Everyone is Watching

by Megan Bradbury

  She pulled the book out from beneath her clothes.

  This all you got?

  What else is there? she said.

  Patti tells Robert many stories. He doesn’t know if they’re real or not.

  Patti gets a job in a bookstore so Robert can work. Robert works all day and waits for Patti to come home. He lays out all of his pieces so that she can see what he has done.

  Patti has a faster metabolism than Robert. He can go for days without eating but she is close to collapse by lunchtime if she has had nothing to eat. Robert loves chocolate milk, but it is expensive. She wants to point to her skinny body and say, You have done this, Robert, you and those fucking milkshakes.

  Robert heads to 42nd Street for a hot dog – gone in two mouthfuls. He talks to the guys on the street. No money for dinner but he likes chocolate milk. Gone are the days he used to know. Here is something else. Street life.

  Robert and Patti move into a room at the Allerton Hotel on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in 1969. Robert is shivering with fever on a mattress. Patti is mopping his brow. She sits beside him all night as he sleeps. The morning comes slow and grey. She hears the hotel manager outside the door. He hammers on the door but she doesn’t answer. She holds her hand over Robert’s mouth. She opens the window and looks out. She sits Robert up and dresses him. She hoists him up against her shoulder. She pushes him onto the fire escape. She looks back to see if she can carry anything else. There are too many things but not enough time. She pins a few paintings under her arm and follows Robert. On the sidewalk she hails a cab. Take us to the Chelsea, she says.

  Robert is slumped in the reception of the Chelsea Hotel. Patti is talking to the man behind the desk. She flattens her pictures out and points to what they are: art, the future, what they will one day be.

  Robert is sitting in his room in the Chelsea. He is threading beads and charms onto leather bands. He is making one of the first necklaces that he will try to sell. Laid out upon the floor is all of his and Patti’s work. Art. It lies all around him, in this room and in every other room of the Chelsea. It seems the whole world is made up of art.

  Robert adorns himself in necklaces. They are made of feathers, skulls and plastic beads. He calls them Fetish Necklaces. They remind him of the rosary. People are praying all the time in the Chelsea. They talk to themselves as they walk down the corridors. They sleep at night with their bedroom doors open. Voices echo through the hallways. The skylight over the staircase lets the sunlight and night light in. Robert clutches the beads and prays for success.

  Robert hustles on the street with a friend to make some money. It’s just a way to help pay the rent. He asks his friend how he knows he’s not gay. Because however cute the guy is, his friend says, I always ask for money. What the men ask Robert to do is kids’ stuff, anyway. And he needs the opportunity to express himself. The street is the perfect place for this. These experiences are helping him to define who he is.

  The artist Sandy Daley gives Robert a camera. Sandy says he should be taking his own photographs. Robert thinks this will make his work more authentic. This way he can position his subjects however he wants.

  The photography curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, John McKendry, likes Robert’s art very much. He thinks it shows a strong classical lineage. Robert’s male nudes remind John of the work of Thomas Eakins, the nineteenth-century artist who painted and photographed young men, showing them as beautiful objects to be admired. John McKendry befriends Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. He wants to find ways to help them both. He gives Robert a camera. If there is ever a problem they can always count on him.

  Robert will say later that he was young and naive at the Chelsea. He will say that he was standing on the edge of an art scene. He is standing on the edge but he is also crammed into the middle, crammed into the small room that he shares with Patti and crammed into the city. An artist is influenced by the people around him. He must learn from others how to become a success. You have to be part of a scene to do that.

  There is a steakhouse on 18th Street where all the artists go called Max’s Kansas City. Robert and Patti are hanging outside the joint.

  We just have to walk in with our heads held high, says Patti.

  She takes Robert by the hand and pulls him in. The din is extraordinary. The booths are full, jukebox music, shots of whisky lined along the bar, men and women speaking loudly together, thick tobacco smoke, the smell of chargrilled meat hanging in the air. Everybody here is very young. There are groupie girls with fur coats and fake eyelashes, drugged up to the ceiling, they fawn and lean, asleep. They float. Everybody is looking at everybody.

