Everyone is Watching
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63
Patti handles the Persian necklace. She fingers the plaques and the clasp. She fits the necklace around her neck. The plaques are cold. They are heavy. Edward’s fingers as he handed her the necklace looked for a moment like Robert’s fingers. She unfastens the clasp. She places the necklace back in the drawer and switches off the light in her white room.
WORLD’S FAIR, FLUSHING MEADOWS–CORONA PARK, 1965
On the last day of the fair, two friends make their way to the General Motors Pavilion, where they have heard there is an exhibit about the future. The women get into the car and wait for the narration to begin.
It’s almost a shame to know the future, one woman says.
I don’t think I want to know.
But the car is moving. They come to a diorama of the Moon with its large craters and grey, dusty surface. Animatronic men power lunar rovers to and from arrival pods. The Earth can be seen in the black sky.
The car climbs away from the Moon into Life Under the Ice where scientists are testing equipment in an ice-framed shelter. The narration explains they are testing weather monitors. One day they will be able to predict all future weather across the Earth.
Life Underwater follows. The woman begins to hold her breath. People are extracting minerals from the seabed. Vacationers peer through the glass walls of their hotel into the underwater wilderness.
Will we ever live in the jungle? The next diorama claims that we will. Trees are being knocked down with laser beams. Trees lie on the ground ready for processing. A machine is levelling the ground behind the fallen trees, creating a multilane highway behind it.
How awful, the woman says.
They are being pulled along the track to the land of the desert where crops have been planted and are thriving in specially irrigated fields. These crops do well in the sun, creating plenty of food for a rising population.
And then the City of Tomorrow. Monster skyscrapers and moving sidewalks, high-speed buses and mid-city airports. No one is walking any more, and everything is new.
Oh God, get me out of here, she says to her friend.
We can’t just get off, her friend says.
She sits back down and waits for the ride to end.
When the ride is over, they hurry through the exit and into the fresh air. They fight their way through the crowd to the nearest patch of grass.
I’m exhausted. It’s not even two o’clock.
We’ll rest a moment, then we’ll go on.
They watch the people walking by.
What do you want to do now?
See something else.
Something else?
I feel like a kid.
They follow the crowd to the time capsule, a sleek rocket-shaped container positioned on a stage.
They read in the programme the list of items that will be placed in the capsule: a Polaroid camera, an electric toothbrush, antibiotics, credit cards, a ballpoint pen, a bikini, a Beatles record.
Hmm, the friend says.
As the time capsule descends into the earth, the friend notices a woman ripping up the flowers from the flowerbeds beside her and shoving them into her handbag. Then she sees a man pull a poster from an advertising board. A woman runs out of a store holding a stack of chairs.
What’s going on? she says to her friend.
Everyone wants a souvenir. It’s the last day of the fair, she says.
64
Robert Mapplethorpe is cremated, segmented and organized – a vial for Patti, a box for his family.
Robert’s memorial service is held in Queens. The people who come to it – the people who knew him from Manhattan – can’t believe this is where he was born – post-war suburbia, wide, clean streets.
65
Edmund opens the book and dials the number. He requests a man who looks like T – tall, blond, athletic, young. He goes into the bathroom and washes his face. As the steam fogs the mirror he thinks about the steam engines of the elevated railway and the things he has seen. He thinks of Stephen Crane walking through New York at the turn of the twentieth century. He goes and stands at the living-room window. He looks down at the people on the street. There is a knock on the door.
Standing in the hallway is a young man of nineteen, maybe twenty. He must have been born in the nineteen-nineties. Edmund lays the money out on the table as the man undresses.
Where? says the man.
Here is OK.
The man takes Edmund’s hand.
Feel this, the man says.
Edmund closes his eyes. This is the whole world: the city, skyscrapers and the hot street, this room, where love is happening.
66
The World’s Fair closes sooner than expected. On its last day, the public raid it, rip the daffodils out from the flowerbeds, rip the shelves out from the gift store, the cushions from cafeteria seats, the auditorium seats, ornaments, door handles, table tops. They are stripping the fair.
They swarm around Moses. Suddenly there is no room for him on the path. He takes a step sideways onto the grass. These ungrateful people. He built them a fair. He built them a city. He dedicated his life to them.
He remembers the burning effigy that the public carried through the Bronx after he tore their houses down. How he had laughed then. How funny it had seemed. But standing here, watching the looting, he is disturbed by the violence.
67
Bucke and Whitman are coming into the city.
Lights flicker in the windows. The silhouettes of the buildings, the blackness of the walls, the near black of the sky. Broadway, that great river, flowing upstream. Here are the people of the city – the men and women, the businessmen and those without jobs, the homeless and the traders of the city, the carts and the trolleys, the horses.
