by Andy Warhol
And what I forgot to say is the other night I had a blackout like I used to have when I was little. At first I thought it was because of flash bulbs, but there were no flash bulbs really right there, and it got me so scared that I’m having a brain tumor or that I’m getting the Dark Victory disease.
Saturday, June 6, 1981
I’m really getting to hate living with antiques, they make you look like the place. They really do.
Tuesday, June 9, 1981
Called Doc Cox’s office and asked Rosemary if I could get a B-12 shot before going to Seattle for my show there (cab $3). Rosemary was going to give me a pneumonia shot, it’s so you don’t get colds and things in your chest. When I’d told them before that I was losing weight they’d told me I should have this shot, but I didn’t think I really had to, I didn’t take it seriously. I had a fever of 100 and Rosemary got mad and said I might have pneumonia and told me to go right home and get into bed and stay there for two days or else I couldn’t go to Seattle. Got a chest X-ray. So I went home and got into bed although I felt okay.
Fred had to come up with papers so I could send my IRS things out. I actually might not go to Seattle. The Doc said I had to have another chest X-ray on Thursday. I’ve always had this theory that I can walk through everything, but it’s not working.
Wednesday, June 10, 1981
Archie’s really acting sick and I don’t know if it’s because he’s worried about me because I’m home, or if he’s sick because he wishes I’d get out of the house. Well, my philosophy is, Life is not worth living if you’re not healthy, and health is wealth—it’s better than money and companionship and love and everything else.
I haven’t said that Lynn Revson called and said she loved the portrait but that her cheekbones looked too fat. I knew she’d be trouble.
Got a call from Paramount Pictures again. He’s coming to New York on Friday, just when I’m leaving.
Thursday, June 11, 1981
Got up and didn’t have a fever. Had an appointment with Doc Cox (cab $3). He took X-rays, the infection was still there. He said not to go to Seattle and California. I was depressed the whole day.
Friday, June 12, 1981
The pneumonia was on the mend. The Doc told me I could go out but that I should be careful.
Jon was back in town and he said he thought I was going away so he’d made plans to go away for the weekend and so I guess my whole relationship’s fallen apart. He said he’d call me and he didn’t, which was mean. I have to pull myself together and go on. I have to get a whole new philosophy. I don’t know what to do. I watched Urban Cowboy, and John Travolta just dances so beautifully. It was a really good movie. A Paramount movie, so that made me think more about Jon and I felt worse. I cried myself to sleep.
Now I’m sure I got the pneumonia from that cold daiquiri I drank. And probably if I hadn’t gone to the doctor I wouldn’t have known I had it and I would have gotten over it. I have a vaporizer in my room.
Saturday, June 13, 1981
Had a horrible day, so depressed. I decided I would explode if I didn’t get out of the house and I wanted to go to work.
I was meeting Rupert at the office but he wasn’t there yet, so I went in and pressed the elevator button and the elevator was right there on the first floor and the doors opened and standing in the elevator were two Rastafarians. A man and a woman. It was so strange. So I backed away and went outside and Rupert finally came and then he went in and told them to leave and they just left. I guess they were stoned. They were just standing there like mannequins.
Sunday, June 14, 1981
This day was better and not so depressing. I decided to stay home next to the vaporizer and watch TV. I decided to watch cable TV and see what a Neil Simon movie is like and so I watched Chapter Two and it happened to hit the spot. I liked it a lot. The lines are really funny. Then the phone rang and it was Jon calling as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t gone away for the weekend and not called once.
Monday, June 15, 1981
When I got to the office Robyn was just so out of it. He’s a sweet kid, but his mind’s not on his work. Jay Shriver’s a good worker, though, and you can trust him.
