Electroboy (11 page)

At a dinner party at her apartment one night, my friend Lucy Lehrer from Wesleyan and her boyfriend, Dan, introduce Allison and me to her friends Lauren and Jonathan. Lauren works as a personal assistant to film director Jonathan Demme, and Jonathan, her boyfriend, works at
The New Yorker
. Allison and I are quite taken with them. Jonathan has angular features, intense green eyes, and light brown hair and looks like a character Norman Rockwell might have painted. Lauren has dark hair and dark eyes and looks like an Italian movie star. They met at college. They are sitting next to each other on a loveseat; Jonathan is drinking a beer and Lauren a glass of wine. When they stand up to say hello, we see that Jonathan must be six-feet-four. It’s a pretty small apartment, and we’re squeezed around a cocktail table. Jonathan and I make eye contact in reference to the spatial problem, and I realize that we share a similar sense of humor. Jonathan is fascinated by what I do. He can’t get over the fact that every plastic surgeon has a PR agent. “Dentists, too,” I tell him. That really makes him laugh. Lucy serves the quiche, which she proudly tells us she has made herself, and it looks delicious. We all start eating. “Lucy, you used a goddamn graham-cracker pie crust,” screams Lauren. We all start laughing. It’s a fun evening, and when we’re leaving we realize that we live on the same block as Lauren and Jonathan. We make plans to get together with them soon.

The PR business often takes me to the West Coast, mostly to Los Angeles. Driving on the freeway there, listening to the radio, makes me feel carefree and euphoric. I’m staying at expensive hotels racking up huge bills, paid for by the company, entertaining prospective clients and just enjoying myself for the first time in a long time. I’ve never felt better. The freedom of being on my own leads me to believe that I need more independence when I return
to New York and that my working conditions with my sister are much too tense. I try working on several client accounts on my own, but it appears that I’m trying to hide something. One day I’m sitting at my desk, which is right next to Nancy’s, talking on the phone to a client while I hear her backtracking on work that I have already done, talking to someone about the same client I spoke to them about the day before. I quickly end my conversation, and an explosive argument ensues between us. I scream at her, “You’re screwing everything up, you’re fucking up everything!” I throw everything on top of her desk onto the floor, grab her by her throat, and push her against the wall. She is shocked by my aggressive behavior and screams back at me, “Let go! Stop, stop!” The entire staff is watching. The fight is over in a couple of minutes, and we both realize that our relationship must be severed immediately. I rush out of the office within five minutes, ashamed of my abusive behavior but relieved that the business relationship has finally come to an end. My father comes in to meet with us at the Westside Diner to calm us down and try to reach some type of settlement, but he is unsuccessful. The next morning I pick up a copy of the
New York Post
at the newsstand. Nancy has made the feud public by leaking a story to “Page Six,” implying that she didn’t like the way I was handling the company finances and insinuating that I was dipping into the funds. I make a settlement with her without an attorney. I’m enraged by the publicity and vow not to speak to her for the foreseeable future.

I leave the company with only a handful of loyal clients, taking as many as I can from my sister. The next day I start scrambling for more, going back to old clients, scraping new ones from any place I can find them, including the Yellow Pages. That night I see Allison, who is glad that I’ve finally stopped working with my sister and thinks that I’ve made a great decision to work independently. She’s extremely encouraging and tells me I’ll have my business off the ground in no time. It’s exactly what I need to hear. A few days later she surprises me with the news that she’s ready to
move back in with me. I find it curious that this comes after I make a separation from Nancy. I’ve long been aware of Allison’s antipathy toward Nancy and her jealousy of our work relationship, but I’ve always ignored it. Still, I’m glad that she’s had a change of heart and am happy to have her live with me again.

But after a little while I get a strange sense that Allison doesn’t know how much time and effort I’m going to have to put into my new PR agency to maintain my old income. I’m concerned that she’ll resent the amount of time I devote to work. Already it’s beginning to feel like the undoing of a bad marriage.

July 15, 1988. New York
.

