Widow Basquiat

by Jennifer Clement

  I used to go with Andre Walker, who was an underground black gay fashion designer, and Leslie Macayza. Leslie and I were the “Andre Walker girls” because we used to model for him. Jean used to come to these fashion shows and not speak to me but just stare.

  Anyway, Paradise Garage had terrific music and Keith Haring was always there and threw parties there too after his openings.

  I actually became better friends with Juan Dubose, who was Keith’s lover. Juan and I were like the girlfriends of the famous artists. We related to each other in this way. Juan was a DJ and we started working on music together. I would go to the loft where he lived with Keith and put on a music track and I would sing over it. Juan collected records and they were hung all over the walls.

  I went to visit Juan in the hospital when he was in the beginning stages of AIDS. There was a red sign on the door that said “Restricted Area, do not enter without a mask from the nurses’ station.” I had to wear this paper mask over my nose and mouth. I went in the room and sat down. I brought Juan a box of all my favorite things. My Black Hollywood book (about famous black actors), some crystal buttons to sew on a shirt and my Michael Jackson Thriller picture disc. This was one of the only ones he didn’t have. We didn’t mention AIDS. After this, I saw him once more when we got high on dope together in my apartment. He died a few months later.

  In the last years of Keith’s life he was quite open about having AIDS and he was very active in the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP. I would see him driving his car around the East Village. He was pale and thin. This made me very sad. And then Keith died. A big memorial service was held for him but somehow I didn’t know about it and I didn’t go. This made me cry.

  Keith was an amazing person. It was really he who brought graffiti into the SoHo galleries. He opened the door for it and made it legitimate somehow. He was a real social radical. He was always working for the underdog. In many ways he was a civil rights worker. The white art world disgusted him. I think he was a lot more responsible for bringing graffiti into SoHo and the East Village than Jean was. Jean was black and had to present himself as separate from graffiti somehow. Keith was gay and white and could glamorize graffiti in a way that Jean could not. Jean and Keith both understood this.

  Jean could only be seen hanging around with Toxic, Rammellzee, Dondi White, A-One, Futura 2000 and other graffiti artists when he had already established himself as a legitimate artist at Annina’s. He was always very conscious of how he was perceived. It was a real struggle for him being black to be seen as separate from the graffiti artists. Even though he admired it and it was in his roots and he used it to start his career, he was never deep in the graffiti scene. The graffiti he did under the pseudonym SAMO in the late ’70s and early ’80s had nothing to do with classic graffiti—like the kind that was being shown at Fashion Moda in the Bronx, or on trains. It was quite different.

  Keith’s function was different than Jean’s, but both were pioneers. Jean struggled with this. But the two had great respect for each other. Keith painted A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat after Jean’s death. He had a big heart. As he knew me since I was twenty, he always said that he had seen me grow up. Once he gave me a bright red yo-yo that had a music box inside of it so it sounded like bells when it went up and down.

  He always called me “Jean-Michel’s girl.”

  AIDS

  Maybe you can get it from tears …

  First she sees an arm, long and thin, stretching out of the apartment next door and a skeleton hand placing the garbage outside.

  Maybe you can get it from tears …

  The first person she knows who dies is Martin Bourgoyne. He is a good friend of Madonna’s and helped to manage her career at the beginning. Madonna buys him a lovely apartment so that he can die with dignity.

  A dozen people are sitting around the bar at Pyramid. Everyone is talking about how many people they have slept with.

  Most everyone says they have slept with about twenty people.

  Suzanne says, “Well, I, I’d say fifty.”

  Martin boasts of at least two hundred.

  A month later he dies.

  NOTHING SEEMS TO FRIGHTEN HER

  Suzanne drinks a cup of coffee. She smokes ten cigarettes, lighting one after the other. She writes “She makes hungry where most she satisfies” on the wall above her bed. She mops the floor that is still embedded with paint and paint stick. AIDS test: negative.

  She wonders where Sammy is and all those children who came to her house dressed in too many coats and sweaters. Suzanne thinks about how far away she is from Canada and her father’s paint fumes that made her feel sweet. Maybe she was not born there. Maybe none of that ever happened. She touches the scar on her forehead. AIDS test: negative.

  She wonders how people are going to live if they cannot touch each other’s bodies. She promises: God, if I am negative, I promise I will never do dope again. I will never sleep with strangers again. I will never see Jean again. AIDS test: negative.

  Inside the 2nd Avenue and 9th Street phone booth: “Yes, dear, let me get your file. It’s negative, Miss. Thank you for calling.”

  But she does not believe in God. And she breaks all her promises.

  EARTH, 1984

  acrylic on canvas,

  66 x 60 inches

  Textured yellow paint beneath a big black circle. Hints of a continent appear: Africa in a lion’s mane, Africa in the sun and dry yellow grass. Africa where there are no shadows and the night extends overhead like God’s palm.

  Jean never talked about going to Africa but when he met blacks from Africa he was awed by them. He became very silent and his breathing seemed to stop. I thought he felt like a fake. Someone once sent him an African sculpture carved out of wood. He loved it and then he gave it away to someone. He always liked to give away things he liked. Once he gave me a silver Mexican ring with a turquoise stone in it, but I was just like him and gave the ring away. I also threw away piles of his drawings.

