Just Kids

Patti Smith was born into a working-class family on Chicago's North Side on December 30, 1946, during a huge blizzard. Her father recalls Smith as a "long skinny thing with bronchial pneumonia" (4), whom he keeps alive by holding over a steaming bathtub. Smith's younger sister, Linda, is born during another blizzard two years later. When Smith's mother has a son, Todd, soon after, the Smiths move to a neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called Germantown. There they live in "temporary housing set up for servicemen and their children" (4). As a young girl, Smith enjoys playing with her siblings and neighborhood kids in a field they call The Patch.

Smith's mother teaches her a children's bedtime prayer that asks for God "to keep" (5) the child's soul. Though Smith welcomes "the notion of God" as "a presence above us, in continual motion" (5), the prayer troubles Smith, who wonders what the soul is. She asks her mother if she can compose her own nightly prayers, and Smith's mother agrees. As a child, Smith spends a lot of time sick in bed, praying and using her imagination. Later, her love of prayer becomes "gradually rivaled" (6) by her love for books. Smith's mother teaches her to read, and it’s through books that Smith's sense of imagination grows. More than anything, she feels "the urge to express" (6) herself. She enlists her siblings' help in producing her plays and fighting in pretend wars. 

Around age 8, Smith has a slightly-older friend named Stephanie, who is confined to bed due to leukemia. When Smith visits Stephanie, she marvels at the girl's comic book collection and her cigar box of "talismanic charms" (7). Smith has her own stash of things, like trading cards and "religious artifacts" (7) that she snatches out of the "Catholic trash bins" (7). One day, Smith visits Stephanie and steals a skating pin from the girl's jewelry box. The next day, Smith learns Stephanie has died. Shortly after, Smith contracts scarlet fever and becomes quarantined to her room. Stephanie's parents bring Smith their daughter's cigar box and comic books but Smith feels "the weight of sin" (8) for having stolen Stephanie's pin. Smith recalls Mapplethorpe, later, being fascinated by "the Stephanie story" (8) and sometimes asking Smith to recount it to him. Smith says Mapplethorpe was "a good boy trying to be bad" (9) and she was "a bad girl trying to be good" (9), though their roles would change in adulthood. 

Smith's family receives an eviction notice from Germantown and they move to Camden, New Jersey. Smith's mother gives birth to a daughter, "a sickly though sunny little girl" (9) named Kimberly. In New Jersey, Smith feels isolated by the rural setting so she immerses herself in books, taking solace in characters like Jo, "the tomboy" (10) of the March sisters in Little Women. The year after moving to New Jersey, Smith's parents take the family on a "rare excursion" (11) to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia. This marks Smith's first time coming "face-to-face with art" (11). She feels physically and emotionally moved by the works, especially those of Picasso. Leaving, she feels "transformed" (11) by the feeling that humans can create art. Though Smith feels she has "no proof" (11) she has what it takes to be an artist, she hungers to be one. 

At age 14, Smith considers herself "a skinny loser" (12) who suffers "much ridicule" (12) in high school. She loves to dance to rock 'n' roll, draw, and write poems. She begins to brag that one day she'll be "an artist's mistress" (12), like Frida Kahlo, "both muse and maker" (12). She dreams one day she'll meet another artist to "love and support and work with side by side" (12).

Robert Mapplethorpe was born on November 4, 1946 in Floral Park, Long Island, New York. Smith describes him as "a mischievous little boy" (13) with a deep "fascination with beauty" (13). He loves to use "colors that no one else would select" (13) in his coloring book, to shock his family. From a young age, Mapplethorpe knows he is an artist. Mapplethorpe's parents, unlike Smith's, don't have a "sense of culture or bohemian disorder" (16) in their house. They prefer a neat, clean "model of postwar middleclass sensibilities" (16). Mapplethorpe does "his best to be a dutiful son" (16) but will later take his own path. Like Smith, Mapplethorpe has his own fascination with Catholicism, though he isn't particularly "religious or pious" (16). 