  A bottle of beer will buy you a seat at the bar. This is what Patti and Robert do. They sit at the bar and drink the beer. They try to look casual. They watch the artists in the booths. Patti knows that this will be them one day, and so does Robert.

  That’s already us, he says.

  Patti and Robert have outgrown the Chelsea. They need more space for themselves and their art. They move out of the Chelsea and into an apartment down the street. There, they set to work.

  Robert props up the mattress against the wall and in comes the model, Robert’s lover, David Croland. He poses against the mattress, arm outstretched, wearing one of Robert’s necklaces – a leather band and a shark tooth.

  Here is the mattress on its own, grey, dirty, thin lines running down and pinned at points.

  Here is Robert Mapplethorpe looking up into the camera. His face is blurred. He is looking for something.

  Here are Polaroids of Patti Smith. She is standing behind a screen door, lying on a sofa, lying on a messy floor with headphones on.

  Robert still thinks about God, the devil and his family. They come into his head when he is low. When he is high, he rises above all feeling; he becomes connected with the wider universe. This is to do with the people he is watching and the people who are watching him. Something is created in the space of the gaze. It’s not something he can explain but he feels it physically.

  Art collectors visit Robert’s apartment. They look at Robert’s slides and installations. The problem they have is with the subject matter. Enormous cocks are not the kind of thing people want to hang in their dining rooms, but they like Robert’s cool, eclectic style, the negatives he hangs from pegs on the wall, a pair of unworn patent shoes under the closet, a single tie folded on a shelf.

  The viewfinder of Robert’s camera has become a self-determining edge. Robert places his eye against it and looks at the world. Here is the world as he has never seen it. Click. Here are all the people he knows and loves. Click. Here he is. Click. Here are the different parts of his body. Click. Click. Click. Here are the subjects as he has arranged them. Click. Here is a collection of classical male nudes. Click. Here are the men standing on plinths like marble statues. Click. Here he is pinching the shutter balloon.

  Robert makes his male subjects mimic Greek statues positioned on plinths, framed, himself included in a sequence of consecutive moments –

  the robe,

  him wearing the robe,

  taking the robe off,

  holding his cock,

  robe hanging on a hanger,

  naked figure fallen forward from a plinth,

  man talking on a telephone with his legs crossed and his trousers down, his heavy penis slung over to one side,

  Polaroid of a telephone shot from the height of the table.

  Robert’s new lover, Sam Wagstaff, in the bath,

  washing his hair,

  shaving his chin,

  looking at Robert.

  Later, a headshot of Robert wearing a black leather jacket with the collar turned up, smoking a cigarette, the smoke curling up past his Teddy boy hair, background black,

  he is looking at you.

  (You wish he was)

  A body shot of Robert posing with a knife.

  Their friend John McKendry has become very ill. Patti and Robert visit him in the hospital. Robert says
he doesn’t want to go. Robert says it will be depressing. Patti pulls him on.

  At the hospital Robert looks about the room, anywhere but at John, who is sitting upright in a hospital chair, wearing a hospital gown but no shoes or socks. John stares at Robert. The nurse explains that John has been running the ward as if it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has been writing his name on the walls. He doesn’t have very long to live. Alcohol is destroying his liver. He is going slowly mad because of the toxins. Robert can’t stand the hospital. Robert takes John’s photograph.

  Robert Mapplethorpe says photography is the perfect medium for the 1970s because everything is happening so fast. Now that Robert is in possession of a camera, Robert will not steal pictures from pornographic magazines any more. He will take pictures from his own life and use them in his work instead. That way, he is in control. That way, he can make people do what he wants.

  Robert goes to Max’s alone. He goes in the late hours, breezing in through the door like the regular he has become. He is often the centre of attention, not because he is a great artist yet but because he is so fucking sexy, his tight leather pants and fucked-up jewellery, the long curly hair and cold green eyes.

