Everyone is Watching (8 page)

When Sam looks at the photograph he feels the simple joy of witnessing something beautiful. These boys remain fixed. They won’t swim away. They will never grow old.

The other photographs depict the American wilderness – Niagara Falls, the Nevada desert, the beginnings of a Western railroad, working-class portraits, medical experiments, industrial
scenes. The spectacle of a hippopotamus stuck behind bars with children looking on, geese flying low over an ocean, Lewis Carroll’s
Girl on Sofa
, coy and perverse in the way she
bends her knee and looks at the camera, knowing much more than she should. The madness of Boulogne’s
Fright Mixed with Pain, Torture
– the woman’s face seized with
electrical pulses,
President Lincoln on the battlefield of Antietam
,
Fifth Avenue at Rush Hour
.

And here are Robert’s photographs:

Jim and Tom, Sausalito, 1977
, the leather-clad gimp pissing into another man’s mouth, the arch of urine, suspended in mid-air, the warm, fleshy mouth, which eternally holds the
piss, dark shadows, sharp against a sun-bleached wall, a streak of sunlight reflecting off leather, the men standing and kneeling, suspended. And Robert’s
Tulips, New York, 1977
,
freshly cut, positioned in a vase, straight and true, except one, drooping off to the side.

Sam doesn’t know why he collects the way he does.
He says that an obsession – like any sort of love – is blinding.

The camera observes and records passively, without intrusion, and yet it makes an argument by organizing subjects into a two-dimensional plane within which Sam is made to understand.

Robert says that when he takes a photograph or when he has sex he disappears. Like when you are the artist or when you are the art itself, the focal point of everything, you cease to exist.

Sam looks for Robert in the tulip heads, the erect stalks, the black background, but there is only his own reflection in the glass.

When Sam’s mother dies, Robert is away in London. Sam sits beside her bed and takes her photograph. He photographs her face and her hands. He photographs the bed frame
and the bedspread. He photographs the bedside table, her reading glasses, water glass, a vase containing roses. He photographs the view from her window and the way the curtains are tied. He
photographs the paintings on the wall, the dressing gown hanging on the door, her slippers under the bed. The pictures will preserve a silence that doesn’t exist in reality, for there is
noise coming in through the open window – traffic, glass bottles being dumped upon the sidewalk. He can hear his own heart beating and he can feel a nervous twitch in his knee that pauses
only when he stops to take a photograph. He takes more pictures. He thinks, If I can’t understand this thing for what it is, I’ll understand it in pieces. Then he thinks, Now that she
is dead, Robert will have to come home for the funeral.

Sam sets up the studio – white walls, bright lights: these photographs will be in colour. Patti, in a good mood, sits on the floor, tosses the feather boa over her
shoulder and picks up the kitten. She laughs at Sam, who is watching her. She repositions her hat and holds up the kitten. She looks at the camera and smiles. Sam takes her picture.

When Robert finds out he is very, very angry. He yells at Sam, Don’t you know who we are?
I AM THE ARTIST AND YOU ARE THE COLLECTOR! Sam and Patti feel very guilty. All
the pictures belong to Robert, the master of their universe.

Robert decorates his Bond Street studio. He paints the walls and floorboards black, creates a giant cage out of chicken wire, places his bed in the centre. He works how he
lives. This building used to house a factory but now it is filled with art. It is all about money, art, love and rent, all things are up for exchange – this is something Sam always says to
Robert – remember who pays your rent.

Robert doesn’t always remember. He telephones Sam and lists all of the men he has been with and all of the places he has gone. He lists his collection of physical
symptoms – tiredness, back pain, groin strain, lice, rashes, swellings. As he speaks, Sam imagines him twirling the phone cord around his fingers like a debutante and thinks, That’s me
being wrapped around his little finger.

