Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  I was struck by the elegance of everything and everyone out front. Halston had given us a rundown of some of the VIPs in attendance: Babe Paley, the wife of William Paley, the chairman of CBS; Patricia Kennedy Lawford, President Kennedy’s sister; and Jane Murchison, the wife of Clint Murchison, a Texas oil heir and owner of the Dallas Cowboys. All of these women were fixtures at the fashion shows (and on Eleanor Lambert’s Best-Dressed List) and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on their wardrobes.

  For some reason, doing the Halston show and being near all those top models and society ladies lit a fire within me. My love of clothes deepened, because I saw where they could take you, almost like a magic carpet. Being beautiful definitely involves how you feel about yourself inside (witness the way I talked myself into thinking I was as nice-looking as the other girls and how much better I felt when I was dressed in Halston’s dazzling designs). It also means taking care of the outside of yourself. That is no hocus-pocus, just fact. I wanted to have allure, and all that the word implied, just like the beautiful, well-dressed women I was encountering in high fashion. And I was determined to get it.

  As my external life became more and more glamorous, Matthew was always in the back of my mind, cautioning me against being a sellout and letting me know there was a higher internal path—a spiritual path—above and beyond the one that, in his opinion, I was being “seduced” into taking.

  After the show, I saw Naomi leave with a handsome, well-dressed, wealthy-looking young man. Me, I got on the subway to Brooklyn. Rationally, I knew that Matthew (as I still thought of him, though he no longer answered to that name) wasn’t good for me, that he was undependable and growing weirder and weirder, but I couldn’t seem to resist him. In retrospect, I think my hormones were simply trumping my common sense. At the time, no matter how busy I was, he was always on my mind. I persisted in thinking of him as my personal pied piper—a poet whose flute, Arch-Admiral-Ramtree-Rose-Ann, produced an almost hypnotic sound that made me want to follow him anywhere.

  I would sometimes walk with Matthew before dawn—in the sacred hours, as he called them, because that is when everything is quiet—and he would tell me that there was the Mother Earth, and the heavens, and that he spoke to the angels as he played his music to the moonlight, the Milky Way, and to Jove, the god of the sky. He gave me a two-thousand-page book to read called the Urantia Book (“Urantia” is another name for Earth), in order to cure me of the “nearsightedness of a creature of time.” The book, he said, was written (or “revealed”) by celestial beings offering a new interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ and a unique way to unify science, philosophy, and religion. The book was very difficult, he allowed, but the key to enlightenment. I lugged it around with me everywhere, arousing curiosity in all my fashion friends.

  Matthew now described himself as a “celestial vagabond,” and I had to admit that the latter word seemed to fit. He had no permanent home that I could discern, but simply crashed here and there for short periods and spent most nights playing his flute in the park, disappearing, as daylight broke, into the crowd of the city. The address he gave me in Brooklyn was somewhere near the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Back in 1970, this neighborhood was very different from the hip, thriving community it is today, and I felt strange and afraid wandering around there alone. In late afternoon, the streets were deserted, unlike in Manhattan, where they were always filled with people and the kinetic energy among them. I even started to worry, as I walked past rows of brick and limestone buildings that all looked alike, whether I’d be able to find my way back to the subway station, and I told myself to pay attention to exactly where I was going.

  When I finally found the address Matthew had given me, the building—a nice-looking brownstone—appeared empty. I glanced up, and on the third floor I saw an open window. I approached the main door, which was unlocked, went in, and climbed the stairs to the third floor. There didn’t seem to be a soul in the place. I shuddered, thinking that I wouldn’t want to live there. I also thought that as long as I could see Matthew, nothing else really mattered. The door of Apartment 3C was slightly ajar, and I thought, That’s nice, he’s left it open for me. I knocked, and when no one answered, I pushed the door all the way open and walked in.

  The room, a kitchen, was brightly lit and pleasant but had no furniture. To my right was another room, also free of furniture. But there were white curtains on the open window I’d glimpsed from the street, and they were fluttering in the breeze. “Hello?” I said in a whisper. I noticed a second door to my right. “Hello?” I repeated. Silence. I was certain I’d come to the right address, unless I’d misunderstood Matthew. I was equally certain he’d said Apartment 3C.

