FAMOUS FOR NEVER - ON SALE

A STORY OF FAME AND UNFORTUNE

BY

PETER NOLAN SMITH

Rome wasn't burnt in a day. - James Steele

MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2022

In the 1970s city politicians launched countless projects to stem the tide of 'white flight'. None of the doomed programs achieved their goals and the population of the Lower East Side shriveled from 120,000 to 60,000, never hitting zero, because cheap rents, proximity to the subways, and minimal police presence proved irresistible to malcontents disenchanted with the morality of the Silent Majority War and a diverse smattering of gays, drifters, artists, musicians, and addicts reversed the flow from the smoldering desolation.

Soon stutterers read poetry without ridicule to NYU coeds. Bums squatted derelict buildings without fear of landlords. Teenager girls denied cheerleader destinies were offered opiated ballerina gigs at sordid go-go bars. Graffiti artists painted heaven on toppled walls with spray cans. Hell portrayed itself without any artistic endeavors.

Jean-Michel Basquiat appeared out of nowhere. Andy Warhol recognized the young Haitian's genius. His paintings sampled the history of black as if the icons were sampled by a hip-hop DJ, however his mania was cursed by fame and he said he wish he was nobody like me. Heroin was his pay day. Junkies normally only care about heroin, but Jean-Michel was blessed by an eternal desire to paint through his ever-tragic fame.

I knew Jean-Michel.

He once painted my refrigerator.

FAMOUS FOR NEVER recounts the opposite poles of fame and failure.

I saw him a week before his death.

The summer of 1988 at my apartment.

He left me a gift.

I wished he was still alive, but he emulated Nick Tosches' first line of THE DEVIL AND SONNY LISTON.

"Sonny Liston was a man born to die."

And that is the awful truth

FAMOUS FOR NEVER costs $20 plus $5 shipping

i Order via Venmo - peter smith @Peter-Smith-18

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Elk Books At Printed Matter

Years ago famed skateboarder Jocko Weyland published my story FAMOUS FOR NEVER in Elk Books.

My failure versus the success of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The celebrated artist painted my refrigerator.

I had my girlfriend from West Virginia wiped off the images.

My jealousy had a stiff price tag.

At least a million dollars.

Jocko went off to be the curator of MOCA Tuscon.

No money.

Some prestige, but Tucson was Tucson.

A city most people love to leave before it's too late.

Jocko returned to New York this summer for an opening of his artwork.

Images of ruined Detroit.

Paintings of the mysterious Gowanus Canal.

No nudes.

Jocko was a vagabond.

He was staying out in the Rockaways with his girlfriend.

She could have been his uncool niece, but she was plenty cool.

I crashed at the gallery.

No bed.

No shower.

It was only two blocks away from the 169.

I slept there too.

Last week Jocko had an opening at Printed Matter in Chelsea.

He re-published all the Elk Books.

There were many.

FAMOUS FOR NEVER was one of them.

Jocko was with his girlfriend.

They were a happy couple.

Her name and Alyssa.

She read aloud a paragraph of FAMOUS FOR NEVER.

"After midnight Times Square was awash with wickedness. We posed on the sidewalk with the pimps, whores, and drug dealers. Clover reveled in her role as a rich man’s mistress and I passed for a detective in my pinstriped suit."

1978 was a long time ago.

Decades before Alyssa's birth, but she was cool and we drank beer, toasting the many volumes of Elk Books.

And there were many.

I no longer sleep on the floor.

At least not tonight.

And I still have a drawing from Jean-Michel.

He's not alive, but he remains famous.

And me I'm just living.

A vagabond.

Like Jocko Weyland.

ps besides skateboarding, Jocko is a wicked skier.

A legend.

Especially in Tahoe.

Go see the Elk Books collection at Printed Matter.

