Saturday, July 24, 2004

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Sunday, October 16, 1977

David Whitney called about going together to the Jasper Johns opening that night at the Whitney--Philip Johnson was going with Blanchette Rockefeller.

Pretty day. Cabbed downtown ($3.50) then walked to work. Richard Weisman and his little kids arrived and Margaret Trudeau was with them. She's really split up with her husband now so she lets herself be photographed with anybody, and I guess she's been dating Richard for a while. She was primping the kids' hair. I didn't have enough light bulbs though, and they fought over the teddy bear.

Cabbed to the Whitney ($2). Bob Rauschenberg blew me a kiss in the elevator and then later came over and said it was silly to blow a kiss so he kissed me. Jasper was drinking Jack Daniel's. It was a small party, just for lenders, old people. I ran downstairs to get a catalogue and then I looked around to have Jasper sign it, but I couldn't find him so I had Rauschenberg sign it, and then I did find jasper and he rubbed out Rauschenberg's signature and signed "To a Lender."

John Cage was there with Lois Long, de Antonio's first wife. Jack and Marion Javits were there, and Jack gave a speech. Robert Rosenblum was there, and he just got married. I guess it's another Nicky Weymouth-Kenny jay lane-type thing. He's from the gay old Henry Geldzahler crowd. Mrs. Irving who's the president of the museum whose mother is a Whitney was there. She lives down the street from me and I've asked her a few times if I could rent the garage space in her carriage house for the car. I want it so badly, but nothing ever happens. At the Whitney she said that she definitely would call me--and I think it's because I ran into her husband going into the garage that morning.

When we sat down to dinner there were packages of Philip Morris cigarrettes at each place--they were the sponsor--and when nobody was taking them I took them "for the box." There was one red one but I couldn't get it.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Thursday, September 29, 1977

Talked to Fred. We were arranging to go up to meet Nenna Eberstadt who worked at our office all summer for lunch at her school uptown on 83rd Street--Brearley.

Before I left the house I happened to talk on the phone to David Whitney. David said he hadn't even started on the Jasper Johns show. Then he told me something that scared me when I heard it, and scared me even more as the day went on. He said that when Rauschenberg was down in Texas for a show, all the art people were on a chick art-people charter bus and it stopped at a gas station and the men's room was locked so Rauschenberg peed on the side of the bus and two Texas Rangers appeared and arrested him and took him to jail! I mean if you're walking along the street in New York, what if you really have to pee or shit? What do you do? Do you have to do it in your pants? Will they arrest you if you do it in the street? And if you can prove that you really had to go, will they let you go but will you have a criminal record? I guess you have to do it in your pants.

Cabbed up to Brearley with Bob and Fred. Left from the office so I took a stack of Interviews up with me. When we got to 83rd and First Avenue (cab $5) we walked in and left the magazines at the front for the girls to take. I forgot that this wasn't all a high-school-age place. I was just thinking that all the girls were older, like Nenna. Well, Nenna came to meet uo and she looked like she was suddenly ten years old! I couldn't believe it! In a little black uniform and one of those skirts, you know that's short, like--what's the name? Like the ladies wore in the sixties... a miniskirt. And her friend was in a uniform, too, a very beautiful girl who also looked ten years old. And Fred told us a secret, that Mick Jagger had called Nenna and Freddy Eberstadt answered and started screaming at him, "How dare you call a young girl like my daughter? You, an older man of forty!" Mick took offense and said "I am not forty. I'm thirty-four. And Nenna goes out with Mr. Fred Hughes, who is also thirty-four. and besides, I don't go around ringing people's doorbells at 4:00 in the morning." Which was a reference to Freddy Eberstadt ringing Mick's doorbell at that hour looking for Nenna.

As I looked around at how young the girls were, all I could thinking about was the Interviews upstairs and about Rauschenberg getting arrested in Texas and about Roman Polanski, how the poor guy could make a mistake because these young girls could be so young or as old as they wanted to look.

Tina Radziwill was there at Brearley, too. She's changed a lot since that summer Lee rented Montauk. She has so many pimples now. I mean, you'd think they would have found a way to cure pimples. If a girl like Tina who can spend all the money in the world to get rid of pimples can't get rid of them, then thre's no hope for me.

