by Just Kids
I wanted to go alone, but Sam wanted to be there. Vali’s technique was primitive, a large sewing needle which she sucked in her mouth, a candle, and a well of indigo ink. I had resolved to be stoic, and sat quietly as she stabbed the lightning bolt into my knee. When it was over, Sam asked her to tattoo his left hand. She repeatedly pierced the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger until a crescent moon appeared.
One morning Sam asked me where my guitar had gone and I told him I had given it to my youngest sister, Kimberly. That afternoon he took me to a guitar shop in the Village. There were acoustic guitars hanging on the wall, like in a pawnshop, only the cantankerous owner seemed not to want to part with any of them. Sam told me to choose any one I wanted. We looked at a lot of Martins, including some pretty ones with mother-of-pearl inlay, but what caught my eye was a battered black Gibson, a 1931 Depression model. The back had been cracked and repaired, and the gears of the tuning pegs were rusted. But something about it captured my heart. I thought by the looks of it that nobody would want it but me.
“Are you sure this is the one, Patti Lee?” Sam asked me.
“It’s the only one,” I said.
Sam paid two hundred dollars for it. I thought the owner would be glad, but he followed us down the street saying, “If you ever don’t want it, I’ll buy it back.”
It was a beautiful gesture that Sam got me the guitar. It put me in mind of a movie I saw called Beau Geste, with Gary Cooper. He plays a soldier in the French Foreign Legion who, at the price of his own reputation, shields the woman who raised him. I decided to call the guitar Bo, a short form of Beau. It was to remind me of Sam, who in truth had fallen in love with the guitar himself.
Bo, which I still have and treasure, became my true guitar. On it, I have written the greater measure of my songs. The first was written for Sam, anticipating his leave-taking. Our conscience was closing in on us, in our work and life. We were as close as ever, but it was getting time for him to go and we both knew it.
One night we were sitting in silence, thinking the same thing. He leapt up and brought his typewriter onto the bed. “Let’s write a play,” he said.
“I don’t know anything about writing plays,” I answered.
“It’s easy,” he said. “I’ll start.” He described my room on Twenty-third Street: the license plates, the Hank Williams records, the toy lamb, the bed on the floor, and then introduced his own character, Slim Shadow.
Then he shoved the typewriter my way and said, “You’re on, Patti Lee.”
I decided to call my character Cavale. I got it from a French-Algerian writer named Albertine Sarrazin, who, like Genet, was a precocious orphan who moved seamlessly between literature and crime. My favorite of her books was called La Cavale, which is the French word for escape.
Sam was right. It wasn’t hard at all to write the play. We just told each other stories. The characters were ourselves, and we encoded our love, imagination, and indiscretions in Cowboy Mouth. Perhaps it wasn’t so much a play as a ritual. We ritualized the end of our adventure and created a portal of escape for Sam.
Cavale is the criminal in the story. She kidnaps Slim and holes him up in her lair. The two of them love and spar, and create a language of their own, improvising poetry. When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. “I can’t do this,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say anything,” he said. “You can’t make a mistake when you improvise.”
“What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?”
“You can’t,” he said. “It’s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.”
In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.
Cowboy Mouth opened at the end of April at the American Place Theatre on West Forty-sixth Street. In the play, Cavale tries to recreate Slim into her image of a rock and roll savior. Slim, at first intoxicated with the idea and beguiled by Cavale, finally has to tell her that he can’t realize her dream. Slim Shadow goes back into his own world, his family, his responsibilities, leaving Cavale alone, setting her free.
Sam was excited because the play was good, but the reality of exposing himself onstage was deeply stressful. Directed by Robert Glaudini, the rehearsals were uneven and high-spirited but unfettered by an audience. The first preview was for local schoolchildren, and it was liberating as the kids laughed and cheered and egged us on. It was if we were collaborating with them. But at the official preview, it was as if Sam woke up, having to confront real people with his real problems.
On the third night, Sam disappeared. We closed the play. And like Slim Shadow, Sam returned to his own world, his family, and his responsibilities.
Experiencing the play taught me things about myself as well. I couldn’t imagine how Cavale’s image of a “rock ’n’ roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth” could apply to anything I was doing, but as we sang, sparred, and drew each other out, I found myself at home onstage. I was no actress; I drew no line between life and art. I was the same on- as offstage.
Before Sam left New York City for Nova Scotia, he gave me some money in an envelope. It was for me to take care of myself.
He looked at me, my cowboy with Indian ways. “You know, the dreams you had for me weren’t my dreams,” he said. “Maybe those dreams are meant for you.”
I was at a crossroads, not sure of what to do. Robert did not gloat when Sam left. And when Steve Paul offered to take me to Mexico with some other musicians to write songs, Robert encouraged me to go. Mexico represented two things that I loved: coffee and Diego Rivera. We arrived in Acapulco in mid-June and stayed in a sprawling villa overlooking the sea. I didn’t get much songwriting done, but I drank a lot of coffee.