  The bare wood floor creaked as I walked on it. The sound echoed off the walls; it was so quiet, I could hear my own breathing. I thought it was strange that someone would leave the window open when it was so cold outside. The room felt frozen. I was about to leave but thought, Why not look in the other room, since I’ve come all this way?

  I opened the door to one of the most terrifying sights I have ever witnessed. Sprawled facedown on a grimy mattress in the middle of the floor was a young man in a white T-shirt and jeans pulled down around his ankles. A syringe was stuck into his arm, and in the fading afternoon light, motes of sunlight danced around his blue-tinged, lifeless body. It was the first time I’d seen a dead person outside the confines of a funeral home. I suppressed a scream as a rush of adrenaline surged through my body, propelling me over the creaking wooden floor, out the apartment door, down the stairs, and into the street. I ran as fast as I could, not pausing until I was in the subway, on the train. Even then, I felt like I was still in that barren room with the dead man.

  I was horribly upset and confused. Why would Matthew send me there? Was this man a friend of his? Was Matthew heavily involved with drugs? By the time I got home, it was dark, and I went straight to my room. A couple of hours later, Matthew called and asked where I was. He told me I’d gone to the wrong address. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I let him talk me into meeting him and his friends at an African restaurant in the West Village. My mom and stepdad were both working, and I sneaked him into the apartment, where he stayed until sunrise. Passion doesn’t care what time of day it is.

  chapter 29

  I HEAR A SYMPHONY

  In the green room at Vogue with Antonio Lopez on the day we met, 1970.

  Courtesy of Juan Ramos.

  At Vogue, there was change afoot, as I discovered when I was booked for another round of Vogue Seminars. I had no idea that Mrs. Vreeland was on her way out and would be unceremoniously fired in a few short weeks. But I was surprised to hear, when I got to the greenroom, that Maning Obregon was in Europe with Carrie Donovan and that I would be working with a new illustrator, Antonio Lopez.

  I was wearing my red Danskin tights under a new coatdress, with snaps down the front, that Stephen had just given me, and those chocolate-brown, patent-leather wedgies with candy-striped shoestrings. I had just sat down and was writing in my journal when in walked a handsome young Latin guy with curly hair, a mustache, and a playful grin that reminded me of a cat about to play with a ball of string. “Are you the model?” he asked, scrunching up his face in mock confusion.

  I looked at him and scrunched up my face in the same way, like, Isn’t it obvious?

  “I’m joking,” he said. “I know you’re the model.” He extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Antonio. Now I’m going to draw you. What have you got on under there?” He gestured to my dress, winked, and said, “Take it off.”

  My jaw dropped. Is he crazy? I thought. We’re at Vogue.

  “I’m joking!” he said again, flashing a boyish grin that made my heart lurch. From the beginning, there was a kind of light around Antonio that I found irresistible. Meeting him felt like a symphony had come to play in my heart. I knew immediately that this guy was going to be a keeper.

  A smaller man dressed in tweed trousers, a tightly buttoned vest,
a crisp white shirt, and a little bow tie entered the room. Antonio introduced him as Juan Ramos; he was Antonio’s right-hand man or, perhaps more accurately, his cat’s paw. Both of them conveyed the impression that they were on their way to someplace more important and had just stopped by Vogue for a visit. As they conferred with Emmy Lou, the booker—Antonio seemed to charm her, too—I tried to figure out why he looked so familiar. Then it dawned on me: He was the “well-known illustrator” who was sitting with Donna Jordan at the club in Sheridan Square where I’d first seen her with Andy Warhol. I tried to stay calm as my mind raced off into a fantasy about Antonio. I just wanted to wrap myself around him like a cape and fly off to paradise.

  Before I could get too carried away, we got to work on the Seminar. Antonio sat at a small table with pencils in hand while I stood on the tabletop in the center of the room, dressed in a pair of flesh-colored tights and dance leotards. I couldn’t wait to see what he was busy drawing, because I could feel his concentration and the way he was truly taking me in. I would soon learn all about Antonio’s outsize reputation—he was the reigning god of fashion illustration—but I could sense the magnitude of his talent simply from watching the way he worked.