In 1966, at age 19, Smith becomes pregnant when she has sex with a boy "even more callow" (17) than she. During the year, Smith attends Glassboro State Teachers College, a choice encouraged by Smith's father, who said Smith was "not attractive enough to find a husband" (17). During the summers, she works in a factory and sleeps on a cot in her parents' laundry room. Considering her options, Smith feels a "sudden calm" (18) come over her and knows everything will be alright as long as she quits the factory and the teaching college and never looks back. After being dismissed from the teaching college, Smith and her friend, Janet, move into the laundry room together. There, they spend "long evenings discoursing" (18) on music like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones. They try to find a scarf like the one Bob Dylan wears on the cover of Blonde on Blonde and miniskirts similar to those of Vanessa Redgrave's in Blow-Up. 

Later, in Smith's pregnancy, she has to "find refuge elsewhere" (19), as her family's neighbors begin treating them like they're "harboring a criminal" (19). Smith lives with an artist couple a little further south until she goes into labor, just after Easter. At the hospital in Camden, Smith receives poor treatment from the nurses, who call her "Dracula's daughter" (19) and threaten to cut her hair. The doctor administers anesthesia and Smith gives birth to a child whom she puts up for adoption. A few weeks later, Smith goes back to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia, where she sees a statue of Joan of Arc. Looking at the statue, Smith vows to her child and to Joan that she will "make something" (20) of herself. On this same day, in Brooklyn, Mapplethorpe drops acid and works on a drawing in his apartment called, "Destruction of the universe, May 30'67" (21). 

In spring of 1967, Smith begins to think about what to do next. She works at a textbook factory in Philadelphia and still lives in her parents' laundry room. She feels "no prospects and no sense of community" (22) in Camden and her few friends have moved to New York to "write poetry and study art" (23). Smith finds "solace in Arthur Rimbaud" (23), a 19th-century French poet, whose book, Illuminations, Smith stole from a bus depot in Philadelphia. The women at the textbook factory suspect Smith of "being a Communist for reading a book in a foreign language" (23). Smith begins plotting to leave Camden for Brooklyn, where she'll seek out her friends at the Pratt Institute. In June, Smith is laid off from the textbook factory and, like others, can't find employment in South Jersey. 

On July 3, Smith says "tearful goodbyes" (24) to her family and walks to the bus stop with only a small yellow-and-red plaid suitcase containing "some drawing pencils, a notebook, Illuminations" (25), some clothes, and pictures of her siblings. When she arrives at the bus depot, she receives a shock that the fare to New York has doubled since she last traveled. Disappointed, Smith thinks of calling her sister but feels "too ashamed to return home" (24). In the phone booth, Smith finds a white patent purse containing a locket and $32, more than enough for a train ticket to New York. Smith takes the money but leaves the purse and locket, hoping the owner will "at least retrieve the locket" (25). Smith buys her ticket, feeling encouraged by this "thief's good-luck sign" (25) and boards the bus. 

In New York, Smith takes the subway to her friend's address on DeKalb Street but finds they have moved. The new tenant says his roommate might be able to help Smith, though. The roommate, a slim boy with dark hair and a strand of beads around his neck, leads Smith to another brownstone on Clinton Avenue. Smith waits on their stoop all night, waking to neighborhood celebrations of Independence Day. Smith spends July 4 as she spends most days in the next few weeks: "looking for kindred souls, shelters, and, most urgently, a job" (26). She begins to spend many hours walking in the parks. One day, she meets a man known as Saint. Smith checks him out and perceives he’s not a threat. They strike up a conversation and Saint invites Smith to go with him to look for food. They manage to get a few loaves of day-old bread and a head of lettuce from the nearby restaurants. Smith spends the next few days with Saint, scavenging food and sitting quietly in the park. At night, they find their "own sleep outposts" (29). One day, though, Smith dozes in the grass beside Saint and wakes to find he's gone. She doesn't feel sad, rather thankful that he devoted so much time to her.

On Friday, July 21, John Coltrane, legendary and beloved American jazz musician, passes away. Smith, "along with many strangers" (30), feels "a deep sense of loss" (30) for the musician, though she never knew him. As Smith walks around the city, she doesn't feel she fits in with the hippies around her but she feels safe. She continues to sleep where she can—in subway cars, door wells, and graveyards. Occasionally she stays with a friend at Pratt who lets her shower and sleep inside. Smith's hunger begins to bother her but she has absolute freedom. 

