Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (23 page)

Michael Arian

Jackie’s death happened at a time when many of us were doing a lot of drugs. Obviously Jackie was at her zenith of drug use or it probably would not have killed her. I was involved in a situation that I was not proud of, but I do have a past – I at least lived to talk about it. Jackie was involved with, I know it’s going to be hard to hear such a thing – Jackie was involved with a very fabulous group of drug users and dealers, that were great artists in their own way, as was Jackie. And it just got the better of her. It was sad, it was very sad. And I was called in with others to help clean up the mess after she died. It was only to protect those of us who lived through it.

Tom Weigel

The overdose of heroin that killed him was truly accidental, happened because a sinister dealer from Washington was in town with a suitcase of uncut stuff. Jackie was not a junkie and had beaten alcohol too. His time came much too soon and all of us were the worst for it. We are nourished now on the happy memories he has left us some 17 years later. His star will shine in the firmament for a long time to come.

Craig Highberger

Jackie hid his hard drug use from many of the friends who loved him and who were not users. I was one of those friends. I spent a lot of time with the calm sober Jackie who was extremely funny and witty, highly intelligent – his conversation peppered with cultural references that skewered conventionality.

Curtis would sometimes be Greta Garbo, holed up by herself enjoying old movies for day, and she would sometimes be an extroverted James Dean or Barbara Stanwyck, performing in sensational melodramas of his/her own devising. That’s the duality of Jackie Curtis, both male and female, recluse and performer, at turns both the extrovert and the introvert – the creator and the created. Jackie Curtis spent most of his life living in a fantasy world of his own devising that was far more real, wonderful and interesting than the one most people inhabit.

Less than two years before Jackie died, I flew him to Pittsburgh and he spent part of the summer living with me. My father was the architect for the visitor’s center of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and Jackie and I drove up for the tour of the house and the grounds. During the long drive I was amazed to learn that Jackie knew so much about Wright’s life, the Kaufmann family who had built the home and of course the film of Ayn Rand’s
The Fountainhead
which was really about Frank Lloyd Wright. During the tour every time our guide would take the group on to the next room Jackie would immediately jump over the rope and sit or recline on the furniture, or pick up a book or a priceless one-of-a-kind Rookwood vase and strike a pose. I was mortified, but delighted and had fun taking a lot of surreptitious photos.

In 1985 I lived in Chicago. It had been just a few weeks since I had talked to Curtis. We had home delivery of the
New York Times
. I will never forget how horrible it was to turn the page and see Jackie’s obituary.

Rev. Timothy Holder

I never felt an ounce of jealousy or resentment from my brother Jackie. I should maybe say my sister Jackie as well. Because I had the father and mother in Tennessee and all the privileges of an upper middle class upbringing; good schools, colleges – and here Jackie was making do on the streets of the Lower East Side. Jackie always loved me very much. So it was with great sorrow in 1985 when I received a call that he had died of a drug overdose. Just the weekend before we spoke on the phone and had planned a reunion of sorts in New York so he could introduce me to his friends.

My older brother Jackie was a man who was pioneering in areas of sexuality, of gender, and it would be twenty-five years later that I would be sitting at Harvard University in divinity school and the concept of “social construct” came up in class. And we started talking about the fact that the terms “male” and “female” are nothing but constructs by human beings. And we do a lot of labeling and categorizing and stereotyping in society, I think sometimes quite ignorantly and hatefully. I think Jackie knew a lot about who he was, what he was – and I think in his confusion and his pain, and in his struggle I think there was great truth, and great love.

Sasha McCaffrey

Nobody thought we were going to survive those insane times, nobody really believed that any one of us would live past twenty-five. But I was surprised when Jackie died because Jackie was not a junkie. I know she hadn’t done heroin for a long time. And she had also stopped drinking for a long time. When Jackie did heroin it was very occasionally. She probably overdosed because she didn’t know strengths anymore.