Richard Weisman called and said that Margaret Trudeau was in town and would I like to have dinner. Jon called and I invited him and he said it would be fun to meet Margaret Trudeau. Went to meet everyone at George Martin’s restaurant at 9:10. Margaret arrived and she was a little heavier. I think she should go back to her thin look, because now she looks a little older. She was with Bruce Nevins who used to say he’d give us Perrier ads, but he didn’t. And George Martin came over and it was so exciting, he introduced me to Rick Cerone who said, “I want you to do my portrait.” He was really nice.
Bianca was there, too and finally, for once, Jon wasn’t complaining that he had to go home to work. So finally I said that I was tired and had to rest so we left.
Tuesday, June 16, 1981
Got up early, went to a 10:30 appointment with Doc Cox. I was feeling fine, took my own temperature, and it was normal. The Doc said the pneumonia had completely cleared up.
Then I went to meet Jon at Citibank on the corner of Park and 57th, where he was getting a loan. It used to be my bank and it still is, sort of, because I have a safety-deposit box there which they haven’t sent me any notices about for a long time. I should see about it. I think it has my deed to the house on Lexington and 89th Street. When I used to go to this bank there was just a teller, and now there’s lines around the block.
Ran into Pat York. Ran into Gene Simmons of Kiss. Ran into an old rep of mine.
Eva from Stern sent over the article she wrote and I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, I poured out my heart to her and she wrote the kind of rehashed article, you know—“Father died in coal mines/Warhola/Carnegie Tech”—and I poured out my heart to her. I actually gave her a good interview because she kept saying she wanted to do something really different. I mean I even toldher that my father was a construction worker, and still—“Father died in coal mines.” I mean, I only gave it because I liked the guy who has Stern who was so nice to us in Munich. The one who’s doing the liquor that’ll last till the year 2000. And she didn’t put in any of the young things that we did. The modern things. I mean, we had that great night at the Ritz which was really interesting where she told the kid I was an Andy Warhol double—and she didn’t even use that.
I went to see Janet Sartin and confessed that her treatments weren’t working, that I had eighteen pimples and that I’d gone back to my Orentreich methods because he has that stuff that dries them up overnight.
Did some Gun drawings and Gun paintings.
Oh, and I heard that Jed’s sister Susan is marrying Mel Brooks’s son! I mean if that spoiled girl lands on Easy Street I just won’t be able to stand it.
Wednesday, June 17, 1981
Fred is going off to Europe and I don’t know why. He should be staying in town, seeing to business. But for some reason he thinks he’s part of the London scene. For some reason he identifies with all those English kids who sponge off him. And we never get work from England from any of them. I don’t know.
And Tom Sullivan died. At twenty-four. His heart failed.
John Reinhold invited us over for drinks to see his Michael Graves apartment. So we went over there and it used to be big rooms and Michael Graves turned it into a railroad flat. Really, if you’ve ever seen a cold-water flat, that’s what this looked like. Eighteen million columns and doors that open and things that swing out and a million details, and so many different colors, it was ridiculous. I mean, it’ll probably photograph well, they can make it look really big, but he took these great Robert Stern rooms and made three rooms and eight closets out of it. I mean it’s really detailed, and you can’t believe how detailed, but it just—I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. I got tired. Went home at 11:30, had some codeine cough medicine and went to bed.
Thursday, June 18, 1981
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sp; Went over to Tiffany’s. Paloma’s jewelry looks good, actually. There’s nothing different about it, but she does have a look. Elsa’s stuff is selling. Margaret Truman’s son who we met once was selling envelopes there.
Finally talked to Jon. He said it would be okay for me to come over while he packed to go to Robert Redford’s Sundance Foundation. So then I got a brainstorm and I went to Cote Basque in the Olympic Tower and got lunches ($25). Cabbed to Jon’s ($3). Watched him pack and he threw a tantrum because his Armani pants were one inch too small. I couldn’t believe it. I decided to water his plants. He was getting a 4:30 plane so I dropped him at the Gulf + Western building and went down to the office (cab $6).
I haven’t had any liquor for a while and I feel wonderful. But then, I don’t know, maybe I’m high on antibiotics. I don’t know what’s making me feel good.