68
They sell so many Belgian waffles at the waffle stand that it is considered the most popular stand of the whole 1964–65 World’s Fair. Coming here each day this summer, eating waffles every day for lunch as he takes a break from the games of chance, Robert Mapplethorpe is a beautiful young man. He stands in the Belgian Village beside the rotating carousel and eats the waffle from a cardboard holder, licking the sugar from his fingers, lighting a cigarette when he’s done. The jackets and scarves of those on the carousel trail behind them. The smiles of the public are only moments and then they are gone. Robert flicks the butt away and wanders through the square towards the church. He stands a moment in the sun, thinking about which way to go. He continues into the crowd. So beautiful. I wonder what he will become.
NOTES
Floral Park was a good place to come from From the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation website – http://www.mapplethorpe.org/biography/ – where the full quote is: ‘Of his childhood he said, “I come from suburban America. It was a very safe environment and it was a good place to come from in that it was a good place to leave.” ’
Once you sink that first stake Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, p. 218.
Take us to the Chelsea Patti Smith, Just Kids, p. 88. (Original dialogue reads, ‘ “Chelsea Hotel,” I told the driver . . .’)
Because however cute the guy is Patricia Morrisroe, Mapplethorpe: A Biography, p. 83. (Original dialogue reads, ‘No matter how beautiful the guy was, I always asked for the money.’)
Edmund has called this book Edmund White, Hotel de Dream, p. 223. (Exact quote is, ‘This novel is my fantasia on real themes provided by history.’)
You should meet me, I’m cute Edmund White, My Lives, p. 222.
This exhibition is about pleasure Sam Wagstaff, A Book of Photographs From the Collection of Sam Wagstaff, foreword. (Original text reads, ‘This book is about pleasure, the pleasure of looking and the pleasure of seeing, like watching people dancing through an open window. They seem a little mad at first, until you realize they hear the song that you are watching.’)
He says that an obsession Patricia Morrisroe, Mapplethorpe: A Biography, p. 137. (‘An obsession – like any sort of love – is blinding.’)
I AM THE ARTIST Ibid, p. 135. (‘You’re the collector,’ he reminded him. ‘I’m the artist.’)
You know, you should get a tattoo Film, Robert Mapplethorpe with Peter Van de Klashorst, April 1984.
I always say you can draw any kind of picture and You can’t make an omelette Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, p. 849. (‘You can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.’)
You mean, besides a waste of time? Film, Mr Mackridge Interviews Mr Moses, 1963 (New York Public Library, New York World’s Fair 1964–65 Corporation Records. Original dialogue: “What do you call relaxation?” “You mean do I say it’s a waste of time?”).
There are a number of things I must insist on Based on Hard Times Tour, Tenement Museum, New York City.
What was once a run-down PBS Documentary, The World That Moses Built, 1989.
What do I believe? CBS documentary, The Man Who Built New York, 1963.
I think the urn is Persian and They look more like pieces of shell Film, Steven Sebring, Dream of Life, 2008.
What message do people have Real speech from film of Whitney Opening, 1988, held at the Getty Research Institute.
Has there been much criticism, Commissioner? Dialogue from documentary, New York New York: The Fair Face of Robert Moses, 1964 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65 archives).
Girls get confused over the numbers Sound recording, Press Conference on Arterials, 1963 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65 archives).
Are you satisfied with dedicating your life to building? Dialogue from documentary, New York New York: The Fair Face of Robert Moses, 1964 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65 archives).
How have you risen above your critics? Ibid.
I’m getting very friendly with the cashier Ibid.
This Fair is dedicated to man’s achievement Sound recording, Unisphere Presentation, 1964 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65 archives).
SOURCES
BOOKS
ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE
Robert Mapplethorpe: A Biography, Macmillan, London, 1995 – Patricia Morrisroe
Just Kids, Bloomsbury, London, 2010 – Patti Smith
Mapplethorpe: Assault With a Deadly Camera, Hastings House, Mamaroneck, NY, 1994 – Jack Fritscher
The Basketball Diaries, Penguin, London, 1995 – Jim Carroll
Forced Entries, Penguin, London, 1987 – Jim Carroll
EDMUND WHITE
City Boy, Bloomsbury, London, 2009 – Edmund White
My Lives, Bloomsbury, London, 2005 – EW
A Boy’s Own Story, Picador, London, 1994 – EW
Forgetting Elena, and Nocturnes for the King of Naples, Pan Books, London, 1984 – EW
The Farewell Symphony, Vintage, London, 1998 – EW
Hotel de Dream, Bloomsbury, London, 2007 – EW
The Burning Library, Chatto & Windus, London, 1994 – EW
The New Joy of Gay Sex, GMP Publishers, London, 1993 – EW, Charles Silverstein and Felice Picano
ROBERT MOSES
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Knopf, New York, 1974 – Robert A. Caro
Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, W. W. Norton, New York, 2008 – Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage, London, 1993 – Jane Jacobs
Theory and Practice in Politics, Godkin Lectures, Cambridge, Mass., 1940 – Robert Moses
Working For the People: Promise and Performance in Public Service, Harper, 1956 – Robert Moses
WALT WHITMAN
Leaves of Grass, Library of America, 2011 – Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman, David McKay, Philadelphia, 1883 (facsimile edition by BiblioLife) – Richard Maurice Bucke