A dangerous storm drove everyone home, but I stayed on, and eventually made my way back through Los Angeles. It was there I saw a huge billboard for the Doors’ new album, L.A. Woman, an image of a woman crucified on a telegraph pole. A car drove by and I heard the strains of their new single coming over the radio, “Riders on the Storm.” I felt remorse that I had almost forgotten what an important influence Jim Morrison had been. He had led me on the path of merging poetry into rock and roll, and I resolved to buy the album and write a worthy piece on his behalf.
By the time I returned to New York, fragmented news of his passing in Paris filtered back from Europe. For a day or two, no one was certain what had happened. Jim had died in his bathtub from mysterious causes; on July 3, the same date as Brian Jones.
As I ascended the stairs I knew something was wrong. I could hear Robert crying out, “I love you! I hate you! I love you!” I flung open the door to Robert’s studio. He was staring into an oval mirror, flanked by a black whip and a devil’s mask he had spray-painted months before. He was having a bad trip, wrestling good and evil. The devil was gaining on him, morphing his features, which like the mask were distorted and blood red.
I had no experience with this kind of situation. Remembering how he had helped me when I was dosed at the Chelsea, I calmly talked him down as I removed the mask and mirror from his sight. At first he looked at me as if I were a stranger, but soon his labored breathing slowed down. Exhausted, he followed me to the bed and put his head in my lap and fell asleep.
His dual nature troubled me, mostly because I feared it troubled him. When we first met, his work reflected a belief in God as universal love. Somehow he got off track. His Catholic preoccupation with good and evil reasserted itself, as if he had to choose one over the other. He had broken from the Church, now it was breaking within him. His trip magnified his fear that he had aligned himself irrevocably with darker forces, his Faustian pact.
Robert took to describing himself as evil, partially joking or just needing to be different. I sat and watched as he strapped on a leather codpiece. He was certainly more Dionysian than satanic, embracing freedom and heightened experience.
“You know you don’
t have to be evil to be different,” I said. “You are different. Artists are their own breed.”
He gave me a hug. The codpiece pressed against me. “Robert,” I squealed, “you’re so bad.”
“I told you,” he said, winking.
He went off and I went back to my side. I caught sight of him through my window as he hurried past the YMCA. The artist and hustler was also the good son and altar boy. I believed he would once again embrace the knowledge that there is no pure evil, nor pure good, only purity.
Not having the income to devote to one pursuit, Robert continued working in several media simultaneously. He shot film when he could afford it, made necklaces when he had the available components, and created constructions with found materials. But there was no question that he was gravitating toward photography.
I was Robert’s first model and he was his second. He began by taking photographs of me incorporating my treasures or his ritual objects, and graduated to nudes and portraits. I was eventually relieved of some of my duties by David, who was the perfect muse for Robert. David was photogenic and flexible, open to some of Robert’s unusual scenarios, such as lying clothed in nothing but socks, wrapped naked in black net, or gagged in a bow tie.
He was still using Sandy Daley’s 360 Land Camera. The settings and options were limited but it was technically simple and he needed no light meter. Spreading a pink waxy coating over the image preserved the shots. If he forgot to coat it, the picture would slowly fade. He made use of the whole Polaroid pack, the casing for frames, the pull tab, and occasionally even a semi-failure by manipulating the image with emulsion.
Because of the price of film he felt obliged to make every shot count. He did not like making mistakes or wasting film, and so developed his quick eye and decisive manner. He was precise and economical, first out of necessity, then out of habit. Observing his swift progress was rewarding, as I felt a part of his process. The creed we developed as artist and model was simple. I trust in you, I trust in myself.
An important new presence entered Robert’s life. David had introduced Robert to the curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. John McKendry was married to Maxime de la Falaise, a leading figure in New York’s high society. John and Maxime provided Robert with an entrance into a world that was as glamorous as he could have wished for. Maxime was an accomplished cook and hosted elaborate dinner parties where she served obscure dishes taken from her knowledge of centuries of English cooking. For every sophisticated course presented, there was equally well-spiced repartee served up by her guests. Those typically seated at her table: Bianca Jagger, Marisa and Berry Berenson, Tony Perkins, George Plimpton, Henry Geldzahler, Diane and Prince Egon von Fürstenberg.
Robert wanted to expose me to this stratum of society: fascinating and cultured people he thought I could relate to and who he hoped might help us. As usual, this created more than humorous conflicts between Robert and me. I didn’t dress properly, I was awkward in their company, if not bored, and I spent more time milling around in the kitchen than gossiping at the table. Maxime was patient with me, but John genuinely seemed to comprehend my feeling of being an outsider. Perhaps he too felt alienated. I really liked him, and he made every effort to make me feel comfortable. We would sit together on their Napoleonic daybed, and he would read me passages from Rimbaud’s Illuminations in the original French.
Due to his unique position at the Met, John had access to the vaults that housed the museum’s entire photography collection, much of it never seen by the public. John’s specialty was Victorian photography, which he knew I was partial to as well. He invited Robert and me to come and see the work firsthand. There were flat files from floor to ceiling, metal shelves and drawers containing vintage prints of the early masters of photography: Fox Talbot, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and Thomas Eakins.
