Got up and went down to the kitchen and ate the turkey that Nena and Aurora had cooked. I was going to call Dr. Karen but I couldn't face being tortured with collagen needles. I didn't even call to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving.
So I'm at the office and the phone rings and it's Geri Miller calling from the women's shelter and she goes back and forth from "You scumbag!" to being sweet. And she's screaming in the background calling some policeman "You nigger!" and I could hear him getting mad and then later she's screaming at this social worker, "You black lesbian nigger, get away from me!" And she's saying that Mario Cuomo is her father--the other day she called and said Muhammad Ali was--and then she knows everything--like she knew the cover I did of Cuomo for Manhattan, inc. magazine. And she's saying, "he has a birthmark there and I have a birthmark there, so he's my father!" It's like talking to Crazy Matty. And they both have all this energy. She said, "When you saw me on the street I was working in real estate for Alice Mason." That's exactly what she said. And I have a funny feeling she's a young senile person. After seeing these Donahue shows. Because she says they say it's schizophrenia, but I don't think so. A Jewish girl who came from New Jersey--in her Trash days she was our most sensible superstar--then in the seventies she suddenly got crazy. One day she was very down to earth, worrying about her topless dancing career, and then the next week she showed up barefoot at 860, saying that the Mafia gave her LSD because she knew too much! From working in all those topless bars they own on 45th Street, I guess.
And so she's calling from shelters and the odd thing is, she remembers all these details of things that happened to her way in the past. Like she brought up when she had sex with Eric de Rothschild in the sixties and she said that after they had sex he called up Jane Holzer to go for a walk in the park, and she said, "Why did he have to call up Jane Holzer--whey didn't he just take me for a walk?" I mean, every detail. Does that mean nothing's happened in her life since then?
Oh, and more sixties updates: My sixty-year-old cousin called and she was in town with her son and said they wanted to come and see the office, so they came down. And her son is the one who knew Ondine in Pittsburgh. He once took the film courses that Ondine was (laughs) giving there, and he told me that Ondine is now selling hot dogs at Madison Square Garden. I'm serious. You know, Ondine "rented" all those films from us and then never returned them. Loves of Ondine, Chelsea Girls. And there was a story about Gerard Malanga in New York, about him being the new archivist for the Parks Department and for some reason Vincent was upset that Gerard was saying he was thirty-eight. I took a picture of Gerard the other week, though, and he does look great. But how old is he really? About forty-two or forty-three? And oh, God, on my Blue Cross I just scribble and make it up all the time and then I get these things that say my birthday is August 28, 1982, so if I have an accident I probably won't get (laughs) my money.
I'm starting to think that crystals don't work. Because look what's happened lately when they're supposed to be protecting me--my rug has cancer from the moths, I stepped on a beautiful old plastic ring and crushed it, and I was assaulted at the book signing. But I've got to believe in something, so I'll continue with the crystals. because things could always be worse.
Warhol, A. (1989). The Andy Warhol Diaries (P. Hackett, Ed.). Pg. 696-697. New York: Warner Books.