  He strolls right up to the bar and orders a drink. He walks up to the people standing there. I’m an artist, he says. Who are you?

  6

  In the past Edmund regularly saw psychiatrists. They explained to him that his homosexuality was just a symptom of wider issues: his tendencies existed because his mother was overbearing; he was simply looking for attention; it was because he didn’t get on with his father.

  Edmund did what he was told for periods of time. He avoided other boys and stood up to his mother. He lowered the tone of his voice and pretended to like sports. He abstained from everything the doctors said, except for the sex part, which he treated as a reward for all of his efforts. Then he moved to New York and found another doctor. Dr Silverstein told Edmund to just live his life. Dr Silverstein was concerned only with time.

  He said: It’s a mistake to think of life as series of chapters. Time doesn’t stop and start with every life event. Thinking of it like that is just your way of shirking responsibility. You think that if all moments are isolated then it doesn’t matter what you do. But everything is connected, Edmund. You are the person you are because of your history, and the things you will do in the future will be informed by your past. Tell me, Edmund, is this what you’re writing about?

  Edmund is trying to remember New York. He reads his notes:

  Late 1970s – the state of the city is fully realized. New York’s reputation is changing. Tourists = investment. The New York Department for Economic Development commission an agency to transform the city’s brand. The agency keeps coming back to the word ‘love’. They turn ‘love’ into a slogan. ‘I Love’. ‘I Love New York City’. New York City becomes a symbol – NYC. They turn ‘love’ into a symbol, a heart, I♥NY.

  7

  Robert Moses is standing on Manhattan’s western shore in 1934. The ground has deteriorated and is crumbling into the Hudson. He is standing in the lapping river water there. The oily slick is coming up over the toes of his shoes. He kicks away the refuse and walks to steadier ground. The railway line behind him is sinking. Carriages are rusting in the sidings. The landfill used to expand the island is breaking apart. Yet just a few hundred yards away is a modern metropolis, a centre for business, manufacturing and art. This wasteland has no place in a city that contains the Empire State Building, that emblem of engineering achievement. Standing here you could forget you were in New York. The Depression has hit the city hard. It’s not recreation people are thinking of now but jobs. The only way to improve people’s lives is to improve the city. Moses is the man who knows what needs to be done. He’s not like the city planner who draws pretty pictures to just keep on file; he is a builder – he creates.

  Planners have already tried to improve conditions downtown by raising the railway tracks from street level onto an elevated line. Before, when the trains ran along the ground, cowboys were employed to ride in front to warn road users of their approach. Despite the holler and alarm, the accidents continued. So the trains have been lifted into the air. The public can now look out from the upper floors of tenements and factories and see trains passing by their windows. But this solution is already outdated. It is the automobile and not the train that is the transport of the future. It is a highway and not a railway that needs to be built.

  Moses will build a road here. Drivers will use this road to bypass the city entirely, no need to stop at every junction or wait in line along narrow, sunless streets. No more breathing in the noxious fumes coming from the building vents and sewers, no more watching workers shuffling along the sidewalks. No, the driver along this road will see the sun reflecting off water and a public park where people play sports. This driver will become the master of his day, cruising down a clear road.

  Moses buries the railway underground and he builds a parkway over the top. He builds new sports facilities: tennis courts, baseball diamonds, basketball courts, running tracks and playgrounds. He builds handball courts. He plants trees and flower borders. His road allows traffic to bypass the city. It means the public can get to where they are going quicker, go out further, beyond Harlem, and right through the Bronx.