Nenna introduced us to another one of her girlfriends and she looked forty! She had tits so big and an ass so big. She was white, but there were a couple of coloreds around the school, too. Then they gave us a terrible tour of the library and the gym and where the twelve-year-olds eat. All I could thinkg of was the magazines with maybe nude photos in them. I had Bob run upstairs to take them back, but they were gone. I told Nenna she just had to tell the headmistress that we'd just left them there meaning to pick them up on the way out and she said she'd try to fix it. Cabbed back to the office ($5).

Mick arrived twenty minutes late in a really good mood--I was photographing the Stones. Then everbody started arriving--Ron Wood, and Earl McGrath and Keith Richards who I think is just the most adorable person, I love him. I told him I was the first person to meet his wife, Anita Pallenberg. in the sixties

Richard Weisman was sending down tickets to a party for Ali, if Ali won his fight with Shavers. Suzie Frankfurt called. She's been seeing Sam Green all the time and I said to her, "Do you think that Sam Green doesn't talk about you?" She said, "No, Sam loves me." I said, "You mean you think he doesn't go all over town repeating to everybody what you say?" She said, "But he doesn't talk about you." I said "Yes, and that is because I never never tell him anything."

Dropped off Catherine and Peter Marino. Peter and Catherine got friendly in Montauk. I can't figure Peter out, he's nutty. I told him how he owed his whole life and architecture career to us--how we gave him his first job--took him out of his business knickers and gave him his long pants and he said that well now he was in Armani suits and that we sure didn't put him in those. he was funny (cab $4).

Changed at home. Ate some of Archie's food then started walking up to 730 Park Avenue to a dinner for a Swiss guy who's in town, who said he's been dying to meet me. After dinner I went down to 66th Street to wait for my date, kevin Goodspeed, who I'd met at Studio 54. He's big and he's like my old crush from the sixties, Rodney La Rod, and at first I thought he'd be a good bodyguard until later in the evening when somebody stepped on his camera and beat him up.

Cabbed to the party for Muhammad Ali at the American ($2.50). It was one of those parties where you're Waiting for Nothing. Ali never came, they said he was too badly hurt in the fight. But one great thing happened. I met a black lady boxer. She invited me to go see her box.

Then Richard Weisman wanted to go dancing so we went over to Studio 54. Walked. Stevie Rubell is madly in love with me. And Victor was there and got jealous of my date Kevin. Victor was wearing "punk pants" and they had a normal fly that was zipped and everything but at the bottom of the zipper was a hole for his cock to hang through, and you didn't even notice at first, everything looked like it was in order. He was also wearing a sequined Halston Bandanna like the kind he gave me. Then Keving and I went down to Kevin's neighborhood on Third Avenue in the 30s to Sarge's, the all-night coffe shop, and after we had coffee I left him with some people he knew there. It's supposed to be the best coffee shop (breakfast $10). When I got out on the street a kid in a Mercedes pulled up and said he used to live on my block on 66th Street. I made him describe the street and he did know it so I got into the car and he dropped me off. By then it was 5 A.M.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, September 21, 1977--New York--Columbus

On the plane Richard Weisman said that Vitas Gerulaitis had just been to Columbus and staked out the best motel and the best girls to call.

As soon as we landed Richard called the girls' number and they arranged to meet at midnight in Richard's room. Then we went to the motel Vitas said to. it was almost a dump but it was okay, like every other motel, like being at a Holiday Inn, with a pool and everything.

As soon as we checked in there, we went to another motel, the one that Jack Nicklaus owned, to meet him.

We waited while he talked on the phone. He looked fat, but Richard said that he was once 280 and was now down to 180. He was very suntanned, but his eyes, around them, were white where his sunglasses were, and his hands were tiny and white, he wears gloves on the course. His hair was blond, and he said something about needing a haircut, but I had the feeling that his hair was just the way it always looked, puffed just-so over the ears, like ti was "coifed."

I started taking pictures but none of them were coming out good. It's so hard taking pictures of suntanned people because they come out so red. He was being friendly and Richard was trying to be friendly but somehow the situation was strained, he didn't understand what was going on. And I had my tape recorder with me and was taping, but when I sort of realized that he wouldn't understand that, I just quietly shut it off. Richard's secretary Claudia showed him pictures I'd done of Tom Seaver, Muhammad Ali, and Pele, but he still didn't really understand why we were there taking pictures of him. Richard had sent him a book showing my paintings but he didn't understand the style.

