EXTRA LETTER: Correspondence Between Warhol Superstars
Velvet you bitch,
I just saw that shit you were saying in the Voice. What a load of baloney! I’m sick to my god-damned guts of you co-opting everybody else’s history and passing it off as your own. It’s total bullshit Velvet and you know it.
You weren’t in any of the films. I was! I was in Blow Job (briefly), Toilet, Piss Fight, Gum Hair, Nose Tweak, Dump On You, Wrench, Chinese Burn, Eye Poke, Wet Willy, Spit, Candle Insertion and I was the one who snorted the urinal cakes in Chelsea Girls. And it was me that was forced to eat the dog food in Dog Food. I’ve still got a dent from where Gerard shoved my head against the bowl! I was the only one willing to do it. That’s why the movie is only fourteen seconds long. You weren’t an actress! Andy only kept you around because you were able to hold things. Lights, canvasses, coats. That’s all you did. You’d stand around the Factory holding things. You were a holder, plain and simple. Like a piece of furniture, but not in a good way. That’s what we used to call you behind your back. Either ‘The Holder’ or ‘Furniture’.
And that story about Ondine setting fire to you! Impossible! That was either me or Jackie Curtis. He was always trying to ignite one of us. He couldn’t even be bothered setting fire to you. ‘No point burning that one,’ that’s what he said about you. I don’t remember anyone at the Factory burning you. Or even scolding you. I was scolded by many of the famous visitors there, practically on a daily basis. Dylan scolded me on his way to his screen test and again on his way out. I still have the marks.
And how you can say that being in the Factory turned you into a drug addict? A drug addict! Of course you were, everyone was a drug addict, But it was a select few of us that actually became drug paraphernalia. I was used as a makeshift bong by Billy Name and a few others. Coke was regularly cut out on various parts of me. You know that song ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’? That’s about me! I was the mirror. Lou wouldn’t snort off anything else. And anything suspicious was always sent my way for testing. Even when it was obviously poison. That’s how you got into into the inner circle. It took graft and regular poisonings. Being a drug addict was just the starting block. It was from there that you had to grow.
And all that flim-flam about Andy showing people affection by ignoring them and how he ignored you for years. He ignored me! He completely ignored me! He never even looked in my direction. He once had his bodyguards throw me down some steps when I waved at him from across the street. That’s how I knew I was one of his favourites. He showered affection on you. That’s how we know he hated you. Gifts, letters, constant phone calls. That’s what he gave you. Remember when he took you with him to that opening in Norway? And how you were the only one allowed to visit him in hospital after he was shot? And how he named that orphan he adopted after you? That’s how much he liked you! He bathed you in attention, that's how we all knew he hated you.
So I hope your lies keep you warm at night. I’m still keeping it real Velvet, I’m still keeping the flame alive. Sure I’m a bedraggled, homeless, toothless junkie turning tricks at the dump. Yes I’ve developed Smallpox (first domestic case in 34 years). And I’m crazy now. In fact, you probably don’t exist. I’m probably not writing it down. That’s how crazy I am. I just ate a sachet of expired hollandaise sauce mix I wrestled from a raccoon. It’s the first thing I’ve eaten in weeks. Because that’s exactly what Andy would have wanted. That’s how you know you’re a Superstar. That is art.
Go to hell,
International Stardust (nee Andrews)
