Widow Basquiat Read Free Page A

table, counter or chair. There is some room to sit on the stairs around the piles of magazines and un-ironed clothes.
    Suzanne’s mother tries on Suzanne’s Jackie O sunglasses. “These are nice, Suzy,” her mother says. Her mother gets up and walks to the kitchen counter. She takes out five dollars from a box of crackers.
    “Here, I’ve been saving these for you,” she says, handing the money to Suzanne. “Nobody likes crackers in this house, so they were safe,” she laughs.
    “You know,” she continues, “I still think of you as an ice-skater. You could still do it, you know. Can I keep these sunglasses?”
    “Not this time, Mother,” Suzanne says. “Jean-Michel likes them a lot and I bought them at a thrift shop.”
    “I understand, Suzy,” her mother says. “Nothing is for keeps, though, remember that.”

BINIBON RESTAURANT
    While Suzanne is in Canada, the boy who is covering her waitressing shifts at Binibon is killed with a knife by Jack Henry Abbott, the man Norman Mailer wrote about in
The Belly of the Beast.
This man has been living in the halfway houses near the Bowery.
    Jean-Michel sees the white, larvae-white paint, the outline of the body drawn by police on the sidewalk.
    It takes twenty minutes and forty-two seconds for Jean-Michel to run home and call Suzanne in Canada. “Come home,” he cries. “It could have been you.”
    On the airplane back to New York Suzanne knows that her mother has stolen her sunglasses.

LESSONS ON HOW TO BE A WOMAN
    Jean-Michel gets ahold of a big piece of opium. He smokes it with Suzanne but decides that the best way to do the drug is to put it in the refrigerator, break off small pieces, roll it into a ball and stick it up their rectums. So this is what they do. They lie naked on the floor for days.
    One morning Jean-Michel says that an art critic is going to come over and interview him. There is a knock and Jean-Michel, who is naked, answers the door.
    Rene Ricard enters the apartment. He says, “Not only are you the greatest artist I have ever seen, you have the most beautiful penis I have ever seen.” After this meeting, Ricard wrote the “Radiant Child” article for
Artforum.
    Ricard hires Suzanne as his secretary to transcribe his poetry. Suzanne tells him that she is the girl that used to call him up.
    He says, “Of course you were.”
    Rene Ricard writes on matchbooks, wrappers and bits of toilet paper. Every week he gives these scraps to Suzanne ina plastic ziplock bag. He tells her to type everything on a page in any order.
    Rene Ricard teaches Suzanne how to behave on the street, how to behave with the young black and Puerto Rican boys and the “stickup” kids. Suzanne and Ricard have the same taste in men and he teaches her how to have them in her house and not get robbed. He teaches her how to move and what to say and what not to say. He tells her never to allow them to bring their guns into the bedroom and, if something goes wrong, her best defense is to act as vulnerable, weak and passive as she can. He says never to act tough like a black girl or they will kill her in a minute.
    Rene Ricard says he is going to teach Suzanne how to be feminine, how to be a star. He explains that when she walks into a party, club or art opening, she must never look at anyone but fix her eyes on a point across the room and walk toward it. Above all, though, he tells her to study drag queens because only they know how to act like women.

DOWNTOWN SOCIETY
    They dress in long black waistcoats and walk down 3rd Avenue carrying black and silver walking sticks. At night they wear a top hat. They carry their cigarettes in thin silver cigarette cases. They live without electricity and only use candlelight. They have no appliances or even a telephone. Sometimes they perform songs at the new, hip restaurants in Alphabet City and places like Evelyn’s. They sing “Tea for Two” and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” in an a cappella harmony. They also paint paintings