Prettyboy

20: "Always Repress Your Artless Hunger, Friend"

San Francisco, CA

February 20th, 1967

Frank,

I am writing this to solely inform you that your dearest friend has gone in quest of you (i.e. Sullivan Robert) and is in a state of despair, so far as I can tell. 

It has paradoxically come to my attention that you have vanished entirely from the eyes of the public, but I am no reporter, nor Robert Sullivan, to urge you to return. I am clueless as to how Robert Sullivan came to find my address and my phone number, but I suppose you would know that. For your information, I am sending you a similar letter to all your potential residences that I can think of: one to New York, Pennsylvania, and the Texas address you sent me a while ago, so very out of the blue. All is done on Robert Sullivan's wishes. I must say, he sounded rather discomposed. He did not seem to remember me, either.

I want to say that I still have not the heart to call you and that is why I will not. Your last letter (five funny months ago) was very confusing. Are you back in New York City? What did you mean by 'the mind, which harbors all sorts of insubstantial horrors and joys, can also decay'? Have you been reading some of the decadent movement? I know it is none of my business now, but you cannot expect my conformity to you sending mixed-messages. 

Of course, I do not expect you to reply to this letter. God forbid. You? Not after another five moons. But at the very least, I have done as your very concerned friend has instructed me to.

Have a wonderful life. Always repress your artless hunger, friend.

PB

***

"Exploding Plastic Inevitable? And you think, what the hell is that? I personally don't feel the urge to ask such questions. I suppose it is meant to confuse, so I allow myself to remain confused."

"So you see. Did you believe it, at first, that I had perhaps copied your absurd style? I was never one two-goody-two-shoes in glitzy art galleries. We happened to be two individuals who came up with the same idea, at the very same era. Or did we?"

"Warhola sure is a funny name. You shouldn't have altered it. Say, you don't look almost-forty."

"I look it very much. What makes the difference is that I do not feel it. And you, yourself, how are the mid-thirties?"

"Green. If there were a color, the color for the mid-thirties would be green."

"And what about the twenties?"

"You're not twenty."

"Never mind that. Tell me which color."

"Yellow. Certainly yellow. Maybe yellow and white."

"So far, I am picturing a banana. Well, Frank Iero. You should try filmmaking some time. If I knew you, or if again I didn't, I'd say you've grown tired of the simple art of photography. Try something else, you might find yourself again."

"My former partner was of the same opinion."

He is dead now, I wanted to add, but the conversation did not seem to welcome it. 

Andy Warhol did not strike one as human-sane, and I'd rather leave the subject untouched, than tarnish it with witty remarks in 1967.

Sometime in February 1966, Jack Cooper got a call from his relatives for some sort of family emergency. I very well recall how that morning went. The cabin was still and not breathing, and the phone possibly very far away. He went to the parlor and spoke in his gruff but hushed tone into the receiver. When he came back, I pretended to read last Monday's newspaper.