Everyone is Watching (22 page)

I’m exhausted. It’s not even two o’clock.

We’ll rest a moment, then we’ll go on.

They watch the people walking by.

What do you want to do now?

See something else.

Something else?

I feel like a kid.

They follow the crowd to the time capsule, a sleek rocket-shaped container positioned on a stage.

They read in the programme the list of items that will be placed in the capsule: a Polaroid camera, an electric toothbrush, antibiotics, credit cards, a ballpoint pen, a bikini, a Beatles
record.

Hmm, the friend says.

As the time capsule descends into the earth, the friend notices a woman ripping up the flowers from the flowerbeds beside her and shoving them into her handbag. Then she sees a man pull a poster
from an advertising board. A woman runs out of a store holding a stack of chairs.

What’s going on? she says to her friend.

Everyone wants a souvenir. It’s the last day of the fair, she says.

Robert Mapplethorpe is cremated, segmented and organized – a vial for Patti, a box for his family.

Robert’s memorial service is held in Queens. The people who come to it – the people who knew him from Manhattan – can’t believe this is where he was
born – post-war suburbia, wide, clean streets.

Edmund opens the book and dials the number. He requests a man who looks like T – tall, blond, athletic, young. He goes into the bathroom and washes his face. As the steam
fogs the mirror he thinks about the steam engines of the elevated railway and the things he has seen. He thinks of Stephen Crane walking through New York at the turn of the twentieth century. He
goes and stands at the living-room window. He looks down at the people on the street. There is a knock on the door.

Standing in the hallway is a young man of nineteen, maybe twenty. He must have been born in the nineteen-nineties. Edmund lays the money out on the table as the man undresses.

Where? says the man.

Here is OK.

The man takes Edmund’s hand.

Feel this, the man says.

Edmund closes his eyes. This is the whole world: the city, skyscrapers and the hot street, this room, where love is happening.

The World’s Fair closes sooner than expected. On its last day, the public raid it, rip the daffodils out from the flowerbeds, rip the shelves out from the gift store, the
cushions from cafeteria seats, the auditorium seats, ornaments, door handles, table tops. They are stripping the fair.

They swarm around Moses. Suddenly there is no room for him on the path. He takes a step sideways onto the grass. These ungrateful people. He built them a fair. He built them a city. He dedicated
his life to them.

He remembers the burning effigy that the public carried through the Bronx after he tore their houses down. How he had laughed then. How funny it had seemed. But standing here, watching the
looting, he is disturbed by the violence.

Bucke and Whitman are coming into the city.

Lights flicker in the windows. The silhouettes of the buildings, the blackness of the walls, the near black of the sky. Broadway, that great river, flowing upstream. Here are the people of the
city – the men and women, the businessmen and those without jobs, the homeless and the traders of the city, the carts and the trolleys, the horses.

They sell so many Belgian waffles at the waffle stand that it is considered the most popular stand of the whole 1964–65 World’s Fair. Coming here each day this
summer, eating waffles every day for lunch as he takes a break from the games of chance, Robert Mapplethorpe is a beautiful young man. He stands in the Belgian Village beside the rotating carousel
and eats the waffle from a cardboard holder, licking the sugar from his fingers, lighting a cigarette when he’s done. The jackets and scarves of those on the carousel trail behind them. The
smiles of the public are only moments and then they are gone. Robert flicks the butt away and wanders through the square towards the church. He stands a moment in the sun, thinking about which way
to go. He continues into the crowd. So beautiful. I wonder what he will become.

Floral Park was a good place to come from
From the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation website –
http://www.mapplethorpe.org/biography/ – where the full quote is: ‘Of his childhood he said, “I come from suburban America. It was a very safe environment and it was a good
place to come from in that it was a good place to leave.” ’

Once you sink that first stake
Robert A. Caro,
The Power Broker
, p. 218.

Take us to the Chelsea
Patti Smith,
Just Kids
, p. 88. (Original dialogue reads, ‘ “Chelsea Hotel,” I told the
driver . . .’)

Because however cute the guy is
Patricia Morrisroe,
Mapplethorpe: A Biography,
p. 83. (Original dialogue reads, ‘No matter
how beautiful the guy was, I always asked for the money.’)

Edmund has called this book
Edmund White,
Hotel de Dream
, p. 223. (Exact quote is, ‘This novel is my fantasia on real
themes provided by history.’)

You should meet me, I’m cute
Edmund White,
My Lives
, p. 222.

This exhibition is about pleasure
Sam Wagstaff,
A Book of Photographs From the Collection of Sam Wagstaff,
foreword.
(Original text reads, ‘This book is about pleasure, the pleasure of looking and the pleasure of seeing, like watching people dancing through an open window. They seem a little mad at
first, until you realize they hear the song that you are watching.’)

He says that an obsession
Patricia Morrisroe,
Mapplethorpe: A Biography,
p. 137. (‘An obsession – like any sort of
love – is blinding.’)

I AM THE ARTIST
Ibid, p. 135. (‘You’re the collector,’ he reminded him. ‘
I’m
the
artist.’)

You know, you should get a tattoo
Film,
Robert Mapplethorpe with Peter Van de Klashorst
, April 1984.

I always say you can draw any kind of picture
and
You can’t make an omelette
Robert A. Caro,
The Power Broker,
p. 849. (‘You can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra or Brasilia, but when you operate in
an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax.’)

You mean, besides a waste of time?
Film,
Mr Mackridge Interviews Mr Moses,
1963 (New York Public Library, New York World’s Fair
1964–65 Corporation Records. Original dialogue: “What do you call relaxation?” “You mean do I say it’s a waste of time?”).

