by Andy Warhol
And I’m letting the Caffe Roma use my name as a host for New Year’s Eve.
Sunday, December 21, 1986
Jed called and said he’d rushed Amos to the hospital over the weekend because he had a bad toothache, and I felt terrible, I didn’t see this coming. By 3:00 he was still waiting to have three teeth out. Dr. Kritsick gave Jed the name of a doctor who works twenty-four hours. They said it was a bad case, but I didn’t even notice anything was wrong.
Didn’t get out of the house until 4:00 and went over to church. Stuart picked me up and we went to the flea market but couldn’t find any fleas.
Then John Gruen and his wife, Jane Wilson the painter, were having a retirement party for Ulrik who’s moving to an executive position at the New York City Ballet. Went over to the West Side to that (cab $4). Everybody was so friendly to each other it was like we’re not part of this crowd. Heather said right in front of Peter Martins that she was so tired of seventeen years of waiting for him to give her a band. And Anne Bass is in Texas.
Monday, December 22, 1986
Went to Dr. Li (cab $4, newspapers $2, phone $.50, cab $6). Read the newspapers, passed out interviews., and went to the office. I decided to get involved with the covers. Gael came by my room to say how great she is. This cover of Charlie Sheen is by Greg Gorman, and he did the pictures inside, too, and it’s the same old thing, a nice face and nice clothes. But Charlie kisses so well that I wanted something different, like him kissing a girl, and we could still use the same pictures inside, but just something different for the cover and Gael said that she’d been looking at Weegee things, that she wants a new look, too.
The office was busy. Fred’s agitated, he was going to go to Paris a day or two early to get away from Christmas, he hates it. He saw me doing a business gift list and yelled at me that we weren’t a regular office and that I did not have to do boring things like that and that he wanted me to stop it that very moment. So I said (laughs), “Okay.”
And the bigger the box, the less the present, I’ve noticed this year.
Rupert drove me home. Then Sam called and wanted to go out so I met him at Nippon (cab $5, dinner $50) and talked about what work he should be doing at the office. And it’s so funny, I made up things and accused him. Like of attacking somebody in the corridor, and it turned out to be true! He began admitting things, saying, “It was pure sex.” But maybe he was kidding. It was like Dynasty, people overhearing people in the hallways. I actually said (laughs), “I heard you in the hallway.”
Tuesday, December 23, 1986
Fred cancelled his trip to Europe, he finally got in the Christmas spirit. And he loved the two cast-iron disks I got him that were from the West Side Highway. I got them at Doyle’s. Maybe I should go back and get more. The kid there likes me, and he gives me things really cheap. They have the best fabrics there, antique fabrics. I should’ve gotten Fred a lot of those. And Fred gave me a great book, an old one on beautiful Greek statues, for my new paintings. Paige and Fred are the best of friends now. He gave in and she gave in. I got Paige something she really loved, I guess, because she squealed, and it was just a book on Clemente. But the book was just an extra—I owe Paige a lot of money. I hope she doesn’t think I’ve forgotten (phone $2, newspaper $2, cab $7).
Thursday, December 25, 1986
I got up early and walked to Paige’s and she and Stephen Sprouse and I went to the Church of the Heavenly Rest to pass out interviews. and feed the poor. It wasn’t as crowded as it was at Thanksgiving. Afterwards Stephen and I walked down the street, and I had told John Reinhold we’d come by and he could take us to tea and he did, at the Carlyle, and that was sort of, I don’t know, young guys waiting for their grandmothers to die. Stephen dropped me. Got a lot of calls to go to Christmas parties but I just decided to stay in and 1 loved it.
Sunday, December 28, 1986
The day before I watched a great show on something like channel J. It was (laughs) a nobody interviewing three other nobodies. One said she was a friend of Milton Berle’s and she was in every chorus of every movie you could ever think of. And then there was another one who was also in the choruses and she would say, “I played the Red Room of the Downstairs Club, and the Blue Corner of the Uptown Spot,” things like that. It was so sad. Then she’d say, “Show thepicture, show the picture, that’s the one they’re going to use when they use me….” And there was a black girl who sang off key, oh it was sad.