  Jean was so strange about giving things. First, he’d give the thing, whatever it was, usually a drawing but later it became Armani suits, and expensive bottles of wine and jars of caviar. Then when you got into a fight with him he’d ask for it back. And you gave it back, of course. Then after an hour, a day, a month or a year he’d accuse you of not liking the present because you gave it back to him. No matter how many times you insisted that it was he who wanted it back he would never admit it. He always would say that you didn’t like it. So then you’d say, yes, give it back, I do want it. Then he would look at the ground and shuffle his feet around a bit and say he’d given it to someone else. He did this to everyone.

  Later, I remember, he once had a fight with Madonna and she returned a whole pile of drawings that he’d asked for. He was very angry that she had returned them. I said, “But, Jean, you asked her to return them.” He said I could have them and I said that I did not want Madonna’s drawings. He told me to stop acting like a second-rate Italian drag queen.

  THE GREAT JONES LOFT

  Even after she has stopped living with him she goes over to the Great Jones loft and stays with him—sometimes for weeks. He paints. They have sex, eat, do heroin and drink the most expensive wine. Suzanne never wants to leave. She never wants to open the door. She always feels sad.

  They watch a lot of television. If Jean-Michel hears an interesting word or phrase, he jumps up and paints it on his canvas. Friends, art critics, photographers and dealers come and go, and Suzanne hides in the bedroom.

  She thinks that Jean-Michel has become like a shaman. He is so thin there are no muscles left in his body. The dope has turned him into a ghost. His eyes are luminous and huge. He says he knows he is going to die from AIDS, so what does anything matter.

  Jean’s favorite restaurant was Barbetta on 46th Street. He took me there many times. Sometimes with Shenge. Once with Rammellzee. Rammellzee was very uncomfortable there. He thought it was too fancy for him. Jean had a house account th
ere and never paid. The manager loved Jean and so did all the waiters. Jean always left enormous tips. The manager always went down to the wine cellar and brought back some one-of-a-kind spectacular red wine for Jean.

  Once I was there with Jean and Andy Warhol and other friends. Andy started picking up the spoons off the table and signing them with a big black marker and handing them out to the people at the restaurant. Then Jean started signing the spoons with crowns on them. Then a whole signing frenzy started between the two of them. They began signing anything they could find on the table. One girl was wearing a black leather coat and both Andy and Jean started signing and drawing all over it.

  Sometimes we went alone and Jean would order all the most expensive things as well as a private stock wine from the wine cellar. Then before the meal arrived, he would go to the bathroom and do coke and come back and not want to eat any of the food and we would leave.

  The strangest times, however, were when it was only Jean, Andy and me. Andy was very much in love with Jean and so he was jealous of me. I was always on guard with Andy. In front of me he would describe how beautiful other women were to Jean. They were usually very famous women or models. Andy would go on and on and say, “She wants to meet you. She told me so.” Jean would act as if I weren’t even there and say, “Really?” like he couldn’t believe it. If I got upset or looked angry, Jean would get furious and we would get into a fight for days. Andy knew this and delighted in it.

  I very quickly learned what he was trying to do and sat expressionless or, if I had the energy, I would say, “Yes, isn’t she divine? She is enough to make me want a female lover.” This enraged them both.

  It was a constant struggle to be with Jean when he was with Andy. Andy couldn’t stand to share Jean in any way and Jean loved to feel that he was so important. Jean loved Andy because of this adoration and he loved to feel the power he had over Andy.

  Andy was always taunting me. He would say things like, “Jean-Michel and I have discussed whether or not you are a lesbian. Are you? You would make such a glamorous lesbian. It could make you very famous.” Or he would say things like, “What would you do if Jean-Michel left you? Would you commit suicide? I don’t think his paintings would be so good if you committed suicide.”

  I would answer, “Do you think I am so naive? He has already left me.” And Andy would respond, “Oh, are you referring to his infidelities? They mean nothing to him, he will always do that. You must be used to that by now.”

  On some level I think Andy was talking to himself, trying to console himself.

  THE PAINTER LIKES TO SHOP

  One day Jean-Michel, Suzanne and Andy Warhol go to Balducci’s to buy caviar for a party. Jean-Michel looks like a bum. His dreadlocks are matted against one side of his face and his clothes are wrinkled and look as if he has not changed them for weeks.

  Jean-Michel asks for two thousand dollars’ worth of caviar. The man behind the counter begrudgingly hands it to Jean-Michel. The security guard follows Jean-Michel to the register. He stands close behind Jean-Michel, ready to arrest him. Jean-Michel never carries a wallet and he begins to take out crumpled ten and twenty-dollar bills from his pockets. The customers behind him watch in silence. It is quite a spectacle and takes a lot of time.

  When Jean-Michel, Suzanne and Andy leave the store Jean-Michel says, “Boy, did we fuck them!” and bursts out laughing.

