Flame, ed. Blinderman, p. 114.

  claiming it was “New York steak” Ibid.

  probably in 1962 Though David situated the shopping center incident in 1961, Ed’s record with the United States Lines indicates that 1962 was the only year he was home for Christmas. Service record of Edward T. Wojnarowicz in author’s possession.

  sitting together behind Lee’s gas station Fales Series 1, Box 2, Folder 27, and Diaries, ed. Scholder, p. 199.

  broke a whiskey bottle over someone’s head October 15, 1979, in Fales 1, 2, 36.

  2 Dissolution

  “I got yelled at” Author’s interviews with DW in January 1990.

  3 The Street

  “cigars under the flashing entrances” Fales Series 3A, Box 4, Folder 12, p. 15.

  “all directions at once” Ibid., p. 16.

  “knife wielding lunatic” Ibid., p. 25.

  “could hardly recognize myself” Ibid., p. 26.

  “filled with lurid photos” Ibid., p. 33.

  “death trip continually” Ibid., p. 38.

  “We were still new to hustling together” April 24, 1978, in Fales 1, 1, 6.

  a piece for his local paper http://articles.mcall.com/1992-12-24/news/

  2880365_1_raymond-blind-man-salvation-army.

  described meeting him in the dining hall at the residence Untitled story in Fales 3, 4, 3.

  In one story… at the halfway house for a few months; in another, he said he’d been there for a year “Guy Wakes Up (16 Years Old)” in Fales 3D, 6, 228, and untitled story in Fales 3, 4, 3.

  he and Willy stayed with an ex-con Steve Hager, “From Street to Salon, New York Beat, May 9, 1984, in Fales 5C, 8, 23.

  finding an abandoned bus on Houston Street “Guy Wakes Up (16 Years Old)” in Fales 3D, 6, 228.

  “or lonely drag queen’s palace” Ibid., pp. 3–4.

  two accounts of this sojourn “Teenage Guy on Canal Street” in Fales 3E, 6, 247, and “Willy” in Fales 3B, 5, 206.

  “I almost burst into tears” “Guy Wakes Up (16 Years Old)” in Fales 3D, 6, 228.

  he gave Willy the name “Lipsy” Fales 3A, 5, 152.

  4 The Secret Life

  “FIRST PHOTOS (AWFUL)” Fales Series 9A[3], Box 32, Envelope 21, Sheets 33, 34, 35.

  “that I at least give my life up to it” Fales Series 2, Box 2, Folder 1.

  prose poem on the Denver bus station Coldspring Journal, no. 10, April 1976.

  questionnaire about his poetry life Fales 3A, 5, 149.

  “He’d given up in a way” DW to Ensslin, September 9, 1976, in author’s possession.

  5 At the Shattered Edge of the Map

  an anthology they turned up in a remainder bin Ronald Gross and George Quasha with Emmett Williams, John Robert Colo
mbo, and Walter Lowenfels, eds., Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973). David read Filliou’s intro while Lackow created his own tiny poem.

  One study of the Beat Generation … analyzed Huncke’s appeal John Tytell, Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation (New York: McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, 1977), p. 91.