Went to the Kennedy dinner at the Metropolitan Club. Caroline Kennedy came over and she was so much fun. And Ted Kennedy came over and he was adorable. Caroline was next to a Chinese surgeon who couldn’t see, but they said he was still operating. His wife was cutting his food for him.
Tip O’Neill gave a speech, he was good. He said a twenty-minute joke which actually wasn’t funny, but it was great delivery. And Bill Bradley was there, he said he had Rauschenberg and me both on his walls.
Senator Moynihan’s losing weight, he was great, adorable. This was a $1,000-a-plate dinner. They had folk dancing and Irish jigs. Then this Indian called Hassim wanted to dance with Caroline and she turned him down and then he said, “Well maybe you’ll dance with my son,” and he brought over this really great-looking son. The father said that in the early sixties he was a poet and that he’d come to the Factory and that I’d ignored him. I don’t remember. Then Caroline got really interested in him because he was talking about magic things, you know, Harvard-style, like what a light bulb was before it was a light bulb. The guy’s wife looked like me, but more refined. Very white skin. Like a Czechoslovakian beauty. I left and went home. I waited for a call from Jon and finally it came at 2:00 and then I could go to sleep.
Friday, June 19, 1981
Waited for a call from Utah from Jon. He called and he seemed really nice.
I’m not drinking and it feels so great, but I’ve got to try to stop taking Valium. And I’m losing weight even though I’m eating, which scares me, because I don’t know if it’s because I’m not drinking or then maybe it’s also because of the antibiotics. But then, I do like being thin. Although your resistance is lower. I guess you should lose it slowly over a year.
Saturday, June 20, 1981
Fred should be around to take care of things instead of being in Europe. Fred really thinks he’s English royalty, that’s what it’s become when he drinks. He identifies with them and I don’t know why.
Chris Stein showed us some 1950 Weegee photos and they were just great. Weegee was the newspaper photographer who would get the first radio call to all the crimes and things, and so he would get those kinds of photos. Most of the pictures Chris bought were of a Greenwich Village party, and you’d think you were looking at pictures of a 1980s party—it looks just the same! It’s funny that things really don’t change. I mean, people think they change, but they don’t. There were people wearing clothes with safety pins in them and two boys kissing in a window and a woman looking on, and then it was called “Living in Greenwich Village” and now it’s called New Wave or something. But it’s the same.
Sunday, June 21, 1981
I notice that my skin is better when I use the vaporizer, it keeps your nose clear and keeps your skin from drying out.
Jon called finally and said he was back from Utah, he was at the Gulf + Western building, and he gave me some song and dance about how he was too tired to come over, how he’d lost his luggage and his keys, but he had too much spunk and the song and dance was just too hard to handle—he said it was raining and it wasn’t raining—and I just decided that that’s the end of that. I went to bed with Valium.
Monday, June 22, 1981
The morning was just a disaster, I had the worst night’s sleep ever. I shouldn’t let these things happen to me, but … And my weight loss is still scary. I mean, I like being thin, but it’s scary.
Got a call from Jon and he apologized for not coming over and said that maybe we could work things out. We made a dinner date. He came over and we had a serious talk. He was in his running suit. We went to Le Relais, and they didn’t mind that he was dressed that way. We sat down next to Edmund Gaultney. Then Rita Lachman came over with a Xerox of her invitation to the Prince Charles-Lady Diana wedding. Bob said she keeps the original in a vault. I just know they’re going to disinvite her—say it was a mistake or something (dinner $59). If you don’t drink, meals are so cheap.
I had an interesting talk with Jon. He said that I wasn’t a serious enough person, that whenever he would say something significant I would make a light comment. So I’ll have to try to be more serious. We talked about the movie business. He hates being caught between Barry Diller and the other boss.
I’m having a vaporizer on all the time now, I really think it’s helping my skin.
Thursday, June 25, 1981
Had to sign the Gun painting for Chris Stein. Debbie Harry had given me some hair-removing wax. I’m using it all over and it really hurts.
