Widow Basquiat Read Free Page B

from a specific time period in the manner of a particular artist and sign them “McDermott and McGough,” followed by the appropriate date: 1789, 1899, 1942, etc.
    Vicky is a little frail girl who stutters when she speaks. She deals heroin on 1st Street. She has read everything and can quote Dostoyevsky.
    Lili Dones designs menus for restaurants in the East Village as well as eccentric greeting cards. She wears Marilyn Monroe dresses. Her uncle shot himself in the bathroom after they left Cuba. She can always hear it in her head. She still smells like sugarcane.
    Hal Ludacer is more beautiful than Greta Garbo.
    Patti Astor is Fab 5 Freddy’s girlfriend. She wears the highest stiletto heels in town.
    Alba Clemente was an avant-garde performance artist in Italy. She is more elegant and exotic than anyone else.
    Maripol is a jewelry designer and looks like Coco Chanel. She creates the black rubber ring bracelets that everyone wears.
    Z. was a prostitute in Japan.
    Edit DeAk is older than everyone. She is Hungarian. Everyone hangs out in her loft on Wooster Street. She says she once communicated with a panther in a Hungarian zoo.
    Tina Chow has the longest, skinniest arms.
    Fab 5 Freddy is a good kisser.
    Lady Pink is the only female graffiti artist. She spray-paints kittens.
    I cannot remember everyone on the scene. Jean always boasted that he had slept with them all. I knew he was lying.

FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY
    Jean-Michel listens to jazz. He listens to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach, hip-hop, blues and Latin and African music. One day he finds out that Billie Holiday does not have a gravestone on her grave and he can think of nothing else.
    He calls Diego Cortez. Cortez is one of Jean-Michel and Suzanne’s first friends. He is an art curator and dealer who knows everything about the club scene and the art world. He is always impeccably dressed with a European air of elegance about him. Jean-Michel and Suzanne adore him. Jean-Michel says he is a “queen—but you would never know it.”
    From Saturday to Monday Jean-Michel and Diego Cortez spend hours designing Billie Holiday’s gravestone. Every day Suzanne is sent out to buy them coke.
    “Boom for real!” Jean-Michel says when they finish.
    Jean-Michel says his paintings are jazz on canvas. He makes his own music also.
    One day he buys himself a TEAC reel-to-reel recording machine and composes experimental, improvised music and poetry. He makes tape loops that he then records one over the other as if they were musical instruments. He does this a lot with Michael Holman and Nick Taylor.
    At four o’clock Jean-Michel calls the suicide hotline and has a conversation with the man on the other end of the line. Jean-Michel says, “Hijacked Marlboros” and “You won’t be so arrogant once the police arrive” and “It’s gone soft.” The man at the suicide hotline is convinced that Jean-Michel has stolen a truck of Marlboro cigarettes and feels guilty and wants to commit suicide. The man says, “What’s gone soft?” Jean-Michel says, “You won’t be so arrogant once the police arrive.” The man says, “I’m not being arrogant.” The conversation goes back and forth. Jean-Michel makes a recording of this that he later uses with music.
    I loved Diego Cortez. He was very funny. He called me Jean’s muse. We were good friends. It was Diego who arranged Jean’s first group show called New York/New Wave at a PS1 space in Long Island City. Throughout Jean’s career Diego got a lot of important people interested in Jean’s work. Without Diego, Jean might never have become famous.

ONLY FOOD
    “I love the way you walk, Suzanne. Like you lead with your pelvis with your back slanted and long steps,” Jean-Michel says. He imitates her walking back and forth in the kitchen.
    He never buys her presents or clothes. Only food. Whenever he is happy he brings her all kinds of Italian cakes and pastries. She has eaten profiteroles, petits fours, éclairs,