And then he got another phone call, and we were getting nervous and I took some more pictures and he didn't like any and we didn't like any. Not getting good pictures made things more and more awkward and finally he said, "Well, you know what you want--you don't tell me how to tee off on the green," and I felt more uncomfortable and everyone just wished we could leave. Then finally he liked one but it was just nothing, a front shot, and I didn't want to be looking--what's the word? It's like cocky, but it's a short word--he didn't want to look like that, and he thought this one made him look like a nice person. He talked about his wife and his kids.

Forgot to say that when I was taking the pictures, there wasn't a golf club around, they were all down on the course. He went around to some of the offices asking if anyone had clubs and finally came back with some that he said were just like his, and I didn't know that golf clubs have hats on them with drawstrings.

We ran out and dished the whole thing in the car and that's when it suddenly occurred to me that he acttually had looked like he might be lonely and maybe we should have invited him out with us, but he hadn't suggested anything himself, and nobody just knew what to do, so nothing happened. We looked around for a place to have dinner. Fred and I wanted to go back to New York right after taking the pictures but the only flight out went to Atlanta first.

We saw a building with about twenty floors and there was a restaurant at the top that moved around in a circle. We decided not to go to that, and then decided that we would go there after all. It had some name like River House. it was next to a Howard Johnson's. We went up on the elevator and sat down in the restaurant, and it began to revolve. There were ladies there playing harps.

Then we went back to Richard's room with him to wait for the girls that were coming at 12:00 and had tequila with him. When the girls called on the phone he asked them to bring some jeans and a T-shirt for Claudia, because they would all go nightclubbing and she hadn't brought anything to wear.

Claudia used to be an airline stewardess and I guess that's where Richard met her. She's very pretty and she's the best secretary. She just does everything.

The girls arrived and they looked like New York models, very tall and blonde and pretty and they were wearing the same kind of clothes, jeans and T-shirts.

One of the girls was more the hustler and she went after Richard. All they could talk about was Vitas so they called him in New York. The clothes they brought for Claudia fit perfectly.

Fred and I went to our rooms. They were big and clean and everything, but you'd wake up every half-hour because of the air conditioning. I slept in my clothes becasue I knew there was a six o'clock wake-up call.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, August 30, 1977

Up early to go see Dr. Lyons for a teeth-cleaning. Went to Park Avenue to get a cab downtown and one pulled up and the door opened and it was lovely Barbara Rose saying, "Let's share a cab downtown." The fare on the meter was already past $3, I noticed. She's going with Jerry Leiber, the Leiber-Stoller guy who wrote "Hound Dog" and so she talked about Elvis, although I don't think Leiber went to the funeral in Memphis. She said she and Leiber are writing or have written a play and they want Al Pacino to play Elvis. God, I just hate her. She's so awful (cab total $7).

They're saying that the article Caroline Kennedy did on the Elvis funeral for Rolling Stone made fun of the local people, but I can understand that --Caroline's really intelligent and the people down there really were dumb. Elvis never knew there were more interesting people.

When I got to 12th street I walked around University Place for ideas. Then over to the office. Sandy Brant was there with Jed going over decorating schemes for Peter Brant and Joe Allen's office building in Greenwich that Philip Johnson designed. Jed's in the decorating business now.

Cab to Alkit Camera ($3) on 53rd and Third. the cab driver didn't even turn around to look at me but he knew who I was. I asked him how he could tell. He said that he'd been buying art since he was twenty and just "stacking it around the house like the Collyer Brothers." He went to auctions and places for art bargains, and he was thrilled to have me in the cab. I got a new camera because I had to take pictures of Chrissie Evert later in the afternoon. For the Athletes series.

Had Bettina, the famous Chanel model from the fifties, to lunch. She's the beautiful one who was in the car with Aly Khan when he died. She's here to open an Ungaro store on Madison around the corner from my house. She was wearing a purple dress.

Chrissie said she and Burt Reynolds were talking about me recently, and that's why she wanted to do this. Victor came in and he started dragging out the shadow painting of cocks and assholes that I've been doing--the paintings all the "landscapes" have been posing for--and somebody had to tell him not to. I gave her a copy of the Burt Reynolds issue of Interview.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, August 23, 1977

Dinner to interview Diahnne Abbott was at Quo Vadis. Picked up Catherine. Bob began asking Diahnne (laughs) in many different ways how it felt to be colored. "Are you really colored? How do you feel about your skin? Do you like to dance?" And then he got it down to what did it feel like to be colored and in bed with Bobby De Niro. Then I think she must have slipped Bob some coke--he went into the bathroom and came back a zombie.