There are a number of things I must insist on
Based on Hard Times Tour, Tenement Museum, New York City.

What was once a run-down
PBS Documentary,
The World That Moses Built
, 1989.

What do I believe?
CBS documentary,
The Man Who Built New York
, 1963.

I think the urn is Persian
and
They look more like pieces of shell
Film, Steven Sebring,
Dream of Life
, 2008.

What message do people have
Real speech from film of Whitney Opening, 1988, held at the Getty Research Institute.

Has there been much criticism, Commissioner?
Dialogue from documentary
, New York New York: The Fair Face of Robert Moses
, 1964 (NYPL
World’s Fair 1964–65 archives).

Girls get confused over the numbers
Sound recording,
Press Conference on Arterials
, 1963 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65
archives).

Are you satisfied with dedicating your life to building?
Dialogue from documentary
, New York New York: The Fair Face of Robert Moses
,
1964 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65 archives).

How have you risen above your critics?
Ibid.

I’m getting very friendly with the cashier
Ibid.

This Fair is dedicated to man’s achievement
Sound recording,
Unisphere Presentation,
1964 (NYPL World’s Fair 1964–65
archives).

B
OOKS

R
OBERT
M
APPLETHORPE

Robert Mapplethorpe: A Biography
, Macmillan, London, 1995 – Patricia Morrisroe

Just Kids
, Bloomsbury, London, 2010 – Patti Smith

Mapplethorpe: Assault With a Deadly Camera
, Hastings House, Mamaroneck, NY, 1994 – Jack Fritscher

The Basketball Diaries
, Penguin, London, 1995 – Jim Carroll

Forced Entries
, Penguin, London, 1987 – Jim Carroll

E
DMUND
W
HITE

City Boy
, Bloomsbury, London, 2009 – Edmund White

My Lives
, Bloomsbury, London, 2005 – EW

A Boy’s Own Story
, Picador, London, 1994 – EW

Forgetting Elena, and Nocturnes for the King of Naples
, Pan Books, London, 1984 – EW

The Farewell Symphony
, Vintage, London, 1998 – EW

Hotel de Dream
, Bloomsbury, London, 2007 – EW

The Burning Library
, Chatto & Windus, London, 1994 – EW

The New Joy of Gay Sex
, GMP Publishers, London, 1993 – EW, Charles Silverstein and Felice Picano

R
OBERT
M
OSES

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
, Knopf, New York, 1974 – Robert A. Caro

Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York
, W. W. Norton, New York, 2008 – Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson

The Death and Life of Great American Cities
, Vintage, London, 1993 – Jane Jacobs

Theory and Practice in Politics
, Godkin Lectures, Cambridge, Mass., 1940 – Robert Moses

Working For the People: Promise and Performance in Public Service
, Harper, 1956 – Robert Moses

W
ALT
W
HITMAN

Leaves of Grass
, Library of America, 2011 – Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman
, David McKay, Philadelphia, 1883 (facsimile edition by BiblioLife) – Richard Maurice Bucke

Man’s Moral Nature: An Essay
, Trübner, London, 1879 – RMB

Cosmic Consciousness
, Dover Publications, Mineola, New York, 2009 (originally published by E. P. Dutton, Inc., New York, 1929) – RMB

Walt Whitman: A Song of Himself
, University of California Press, 1999 – Jerome Loving

Specimen Days In America
, The Folio Society, London, 1979 – Walt Whitman

The Portable Whitman
, Penguin, 1977 – ed. Mark Van Doren

A
RT
B
OOKS

Polaroids: Mapplethorpe
, Prestel, Munich, 2007 – Sylvia Wolf

Altars
, Cape, London, 1995 – Robert Mapplethorpe and Edmund White

Pistils
, Jonathan Cape, London, 1996 – Robert Mapplethorpe

Flowers
, Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, 2014 – Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Lady, Lisa Lyon
, Blond & Briggs, London, 1983 – Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Chatwin

Robert Mapplethorpe
, Whitney Museum of American Art in ass. with New York Graphic Society Books, New York, 1988 – Richard Marshall, Ingrid Sischy, Richard Howard

Some Women
, Secker & Warburg, London, 1989 – Robert Mapplethorpe

Certain People: A Book of Portraits
, Twelve Trees Press, Pasadena, CA, 1985 – Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe
, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2006 – Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition
, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2004 – Germano Celant and Arkady Ippolitov

A Book of Photographs From the Collection of Sam Wagstaff
, Gray Press, Rochester, New York, 1978 – Sam Wagstaff

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
, Aperture, New York, 2012 – Nan Goldin

I’ll Be Your Mirror
, Whitney Museum of American Art & Scalo, New York, 1996 – Nan Goldin

Mixed Use Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the present
, MIT Press, London, 2010 – Douglas Crimp, Lynne Cooke, Kristin Poor

Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera
, Tate, London, 2010 – Sandra S. Philips

On the Museum’s Ruins
, MIT Press, London, 1993 – Douglas Crimp and Louise Lawler

Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics
, MIT Press, London, 1996 – Rosalyn Deutsche

Playing With the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe
, University of California Press, London, 1996 – Arthur Danto

Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation
, Routledge, London, 2000 – Nick Kaye

Soho: The Artist in the City
, University of Chicago Press, London, 1981 – Charles R. Simpson

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974–1984
, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2006 – various

Pornography or Art?
, Words and Pictures, Harrow, 1971 – Poul Gerhard

Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans
, Hill and Wang, New York, 1989 – Alan Trachtenberg

Inside the Studio: Two Decades of Talks with Artists in New York
, Independent Curators International, New York, 2004 – Judith Olch Richards