  8

  Let’s go back to the construction of Brooklyn Bridge, says Walt. I was there when the first support was laid in 1870, and I was there when the bridge was completed in 1883. As I walked across the bridge I thought of my humble printing press, what it did – I thought, It is the same, for both the bridge and the press allow ideas to move freely. I thought, There is now nothing to stop people from walking across the water to tell someone else what they know. I crossed the bridge and looked down at the river from a great height. I looked at the river that rushed beneath me. I realized we were no longer reliant on the passage of ships. I thought about the many trips I had made to Manhattan by ferry, and how that would now be changed. The bridge has changed everything, Bucke. We can now walk across the East River. We have never been able to do that before. It makes me think that anything is possible. But Bucke, we mustn’t be frightened.

  Walt rode the Fulton Ferry when he was young. As he sailed from Brooklyn, the ferry leapt in the wakes of cargo and passenger ships. It was a great sport, first thing in the morning, sailing to Manhattan. The captain, who was standing beside Walt, laughed at the bucking of the waves, and so did Walt. Walt felt his body lunge out beyond the borders of its skin, beyond the ferry, beyond the city. He watched the dock fast approaching, the harbour men waiting on the pier, their heavy shoulders tired from work, bodies sloping forward. They were watching the boat come in. Walt laughed. No one heard him above the slapping of the waves.

  Walt walked away from the river, up South Street, through the boatyards and the fish stalls. He stopped to converse with the fishermen there. About him was the briny extraction of commerce, fish eyes and fish scales. He smelt the smokeries and the tanneries on the dock. The ground was flooded with water and fish guts. He picked his way through the debris. All life was here, the fishermen and the boat builders, black-eyed men. He loved them all.

  He saw a flower seller, a coal merchant, an omnibus driver, a beer-hall keeper, street-sweeper, a banker, politician, prostitute, factory worker, young children playing in the street, a courting couple, a horse trader, a rigger, a sailor, a soldier, a nurse, a milliner.

  When he reached the Battery, he leant against the wall at Castle Clinton and looked across the bay to Brooklyn. He saw the boatyards, the long-arm reachers lifting cargo from the ships, holding their loads steady. It is only from another vantage point that one understands what one is looking at, and he was looking at it, looking back at Brooklyn from the southern tip of Manhattan, with the rest of the city tucked safely behind him. Something was bound to happen in the future. It was like he had already written it. It was like it was already built.

  Walt remembers when
the great Lafayette visited the city when Walt was just a boy of five or six. That afternoon, the road was filled with people. The public of Brooklyn waved colourful flags and shouted from the sidewalks and from the upstairs windows of buildings. Lafayette stopped his carriage and helped lift children to safety. He picked up little Walter and kissed his cheek. He went on to lay the corner stone of the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library. Every time Walt passed that building he thought of that great man. That building is now torn down. Lafayette’s visit is lodged permanently in Walt’s mind but not in the physical fabric of the city. Places grow up from the people who live there. Every footstep, however slight, marks the ground. As a house builder, printer and poet, Walt is concerned with the way things are created. Here he is walking through his imagination, held safely by the present environment – the carriage of a train – but he is thinking about New York.

  Bucke watches Walt begin to doze. He is tired. He has let his hat fall to the floor. How quickly these states of consciousness change, thinks Bucke.

  He remembers the time when Walt visited him in his asylum in Ontario and became lost amongst its wards. Bucke looked for Walt in the wards and in the gardens, and when he couldn’t find him he returned to his office. He pulled a few books from the shelves. They were not his books but his father’s. He had brought them from the house after his father had died. He liked to keep them here in his office. He used to spend days alone in his father’s library, permitted to read anything he liked. He read literature, science and mathematics. Over time he saw how each subject was connected to the next. Bucke is a psychiatrist. He earns a living by performing scientific tasks yet he gains his pleasure from art and from poetry. Walt says there is no difference between art and science. Everything in art is exact and correct and everything in science is beautiful and profound. This was what Bucke was thinking of when he heard a commotion out on the lawn. He discarded the book and moved to the window. Someone, it seemed, had found Walt. He was sitting on the lawn surrounded by patients. The patients were listening intently to his speech. How easy he is with all people, thought Bucke. He will talk to a guard, a professor, the mentally disturbed. They are all the same to him.