Being allowed to lift the tissues from these photographs, actually touch them and get a sense of the paper and the hand of the artist, made an enormous impact on Robert. He studied them intently—the paper, the process, the composition, and the intensity of the blacks. “It’s really all about light,” he said.
John saved the most breathtaking images for last. One by one, he shared photographs forbidden to the public, including Stieglitz’s exquisite nudes of Georgia O’Keeffe. Taken at the height of their relationship, they revealed in their intimacy a mutual intelligence and O’Keeffe’s masculine beauty. As Robert concentrated on technical aspects, I focused on Georgia O’Keeffe as she related to Stieglitz, without artifice. Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.
This clandestine viewing was one of the first steps in John’s supportive though complex relationship with Robert. He bought him his own Polaroid camera and secured him a grant from Polaroid that provided Robert with all the film he needed. This gesture came in tandem with Robert’s increasing interest in taking photographs. The only thing that had stopped him was the prohibitive cost of film.
John opened Robert’s social circle not only in America, but internationally, for he would soon take him to Paris on a museum-related trip. This was Robert’s first trip abroad. His window into Paris was opulent. Robert’s friend Loulou was John’s stepdaughter and they shared champagne with Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé, as Robert wrote from the Café de Flore. On his postcard he said that he was taking photographs of statues, incorporating his love of sculpture into photography for the first time.
John’s devotion to Robert’s work spilled over to Robert himself. Robert accepted John’s gifts and took advantage of opportunities that John opened up for him, but he was never interested in John as a romantic partner. John was sensitive, volatile, and physically fragile, qualities that would not attract Robert. He admired Maxime, who was strong and ambitious with an impeccable pedigree. Perhaps he may have been cavalier with John’s feelings, for as time went on, he found himself entangled within a destructive romantic obsession.
When Robert was away, John would visit me. He sometimes brought me presents, like a tiny ring of twisted gold from Paris, or a special translation of Verlaine or Mallarmé. We talked about the photography of Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron, but what he really wanted to talk about was Robert. On the surface, John’s sorrow could be attributed to unrequited love, but the more time I spent with him, the deeper consideration seemed to be John’s inexplicable self-loathing. John couldn’t have been more ebullient, curious, and loving, so I couldn’t imagine why he suffered such a low opinion of himself. I did my best to console him, but could not offer him any solace; Robert’s view of him would never go beyond friend and mentor.
In Peter Pan, one of the Lost Boys is named John. Sometimes he seemed so to me, a pale and wispy Victorian boy ever chasing after Pan’s shadow.
Yet John McKendry could not have given Robert a better gift than the tools he needed to devote himself to photography. Robert was thoroughly smitten, obsessed not only with the process, but also its place in the arts. He had endless discussions with John, whose complacent air frustrated him. He felt that John, using his position at the Met, should be working harder to lift the estimation of photography to the respected and critical level of painting and sculpture. But John, assembling a major Paul Strand exhibition, was wed to photography, not the potential duty to raise its place in the hierarchy of the arts.
I never anticipated Robert’s complete surrender to its powers. I had encouraged him to take photographs to integrate into his collages and installations, hoping to see him assume the mantle of Duchamp. But Robert had shifted his focus. The photograph was not a means to an end, but the object itself. Hovering over all of this was Warhol, who seemed to both excite and paralyze him.
Robert was determined to do something Andy had not yet done. He had defaced Catholic images of the Madonna and Christ; he had introduced physical freaks and S&M imagery into his collages. But where Andy had seen himself as a passive observer, Robert would eventually insert himself int
o the action. He would participate in and document that which he had previously only been able to approximate through magazine imagery.
He began to branch out, photographing those he met through his complex social life, the infamous and the famous, from Marianne Faithfull to a young tattooed hustler. But he always returned to his muse. I no longer felt that I was the right model for him, but he would wave my objections away. He saw in me more than I could see in myself. Whenever he peeled the image from the Polaroid negative, he would say, “With you I can’t miss.”
I loved his self-portraits and he took a lot of them. He regarded the Polaroid as the artist’s photo booth, and John had provided him with all the quarters he needed.
We were invited to a fancy dress ball hosted by Fernando Sánchez, the great Spanish designer known for his provocative lingerie. Loulou and Maxime sent me a vintage gown of heavy crepe designed by Schiaparelli. The top was black, with poufed sleeves and a V-neck bodice, sweeping down into a red floor-length skirt. It looked suspiciously like the dress Snow White was wearing when she met the Seven Dwarfs. Robert was beside himself. “Are you going to wear it?” he said excitedly.
Lucky for me, it was too small. Instead, I dressed completely in black, finishing it off with pristine white Keds. David and Robert were in black tie.
This was one of the most glamorous parties of the season, attended by the upper echelon of art and fashion. I felt like a Buster Keaton character, leaning alone against a wall when Fernando came up. He took me in skeptically. “Darling, the ensemble is fabulous,” he said, patting my hand, eyeing my black jacket, black tie, black silk shirt, and heavily pegged black satin pants, “but I’m not so sure about the white sneakers.”