I
t’s so hot and humid outside that I’m tempted to call and cancel my 1:00
P.M.
appointment—I can’t deal with another day of this weather. I’ve already postponed my breakfast meeting with this big-shot fitness guru from L.A. because it was too hot out and I didn’t feel like schlepping all the way down to Soho to meet with an overenthusiastic set of hard abs for an egg-white omelette and dry toast. He’s going to meet me uptown for drinks later tonight. I have an appointment to interview the “nonartist” of the moment, a downtown artist named Mark Kostabi. I’ve already blown him off once, and I’ve got no excuse this time. Kostabi doesn’t actually create work with his own hands—he pays artists minimum wage to paint for him, and he just signs the work. He’s gaining lots of notoriety for this gimmick. It’s not exactly the most original idea. Andy Warhol did it with his Factory in the sixties. I’m going to submit an article on Kostabi for a gossip column for
7 Days
, a magazine in its prepublication phase. He’s already received some extremely negative publicity in the media for a comment he made about AIDS being a good thing for the art community. He’s also well known for his outrageous insults aimed at his collectors. “Anyone who buys a Kostabi is a fool,” he says. “Every time they buy a Kostabi, I spit in their faces.” He should be a real character.

I’ve been toying with the idea of working for
7 Days
in addition to my PR business. At the least it could be an interesting side gig, and at best it could lead me out of this mindless career of public
relations. It’s just so routine—flipping through my Rolodex all day long and talking on the phone pitching clients to editors and producers. I don’t know how much longer I can take it. It’s not the most intelligent work that I can find—anyone with half a brain and a whole lot of charm can do it. But I can’t complain about the money. Now all I can think about is getting to this interview on time. I hail a cab. The driver takes me down Broadway, and in my mind I start tallying my monthly client billing—$2,000, $4,000, $7,000, $9,000, $11,000, $13,000. Let’s see if I can get everybody to pay me on time. Sounds great, but my expenses are much higher this month. I don’t even know what I’m really spending so much money on: traveling (Los Angeles and San Francisco), restaurants (four or five nights a week), clothing (weekend trips to Barneys), artwork (just bought one more painting by Robert Combas in San Francisco). I can always use more clients—and more paintings. I’ll represent anybody. I’m not very picky. Anybody who wants to write a check or pay me cash makes a great client. Doctors and dentists with big practices are usually good for double the fee. Spiritual healers and astrologers are good prey, as are exercise gurus and nutritionists. Even a veterinarian who was referred to me this morning by my friend’s gynecologist will work. I’ll think of something to do with him. I’ll get him booked on
Sally Jessy
somehow. I can promote just about anybody. If these clients want exposure, I’ll get it for them. And even though I hate it, I do enjoy the adrenaline rush of being extremely successful in a competitive business—and the cash.

1:00
P.M
.

Kostabi’s studio, down near the Lincoln Tunnel, is up a steep flight of steps in a pretty run-down three-story building. The floor and walls are painted a glossy white, and lime green sixties modular furniture is scattered throughout the space. A shiny black baby grand piano sits in the far corner. I’m dressed in my summer PR uniform—khakis, a white button-down shirt, and black loafers without socks—and I’m quick to notice that not one person in the entire place is dressed even remotely like me. I’m sweating. I feel
ridiculously out of place. The receptionist greets me wearing an aqua plastic micromini with a matching vest and platform shoes. She’s very pretty, with a slight bluish tint to her black hair, and she asks me my name with a strange accent. Kind of a cross between British and Long Island. A double isle accent. She tells me that Mark is on the telephone to Europe but will be with me shortly. There’s an odd choice of seating—a chair in the shape of a hand and a hanging bubble seat. I decide to walk around the space. An assorted fun pack of people wanders around the studio. A haggard dyed-blond guy with a pale angular face and a roaming eye is carrying all kinds of camera equipment. Later I learn he is Mark’s younger brother, Indrek. He gives me a strange stare, and already I don’t trust him. A woman with dyed jet black hair and deep purple lipstick sporting a black lace dress and combat boots looks through racks of canvases against a wall. Three Japanese men in dark suits and white socks are huddled around a stack of lithographs with a guy who has flame red hair and motorcycle boots, whom they keep referring to as Dr. Fry (I later learn his name is Dr. Fly). I take a look around at paintings of faceless, high-contrast figures, many wearing pointed hats, that I’ll come to know as “Kostabi figures.” One is a simple portrait of a faceless man holding a globe. Another is a faceless naked woman looking in a mirror. Lots of black, red, and white. Strange stuff. Pretty awful. Not my taste at all. It all looks mass-produced. There must be at least five hundred paintings in this room. I feel like I’m at a factory-outlet sale of modern art. And there’s too much of it crowded into one space, which is making me feel uptight and nervous. I hope I don’t knock anything over. I’m not sure if this stuff is worth anything or not because I’ve never seen his work before. I ask the blue-tinted girl with the hybrid accent if I can use her phone to check my messages. I call, and my assistant, Lara, is holding down the fort. Nothing urgent. The blue-tinted girl offers me a piece of her pink bubble gum. No thanks.