  Once he started making money he hired limousines to take him everywhere. One day we drove past a garage with an old ’40s Chevy for sale. I said, “You have to buy that car.” He said, “No.” But a month later he bought the car pretending it was his idea. But he never learned how to drive so he hired people to drive for him. When he went to L.A. he shipped the car there along with a driver.

  DOS CABEZAS

  acrylic and oil paint stick on canvas

  Jean-Michel paints Andy Warhol’s face beside his own face: black and white.

  Suzanne asks, “Why, why does he need you?”

  “I recharge his batteries,” Jean-Michel answers.

  Jean’s drug use worried Andy. Once he called and I answered the telephone. Andy said that he did not want to talk to Jean if Jean was “out of it.” I know he sometimes told Jean to quit doing drugs but Andy could also be very cynical and would say to him that he’d end up being a legend. Of course Jean loved that! They used to talk a lot about being famous as if that was all that mattered.

  THE GIRL HAS A NEW FRIEND

  They are sitting on a stool at a dark and dirty bar on 2nd Avenue. Suzanne is high on dope. She is dressed in black. She is with her friend Jennifer Clement. Suzanne gets up to go to the bathroom and doesn’t come back. The ice in her Rémy melts. After forty-five minutes Suzanne returns. She is sweaty and tired.

  “What happened to you?” Jennifer asks. “I was just going to go and get you …”

  “The bathroom was so dirty,” Suzanne says. “I couldn’t stand it. I just had to clean it. I am just like my mother!”

  I met Jennifer when I was waitressing at a Mexican restaurant. She spoke Spanish because she had been raised in Mexico. She had very blonde hair and was a poet. We had a very strong connection the minute we met. We would spend hours after work talking and drinking Rémys at a bar. We talked about dark, intense, hungry things. We filled each other up. She comforted me. We held hands at night and walked the streets. We loved each other. We laughed like hyenas. She understood my love for Jean. She wrote poems about it. My love for Jean made her love me more.

  When Jean met her he freaked out that a white girl could speak Spanish so well. He did not like it. It disconcerted him. Jennifer was always talking to him in Spanish on purpose because it made him angry. But he liked to show her off to his Puerto Rican friends. He actually liked it that I had a good friend, though.

  THE PAINTER FORGETS TO PAINT

  Suzanne bumps into Shenge at the Pyramid Club. He tells her that Jean-Michel has been on dope for five days nonstop. He says, “Maybe you should go and see him, girl, hum, um, um.”

  Suzanne leaves the club and goes to the Great Jones loft. It is two in the morning. She rings and rings the doorbell and finally Jean-Michel answers.

  “Oh, thank God it is you, Suzanne,” he says.

  Jean-Michel is wearing olive green silk pajamas. He looks a mess.

  “Let me give you a bath, Jean,” Suzanne says.

  Suzanne washes his body, washes his hair, shaves his face and coos over him as if he were a small child.

  Jean-Michel laughs and says, “Imagine, Venus, my best friend is the whitest guy I could find. He is a fucking albino. What do you think of that? What do you think that means?”

  “Andy loves you and he is a genius,” Suzanne says.

  “I know you’re wondering if I have had sex with Andy. Well, I’m not going to tell you.”

  Jean-Michel is dope-sick. He is shaking and feeling nauseous. Suzanne pats him dry.

  “I don’t care who you sleep with, Jean,” Suzanne sighs.

  Jean-Michel tells her to go and get some dope out of the refrigerator. They snort some heroin and go to bed. Jean-Michel sucks Suzanne’s fingers. He tells her they taste like rum.

  I wanted to make Jean jealous. He was very competitive with other artists like Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia and Enzo Cucchi. He was friends with all of them but very competitive.

  I saw Francesco Clemente in a nightclub one night. We didn’t really know each other. I was very bold. I went right up to him and said, “I want you to paint my portrait. I have no money to pay you, but I will pose for you. And I’ll do it with my clothes on.” He looked me up and down and said, “Okay, be at my studio at eleven on Monday morning.”

  I went to his studio and we worked together all day for about two weeks. He painted about five large paintings of me. Some were very surreal. He wanted me to stand in the same position for hours at a time while the sun moved across the windows of his loft on Broadway. He would paint all the colors of the sun changing at diffe
rent positions in the sky as it was reflected through the windows. My body became very stiff from standing still for so long in one position but he insisted and said it was my idea so I must do it.

  At that time he only had the two little girls with his wife, Alba. They were very young. The little one was about two or three. They used to run in and out of the studio while he was painting but were always called away by the maid or by Alba. We would always break for lunch and have a large bowl of pasta.

  While Francesco painted he would tell me about India, where he spent half of the year. He told me what it looked like and smelled like and how beautiful it was. He loved India. This is how he entertained me, by talking about India. Soon all these stories ran out and I became bored. So I told him he must pay me for posing for him. He said, “How much would you like? How much do you make as a waitress in one day?” I told him on a good day I made one hundred dollars. So this is what he gave me. And Alba gave me a beautiful pair of leather gloves with fur inside. It was wintertime and I had no money to buy gloves. I liked Alba very much. She was one of the most beautiful and elegant women I had ever known.