And I finally saw Debbie Harry’s video that was made in L.A., she’s at the Beverly Hills pool and she didn’t wear the camouflage dress that we made for her, the Stephen Sprouse thing. I guess the director didn’t want her to wear it, and it would’ve been so good. My ambition if I were to really go and have a facelift and everything would be to come out like Debbie. Her song grows on you, “French Kissing.”
I had leaking water and went into a closet and in it were the dresses I’d bought at the Joan Crawford auction in 1977 and it turns out that the label on one says Nolan Miller! Can you believe it? The Dynasty designer! And now I do remember that at the auction I’d said, “Whoever heard of this nobody?” So now I would like to write to him and say I’ll sell it back to him for like $4,000. We’ll find out what he sells a Joan Collins dress for and make it for that amount. The others don’t have labels, but they all look the same so I’m sure they’re all Nolans.
Monday, December 29, 1986
Benjamin picked me up and we went to the West Side to Dr. Li. I told her to get me off some of these vitamins she’s got me on but she gave me six new vitamin pills and I don’t know if she took me off any. I think all the vitamins I’m taking may be what’s making me have so much trouble sleeping. Over the holidays, for two days, I finally did get sleep and one day I even slept till 10:45. And on those days I did feel rested. But usually when I wake up in the morning I feel aches and pains. And I am addicted to Valium. It’s only a quarter of one that I take at night, but when I was really trying for over a month not to take any, I felt lightheaded and that’s a withdrawal symptom. So I started again.
Wednesday, December 31, 1986
Went to Bernsohn’s alone, got cured for a moment, walked downtown (phone $2, newspapers $2). Paige was upset there were no good-looking boys coming along on our New Year’s Eve party, and her excuse is always that we need to find somebody for Tama, but she wants to meet them, too. I don’t know why Paige has us doing all this for Tama—“We have to find Tama a boyfriend.” Why? I mean, everybody in town needs a boyfriend. The whole world needs a boyfriend. Anyway, so Stephen Sprouse was coming. Poor Stephen, they’re even after him, I think, and he’s scared.
Worked till 7:45. The ballet kids came down and I took their pictures. It’s so funny that when you look really close you see that Heather Watts actually has a sort of deformed body—and she’s the number-one ballerina in New York. And her nose is too big and it may have been fixed from being even bigger, but her eyes are really beautiful. They’re like gorgeous movie-star eyes, the kind with the dark circle around the blue.
So Steven Greenberg was giving his New Year’s Eve party at the River Café in Brooklyn. It was black tie and I was just in my crummy scarf. We left at 11:55 and we rode over the Brooklyn Bridge and that was the most fun part of the night with Paige telling Harold the driver to honk his horn louder and Paige was doing her piercing whistle that comes from her throat and as we came over the bridge, the fireworks were going. And then Tama came in the other car and she told us that Steven and Elizabeth Ray had just had a fight, and so later I said to Steven, “So have you had a fight with Elizabeth yet?” and he said (laughs), “No no, not yet, not yet.”
And then we went to Scott Asen’s house in Turtle Bay and there wasn’t much happening there. Peter Martins was using the phone in the toilet and his son was just leaving—he’s beautiful, he dances. And Sirio from Le Cirque was there, and we took him down to Nell’s with us and he was fun. Nell took her clothes sort of off and threw herself on the table for a photograph and I told Siri
o that he had to do that, too, if he wanted to make Le Cirque the really “in” place. He said his wife and kids were away so he was just on his own this New Year’s. He invited us for dinner on Sunday.
Paige and Tama went on to the Tunnel, we dropped them there, and then got home around 4:00, walked the dogs, and it threw my whole day off, it was so stupid to stay out late just because it was New Year’s.
Thursday, January 1, 1987
The weather was raining and awful. Stayed in and had a rest day.