  At the end of the day, Antonio invited me to work with him at his private studio in the Carnegie Hall building. As I stood in the elevator, I thought back to when I was fourteen and my mom brought me there to be photographed by Carl Van Vechten’s friend Adelaide Passen. Carl Van Vechten himself had kept a studio there.

  Juan, neatly dressed in his perky bow tie and ready for business, let me into the studio and shouted, “Antonio!” in an exaggerated singsong voice. I was surprised that someone who seemed so serious one moment could be so funny the next. He led me through the hallway, and I noticed several magnificent black-and-white photos of the same girl; she looked like a glass-faced Pagliacci doll, with dark brown eyes that suggested great emotional depth. I recognized her as the model for Danskin dance clothes, which automatically made her an icon in my book.

  “You like her?” Juan asked. “That’s Cathee Dahmen. She’s been Antonio’s model since he started illustrating.”

  We walked farther down the narrow hallway, which opened into a bright duplex. At the far end of the main room was a floor-to-ceiling arched window surrounded by white space. In front of it, on a sleek black settee—“a Corbusier,” Juan told me, “made just for Antonio”—sat Mr. Lopez himself, with his drawing board on his knees, charcoal in one hand, colored pencils in the other. With every breath, he shifted positions, holding the board differently. He was concentrating just as fiercely as he had at Vogue, but here in his own environment, he looked like a deity, with his hands moving back and forth, creating a swish against the paper as he passed over it with each stroke of charcoal.

  Juan pointed, and I squinted into the room and saw, just behind a pillar, Cathee Dahmen, the girl in the photos. She looked like a child, with the palest skin, prettiest eyes, and absolutely no makeup. She was a rare argument for natural beauty.

  With a sweep of his arm, Antonio stopped. Without even checking his work, he set the drawing board aside; he looked completely drained, as if he’d been riding a wild horse and had just let go of the reins. It seemed to take him a minute to come out of his trance. “Hey! You made it,” he said, registering me for the first time. Then he switched to his jokey mode. “What’s that on your shirt?” he said, pointing as though he saw poop on me. When I looked down, he said, “April Fool’s! I made you look!” I had completely forgotten until then that it was April 1, and I gave him a feeble smile. Meanwhile, Antonio laughed hysterically, with his hand on his stomach, almost as if he couldn’t stop. Eventually, he said, “You know Cathee?”

  I turned and waved at her. She was just getting out of her pose. “She’s my sister,” Antonio said. Cathee walked over to him and he hugged her affectionately, squeezing her cheeks together until she looked like she had fish lips. “Don’t we look alike?”

  “You wish,” said Juan.

  “Shut up, Tweety!” Antonio teased back. “Don’t you think he looks like Tweety Bird? The shape of his head?”

  We all laughed except Juan, who looked all business. “Look what you did,” he said to Antonio, pointing to the sketches. “You drew outside the lines again. I told you not to.”

  “So?” Antonio replied. “That’s what happens with charcoal.”

  “How am I going to line up the color if you can’t even stay inside the lines? Jeez, it’s like you’re in kindergarten.”

  “Don’t be sore—just erase it,” Antonio said. Juan shot Antonio a wicked look, took the drawing gently by the top corners, and went to the table in the center of the room and began furiously erasing stuff off the paper.

  “Back to the old drawing board, Wile E.,” Antonio said. “He’s that silly coyote,” he added to Cathee and me.

  “I know what to do, wise guy.” Juan seemed to be getting really pissed off. I didn’t know it yet, but this was a regular routine of theirs. Like many longtime collaborators, they were always sparring with each other, but in the end, their squabbles were like performance art that they enacted to amuse themselves and others.

  There were Magic Markers and colored inks at Antonio’s feet. He stayed seated when Cathee jumped up, kissed him on the forehead, and gave him a big hug. Then she said goodbye to us all and left.