Jim Nelson arrives in the overnight delivery (a gift from Robert, who is in San Francisco). He is slim, attractive and new to New York. Sam buys himself a home on Long Island.
At weekends and in between shows Sam and Jim rest up here and feel very grand. One thing Jim wants to do is grow wild roses. Sam doesn’t mind, except, when he thinks about the roses, he
thinks about Robert’s photographs of flowers. Wherever Jim decides to try to plant the roses they just don’t grow. He tries them in a sunny spot and then a shady spot. He tries them by
the perimeter wall and by the exterior wall of the house. He plants them too close to the woodland and wild deer eat the bushes before anything can grow. All the time they are in Manhattan, Jim can
only think of the roses. He talks about them all the time to Sam. Jim is a hairdresser by trade. He has spent his adult life cutting things back but now the roses won’t grow.

When Sam’s photography collection is complete he sells it to the Getty Museum for five million dollars. His critics say that this is self-sabotage. They say it is the
action of a man who wants to build something up until he loves it so much he cannot help but despise it. They say the collection represents him, and he is the thing he has come to despise.

Sam starts to collect American silver. He raids the salerooms and the auction rooms. He drags it all back to his place in black plastic sacks. He stands on the Long Island
beach and scours the sand for remains of ancient shipwrecks, shoes off, wading through the soft sand, feeling for shards of silver with his bare feet. He finds pottery shards and polishes them. He
commissions an artist to make them into jewellery. He does not stop looking until it is night time, and, even then, once he is back inside the house, he is looking out at the beach imagining the
silver.

His critics say that this collecting of silver is a sign of early dementia – a Polish émigré wanting to possess more silverware than the Boston museum.
Others say this is just an example of his capacity to love.

Robert comes to visit Sam in hospital but he cannot look at Sam. Sam is dying. He is no longer beautiful. AIDS has eaten away his body. His is thin and grey. His eyes are
sunken. He has become an ancient, empty vessel. Sam is finding it hard to speak but he manages to say to Patti:
If you want any of my money be nice to Robert because I’m giving him
everything.

Sam’s body is placed in the Wagstaff family crypt. He was a collector of art for so long and then he was the subject of art, and then he was the subject of history.

Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph of Sam Wagstaff shows him staring defiantly into the distance. His neck muscles are taut. The area around his head is illuminated with
light like a halo, and that makes the rest of his figure appear more definite. He is very beautiful. He has a strong jaw and forehead. He is solid and weighty, like a statue or a monument.

Edmund White follows the assistant down the carpeted corridor of the Midtown office tower. The building is a dreary sequence of office cubicles, walls covered in an array of
personal effects: family photos, holiday photos, notes and calendars, sheets of white paper. Midtown and the Empire State Building are visible through exterior windows. They look grave and
unmanageably high. Manuscripts reflect the towers outside, piled high on every desk, higher than the workers sitting there who are doubled over the print, shoulders hunched, the murmur of voices,
telephone trills, stacks of cardboard boxes, taller than Edmund.

Edmund’s editor shakes him by the hand. He could be in his twenties, thirties or forties. He has a universally appropriate smile. He is always pleased to see Edmund White. His handshake is
firm and vigorous. Edmund is asked to sit in his office. An assistant hands Edmund a cup of coffee for which he has not asked.

Good to be back on track, hey, Ed? says his editor. We just love what you’re doing with the book. He pats the manuscript on the desk.

Edmund knows he won’t use any of those scenes. He has been trying to write about the Painted Boy, an update to the original story. It is supposed to be about the Painted Boy in modern
times. It’s not as straightforward as he originally thought. Every time he describes the boy he thinks of himself. He no longer wants to write about himself. He wants to think about the
future. But Edmund feels very tired. He wants to write about New York. He cannot tell his editor this.

Edmund wipes his brow with the back of his hand. The coffee they have given him is very pale.

The assistant leans over and places her hand on Edmund’s arm.

You must be very tired, she says.

Her fingers are very cold. She can’t be more than twenty-two.

The editor taps the end of his pencil against the edge of his desk.

You seem concerned, Edmund, he says. What’s wrong? Why not take the afternoon off. Go see friends. Go have some fun.

Edmund remembers the Hudson River piers where he loved strangers in the dark. Unemployment was high in the city then. On sunny days men sat outside and dangled their legs above
the Hudson. They bathed in the sun. They lay out.