Sunday, January 4, 1987
The ballet kids wanted to take us to dinner at Indochine. Paige picked me up. Stephen Sprouse was there and it was Ulrik and Jock and Bruce Padgett and Heather and Scott Asen and Julie Gruen—Peter Martins was the only one missing. It’s such a wonderful group, they have everything down. And Heather said that she always thought Stephen was passive, but that since he’s started doing ballet costumes she’s changed her mind. Everybody else always gave her what she wanted, she said, but when Stephen gave her her dress and she said, “Oh I don’t want this,” he told her, “You’re going to get what I say you get.” So she liked that and now she wants to marry him. So that’s another girl who’s after him. Heather paid.
Monday, January 5, 1986
There’s a cable news show that I see at 5:30 in the morning when I get up to pee that’s good. I don’t know what it is I’m allergic to. Dr. Linda Li says it may be the paint I use, but I’m hardly ever near it now. I think it’s something in this house. Or maybe it’s something in the buildings on either side of me, maybe radiation from the doctor’s building. Maybe it’s the teddy-bear coat I sleep in, although the label says it’s all cotton, I don’t know. It’s Armani. I somehow feel it might have a little polyester, it has that fuzzy feeling. And I also sleep under the Larissa leather coat that Jane Holzer gave me, it’s so great. Jane keeps saying I never wear it and I tell her I wear it every night.
Paige picked me up and we went to the St. Regis for the Adolfo show. The clothes are beautiful but it’s so abstract to me that somebody should copy Chanel suits for years, that you’d make a career out of copying somebody else’s suit. It’s been decades and it’s still the same suit. There was a tall lady next to us and I didn’t smile at her or anything, I didn’t know who it was, and then later I realized it was Evangeline Bruce. There were so many ladies there that I just should be doing portraits of, just every one was one of those rich ladies. And they still have all their energy from not having hard lives.
You know, Heather Watts is so interesting. She’s in this “reading group” that Anne Bass is in, they all read the same book every month and then they meet and discuss it. And it’s all these rich ladies like Brooke Astor and Mrs. Rupert Murdoch and Drue Heinz. And they meet at a different member’s house every week with the butlers and cooks and maids, and Heather says she’s the only poor one and that she’s the only one who reads the books. She dropped out of school at fifteen. And you know how vivacious she is, she said she heard about Anne Bass’s group at a party and she said, “I want to be in it! I want to be in it!” Heather can’t wait for the group to have to come to her loft and they’ll all sit on the floor.
Then Paige and I went to the Robert Miller Gallery and the show of my photographs looks absolutely great. Terrific. The catalogue looks good but Stephen Koch’s essay throws in the same old names like Duchamp and Brassai. Brassai!!! And if they’d had some young person do it it would’ve been different names and fresher.
I decided not to go out and just rest up and be fresh for the opening of the show.
Tuesday, January 6, 1987
Everybody wanted to give me their limo—Steven Greenberg, Stuart Pivar, the glamour days—and Paige gave the gallery fifty more people to call and invite at the last minute. Had a full day at work. Got to the gallery at 5:00 and then there was only a scattering of people, but it got to be more and more and I worked myself to death. The show looked great. Then we went to dinner with Steven Greenberg and then I went home and went to bed early, I thought I would shake this cold, but then Jean Michel called at 3:00 in the morning and I talked to him and it just ruined my sleep.
Oh, and I’ve just been watching the new Joan Rivers show a few times and it’s just only about sex all the time—so boring.
Wednesday, January 7, 1987
Lost my cold when I went to Bernsohn in the morning. I walked in and didn’t tell him I had a one but he said I felt congested and then he worked on me and for the first time used a lot of crystals on me like the long skinny ones and for the first time I really completely totally believed in it, because my cold was absolutely gone when I left there. And he said to me, “Do you mind if I raise my price $10?” And I said, “yes!” I mean, he’s telling me about all the clothes and records he’s buying. And so he said, “Well, then how about $5?” And I said, “Well, what can I say?”
Thursday, January 8, 1987
Sam told me gossip about Fred that I’m not supposed to know. He wrote a letter to Nell apologizing for pulling his pants down there. And then I also heard that one night at Area he took out his cock and was standing there like one of the installations until somebody realized it.
