Ivy Superstar

Ivy Nicholson believes she is the ultimate and purest meaning of the word “superstar”. I have the manuscript to her autobiography somewhere and don’t want anyone to know that I have it, especially her. One never really gets introduced to Ivy, she just shows up at all these Warhol events, the tattered rags of that brand “superstar” screeching from within her mad soul and its worn out neon sign blinking at you…both S’s having burnt out long ago.

Ivy Nicholson was once Irene from Queens, beautiful and Catholic and determined. She was one of the top models in the 50’s/60’s, one of the first to be her own makeup artist as she graced the cover of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue at a tender teenage age. Her proud neck was that of a crane’s, or so they said, and she was sought after for its height and dignity along with hers which shone through her young, arrogant eyes. Dignity is something she has never lost, even during her lowest hours. The story goes as it is expected to – affairs with royals, becoming a Warhol superstar, cavorting around New York and Europe, having many certifiably crazy children with equally as crazy men, losing her looks and her money, living on social assistance, and entertaining the young writers, artists and wannabes of today during many art openings and events.

Ivy’s son Gunter, like his sister Penelope, was born and raised in France. He is a handsome man in his 40’s who shows up at his mother’s side, his schizophrenia bounding out of every loose crease in his oversized suit. He is set up by his mother with a friend of mine called Lala - a girl whose mouth beats her brain to the punch every single time. I admire that Lala never cringes and wonder how in the hell this “date” will go. She can’t resist and goes along to a restaurant with the whole family: Ivy, Gunter and Penelope. Penelope is a carbon copy of her mother (though lacks a certain confidence that I suspect Ivy never allowed to come to fruition), and is also deemed schizophrenic by the state, as is Gunter. Penelope speaks slowly and is fond of wearing antique cat eye glasses, which frame the large, unavoidable mole at the tip of her nose. On the night of this family “date”, I was visiting my best friend Misha in the Gershwin Hotel downtown for Warhol Week. She was modeling for the event and wanted me to keep her company in the midst of the circling Warhol crazies in daytime…which doesn’t sit right no matter how you look at it. I was also visiting Jack, who was helping curate the event and was right at home with them. He would watch their madness unfold in a stroke and a sentence and just remain himself, with a wry little smile forming at his mouth. One of the things I miss most about seeing him.

Back at the Gershwin, that afternoon – I heard the strains of Ivy’s voice coming from one of the bathrooms, where I was helping Misha change her clothes…“Gunter, bring mommy a cigarette”. This phrase would soon be repeated and driven into the ground by me and others for whom I re-enacted it, since, in addition to the slightly disturbing picture it painted next door, Ivy’s voice was perfectly distinguishable from any other voice. I don’t know what it sounded like when she was a young model, or a count’s mistress, or a Warholite, but now after umpteen years of smoking, drinking and believing her own beauty was the sole source of her power, her voice was gravely and reactionary. A drunken typewriter covered in rocks cursing its way down the stairs at you. Hard, German-like inflections, which smothered a posh “old” NY American accent. Amazing pronunciation, but piercing in its dexterity.

It probably was due to her constant frown. She looked like a wrinkled, angry old clown looking for its makeup. Downward-turned mouth to the point that it did, as mothers always warn, stay that way. She haunted the back rooms of the Gershwin that night like an ancient poltergeist, just as she did weeks later during Jack’s art opening. Ivy was proud and rageful, but when drunk her passion would run sour and her vocal tone would increase. She’d complain to anyone and everyone about some second of time that bothered her. A black man stood in her way so she bellowed “nigger, nigger, nigger” for hours after, in the corner away from those who dared to ignore her. It became “niggers, jews and fat people” as I’m sure one of each insulted her ego in some unknown fashion. Ivy was not happy with Jack’s mismatched portrait of her, the downward frown emphasized emphatically, causing her to look like herself. She yelled after him, “you might be beautiful on the outside, but Ugly on the Inside!”…Ivy actually was onto something which I had to find out the hard way to, in some sense of those words, although he Did reveal her true self which looked like a kimono dragon after a heroin binge. That night, eye makeup somehow still in place, she ended up making out with a homeless black man outside the hotel entrance, on an old mattress that the Sex Museum had thrown out onto the street. Making up with her detractor, at least as she saw it behind the squinty, overly made up wrinkled caricatures that equalled her gaze.

But on date night, well, it was Lala’s turn to be part of the family business. I was not there, but they apparently sat around a large round table and Gunther did not speak, to Lala or any other. He just drank wine, and played around with his napkin and utensils. At one point, Ivy raised her glass of wine and remarked “to Love and may it find its way to two people sitting at this table”. Lala’s body crushed itself into regret at that point, although she claims Gunther and she shared that moment as Ivy spoke those words and glanced at each other with the same weight of aversion to the wishes of the table’s matriarch. Ivy would later call up Lala on a few occasions; sometimes Gunther would come to the phone and speak rather eloquently and on other occasions, Ivy would yell to him from the phone “Gunther, it’s Lala , you went on a date with her” to which his distant French voice would remark rather tersely “I don’t date…I don’t know anyone named Lala…fuck off Mother”. He would switch like that, from sane to other, in a couple beats.

The Palmers (named for their joint father John Palmer, who lived in Hawaii and was of a different but equal species of cracked-) don’t want pity, from me or anyone else. Ivy Nicholson’s life has not been easy to say the least, but despite the loss of sanity, comfort, and fame, she seems to have no regrets. Every day is a new chance for a showing or a chance to play model. She lives and breathes still for the possibility of the Photograph. They move in a cluster around New York City entertaining and inviting in many who would rather lose their number. God knows they are true to themselves, whoever that is on that particular day. I actually miss them – their clan, with Ivy at the glaring helm, has provided many a story, anecdote, lesson and metaphor to any and all that have been left in lost conversation in their wake.

~ M. Lucia