bruised little body may be seen creeping
around the docks of Limehouse.
Jean-Michel and Suzanne are in bed under Suzanne’s Superman blanket. They smoke pot, eat and watch silent movies.
In every group there is one, weaker than
the rest—the butt of uncouth wit or
ill-temper. Poor Lucy is one of these.
Jean-Michel sucks Suzanne’s fingers.
Her dreams, her prattle,
her birdlike ways,
her sweet self—
are all his own.
Jean loved silent movies because they were like cartoons. I think that he felt that even in life we should be walking around with a word-balloon above our heads—you can see this in his art also.
He always kept watch for any black characters but, of course, they only appeared as servants, if at all.
We watched D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms dozens of times and Jean could quote whole sections of it: “It is a tale of temple bells, sounding at sunset before the image of Buddha; it is a tale of love and lovers; it is a tale of tears.” The quote he loved best was, “The yellow man holds a great dream to take the glorious message of peace to the barbarous Anglo-Saxons …”
I remember he did a few paintings of the yellow man on some cardboard boxes. For a short time he called himself The Yellow Man and he called me The Girl or Lucy, using a funny, formal language.
He would say, “The Yellow Man is desirous of a kiss from The Girl,” etc. This lasted only a short while.
I think he adored Broken Blossoms because of all the opium-smoking scenes, and there were many boxing scenes also.
The mime and mute aspect of these movies moved him deeply. Sometimes, after a session of watching several silent movies he would be very quiet for hours and just mime to me anything he wanted or wanted to say and the apartment would be filled with a strange, quiet feeling as if we were underwater.
NOT FOR SALE
Jean-Michel is like the child who tells the fat lady on the bus, “You’re fat.”
His paintings scream Famous Negro Athletes and Origins of Cotton. The words are childishly scrawled backwards or scratched out and placed with provocative images of kings with black crowns covered in tar and feathers. He says, “There are only fifty people who buy art. They buy whatever I paint because they are whitewashing history … just like the ‘Mammy’ saltshakers that disappeared.”
He refuses to sell his paintings and writes “NOT FOR SALE” on some of them. He is furious because people are writing about his ghetto childhood and call him a “graffiti artist” and “primitive.” “They don’t invent a childhood for white artists,” he says.
He wears Armani suits to paint in and throws them away afterwards. He makes fun of everyone by wearing pseudo-African garb to important art openings.
Jean-Michel paints Obnoxious Liberals because he says he is sick of liberal white art collectors. He makes Suzanne cope with the people who come to the loft to buy his paintings. He hides in the bathroom.
Suzanne says, “Please sit down. Can I get you some coffee?”
Jean-Michel comes out of the bathroom and says, “I don’t think it goes with your couch.”
The buyers are insulted. He pours a box of granola on their heads from the window of the loft as they leave. He says, “I feel like an art mascot.”
He never sells paintings to people he does not like.
Jean-Michel is full of fears, especially when he is all coked up. He is afraid that he will be a flash in the pan. He is afraid that the KKK is going to kill him because he is getting so famous and he is black. He installs an elaborate alarm system in the loft. He thinks that the CIA is going to murder him.
One day he comes home to the loft with two delivery boys. He has bought a color TV, a stereo system, a TEAC recording machine. He sits on the sofa looking sad and crying. “I didn’t know what else to buy,” he says to Suzanne. “Did you want something?”
When he first starts to get rich he rents limousines to take him everywhere. He drives down to the Bowery and throws one-hundred-dollar bills to the bums. He tells Suzanne, “I have to do this every day.” He remembers that once he and some friends harassed a street bum and poured a liquor bottle over the bum’s head.
I met Shenge Ka Pharaoh (whose real name was Selwyn O’Brien) before Jean did when I was working at the Berlin nightclub as a bartender. Shenge worked at Reggae Lounge. Then Shenge was always around. He did everything for Jean. He cleaned, ran errands, bought drugs and was a buffer for Jean from people and situations Jean did not want to deal with. Shenge always loved me and always referred to me as Jean-Michel’s woman. He had a charming Barbados accent. I think that Jean was probably closer to Shenge than any other friend he had. In my opinion even closer to him than Andy Warhol. Andy was really only around in the latter part of Jean’s life when Jean was famous already. Andy was Jean’s connection to other famous people.
Jean trusted Shenge with all his secrets.
Shenge was very small, thin, fragile and gentle looking. He had a beautiful face with small features and sparkling eyes. He had a full beard, dreadlocks and soft loose-fitting, flowing clothes and he had a profound spirituality about him. He was always around Jean until the last few months of Jean’s life. I asked Jean where Shenge was and Jean told me that they had had a falling-out and that they were not friends anymore. This was typical. Every person that was close to Jean eventually had a fight with him. I think it scared Jean to have people get too close.
Shenge was part of the family. I loved Shenge too. Shenge and I still see each other occasionally on the street. We both have this look in our eyes like only the two of us shared some kind of deep experience. We don’t have to say anything. We just hug each other and know. Shenge more than anyone knew what I went through with Jean. And I know what he went through too. We are the only people that share both the ecstatic and hellish experience of Jean. Jean behaved a certain way with Andy Warhol. He did not show his whole self to Andy. Because both Shenge and I lived with Jean, we knew the whole person. We knew how deeply compassionate and loving he could be at one moment and then suddenly become cruel, cold and angry. It was basically either me or Shenge who lived with Jean. Most times it was the three of us hanging out.
One night I had been out with Rene Ricard, after living in the Crosby Street loft, and Jean was now living with Shenge at the Great Jones loft. Rene and I were with T. doing coke at a party. Then T. invited us back to his house. Rene told me to go and said he would be back shortly. So I went, but I was really frightened of T. (who is a very famous gallery owner in SoHo). I only went because I thought Rene would be there too. Rene never showed up.
Immediately T. began to act very strange. He asked me how big Jean’s penis was and if it was true that Jean had herpes. I was very scared.
Then T. took his pants off and started chasing me around with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. I was terrified and I ran out the door. He followed me with no pants on and wearing just a white shirt and a tie. It was really a ridiculous sight. I was very high on coke and scared that he was going to rape me.
In the street I jumped into a cab and went home. I put on my pajamas and tried to sleep but I couldn’t. I kept crying and crying. So I put my coat on over my pajamas and put on my shoes and sunglasses and took a bottle of Rémy with me in the pocket of my coat.
As I walked to the Great Jones Street loft I drank the Rémy to come down from the coke. I was really drunk by the time I got there. I knocked on the door and Shenge answered.
He said, “You would not want Jean to see you in this state.”
I said, “Why not? I’ve seen him in worse states than this. Shenge,” I continued, “something terrible just happened to me. Please, I have to talk to him.”
So Shenge let me in. When Jean heard my voice he came running down from the bedroom. He threw the television at me from the top of the stairs. I was at the foot of the stairs. Shenge jumped in and pushed the television out
of the way. Jean ran down and tore off my sunglasses to see my eyes. He was furious that I was drunk and high. He had never been this violent with me before. He hated it that I would get high without him. He somehow felt responsible for this. It was okay if he gave me drugs because he felt that he was there to take care of me.
“Who were you with?” he yelled.
I crouched down on the floor and held on to his ankles. I was too scared to tell him what had just happened to me.
Jean said, “I don’t want to know what happened. I can’t deal with this now. I’m dope-sick. Go upstairs and get some sleep.”
I was sobbing and I couldn’t get up off the floor where I was crouching. So he carried me upstairs and put me in his bed. He said he was going to go out and get some dope and that he would bring me some so that I could sleep.
While he was gone, Shenge came up and asked me what had happened. When I told him he said, “Don’t tell Jean. He would kill T., he would go crazy. No, girl, you did the right thing, girl, um, hum, hum, um, hum.” (Shenge would say um, hum, hum, um um very fast all the time. It was a habit. It was somehow comforting to hear.)
Then he said, “Don’t worry, girl” with his beautiful singsong Barbados accent. “He is going to get you something so you can sleep. Don’t worry, we will take care of you. You are where you should be, you are home, um, hum, hum, um, hum.”
Shenge was not gay, but he had this very feminine maternal side to him. He was like our mother or something. He looked after us. He was so gentle.
MOTHER COMES TO VISIT
Jean-Michel doesn’t like Suzanne’s mother. He met her for the first time when Suzanne ran away to Canada to get away from him and he went there to bring her back. He hates Suzanne’s mother’s English accent. He said that just the way she speaks shows she is patronizing and a racist.
Jean-Michel’s friends think Suzanne’s mother is marvelous and charming. She meets Fab 5 Freddy and Rammellzee. She says she understands Rammellzee and that what everybody thinks is gibberish in his talk is accurate.
Jean-Michel keeps saying over and over again, “Stay away from my pile of drawings.” Suzanne’s mother becomes so fed up with hearing this that she steals one of the drawings.
Later Jean-Michel pretends that Suzanne’s mother is invisible. He paints Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari. He tells Suzanne that these paintings are inspired by her mother’s visit.
A few days after Suzanne’s mother has left, Jean-Michel wakes up Suzanne in the middle of the night to show her a painting he has just finished.
“It’s called Self Portrait as a Heel,” he says.
DINING OUT
Jean-Michel likes to take Suzanne to fancy restaurants. One night at one expensive Italian restaurant there is a long table with twenty white businessmen having dinner. Jean-Michel says, “They are the kind who have their own private jets.”
The businessmen stare, whisper racist remarks and drunkenly laugh at Jean-Michel. They think he is a pimp because he is black and has dreadlocks and is wearing messy clothes. They think that Suzanne is a prostitute. She is heavily made up and has her hair teased up in a beehive.
Jean-Michel tells the maître d’ that he is going to pay for the businessmen’s dinner. It costs him three thousand dollars. This is how Jean-Michel laughs back. He does this to fuck with them. Most of Jean-Michel’s outlandish behavior has to do with a desire to fuck with people’s racism.
I was sound asleep in the Crosby loft one night and Jean-Michel was out clubbing. It was about five in the morning when I woke up because I heard people talking in the living room. There was Jean sitting on the couch with the most gorgeous, blonde, young, svelte woman. I was livid—how dare he stay out all night and come back with a beautiful woman. I called him into the bedroom.
“Who is that girl?” I asked.
He burst out laughing and said, “It’s not a girl, that’s Teri Toye. She’s a transvestite, isn’t she beautiful? Come out and meet her.”
So I went out and did coke with them.
I later ended up becoming good friends with Melody and her boyfriend of many years, who ran a gallery for a short time. I even showed my paintings in his gallery.
Teri Toye was fabulous, very skinny and so elegant. She had straight thin hair with bangs and wore big black sunglasses. She wore tight little black minidresses and looked like she was straight out of the ’60s. She was a runway model and became famous as the Stephen Sprouse girl. She wore light pink frosted lipstick and had a thin-lipped pout. She was all arms and legs. She looked more like a girl than most girls.
She had not had the sex change yet when I first met her. Then I was hanging out with her one night when she told me that she had recently gone to Switzerland to have the sex change. Her adoptive mother paid for it and bought her the most fabulous Yves Saint Laurent dress. We were at some friend’s loft. Teri Toye and her boyfriend were staying there and they invited me over to do some heroin.
Melody was prancing around in her new Yves Saint Laurent dress and talking about her sex change. She was on hormones and had developed little small round breasts. So I asked her if I could see it, the sex change.
So, like girlfriends, we went in the bedroom and she lifted up her fancy dress and took off her underwear and showed me. It was such a beautiful job. It looked just as real as any girl’s. She was so happy and proud. Then we started talking. I asked her when she started to feel more like a girl than a boy. She said as far back as she could remember. Melody later married her boyfriend and moved to Iowa. The boyfriend became a shoe salesman.
RAMMELLZEE
He walks or rather glides in big steps leaning backward with a bop in his walk, in a bebop kind of glide. He wears polyester slacks and silk socks. On his head he wears the hood of a sweatshirt or a hat with ski goggles on it. Sometimes he wears the ski goggles down over his eyes. He talks quickly like Donald Duck and even quacks. Rammellzee calls girls “freaks” and boys “crimees,” for criminals. He wears shiny patent leather shoes. He calls this his “city look.” In Far Rockaway he dresses in tracksuits because the cops might harass him. He wears rings on every finger and necklaces. He also wears a long white leather trench coat. There is something hip-hop and superfly about him. He always carries one or two bottles of Olde English beer under his coat.
When he sleeps over at Suzanne and Jean-Michel’s loft he never takes off his shoes or hat. He says he does this in case he needs to make a quick getaway.
Rammellzee invented a new language called Iconoclast Panzerism. He says that he was put on Earth to smash the written word apart. He explains that all the letters of the English language come from social change, patriarchal societies, economics and history. He calls himself Gangster Prankster. He explains that his name, “Ramm Ell Zee,” means “ramming the elevation of the way we read from left to right like a Z.” He believes that the written letter in the Western alphabet is a reflection of a culture and philosophy that does not suit him or his brothers.
Rammellzee keeps the fingernail on his pinkie long for sniffing cocaine. He does very geometric paintings shaped like his alphabet and then he makes sculptures of them.
He is a member of the Five-Percent Nation, a radical offshoot of the Nation of Islam. He says that Jean-Michel has a responsibility to the black man. He tries to convince Jean-Michel to go to the Black Men’s Meetings in Harlem. Jean-Michel tells him that his responsibility to the black man is fulfilled in his paintings.
Jean took Rammellzee on his first airplane. He was terrified as he had never been on a plane before. And when Jean first took him to Barbetta, a fancy restaurant, he was very intimidated and awkward. He didn’t know what to order, or what fork to use, etc.
Once Rammellzee noticed that my shoes were worn out so he took me out to buy some. He was all dressed up in his white leather trench coat with his bug ski goggles on and leaning against a two-tone brown and tan stretch limousine. He opened the door for me. I said, “Where are we going?”
He
said, in his best sinister Donald Duck voice, “Wherever you want to go as long as I can buy you a pair of shoes there. That’s where we are going, my little chickadee ha ha ha ha.”
We ended up at Fayva. Rammellzee didn’t know this was a tacky shoe store. It was just a shoe store to him. Then he took me to Tony Roma’s Steak House on 6th Avenue for dinner, which he considered a very fancy place. We had wine by the glass and salad and steak and baked potatoes and dessert. It was very lovely. Then we drove around so that I could show off my new shoes. They were simple little black high heels. At the shoe-shop counter we had bought red clip-on bows for them. I wore them until they fell apart. They were my Minnie Mouse shoes.
Like almost everyone, Rammellzee had a falling-out with Jean. I got the impression that he thought that Jean had sold out to the white art world. But I know that deep down he always loved Jean.
THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A CAR
Shortly after Suzanne moves into the Crosby Street loft Jean-Michel takes her to Italy. He is having a show at the Emilio Mazzoli Gallery in Modena. Neither Jean-Michel nor Suzanne knows how to drive a car so Jean-Michel pays to bring Kai Eric along to drive them around.
In the airplane Jean-Michel continuously gets up to do some coke in the bathroom. He says he has to finish it up before he goes through customs in Europe. He says he wants to open up the emergency door exit and jump on the clouds.
Widow Basquiat Page 5