Caveat Emptor (9 page)

When I got the chance to peek in, I nearly gagged. A bed was inexplicably mounted on a crazy-looking platform that Tony had built himself. It was about five feet above the floor. On it was a pile of clothes, pillows, and blankets that swept up into a corner reaching halfway to the ceiling. Tony's old poster of Mussolini that went everywhere with him hung crookedly on the grimy wall above the bed like a picture of a saint. A wretched three-legged table supported a lamp with a broken shade. The rest of his wardrobe was stuffed in a heap beneath the bed. A path through piles of bottles, books, and boxes containing God-knows-what led to the bed, where Tony had to leap up and burrow in to sleep.

I threw the mattress I'd brought from my studio against a wall in the main room of my new home, but I experienced a sinking feeling when I was faced with the prospect of spending my first night in Tony's dungeon. During the time I had planned this move, Tony mentioned in passing that there might be another lodger, who I assumed would be a girl, staying with us, but the excitement of embarking on my first serious artistic effort caused me to forget this detail.

I was sitting at the table having a glass of wine with Tony, who was doing his best to cheer me up. I looked at him in surprise when I heard the door lock being turned. Tony was smiling, and I wondered who this could be. I was speechless when a gorgeous African-American girl with the most beautiful smile poked her head around the door. She flung a modeling portfolio onto a chair and lighted on my lap!

“You must be Ken,” she said, laughing. I was smitten on the spot and instinctively wrapped my arms around her tiny waist. When Andrea Sutton introduced herself, I was staring at a hundred blindingly white teeth framed in the biggest lips I'd ever seen.

With the formalities out of the way, Andrea told us about her day spent auditioning for a part in a movie, all the while getting more comfortable in my lap. For the first time all day, I was smiling, and Tony was delighted.

Andrea was a model and actress who Tony had found at Max's. In need of a place to stay, she'd been keeping irregular hours at the loft for the past month. She had an exuberant personality, a devastating smile, and a body so slinky it looked like she'd been squeezed out of a tube. Tony was preparing to leave for his afternoon routine of a sauna and rubdown at the Russian Baths on East Seventh Street, before reading the paper at his favorite espresso bar.

I got up and poured a glass of wine for Andrea while she turned on some music. As we sat at the table sipping our wine, we began staring into each other's eyes and smiling. The door hardly closed behind Tony before we:

A) raided Tony's stash of joints,

B) undressed each other,

C) went straight to bed.

Andrea definitely helped buffer the shock of moving into that place. One day she came home with a beautiful Irish setter that had been abandoned by a recently evicted friend. We walked the dog around the Village, enjoying beautiful carefree days together while I gathered materials and arranged to have my steel and Plexiglas containers made at a fabricator in TriBeCa.

Unfortunately, Andrea finally had to split. She landed a part in a movie and flew out to L.A. I immersed myself in my work, and it wasn't long before I was in a routine of eating, sleeping, and painting. The exciting prospect of creating my first collection of art put all thoughts of forgery out of my mind. In fact, I was convinced that my days of faking paintings were in the past.

Tony and I couldn't have been in a better position. The location of the loft was perfect, and Tony had all the contacts. In fact, I had already been brought to the attention of Robert Hughes, the author and art critic. Tony was friends with Robert and had met Richard Neville, the publisher of
Oz
magazine, at Robert's loft in SoHo when Richard was visiting from London in late '72.

Oz
was the leading British counterculture magazine started by Richard in the 1960s. Grossly obscene, drug oriented, and politically radical,
Oz
enraged the British public. It exemplified the philosophy of the counterculture and promoted every type of deviant sexual activity. It featured columns such as “Letter from an Ever-Open Pussy” and articles like “The Queen's Vernacular,” a satirical compendium of gay slang.

The magazine finally provoked the wrath of the British government with its hilarious sexual satires, often aimed at political and royal figures. After numerous warnings went unheeded, the government took action and charged Richard and his editors with criminal obscenity. As the trial date approached, protests in support of
Oz
broke out around London. Some were violent and attracted celebrities like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Meantime, Richard was having engraved invitations mailed out to subscribers, inviting them to attend “Obscene Courtroom Dramas” at the Marylebone Magistrates' Court.

On the day of the trial, Richard argued the case himself, defending the magazine's right to free speech and expression. He and his cohorts lost and were slammed with fifteen years in prison. There were riots in the street. Then, in a stunning reversal, the case was reviewed and thrown out. The magazine continued to be published and was never shut down by the government. The case inspired a play titled
Oz
that opened briefly in the East Village.

While Richard, Robert, and Tony were having drinks at Max's, Richard mentioned that he was on the lookout for something “far-out” for the cover of his magazine. It occurred to Tony that the surrealistic masterpiece I had done years before—my impression of the Castle, which was decorating the wall of my studio on Fifth Avenue—might be just the thing for him. Richard was interested and asked Tony to bring the painting to Robert's loft. When Richard saw it, he was impressed and wanted to meet me.

The next day, I went to Robert's loft in SoHo and met both Robert Hughes and Richard Neville. It was agreed that the painting would be sent to London and used on the cover of his magazine.

When
Oz
came out some months later, the cover was attacked as “disgusting” by the public, and I was immediately contacted by the Portal Gallery, located just off New Bond Street. They were interested in giving me a show, but I was in no position to take advantage of the opportunity. Besides, I was through with surrealistic paintings and wanted to get on with more serious art. The upshot was that I had made an impression on Robert Hughes, and he was interested in what I'd be doing in the future.