Diana Vreeland was there for dinner with Alessandro Albrizzi from Venice, at a table behind us. Then later as we were leaving, I introduced Diahnne to Diana and Diana said, "I'm madly in love with your husband." We went over in Diahnne's car to Studio 54. Fred and Ahmet Ertegun and Earl McGrath were there. Earl said he was thrilled that Fred had agreed to so little money for the billboard I'll be doing for the Stones.

Diahnne didn't like the music that was playing, it wasn't right, she wanted to leave. Went up to Elaine's. She played some songs on the jukebox that she wasn't able to hear at Studio 54. Bob continued the questioning on how it felt to be colored.

She told about her waitressing jobs in the Village at the Left or Right Bank, places like that. Then Bob asked her about politics, and she said she didn't think about it, and then Bob broughtup Idi Amin! I mean, everthing he said was colored (Elaine's $50).

Then Diahnne invited us down to her apartment. It was peculiar, it was like this meant she was really accepting us or something. Barrow Street. She had clothes all over, she was buying lots and lots of clothes. They're looking for a new apartment and I suggested park Avenue, but she said they have an image to protect. She served Dom Perignon, showed us baby pictures. She let the limo go, which was tacky, and we had to cab home. As we passed the Studio 54 neighborhood, Bob screamed, "let me out, Let me out" (cab $5).

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, July 18, 1977

I'm reading the Evelyn Keyes book Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister, and she describes everything in detail in her sex life, it's great, sex with King Vidor and with John Huston--how he put it in and everything. and she says that Paulette Goddard was her idol, that she copied everything about her, her hair, her voice.

Called Paulette and told her about the book, how much Evelyn loved her. She said, "Oh yeah, she loved me so much she stole all my boyfriends, and when she stole my last boyfriend, I dropped her."

Cabbed up to Suzie's ($2.35). Sandra Payson who's married to George Weidenfeld was there and as I sat talking to her, a cockroach was running on her. I didn't know if I should say something or not. But then maybe she knew because she stood up and said, "Shall we get moving?" And that knocked it off. What would Emily Post do?

I decided to really really hustle so I took Lady Weidenfeld home. We walked a little, and then she was overheated and we cabbed to 25 Sutton Place ($2.50). We talked about Diana Vreeland's nose. She popped the question about how much a portrait is and I said, "Oh, I can't talk money, talk to Fred." That effect.

On my way home, a cab stopped and I really wanted one, but since it had stopped for me I was suspicious to get in and didn't. Went to a magazine store ($4).

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, July 13, 1977

Cabbed up to Rockefeller Plaza to the Warner communications offices to see Pelé, the soccer player who was being photographed for Interview. He was adorable, he remembered meeting me at Regine's once. We were on the thirteenth floor. He's sort of funny-looking, but then when he smiles he looks beautiful. He has his own office up there, and they're making Pelé T-shirts and hats and cartoons.

Mark Ginsburg had called and said the interview with Irene Worth was on for that night, and I said I'd meet him at the Vivian Beaumont where her play The Cherry Orchard was. We were going to see it first.

Irene's voice was good, and that's all that really matters--everything she says sounds like real acting. The lights went down and I thought it was the end of the act, but it wasn't. It was the Blackout of '77. They kept acting on stage in the dark, and the girl who played the daughter announced, "isn't this fun? Let's keep going!" A guy came on stage and said that anybody who wanted to leave would be shown the way out, and that they'd just keep going witht he play, they had guys on stage holding candles.

So everybody was a real trouper, and this was the moment these actors had been waiting all their lives for-- to make the show go on.

Then after the play, as Mark and I were walking backstage to see Irene, a man said, "This is the most thrilling tthing that's happened to me, passingg Andy Warhol in the dark." Irene changed and put on bluejeans and turned out to look young. She served champagne. I had enough tape for three or four hours's taping. A Lincoln Center guy was saying, "Stay in the crowds, they're mugging people all over" (cab $4, big tip).

For some reason it was so simple to get a cab, we just walked out and got in one and went with a friend of Irene's who I also know, Rudy, to his apartment on 67th and Lexington, right on the second floor. He had candles all over because he always eats with candles. He made omelettes on his gas range, it was all so easy. They were delicious. Did the interview with Irene.

The phones were sort of working--you had to wait for a dial tone, but then it was okay.