Paige was in a really bad mood because I had Sam dial her number and make the arrangements to go to the Mary Tyler Moore play that Barry Tubbs is in—she came over and said that she didn’t want my little messengerettes calling her for me. She really has another personality when she wants to, she can really be mean.
Oh, and Len Morgan came back from his ten-day cruise with Thurn und Taxis so he was answering the phones. And the prince still makes up stories about me. He told Len that once I said to him, “If you’re supposed to be so exciting, do something exciting,” and that then I stepped on his toes. Which I don’t remember at all.
Went to the theater (cab $4). Lynn Redgrave is a good actress because she played down her role to give Mary Tyler Moore the stage. And the other young guy in the play showed his cock and then afterwards at the party his parents said how (laughs) proud they were of him.
Friday, January 9, 1987
I’m deciding when to go to Milan. My show is the Thursday after next.
Fell asleep with MTV on and had rock-video nightmares.
Sunday, January 11, 1987
Pee-Wee Herman is being sued for $130,000 because he didn’t pay his (laughs) video bill. His whole show’s all video effects.
These two kids have been ringing my doorbell all weekend. A boy and a girl. I guess they saw me come in and there’s been nobody in the house with me—Nena and Aurora were away—and it’s creepy. I just don’t answer.
Went to church, then Paige called and said she’d pick me up for the ballet (cab $5). The ballets were great. “Symphony in C” which I haven’t seen in years, and then two Jerome Robbins ones. We had Peter Martins’s seats. Jock and Heather were up there just flying around. And they said I could photograph the company for as long as I want, so I’m going to start that.
Anne Bass wasn’t at the ballet but she came to the dinner afterwards that Paige had arranged at Baton. And Paige and I are fighting. She keeps making these digs about Jean Michel, she said, “Are you starting up your gay affair again with Jean Michel?” and so I got my dig in and said, “Listen, I wouldn’t go to bed with him because he’s so dirty, and I can’t believe that anyone would. I mean, you’re the one who had the affair with a dirty, unwashed person.” And then we had a fight about Eizo and shiatsu because her guy went on vacation so she’s been using Eizo and she asked me if he ever did a thing on my stomach and she described how he’d put his hands and was shaking it and she got nervous and took his hand away, and so I said, “No, but he told me how fat you are”—I was kidding—and so she said, “Okay, that does it, I’m not using him anymore.” And then I tried to tell her he didn’t say she was fat, but she wouldn’t believe me.
And Peter Martins who commissioned me to do the ballet curtain, he actually does have great ideas. I didn’t think so before but now I do. He talk
ed to Stephen Sprouse about the Touch Tag thing where the kids who play football use clothes with Velcro so that instead of tackling and wearing shoulder pads, they have to tear the Velcro off, so they’re working on the “Fluorescent Orange” ballet, and then the kids thought of fluorescent snow.
And when Ulrik told me he hadn’t had time that night to walk his dog, I used Heather’s aggressive personality and I said, “Why didn’t you just put the dog on stage and have him do it there and no one would notice.” And I was telling everyone about my idea for a “Shower” ballet that I’ve always had—nude dancers getting into the shower after a heavy dance number and then shaking the water off on the audience.
The ballet kids were quiet at first but after ten glasses of wine they were really funny. And Stephen Sprouse was showing how he writes backwards, he’s so clever and he had such beautiful writing. And then something really surreal happened. A busload of eight-year-olds came into this restaurant, about fifty of them, and filled it up, at the bar and everyplace. And we asked them what they were doing there and they said they were going from bar to bar researching a school paper. It got really loud and noisy. They said they were going on to Nell’s.
Monday, January 12, 1987
Sean Lennon came down. I’m doing a portrait of him every year, one a year. And he was fun. Went to Castellano’s for dinner (cab $6) with David Whitney, but without Philip who was off having dinner with some swells. And David still reminds me that he wants us to get married, and now that I hear how many Jasper Johnses he has, it would be really worth it. He’s doing the David Salle show at the Whitney. He said that Jasper fell out of a tree at La Samanna but that he just broke a wrist. He and Rauschenberg have given up drinking so I guess they’ll live forever.