Friday, June 26, 1981
I got my B-12 shot at Doc Cox’s, only Rosemary missed and I got black and blue and a bloody shirt. On my way out a guy tried to pick me up. He said he was a record engineer and that he lived with a private investigator, and that the private investigator makes him get dressed up in drag sometimes for entrapment but that he was sick of it. I got away from him.
Then I got a call from Jon and we were supposed to go to a movie but he said he was on the verge of pneumonia, so he couldn’t go out, so I said I’d bring the transcripts of my tapes of Maura Moynihan over for him to work on while he was in bed. We’re trying to see how all this dialogue can be turned into a play. So I dropped Rupert off (cab $6). Went to Jon’s and stayed there a couple of hours, and got to bed at 11:30.
Thursday, July 2, 1981
One of the B-52s came to the office and bought a Spacefruit portfolio. And he always thinks I’m abstract because I never know who he is. His name’s Fred. He’s a friend of Jay Shriver’s girlfriend, Karen Moline.
I went to Mick and Jerry’s party at Mr. Chow’s (cab $7.50). I had fun chatting about abortions and sex, but I have to get off those subjects and talk about politics or something, because when I read interviews that I do, the questions I ask are so awful. Stupid. Somebody besides me, if they could spend a day taping the person, would do a better job. I’m down on myself.
Saturday, July 4, 1981
It rained and rained. It was the day of Averil’s wedding to Tim Haydock. Suzie Frankfurt was getting us a limo out to Manhasset.
Got a call from Christopher on the Cape. Peter wants to stay up there all summer and work on his art and take care of the garden which hasn’t been taken care of since his father died. If he stays up there all summer and makes art and then comes to the city and sells it in the winter, he thinks it’s a good plan, which it is, but Christopher can’t stand family life and Peter’s mother’s up there and even though she likes the idea of Chris and Peter being together, Christopher just doesn’t like family life. His father’s Greek and he lives with a Chinese guy and his mother’s in California, she’s Italian.
Went out to Manhasset. Averil looked beautiful. The Kennedy boy who traded ties with me at his brother’s wedding was there, wearing the tie I’d traded him, so he was imaginative. He said he was always going to wear it to weddings. I should have worn his. Catherine was there, she was a bridesmaid and her hair’s lighter, so I guess she dyed it.
The boys had to pick up the girls and take them to their seats, and they were (laughs) about to take me until they realized I wasn’t a girl, after all. They played “America the Beautiful” and everybody talked and y
elled during the ceremony. Averil’s whole family was there, so tall. And Fred was there in his morning coat. And Vincent and Shelly. And Rachel Ward was a bridesmaid, she just finished a movie with Burt Reynolds and now she’s off to California to star opposite Steve Martin, so she’s really made it. Jerry and Mick were there and Jerry’s just dying to get married herself, you could feel the tension.
It was pouring rain and we went in the limo to the reception. It’s such a great house. Talked to Catherine, she said Winnie wrote her a letter about Tom Sullivan dying that began: “Somebody who loved you so much is dead.” Which was the exact same note she sent me. I don’t know why Winnie’s bothering, it was like a form letter.
And I was telling John Samuels—John Stockwell—that I thought he would have made it as an actor by now, and he said, “Listen, I’m only twenty,” and then I realized he was right! I keep thinking he’s like twenty-five. He invited me to his father’s house over on West Island in Glen Cove where a lot of people at the wedding were staying for the weekend. It’s the ninety-room Morgan house and there’s like thirty guests and one servant—Nona Summers was saying how she mentioned she’d like breakfast in bed and everybody laughed at her. And John Samuels told me how Michael Kennedy was swinging on the chandelier, but then when you go to his house they say, “Don’t touch that—it’ll break!” and they’re pointing at some cheap chair. He says that they save all their destruction for when they go visiting, that that’s why they’re always so rowdy wherever they go—because they’re so careful around their own things.