She must have gone back to heroin because she was bored or something. I would never think of my friend Jackie as a heroin addict or a speed freak or an alcoholic. She was an extremely talented person who was struggling with personal problems and doing the best that she could. But she wasn’t lucky. I wish she’d know that she was appreciated then – it might have helped.

Rose Royalle

When I cleaned my act up finally after going to the limits with drugs and alcohol, I had a councilor I was seeing, this was in 1985 and it was very sad yet poignant in a way that this man told me about Jackie’s death. I had been in rehab. I didn’t know what was going on. And he had been her counselor and found out I knew Curtis and he said, “Jackie went out on a slip,” in other words, she picked up again and died.

I felt very sad that I would never see her again and also amazed that she had even been in recovery. I think there was some kind of synchronicity there that meant something. It was really significant to me to hear that at that moment in my own recovery process. Actually, I really can’t believe that I’m still alive. Obviously, I’ve been influenced, with all the glitter and hair. I absolutely love Jackie. I loved those times. It makes me really sad that there are so few of us left. But we go on …

Penny Arcade

Jackie’s death was kind of the last straw in my relationship with Andy Warhol and the factory. Because Jackie never stopped loving Andy and Jackie had a very close relationship with Andy if we can say Andy had close relationships. When Jackie died I contacted the factory with the hope that Andy would give Jackie the big Walter Campbell celebrity funeral like he had given Candy. But at that point Warhol was making celebrity portraits and commissioned portraits of rich people and politicians. He wanted to distance himself from any drug deaths or any scandal and he didn’t even send flowers.

We gave Jackie an incredible wake, and incredible funeral, and an incredible burial. It was the last great downtown funeral. By the end of the wake Jackie was completely covered in glitter and had a magic wand under his arm. We stuffed the casket with packs of Kools and photographs of James Dean and Gary Cooper and all kinds of mementos for Jackie; it was a mad, mad, mad wake. Jackie was buried out in the countryside and at the end of the burial Rita Red covered Jackie’s grave with red glitter. You could see it half a mile away.

“You are not truly a Warhol Superstar until you are dead.” – Note in Jackie’s handwriting found amongst his belongings after his death. (Not a suicide note. Just something that occurred to Jackie.)

The Dead Are Dancing With The Dead
– poem by Jackie Curtis

The soul is the desperate hope of a man

that he may live forever.

A hope and a delusion.

Doesn’t the soul live on after the body?

The soul does not exist.

The pyramids in Egypt harbor skin and bones

which would be more useful to the earth’s fertility.

But man yearns to be immortal,

even to the extent of preserving his dust.

Is immortality so cherishable?

The desire for immortality is in the nature of things.

A stone thrown into the air yearns to fly on forever

and struggles against the wind that hinders its speed

against the earth which pulls it back to its bosom.

Once the wheel turns it must complete its dizzying career to the end of time …

The voice breaks into echoes

that it may not vanish and become

part of the silent air …

Petals of a flower battle

against the cold hands of winter.

Nothing willingly relinquishes its form and condition.

Man is like

the stone and the wheel

and the flower

and the voice.

His ingenuity and fear, however

have created a shadow

which lives on forever …

His soul.

—Jackie Curtis © 1985 The Estate of Jackie Curtis

Robert Heide

I remember seeing Jackie in his coffin dressed in a man’s suit – which was somehow inappropriate. People were putting joints in his jacket pocket, in case Jackie needed to get high in heaven. And the coffin was filled with photographs and glitter and all of the reviews from Jackie’s plays. It was a nice send-off.

Jackie Curtis

When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread all over Greta Garbo’s apartment. Seriously, I want a funeral with an open casket, no – I want two open caskets, one as Jackie, and one as Curtis.

Paul Ambrose

The wake and funeral were just incredible. Jackie looked like a frog in a tuxedo. He would have appreciated the fact that his face was painted the same color orange that he used to wear on the street. Everybody was just mad at him, sad and angry … the nerve of him doing something so stupid. He had warnings, he knew better and he just wasted his talent, extinguishing his life like that. Everybody appreciated Jackie for his great talent.