Returning to what is now the Hudson River Park, the space he finds is a long strip of manicured lawn. Cycle lanes stretch north and south. Joggers speed past. Their elasticated clothing is a
multi-coloured blur. Edmund is standing with his back to the expressway. He is stuck between the rush of vehicular traffic and speeding exercisers. He is waiting for his moment to cross.

He does not find the structures he remembers. He is looking at the high-rise shore of New Jersey but he remembers danger, abandonment and the exchange of love. He remembers the rude dark. In the
summer, when the sun was bright, it seemed a greater leap of faith to step foot inside those piers, for one step took you into blackness. Knife-sharp walls of light streamed in through injured
ceilings. He loved the glory holes, the contextless dicks suspended in the wall. He loved to get onto his knees.

He remembers the backwards nature of time when the moon was the noontime sun and walks were midday strolls in the dead of night.

His favourite places were ordinary restrooms, alleyways, trucks, parks, subway stations. The men who used these places were ordinary people. He chose hustlers who were physically imperfect. To
go with an Adonis just wasn’t realistic. There had to be an element of reality about it. It couldn’t be pure fantasy. It had to be authentic. A worn, imperfect body was a body with a
past. It was into the grooves of history that he placed his desires.

He used to wait in the piers when it was dark. He was frightened. But that was the point – you didn’t know what would happen. There had been murders, muggings, people took advantage,
but this made Edmund feel alive. He waited in the dark. He could hear the lapping of the river against the posts, the repetitive slap of waves rebounding off passing ships.

He remembers the vast internal space, the piers occupied by them. The piers were dilapidated, sure, but they were used.

After a while he’d see somebody. They’d both be a little suspicious. Maybe he’d like the look of him and maybe he wouldn’t, but in the end there was always someone.
Edmund would find a place – perhaps he’d do it right there in the middle of the cavernous shell where their voices echoed and other men crowded to see. Or maybe they’d go off and
find somewhere private. Or if it was sunny, perhaps they’d go out onto the deck and find a warm spot and do it there, outside, on the boardwalk, with only the Hudson beside them and the
passing ships. It was exciting, not knowing how the story would end.

And afterwards they would maybe share a smoke or go their separate ways, or else Edmund would hang around and watch the boats go by. Edmund could never leave. He had to see what the next ten
minutes would bring.

Edmund walks to the Chelsea Piers. These are a series of industrial units containing sports facilities and conference spaces. Edmund White could enter now and play ice hockey.
He could play soccer or ten-pin bowling. He could play basketball. He could do all manner of things that require the adding up of numbers, points, watching scores accumulate, lit beneath
artificially brilliant light, move his body to the limits of physical endurance. He could become a physical creature again. He could count the seconds, time, as he used to. He could run on a
treadmill or ride a stationary bike. But what would be the point of this? Why run on a machine when you can fuck?

In 1939, Moses tries to build a bridge across New York Bay, connecting the Battery with Brooklyn.

This bridge will cross infamous water. It will be more magnificent than Brooklyn Bridge. As a consequence the city will lose Battery Park, but this is a necessary sacrifice.

But Moses, although powerful, is not God. He cannot just click his fingers and have his own way. It seems that the public love Battery Park and they are willing to fight for
it. They love seeing the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island. Those who work in the offices on Wall Street like a calm place to stretch their legs. The workers in the fish markets of South
Street come here to get out of the crowds, throw a line in and wait for a catch. The idea of an imposing structure like a bridge cutting across the bay is obscene. It is as if they can all remember
sailing into New York on immigrant ships, fresh from Ellis Island, the famous New York skyline before them. To have a bridge here blocking the view of the city is more grotesque than anyone can
bear. To destroy Battery Park and Castles Clinton where the great singer Jenny Lind once sang!

Moses is ordered to build a tunnel instead. But a tunnel to Moses is just a hole in the ground. There is no point in building something no one can see.

He thinks, If they want a tunnel then that’s what they’ll get. But they’ll get other things besides.