231 11th Avenue New York, NY 10001 Today until 7 pm

And you can purchase FAMOUS FOR NEVER at this url https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/49540

FAMOUS FOR NEVER On Kindle For $1.99

FAMOUS FOR NEVER is a semi-fictional recounting of a ne'er-do-well living in the East Village during the 1970s, Paris through the 1980s, and Asia into the 1990s. Peter Nolan Smith's ping-ponging around the world has ricochetted him through the ranks of the famous and near-famous such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Klaus Nomi without his ever having achieved success to threaten his firm grasp on failure, because there is no failure greater than premature success.

Quitting was not an option for the writer.

Only dying.

Also included in FAMOUS FOR NEVER are stories about Jack Flood, a legendary Harlem gangster, Andy Warhol, the actor Vinnie Gallo, and Mr. Cool taking place in New York of the 1970s and 1980s.

To purchase FAMOUS FOR NEVER for $1.99, please go to the following Kindle URL

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BH38JQQ

It was all history in the making back then.

And still history now.

A LOSS OF MEMORY by Peter Nolan Smith

The Catholic Church and other derivatives of the Judaeo-Christian faith extol monogamy as the true state of man and woman, then explain sex through the mysteries of the birds and bees. Actually my parents never lectured their children on that subject, although they said that the stork had delivered each of my new brothers or sisters from the hospital.
“A stork?” The long-winged bird was not native to New England.
“Yes, a stork,” my parents said the word with reverence and they remained faithful as mating pigeons to each other. Bees never entered into the conversation about babies, because the queen bee had so many lovers.

Just like me. I can’t count the number of my paramours on one hand and while I don’t remember all their names, I do recollect their faces, smiles, and smell, yet very little of the sex.

Woman on the other hand pride themselves on their acute memories and quote a man’s utterance twenty years after the words left his lips, so I imagined that all females would be equally recollective about the act of love, but not all of them.

Several years ago I ran into Valda at a Lower Manhattan studio opening. The ex-La Rocka model was still a beauty. Not a surprise, since the Polish emigre had been Jean-Michel's muse as had many women in the artist's short life. We sat on a gallery's window sill recounting our past and a younger women with a younger male asked, “Are you a couple?”

“Not really.” I smiled at the tenderness in her voice. I had once been that young.

“You seemed so comfortable together.” Her beau beamed with the glow of two hearts beating as one and he held his girlfriend’s hand with tenderness. They had a lot to learn, but I wasn’t in the mood to educate them about the hills and canyons of love, so I said, “No, we were never a couple, but we once were lovers.”

“No, we weren’t.” Valda harshly answered with darkening eyes.

“We weren’t?” I remembered certain spending hours together on a hot August night in 1979.

“Not at all.” Her adamant denial bristled with certitude.

“Are you sure?” Her kiss was etched on my mind.

“100%.”

That encounter couldn’t have been a phantasm of my fantasies. She had scratched my back to shreds.

“Really?’

“Yes.” A fury settled in her eyes.

The young couple fled from the charred ashes of my displaced memory.

“Sorry, guess I was thinking about someone else.” I waved the white flag of surrender.

“And there were plenty of someone elses.” Valda sway from the window. I remained seated, thinking that she was right, because a woman is never wrong about a man, but I had slept with one of her best friends.

Lucille and I had lasted a weekend.

My imaginary tryst with Valda went on for a month.

1979 wasn’t a time for monogamy.

I stood up. Valda stood by the bar. I was exiled from her thoughts and I wondered what other men else dwelled in her gulags. It really didn't matter, because 1979 was a long time ago and even worse maybe I wasn’t so memorable in the affairs of the birds and bees, then again I had slept with one of her best friends.

Lucille wouldn’t know if I was right, but I was gracious enough to allow Valda her victory, for as the philosopher Pascha Ray paraphrased, “As you get old you forget. As you get older you are forgotten by everyone but yourself.”

Sad, but sometimes true.

Especially in the mind of a woman.

Other photos of Valda and Mary Beth and Lucille.

In 1979 we were friends and I never forget friends.