Just Kids

I really enjoyed Just Kids by Patti Smith (thanks to Jillian!), which is full of vivid anecdotes, gritty wisdom and the story of her very close relationship/lifelong friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I’d call it a rags-to-richness story…richness, less in the sense of wealth than in the variety of her experiences, her achievements and the astonishing number of accomplished, interesting people she met or became friends with.  In all of this, she remained an unusually simple and fresh person.  Here’s a small but surprising example of her openness (although taken from M Train, rather than Just Kids):

September was ending and already cold. I was heading up Sixth Avenue and stopped to buy a new watch cap from a street vendor.  As I pulled it on an old man approached me.  His blue eyes burned and his hair was white as snow.  I noticed that his wool gloves were unraveling and his left hand was bandaged.

 --Give me the money you have in your pocket, he said.

  Either I am being tested, I thought, or I have wandered into the opening of a modern fairy tale.  I had a twenty and three singles, which I placed in his hand.

 --Good, he said after a moment, and then returned the twenty.

  I thanked him and continued on, more buoyant than before.

Patti’s  openness unlocked paths that remain invisible to more conventional souls (me).  Like, she goes to a Holy Modal Rounders concert and becomes interested in the drummer, Slim Shadow:: “..and as he slammed the drums, I thought, This guy truly embodies the heart and soul of rock and roll. He had beauty, energy, and animal magnetism.”  She decides to write an article about him for the rock magazine Crawdaddy, and, over the autumn months, they start seeing each other, as friends.  As winter comes, the impoverished Patti becomes anemic and her doctor advises her:

…to have red meat and drink porter, advice given to Baudelaire when he trudged through a winter in Brussels sick and alone.  I was a bit more resourceful than poor Baudelaire.  I donned an old plaid coat with deep pockets and lifted two small steaks from Gristede’s, planning to fry them in my grandmother’s cast-iron pan over my hot plate.  I was surprised to run into Slim on the street and we took our first non-nocturnal walk.  Worrying the meat would go bad, I finally had to admit to him I had two raw steaks in my pocket.  He looked at me, trying to detect if I was telling the truth, then slid his hand in my pocket and pulled a steak out in the middle of Seventh Avenue.  He shook his head in mock astonishment, saying “Okay, sugar, let’s eat.”

  We went upstairs and I fired up the hot plate.  We ate the steaks out of the pan.

Slim becomes concerned about Patti’s health and takes her for a lavish lobster dinner at Max’s Kansas City.  Patti begins to worry that this “handsome hillbilly might not have the money to pay the check.”  But a stunned friend of Patti’s sees her with Slim and, motioning her to meet in the ladies’ room, saying “Honey, you don’t know who he is?”  She soon informs her that “Slim” is Sam Shepard: “he’s the biggest playwright off-Broadway. He had a play at Lincoln Center.  He won five Obies!”

The heart of the book, though, is the story of the remarkable friendship/partnership between Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe, a friendship that seemed fated from the beginning.  For many years, they lived together, collaborated on art projects, and were true friends until Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS.  Early in the book, Patti says

We headed home holding hands.  For a moment I dropped back to watch him walk.  His sailor’s gait always touched me.  I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart.

Just Kids is Smith’s tribute to Mapplethorpe and their friendship and it’s funny, fascinating, and deeply touching.

NB:  9-19-2019 NY Times just ran a piece on Patti Smith