After weeks of searching, Smith lands a job as a waitress at an Italian restaurant on Time Square. She wears the white uniform and shoes her mother gave her as a farewell gift but three hours into the shift she spills food on a customer and loses her job. Desperate for food money, Smith feels total relief to be hired as a cashier at Brentano's, a bookstore with locations across the country. There, she works as a clerk selling "ethnic jewelry and crafts" (36). Smith, still homeless, takes to sleeping in the store, hiding in the bathroom until after the night watchman leaves. She rummages in her co-workers pockets for change to buy "peanut butter crackers in the vending machine" (37). 

One day, the same young boy Smith met on her first day in Brooklyn appears, wearing a "white shirt and tie, like a Catholic schoolboy" (36). He buys a Persian necklace that Smith loves. Smith half-jokingly tells him not to "give it to any girl" (37) but her and the boy agrees. After Smith's first week, a science-fiction writer who she's noticed "lurking around" (37) asks her to join him for dinner. Though suspicious of the man's intentions, "the prospect of dinner weakened" (37) her resolve. The man takes her to a restaurant at the base of the Empire State Building. Smith orders the cheapest item on the menu, though with the man's eyes on her, she can hardly enjoy her meal. After they eat, the man walks her downtown to Tompkins Square Park where they sit on a bench together. Smith begins to scheme ways to get away from the man when she spots the young man from Brooklyn walking towards her, wearing "dungarees and a sheepskin vest" (38) with strands of beads around his neck. Smith runs up to him and asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend. The boy agrees and Smith drags him over to the man. Smith introduces the boy as her boyfriend and says they have to leave now. Smith and the boy, who introduces himself as Robert, run away from the man. 

Mapplethorpe takes Smith out for an egg cream and the two chat for a while. Mapplethorpe tells Smith he's tripping on acid, though, with such little experience with drugs, Smith can't tell. They reveal to each other that neither has a place to sleep. Mapplethorpe brings Smith to his friend's house on Waverly Street, near Pratt. There, Mapplethorpe leads Smith inside, then shares with her some of his artwork, which he stores in the flat's back room. Smith spends the rest of the evening looking at art books and talking with Mapplethorpe. They fall asleep in each other's arms just before dawn and Smith feels Mapplethorpe is her "knight" (42). They spend the next few weeks in Mapplethorpe's friend's apartment while they pooled their resources to get their own apartment. Smith's co-worker, sensing she has little to no money, often leaves her containers of homemade soup. 

Soon, Mapplethorpe finds an apartment for them close to Pratt. Though they have an entire second floor, the walls are "smeared with blood and psychotic scribbling, the oven crammed with discarded syringes, and the refrigerator overrun with mold" (43). Mapplethorpe promises he will clean the place and turn it into "a good home" (43) and he keeps his word, scrubbing the entire apartment. One night, Mapplethorpe and Smith scavenge the streets and "magically" (44) find everything they need for furnishings: a mattress, bookcase, lamps, and "a threadbare Persian rug" (43). They decorate the apartment with images and objects sacred to their relationship. They spend their time at their jobs or at home, together, working on their respective art practices "in a state of mutual concentration" (45). Sometimes, they scrounge enough money for one of them to go to an exhibition at a museum, then "report back to the other" (48) about what they've seen. 

For the holiday season, Mapplethorpe gets a full-time job as a window trimmer at FAO Schwarz, a toy store in New York. Smith later gets a temporary cashier job there. Though the pay is low and hours long, Smith and Mapplethorpe make the most of their time, meeting in secret behind the Nativity spread. Smith "rescue[s] a tiny Nativity lamb" (51) from the garbage and Mapplethorpe vows to do something special with it. On Christmas Eve, after work, Smith and Mapplethorpe take the bus to New Jersey, where they celebrate Christmas with Smith's family. Mapplethorpe, "to stay his nerves" (52), takes acid beforehand, though he maintains his composure enough to be on the drug undetected. In this state, Mapplethorpe becomes mesmerized by a "marbleized candy dish with a purple cow lid" (52), which Smith's mother gives to him. 