On Union Square, I sometimes saw Andy Warhol out on the street on his way to his building. He began giving me very hard stares, and if by chance I passed him and looked back, he'd be standing there waiting. I realized that he wanted to meet me, but I foolishly put it off, reasoning that I'd have plenty of time to meet him and invite him to the loft as soon as my collection was finished.

In the meantime, a steady stream of friends was dropping in. Frosty Myers, the sculptor, was a constant visitor. His most famous piece was a long, wavy tube painted red that was suspended above the bar at Max's. Julian Schnabel was another who would stop by. Sometimes we'd all get in the Jeep and cruise around the Village trying to pick up girls.

And of course there was Michelle, my beautiful uptown model who'd stop by between fashion shoots to encourage me. It was bad enough that she incited a terrific envy in Tony toward me, but when he came home one afternoon and discovered her favorite pendant in his bed, he went through the roof, throwing it at me and threatening to hang me by my balls—as he so elegantly put it—if I ever crawled into his bed again.

As work on my collection progressed (and most of my money was used up), the loft began to look like a real artist's studio. Huge paintings were propped against makeshift easels. The steel and Plexiglas boxes were awaiting paintings to be jammed into them. I was very excited, working on pure adrenaline. I had perfect faith, absolute conviction in my envisioned collection. No matter how bad it was living at the loft, no matter how broke I was, I was prepared to survive on a diet of sawdust to make the collection a reality; but the worst privation of all was that there was no way to take a bath. The bathroom outside in the hall had only a sink and toilet. While Tony promised to rectify this situation soon and install a tub in the loft, I was forced to visit friends across town in order to take an occasional shower.

Added to the misery, I hated Union Square. Whenever I sat at the window and looked out, I was sickened by the dreary commercial scene below. In spite of my high hopes, I wondered what would happen if my planned collection didn't succeed. The city was full of would-be artists who ended up as clerks in art-supply stores or waiters in SoHo restaurants, fates too awful to contemplate.

Sometimes I'd go for breakfast to the restaurant down below our loft. It was an old-fashioned Jewish dairy restaurant, where no meat was served. I sat there and gazed through the steamed-up windows at all the people rushing to work in the morning. All dressed in suits and fancy hairdos, they reminded me of goldfish streaming by in a bowl. But they went to school, they had jobs, they had done the “right thing.” It was frightening to consider having to do that every day, but just as frightening to know I couldn't even if I'd wanted to.

By the time winter came, life there was even more depressing. The loft was freezing and we were broke as usual. If Tony did manage to lay his hands on any money, he instantly transformed into a tyrant, barking orders and expecting everyone to kiss his ass. Every night he'd go out and blow a couple hundred bucks in bars and classy restaurants. He loved to yell at the waiters and make a scene. I finally realized why he always had that old poster of Mussolini around. That's who he wanted to be—fuckin' Mussolini!

Then one day Tony came in bubbling over with excitement. A drinking pal had met Paloma Picasso at Max's and had arranged for Tony to meet her one day for lunch. Tony put on the charm, and she was smitten. Phone numbers were exchanged. Dates, dinners, and romantic interludes followed.

It was all very glamorous: there were stories of a huge fortune, an apartment filled with her father's paintings, trips to Paris, and romance. Tony was ecstatic. Visions of a life in the international jet set danced in his head. Winters at Saint Moritz and summers on the French Riviera!

I was trying to figure out how I would pay for the loft myself, when the situation came to a climax. Paloma had to leave for Paris, and Tony was getting his passport. She would call in a week and have a ticket waiting for him at the airline counter. Tony was beside himself with anticipation. All he would have to do was pack a bag and fly off to a new life in high society.

Tony recounted this while treating me to a steak dinner! When it came time to pay the bill, I almost choked when he pulled out a wad of French francs together with some American money.

“Where did you get that?!” I gasped. Tony just laughed and shimmered like a bowl of Jell-O as he peeled off a C-note without a care in the world. When I dragged the story out of him, I learned that Tony had spent the night with Paloma before she left for Paris, and finding himself alone in the bedroom for a while, he noticed her handbag lying conveniently on the floor next to the bed. Instinctively he'd reached down and pulled out her bankroll. He'd been exchanging it for American money and spending it all day long. It was a pity, because there never was a call or a ticket to Paris waiting for him. He never heard from Paloma again, and his calls and messages went unanswered.

The money quickly ran out. Tony managed to pay one month's rent of two hundred and forty dollars out of the three grand he'd lifted from her. As dreams of Gstaad and Saint Tropez faded, it was time once again to deal with more down-to-earth matters. The refrigerator had a nervous breakdown, the windows leaked so badly that the wind howled through the loft, and of course I still faced the ongoing problem of running out in the now-freezing weather to take a bath at someone else's place.

Tony would go out and steal a car as casually as normal people would go out and rent one. He would scan parked cars until his sixth sense guided him to exactly what he was looking for. Usually that was an unlocked station wagon. The rationale behind his choice was that it would serve a dual purpose, that of transportation and the perpetuation of his nefarious schemes. So one day, out of the blue, Tony announced that he had a new set of wheels and that we were going out for a ride. After dropping in on Julian Schnabel at his studio in Little Italy, we were leaving the building when Tony noticed a pile of custom-made artist's stretchers in the lobby waiting to be carried up to Julian's loft. In a flash Tony scooped them up and threw them on the top of the wagon, and we sped away.

Living with Tony began to distort my view of reality until it all began to seem normal, as though everybody lived this way. And when necessity demanded that we address the bath problem, it was solved in a perfectly logical way. We were sitting at the table having coffee when Tony mentioned he'd found an old bathtub in the back of a deserted fortune-teller's shop on the Bowery. He proposed that we boost it with the hot station wagon that very night.