Other artists have always felt a rare intensity and love for Patti Smith. In Just Kids, her compelling and beautiful memoir, she lays out her life and her lifelong friendship and love affair with Robert Mapplethorpe. They were lovers, brother and sister, and best friends. A mystical trust bound them from the time they met in 1967 until Robert died of AIDS in 1989.
The title comes from an older woman who asked her husband to take Patti and Robert’s picture because they looked like artists. The husband replied that they were “just kids.”
Patti Smith grew up in a loving family. At nineteen, she had a baby with a boy who didn’t mean much to her. She gave the baby up to a good family and moved to New York, where she lived on the streets. At Brentano’s bookstore, she first laid eyes on Robert Mapplethorpe. Later, out of the blue, he appeared on the street to rescue her from an uncomfortable dinner date she had accepted because she was starving. It turned out they were both homeless, and from that moment on, as she says many times, they took care of each other.
One small episode captures them in these years. They saw a movie poster for Bonnie and Clyde, and Robert admired the tagline: “They’re young. They’re in love. They rob banks.”
They saved enough for an apartment, which they decorated with found objects and Robert’s paintings. Patti was the breadwinner throughout their relationship; Robert couldn’t hold a regular job.
The relationship that had seemed so beautiful began to unravel. Mapplethorpe turned strange and withdrew. Patti got a job at Scribner’s and decided to break up with him. He tried to win her back and threatened that if she didn’t return, he would start sleeping with men. It was over.
Patti traveled to Paris and visited the graves of Rimbaud and Jim Morrison. Robert went to San Francisco and came back with a boyfriend. They remained close friends, and eventually they renewed their relationship and got back together.
Mapplethorpe came from a family with an authoritarian father, and I trace many of his issues to that relationship. He became immersed in the gay underground, including S&M.
They hit rock bottom when Robert became very sick with a terrible case of gonorrhea. They lived in a run-down hotel for junkies and had to sneak out because they couldn’t pay the bill. Even there, she found beauty and friendship.
The most disturbing parts, the ones that might make you wince, involve Robert’s obsession with dark or evil forces. He seemed to be searching for, or at least open to, a Faustian pact.
Life changed when they moved into the Chelsea Hotel, where they met other artists, including William Burroughs, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Robert Rauschenberg, Allen Ginsberg, and others. They hung out at Max’s Kansas City with members of Warhol’s Factory. Robert believed that if he could meet Andy Warhol, Warhol would see him as an equal.
To make money, Robert, like Jim Carroll, hustled his body to men. Robert didn’t know whether he did it for money or for pleasure.
Their romance could not survive Robert’s obvious preference, but they remained each other’s “artist and muse” as their careers began to blossom.
One of the many treasures of Just Kids by Patti Smith is its intimacy. It’s a breathtaking story of two special people in the iconic Manhattan of the ’60s and ’70s.
See Just Kids by Patti Smith on Audiobooks, Amazon/Audible, and Bookstores who are not Amazon.
You might also enjoy Of Walking in Ice by Werner Herzog. Read Edmund Wilson’s review of Just Kids on The Guardian.
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