For Smith's birthday, Mapplethorpe makes her a tambourine and a "small book on the Tarot" (53) that he has rebound in silk. On New Year's Eve, Mapplethorpe promises to apply for a student loan to return to Pratt to study art, while Smith makes a "silent promise to help him achieve his goal by providing" (53) for Mapplethorpe's practical needs. Smith gets a better-paying job at Argosy Book Store as an apprentice restorer but lacks aptitude for the job and gets let go. Through Smith's friend, Janet Hamill, Smith gets hired at Scribner's, a high-end bookstore on Fifth Avenue. Smith feels "lucky to be associated with such a historic bookstore" (55) and enjoys her time there. Meanwhile, Smith encourages Mapplethorpe to quit his job at FAO Schwarz and devote himself to his work. Even with Smith's better pay at Scribner's, they often have little money. They sometimes debate between spending their money on "grilled cheese sandwiches and art supplies" (56). 

Smith and Mapplethorpe often have friends over to visit, mostly other artists. Smith refers to them as a kind of "losers' salon" (58). One of their friends, Judy Linn, is a photographer who takes some of the earliest images of Smith and Mapplethorpe together. In March, Mapplethorpe gets a job at the Fillmore East. He manages to get Smith a pass to see the band The Doors; Smith feels "both kinship and contempt" (59) for their charismatic lead singer, Jim Morrison. Smith feels "somewhat ashamed" (59) about how she responds to the concert and keeps this feeling to herself. Smith does express a feeling of discontent to their friend Ed Hansen, who brings Smith a record by The Byrds. He plays the song “So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star” for Smith; it excites and unnerves her. Later that winter, Smith and Mapplethorpe talk Ed down from the top of a crane and Smith gives him the lamb she stole from FAO Schwarz. They lose contact after that but, years later, when Smith covers The Byrds' song Ed showed her, she thinks of him.

In early spring, Mapplethorpe's artistic attention turns more towards a mix of magic and the Catholicism of his youth. Smith receives a promotion at Scribner's to sales. For Easter, Mapplethorpe buys Smith a "tattered Victorian tea dress of handkerchief linen" (66) to comfort her grief over Martin Luther King's assassination. Mapplethorpe and Smith plan to spend Easter with Mapplethorpe's family but Mapplethorpe has anxiety that, as strict Catholics, they won't approve of their living together. Mapplethorpe decides to tell his parents that he and Smith have “eloped to Aruba and gotten married" (66). Smith disagrees with this deception but goes along with it once she meets Mapplethorpe's parents. Smith is shocked at how Mapplethorpe's dad, Harry, treats him, though Mapplethorpe's mother, Joan, gives Smith a gold ring to wear on her left finger. 

In early June, Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol, a hero of Mapplethorpe's. Smith doesn't much care for Warhol's hyper-contemporary aesthetic, instead becoming excited about Kennedy's presidential campaign. Smith goes to New Jersey to visit her family and watches Kennedy's assassination on television with her father. Despondent, Smith returns from her trip to find Mapplethorpe has changed his interests once again. This time, "cutouts of statues, the torsos and buttocks of the Greeks, the Slaves of Michelangelo, images of sailors, tattoos, and stars" (70) litter their apartment. Mapplethorpe covers their walls and ceiling with Mylar, to Smith's dismay. She mourns "the dismantling of the romantic chapel" (71) she felt they'd created together. Mapplethorpe begins to work in silence, through the night, and sleep during the day. Though still physically affectionate with Smith, Mapplethorpe becomes mostly taciturn. 

Smith, feeling restless, begins to spend more time away from their apartment. She visits her friend Janet's often and begins spending time with Howard Michaels, a painter Smith knew from New Jersey. Smith and Howard enter a physical relationship about which she eventually tells Mapplethorpe. Given Mapplethorpe's increasing distance, Smith decides to flee their apartment and gets a new place with Janet on the Lower East Side. Though Smith's leaving makes Mapplethorpe distraught, he helps her move into her new place. He wants to "get back together as if nothing had happened" (73) but Smith doesn't feel the same way. One day, Mapplethorpe appears at Scribner's in an oxblood leather trench coat. He tells Smith that he has returned to Pratt and used his loan money to buy the coat and a ticket to San Francisco. He tells Smith to come back to him or he'll go to San Francisco and "turn homosexual" (74). This confuses Smith, who responds in a "less than compassionate" (74) way that she's since come to regret. Rejected, Mapplethorpe hands Smith a letter then leaves. Reading the letter, Smith finds Mapplethorpe's "manifesto as an artist" (75), a manically-scrawled letter filled with paradoxes like: "Life is a lie, truth is a life" (75). The earnest letter moves Smith to tears.