Jackie would have approved of the funeral service, which was at the little Catholic Church over on 11th Street. There was a nice turnout. Many of Jackie’s factory colleagues were there and a sea of flowers surrounded the casket. But just when you think everything is going to be fine and they start carrying the casket down the aisle, Jackie’s Aunt Josie suddenly flings herself onto the casket, sobbing, knocking it out of the pallbearer’s hands. Eventually, they picked Josie up and maneuvered the casket out the door. Everyone heads outside, including Penny Arcade and Gomadi – who has had the nerve to show up, none of us could believe it but there she was … and as they began sliding the casket into the hearse, Penny Arcade turned around, glaring at Gomadi and suddenly started screaming “Murderer! Murderer!” and just went after her. People actually started running away because you could see Penny was just rabid, and I remember sort of hoping that she would get Gomadi – strangle her with those gypsy scarves and things. But Gomadi got her own later, as always happens – she overdosed and died a couple of years later and nobody missed her.

Joey Preston

The day Curtis died, I sat in the middle of the living room right on top of the drug paraphernalia, I didn’t move it, and I cried my heart out. I found Curtis’s address book and I called everybody up. Everybody was upset and sobbing on the phone. It was very difficult for me, but we had to make sure that Curtis’s funeral got off properly. The family could not afford all the burial expenses and we did not know where the rest of the money was going to come from. But I said a prayer and through Ellen Stewart, and many other kind donations we were able to raise the rest of the money by the end of the funeral. I couldn’t have been more moved and happier and more thankful to everyone who had helped.

After the burial, the mound of dirt over Curtis’s grave was just embedded with rhinestones and glitter. You could see it for a quarter mile away as we were driving away. I wrote the tombstone, it says Warhol superstar, poet, writer, singer, and actor. Curtis is buried in the same plot with my Uncle Jackie up in Putnum Valley. I go up and visit and put flowers on it all the time and sit there and reflect.

After Curtis died, it changed my whole outlook about ever getting into the movies, or staying in theatre. I enjoyed it and I thought I’d have a career out of it and we all worked together. But when Curtis died, it was suddenly different. It was no longer interesting to me. Curtis was our family star and he was going to propel us into the universe. When he died, it was a whole world that was lost.

Harvey Fierstein

There were a great many people entertained by that man – outraged, their lives changed, or their lives and their thoughts challenged. Ronald Tavel once said, “We should always take care of our insane, because they are the Christopher Columbus’ of the mind.” Jackie Curtis certainly was that.

Jacob Clark

The following diary excerpt is dated May 22, 1985, I wrote it in a Laundromat on Graham Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn:

Jackie Curtis died last Wednesday of a heroin overdose. I was shocked at first, then resigned and angry. What a fucking waste! I called Jamie Eisenhower and talked to him. He said it was “accidental,” but how in the fuck can a heroin OD be accidental? It is voluntarily injected. He told me the pertinent information and on Sunday, I went to the funeral home. There were lots of people there—old frayed queens and icons of the downtown underworld. Jamie was out of it as I imagined he had been since. …

I viewed Jackie, who appeared stately, almost kingly, in his tux. He looked good except for the pancake makeup slathered over his face. He looked too good and too young to die. It was strange seeing him there—someone had sprinkled glitter over his face. I had just seen him about a month ago at The Bar. He seemed far away then, perturbed at something. Not at me but at something. He looked around and left as quietly as he had come in. I went to The Bar after the viewing and remembered where he had stood then, and the first time I met him in January 1984. I felt very strange.

The funeral was Monday. At first I wasn’t going to go but I did anyway. After all, he was a friend in a very odd and short-lived way. It was Catholic and routine as funerals go. His aunt fainted, there were a lot of tears. At the end, some deranged woman screamed, ‘I’m going to get you, you fucking bitch!’ at another mourner outside the church. I didn’t know what started all of that but people said it had something to do with a girl trying to have sex with Jackie as he lay dying. It was an ugly scene.