  “She’ll be back,” Antonio said to me. “She can’t live without me.”

  I was sitting there, unsure what to do, when Antonio gestured to the pillar where Cathee had been. “Sit there, girl,” he said. I was thrilled to inhabit the space she’d just left and hoped the ghost of her presence would inspire me. “Hold that pose.”

  As I sat there, Antonio tilted his head sideways to the left, then to the right; he slightly crossed his eyes and extended his hand with a pencil in it, as though measuring me with his thumb. He gathered his charcoal together and directed me to take off my jacket and unbutton my shirt. “Show one of your shoulders. No, better yet, take off your shirt and tie it loosely around your neck.”

  I turned my back to him, shyly, because I was wearing nothing under my shirt.

  He waited patiently. “More shoulders,” he said. “That’s good. Now sit with one hand on your thigh, like this.” Antonio went into the pose himself, and I mirrored what he did until my body was twisted into the same shape as his. It was like a tango: He was me, and I was him, and as soon as we replicated each other, he flexed his long fingers like a piano player and began to draw, as if some rhythmic force had taken over his body and soul and right hand.

  I flashed back to the experience of posing for my mom at Madame Metcalf’s home in Connecticut. As with her, I adored watching Antonio work, and every muscle in me wanted to please him. He moved with the air, one stroke leading into the next, until he had a pile of drawings at his feet, like leaves dropping under a tree. These were the sketches that would lead to the finished work; Juan carried them away with great tenderness, as though Antonio had just delivered a newborn baby.

  I posed this way for Antonio until midnight and then did the same for weeks afterward. Before long, I was his main model. We did Vogue Patterns, among many other projects, and it never really felt like work because I was so inspired and entertained by Antonio. As I watched him draw, I loved him more each day. He was one of the finest artists I’ve ever known. He could see deeply into the current moment but also mix past and future into his art. I felt sometimes that he was divinely guided, but he would always brush me off when I made comments like that. He never wanted to admit his spiritual side—he was always joking and playing down anything serious—but as far as I was concerned, he was working with a higher force.

  So after my regular work and various go-sees and tests, I started going to Antonio’s studio. Usually, he was just sketching me, but occasionally, he’d invite other models whom he wanted to photograph for his own portfolio. At one of those shoots, Antonio posed me nude, in an amorous embrace with a beautiful young (also
nude) male model named Martin Snaric, whom I’d never met. It was a bit awkward to be entwined stark naked with a total stranger, but the two of us laughed it off and became fast friends. (That friendship deepened into something more about six years later, when Martin became my first husband.)

  At the evening sessions with just Antonio, Juan, and me, we’d often break for dinner, which we’d always eat out because, while the studio was equipped with a kitchen, Juan couldn’t stand the smell of food in the place. We’d usually go to a Cuban-Chinese joint on Ninth Avenue, where the food was cheap, plentiful, and delicious. Juan and Antonio were regulars, so they’d speak Spanish to the staff and other customers from the moment we walked in. At first everyone thought I was from Puerto Rico, too, because Antonio, that jokester, told them I was his sister (hmmm, this seemed to be a pattern of his). We’d order black beans and rice with thick greasy plantains and stuff ourselves until we couldn’t eat another bite, then go back to work.

  One night we were in the restaurant licking our fingers and sucking our mango sodas, when who should walk in but Maning Obregon. Unbeknownst to me, Antonio and Maning were rivals at Vogue, and Maning was incensed because while he was in Europe with Carrie Donovan, the powers-that-be had permanently replaced him with Antonio. Maning had received this unhappy surprise when he came in to work on the Vogue Seminars. Clueless as I was to these goings-on, I jumped up and ran over to Maning to say hello. I was delighted to see him; after all, he was one of my first and greatest mentors. Talk about a cold shoulder! Not toward me but toward Antonio. Maning grinned and joked but was clearly upset. “I see the enemy has taken over,” he said.

  Juan immediately asked for the check, and we ended up taking our boxed rice, beans, and gravy back to the studio. The three of us ate there, which tells you how unsettled the boys were, to let smelly food like that into their inner sanctum.