In her own space, Smith begins drawing self-portraits. However, thieves break into her apartment and, "frustrated by [the] lack of sellable goods" (75) destroy most of Smith's artwork. Janet moves into an apartment with her boyfriend and Smith finds her own place in Brooklyn, on Clinton Avenue. From San Francisco, Mapplethorpe writes to Smith, telling her of his "experiences with other men" (77) while assuring Smith that he still loves her. Smith, claiming a "narrow and provincial" (77) understanding of homosexuality, feels that she has failed Mapplethorpe and "turned" (77) him homosexual. Based on her reading of gay writers, Smith assumes homosexuality is "a poetic curse" (77). 

When Mapplethorpe returns from San Francisco, he begins dating his first boyfriend, a "kind and handsome" (78) man named Terry. Despite his relationship with Terry, Mapplethorpe hopes to continue his relationship with Smith. Terry treats Smith with "warmth and compassion" (78) but she begins to feel "completely alone and conflicted" (78). She begins to have bouts of weeping, which Mapplethorpe tries desperately to console. At Christmas, Smith and Mapplethorpe work on books of drawing and writing as gifts to each other. Confused and lonely, Smith visits her family in New Jersey and makes plans with her younger sister to go to Paris in the summer.

By the spring, Mapplethorpe and Smith have struck a balance in their new relationship. They begin spending time together again, each having a little more money than they did the year before. Smith saves her money for her trip to Paris and spends half of the summer there with her sister. Together, they stay in "fleabag hotels" (82), visit art supply stores, see movies, walk the city, and create art. At one of the art supply stores, Smith buys a "large red portfolio with canvas ribbons" (82), in which she places her drawings and lugs around to the galleries. Mapplethorpe writes letters to Smith while she's there, describing his new art, which makes Smith suspect Mapplethorpe is "moving deeper into the sexual underworld that he was portraying in his art" (84). Mapplethorpe also writes that he's become sick, with "white and achy" (84) gums and not enough money to eat. He begins to describe himself as a hustler. 

Smith returns to New York on July 21. She finds Mapplethorpe in worse shape than he had described and so weak he can't stand. Mapplethorpe has, despite his bad health, been artistically productive. While Mapplethorpe stays in bed with "a high-grade fever" (85), Smith straightens his materials: "colored pencils, brass sharpeners, remnants of male magazines, golds stars, and gauze" (85). At dawn, they hear "a series of shots and screams" (85). The police tell them to lock their doors and stay in the apartment; later, they find out someone was murdered outside their front door. Mapplethorpe decides they can't stay in the apartment, and is "horrified" (85) they'd been "so close to danger" (85) on Smith's first night back in New York. 

Leaving everything but their portfolios behind, they travel to the Hotel Allerton, a cheap hotel on Eighth Avenue. Smith describes their time there as "the lowest point" (86) in her life with Mapplethorpe. He continues to suffer from health ailments on the "ancient mattress" (86) in their room which reeks of "piss and exterminator fluid" (86). "Derelicts and junkies" (86) make up the rest of the hotel's population. Smith becomes close to one of the residents, a former ballet dancer who is a morphine addict. One night, Mapplethorpe cries out in pain and Smith asks the dancer for something to ease Mapplethorpe's pain. The dancer, upon seeing Mapplethorpe's state, tells Smith to leave the hotel and get Mapplethorpe to a doctor. Not having enough money to pay the bill, Smith sneaks Mapplethorpe out the fire escape then leaves him on the sidewalk while she goes back inside for their portfolios—all they "have in the world" (88). In the taxi, Smith tells Mapplethorpe she'll get her job back and they'll "get better" (88). They promise they won't leave each other again until they are both "ready to stand on [their] own" (88). Smith, fumbling for enough money to cover the taxi fare, tells the driver to take them to the Chelsea Hotel.