I’ve been waiting around for about twenty minutes. About a half hour later, a gawkish young man in his late twenties with medium-length bleached blond strawlike hair with black polka
dots scattered evenly throughout comes from an office in the back of the studio. This must be Kostabi. His face is gaunt and pale, and his skin is kind of bumpy, like the surface of the moon. I’m thinking he hasn’t eaten in days or seen the sun in years. He has very Eastern European looks, with a long jaw, and he seems friendly and excited about meeting me. He’s smiling and laughing the way you would if you were seeing an old friend after a few years. He’s wearing a pair of tight black pants, a white blousy shirt, and black platform shoes—he kind of looks like a court jester. He runs toward me apologizing profusely in this singsongy voice for being so late. He extends his limp hand to greet me and shakes it awkwardly. I immediately get the sense that something is slightly off with this guy. I’ve heard people say he’s mysterious; if you ask him a simple question, he responds sometimes as if he has no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe it’s an act. But I’m really curious to sit down with him and find out what he’s all about.

He invites me into his office and sits behind his desk, contorting his hands and arms, with one knee up on the chair, almost blocking his face from my line of sight. He reminds me of Gumby. He plays with his pen. He proudly shows me a recent full-page ad for his work in
Flash Art
magazine and displays some of his line drawings. He offers me one, a man in the shape of a dollar sign, as a gift. I like it. He starts eating a salad and tells me that food is very important to him—he can’t work without a good meal. The salad dressing drips down his chin and onto one of the drawings; he wipes it off with the napkin. I ask him if this drip increases the value of the drawing. He laughs nervously. He points to a sculpture of a man holding the earth in his hands; it’s just been made for him and he still has to approve it. He asks me if I like it. My opinion seems important to him. Switching from subject to subject, he talks about everything from the current art scene to his plans for the new Kostabi World. The phone rings. It’s a call from Tokyo—it’ll just be a minute. As his conversation progresses, he raises his voice and enunciates each word carefully. It’s obvious that the person at the other end hardly speaks English. He instructs the caller to wire $200,000 into his account immediately
and gives him wiring instructions from a card in his Rolodex, repeating the instructions slowly and loudly. When he hangs up he explains to me that he’s involved in all aspects of the business except the actual painting. He hasn’t painted in years, he explains, but he is at the center of every creative decision. Kostabi World has a regimented production process, I learn. An idea is created by an “idea person” in the “think tank,” approved by a “committee,” assigned to a painter, who projects it onto a canvas with a slide projector, sketches it, and paints it. The painting is then approved and titled by the committee and finally signed by him. I ask him for a tour of his studio, and he brings me upstairs, where there are about twenty painters working side by side on different Kostabi images. They each turn to see who the guest is, make no effort to smile or say hello, and abruptly turn back to their work. I get the feeling that tours are a daily occurrence and that there is a clear sense of disdain for Mark. It is dead quiet except for a radio in the background. He keeps the tour brief. There is a sign on the wall:
PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR MINIMUM WAGE LIVE IN A CAGE.
I ask him about it. Some painters, he proudly tells me, make more than minimum wage. He created the sign himself and seems almost proud. He chuckles. I’m not sure if I like him or if I think he’s a jerk.