Man’s Moral Nature: An Essay, Trübner, London, 1879 – RMB
Cosmic Consciousness, Dover Publications, Mineola, New York, 2009 (originally published by E. P. Dutton, Inc., New York, 1929) – RMB
Walt Whitman: A Song of Himself, University of California Press, 1999 – Jerome Loving
Specimen Days In America, The Folio Society, London, 1979 – Walt Whitman
The Portable Whitman, Penguin, 1977 – ed. Mark Van Doren
ART BOOKS
Polaroids: Mapplethorpe, Prestel, Munich, 2007 – Sylvia Wolf
Altars, Cape, London, 1995 – Robert Mapplethorpe and Edmund White
Pistils, Jonathan Cape, London, 1996 – Robert Mapplethorpe
Flowers, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2014 – Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith
Lady, Lisa Lyon, Blond & Briggs, London, 1983 – Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Chatwin
Robert Mapplethorpe, Whitney Museum of American Art in ass. with New York Graphic Society Books, New York, 1988 – Richard Marshall, Ingrid Sischy, Richard Howard
Some Women, Secker & Warburg, London, 1989 – Robert Mapplethorpe
Certain People: A Book of Portraits, Twelve Trees Press, Pasadena, CA, 1985 – Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2006 – Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2004 – Germano Celant and Arkady Ippolitov
A Book of Photographs From the Collection of Sam Wagstaff, Gray Press, Rochester, New York, 1978 – Sam Wagstaff
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Aperture, New York, 2012 – Nan Goldin
I’ll Be Your Mirror, Whitney Museum of American Art & Scalo, New York, 1996 – Nan Goldin
Mixed Use Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the present, MIT Press, London, 2010 – Douglas Crimp, Lynne Cooke, Kristin Poor
Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, Tate, London, 2010 – Sandra S. Philips
On the Museum’s Ruins, MIT Press, London, 1993 – Douglas Crimp and Louise Lawler
Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics, MIT Press, London, 1996 – Rosalyn Deutsche
Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe, University of California Press, London, 1996 – Arthur Danto
Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, Routledge, London, 2000 – Nick Kaye
Soho: The Artist in the City, University of Chicago Press, London, 1981 – Charles R. Simpson
The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974–1984, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006 – various
Pornography or Art?, Words and Pictures, Harrow, 1971 – Poul Gerhard
Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, Hill and Wang, New York, 1989 – Alan Trachtenberg
Inside the Studio: Two Decades of Talks with Artists in New York, Independent Curators International, New York, 2004 – Judith Olch Richards
BACKGROUND READING
How the Other Half Lives, Dover Publications, London, 1971 – Jacob Riis
Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World, Routledge, London, 2008 – Miriam Greenberg
Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010 – Sharon Zukin
Between Ocean and City, Columbia University Press, New York, 2003 – Lawrence and Carol Kaplan
City of Eros: NYC, Prostitution and the Commercialisation of Sex, 1790–1920, W. W. Norton, London, 1994 – Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Fragmented Urban Images: The American City in Modern Fiction from Stephen Crane to Thomas Pynchon, P. Lang, New York, 1991 – Gerd Hurm
Imperial City: The Rise and Rise of New York, Ulverscroft, 1989 – Geoffrey Moorhouse
Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1991 – William R. Taylor
Leadership, Time Warner, London, 2003 – Rudolph Giuliani
Pornography Without Prejudice: A Reply to Objectors, Abelard-Schuman, Lo
ndon, 1972 – Geoff L. Simons
Prurient Interests: Gender, Democracy and Obscenity in New York City, 1909–1945, Columbia University Press, New York, 2000 – Andrea Friedman
Public Sex/Gay Space, Columbia University Press, Chichester, New York, 1999 – William Leap
Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife 1885–1940, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009 – Chad Heap
Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography, Bantam, London, 1982 – ed. Laura Lederer
The Assassination of New York, Verso, London, 1993 – Robert Fitch
The Disappearance of Objects: New York and the Rise of the Postmodern City, Yale University Press, London, 2009 – Joshua Shannon
The Skyscraper, Allen Lane, London, 1982 – Paul Goldberger
The Times Square Story, W.W. Norton, London, 1998 – Geoffrey O’Brien
Times Square Red Times Square Blue, New York University Press, London, 1999 – Samuel R. Delany
Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon, MIT Press, London, 2001 – Lynne B. Sagalyn
Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1979 – Alan Trachtenberg
On Photography, Penguin, London, 1979 – Susan Sontag
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Flamingo, London, 1984 – Roland Barthes
The Denial of Death, Free Press, London, 1973 – Ernest Becker
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, Penguin, London, 2002 – Susan Sontag
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000 – Edwin Burrows
The City That Never Was, Viking, London, 1988 – Rebecca Shanor
New York 1930 (Rizzoli, New York 1987) /1960 (Taschen, Koln, 1997) /2000 (Monacelli Press, New York, 2006) – Robert A. M. Stern
Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Reaktion Books, London, 2009 – Michael Sorkin
After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City, Routledge, London, 2002 – Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin