Everyone is Watching (3 page)

Al Smith takes Moses by the arm and they stroll through the Lower East Side. They walk down Orchard Street, along Delancey, up the Bowery, pass over to Mott Street. They walk
through the crowds of people huddled over goods for sale in the street market stalls. Smith stops to shake a few people by the hand.

Al! they say. How’s Katie? Let me shake your hand.

Smith says to Moses, This is how a city is run. You have to be prepared to shake hands with ordinary people.

Moses visits one Long Island farm on a number of occasions. At first, he is the most charming man the family has ever met, suit jacket slung casually over his shoulder as his
broad figure strolls across the open fields. He stops to take in a deep breath of air. The family are waiting for this important man to speak. It is as if he has seen a little piece of heaven in
what they are doing here. Hell, they think he is going to give them money to see the whole place preserved as it is. Inside the house, Moses helps the mother to make the coffee and talks about his
childhood in Connecticut, how wonderful it was to live in all that open space. He asks the mother about her own children: Are they healthy? Do they enjoy living in the country? He explains that for
Manhattan’s children it’s not so easy – the lack of space, the dirt, disease. If the children were taken out of Manhattan and shown this farm they just wouldn’t believe
it.

But it won’t stay that way for long, says Moses. The developers will get here sooner or later and they’ll tear this land up to build new houses. Soon the whole of New York State will
be a sight to see, nothing but houses. The thing to do is to make parts of this region accessible to everyone. Allow those who live in the city to visit here once in a while. You should see the
faces of these children. If you did, it would break your heart. All I need to do to improve their lives is to build one straight road from Brooklyn to Long Island. This is where I’m building
my beach. How’s the farm doing? Moses asks, not to the father but to the mother. Her hesitation says it all. I’ll give you a good deal on this land. The road won’t be anywhere
near the house. You’ll have enough money to buy more land elsewhere.

We don’t want more land, the father says. We don’t want your money.

I’ll let you think it over, Moses says.

We’re not selling, says the father.

Moses picks up his jacket and his hat. He thanks the mother for the coffee and wishes them all goodbye.

Next time, Moses brings with him an army of suited men. He walks into the kitchen and drops the new plans onto the table. He says that the money he is offering is now half the
original amount. And the road, which before ran up over the brow of the hill, now runs beside the house.

The father says, You can’t do this – I’ll get a lawyer, I’ll—

Moses laughs.

Within six months they lose the farm.

Merrick Road needs to be widened and turned into a parkway, and two other parkways must be built to connect Long Island to the sandbar. He will need to build a bridge across
the water to the island, and he will need to raise the sandbar to make it high enough to build upon. He does not seek the approval from the owners of the estates on Long Island. Moses comes onto
their land and measures up. They see him from their bedroom windows and call security. Moses returns with an armed guard and approval from the governor. The landowners take Moses to court, and for
a while it looks like Moses might lose his precious beach. He is criticized for not going through the proper channels, for not negotiating with the other side. He has just waded in with fists
flying.

Being reasonable doesn’t get things done, he says.

Moses waits for the season to turn hot when everyone is in the mood for beaches. Then he addresses the court, describing the conditions for ordinary people on sweltering New
York days with no space for recreation or refreshment while the richest families in America use Long Island for their private playground. Now the papers have a story.
Savior Moses
.
Hero Moses
. He is one for the people.
Where’s Our Beach?! Dying for the sake of a little fresh air!
Moses has realized that if you are for beaches then you are for the
public. It’s so hot that everyone is for beaches. The whole city has gone beach mad.

What the courts don’t know is that Moses has already started to build his beach. He has bulldozed the woodland and laid the foundations for access roads. He has measured out the perimeter
dimensions and brought in all the materials. Now what court in this country is going to order the reversal of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of work?

He says,
Once you sink that first stake, they’ll never make you pull it up.

Richard Maurice Bucke is standing on a railway platform on a crisp, clear morning in 1891. He is waiting for Walt Whitman. What he sees is the hustle and bustle of people
waving through the polluted air with hands and pocket books. Other passengers climb aboard the train for the beginning of their journey but this moment marks the beginning of the end of
Bucke’s, for he and Walt will part company when they reach New York City.

In his hand Bucke is holding a notebook in which he will write another biography of Walt. Thinking of the original biography now, it seems inadequately slim and out of date. He could write five
or six more volumes about his friend.

Bucke first encountered
Leaves of Grass
when he heard it being read at a party. Afterwards he felt a series of impressions held together like beads on a string. It was no longer the
real world he knew but the world left behind in the wake of poetic revelation. Bucke rested in a valley between exact reality and poetic truth, for suddenly he possessed the words but not the man.
Bucke wanted the man. He found him eventually in his home in Camden. He spoke with Walt at length about his poetry. Bucke has been trying to describe his friend ever since, but the more Bucke
writes the more he finds he cannot prove him. He cannot set him on the page, pin him down, pin him to the ground. Walt is magnificent. Bucke remembers riding home from the party and experiencing a
feeling of light and fire. He felt the world fall down. This feeling has remained. It is not easy to live with the sudden knowledge of possibility, to feel it in the blood, hot and terrible.

Bucke moves to the centre of the platform. Beyond the railway the horizon is a shimmering line. Porters throw bags on and off the train. What Bucke is seeing are the definite actions of
strangers about to form new lives, perhaps he is also. He is ready. He is waiting. But Walt is always late.

Walt is watching a porter leaning against a stack of trunks. It is as if the trunks are an extension of his body; they are as tall and as solid as he is. This man is lost in a
dream. He hears no noise, no hiss of steam, no voices. These trunks will eventually be separated and restacked within the carriage and this man will be left upon the platform. Walt will sit within
the train and the train itself will depart. Perhaps he will see this man from inside the train, waiting on the platform as the train moves on.

His friend Bucke is writing another biography. It will be another souvenir of Walt’s life. Walt wants this great book to be written. It will help Walt remember the places he’s
been.

He was born on Long Island. He often stood on the shores there and felt the great spray of ocean spatter his face. He walked across the sand and sat down in the beach grass. This was where he
read his books. He explored the coves and beaches. He found rare shells and milkstones there. He kept them all as souvenirs of the place he loved most.

The first ships landed at Long Island. Sailors pinned their shaky steps onto its golden shores and headed west to Brooklyn. Brooklyn was lush and hilly then with wild open space and undulating
vistas. What the men saw was possibility. They realized they could use the land. They looked at Manhattan and they said, No one lives there. It is too hard to live there. It is difficult to get to.
Nothing will ever grow there. Brooklyn was where the crops were grown. Brooklyn was where the seeds were sown. Brooklyn was soft and penetrable. Grass grew. Men built houses, churches, beaches,
ports and piers. This is where Walt is from, from Long Island and from Brooklyn. Walt is going home to that hilly, fertile place.

Patti and Robert drag a mattress back to their apartment in Brooklyn and scrub it with a scrubbing brush and bicarbonate of soda. Robert picks out black sheets. He jokes that
Patti is his sacrifice. They set up altars and paint the walls.

They adopt a routine called ‘One Day–Two Day’. If one of them is down the other has to be up. This is the only way they can survive. It is a great
responsibility. The presence of one makes the other feel whole.

One day Robert goes to a gallery and Patti stays home. The next day Patti goes to a gallery and Robert stays home. They describe to one another what they saw. Patti is better
at this than Robert. Often, Robert spends so long getting dressed up that by the time he arrives at the gallery the building has closed.

The best artworks Patti makes are the gifts she gives to Robert. She makes Robert an advent calendar. Behind every door is a picture of her.

Patti once stole an encyclopaedia from the local store in her hometown. She stuffed it under her shirt, but the fucking thing was huge.

Show us what you have there, miss.

She pulled the book out from beneath her clothes.

This all you got?

What else is there? she said.

Patti tells Robert many stories. He doesn’t know if they’re real or not.

Patti gets a job in a bookstore so Robert can work. Robert works all day and waits for Patti to come home. He lays out all of his pieces so that she can see what he has
done.

Patti has a faster metabolism than Robert. He can go for days without eating but she is close to collapse by lunchtime if she has had nothing to eat. Robert loves chocolate
milk, but it is expensive. She wants to point to her skinny body and say, You have done this, Robert, you and those fucking milkshakes.

Robert heads to 42nd Street for a hot dog – gone in two mouthfuls. He talks to the guys on the street. No money for dinner but he likes chocolate milk. Gone are the days
he used to know. Here is something else. Street life.

Robert and Patti move into a room at the Allerton Hotel on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in 1969. Robert is shivering with fever on a mattress. Patti is mopping his brow. She sits
beside him all night as he sleeps. The morning comes slow and grey. She hears the hotel manager outside the door. He hammers on the door but she doesn’t answer. She holds her hand over
Robert’s mouth. She opens the window and looks out. She sits Robert up and dresses him. She hoists him up against her shoulder. She pushes him onto the fire escape. She looks back to see if
she can carry anything else. There are too many things but not enough time. She pins a few paintings under her arm and follows Robert. On the sidewalk she hails a cab.
Take us to the Chelsea, she
says.

Robert is slumped in the reception of the Chelsea Hotel. Patti is talking to the man behind the desk. She flattens her pictures out and points to what they are: art, the
future, what they will one day be.

Robert is sitting in his room in the Chelsea. He is threading beads and charms onto leather bands. He is making one of the first necklaces that he will try to sell. Laid out
upon the floor is all of his and Patti’s work. Art. It lies all around him, in this room and in every other room of the Chelsea. It seems the whole world is made up of art.

Robert adorns himself in necklaces. They are made of feathers, skulls and plastic beads. He calls them Fetish Necklaces. They remind him of the rosary. People are praying all
the time in the Chelsea. They talk to themselves as they walk down the corridors. They sleep at night with their bedroom doors open. Voices echo through the hallways. The skylight over the
staircase lets the sunlight and night light in. Robert clutches the beads and prays for success.

Robert hustles on the street with a friend to make some money. It’s just a way to help pay the rent. He asks his friend how he knows he’s not gay.
Because however cute the guy is, his friend says, I always ask for money. What the men ask Robert to do is kids’ stuff, anyway. And he needs the opportunity to express himself. The street is the perfect
place for this. These experiences are helping him to define who he is.

The artist Sandy Daley gives Robert a camera. Sandy says he should be taking his own photographs. Robert thinks this will make his work more authentic. This way he can position
his subjects however he wants.

The photography curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, John McKendry, likes Robert’s art very much. He thinks it shows a strong classical lineage. Robert’s male
nudes remind John of the work of Thomas Eakins, the nineteenth-century artist who painted and photographed young men, showing them as beautiful objects to be admired. John McKendry befriends Robert
Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. He wants to find ways to help them both. He gives Robert a camera. If there is ever a problem they can always count on him.

Robert will say later that he was young and naive at the Chelsea. He will say that he was standing on the edge of an art scene. He is standing on the edge but he is also
crammed into the middle, crammed into the small room that he shares with Patti and crammed into the city. An artist is influenced by the people around him. He must learn from others how to become a
success. You have to be part of a scene to do that.

There is a steakhouse on 18th Street where all the artists go called Max’s Kansas City. Robert and Patti are hanging outside the joint.

We just have to walk in with our heads held high, says Patti.

She takes Robert by the hand and pulls him in. The din is extraordinary. The booths are full, jukebox music, shots of whisky lined along the bar, men and women speaking loudly together, thick
tobacco smoke, the smell of chargrilled meat hanging in the air. Everybody here is very young. There are groupie girls with fur coats and fake eyelashes, drugged up to the ceiling, they fawn and
lean, asleep. They float. Everybody is looking at everybody.