But all this being holed up in a house in-state was death on my art collection, which had been somewhat decimated by the destruction of New York. I’d housed half of my collection in a special storage space in Brooklyn where the waters shouldn’t have reached, but they did anyway. Some of it had been in my beau little apartment, and you know how that fared. There was a bit at my dad’s in-state house. I kept it in a special room where the temperature is always seventy degrees and there are no windows.

Sometimes I would go and look at it, going over every piece individually, appreciating the beauty, remembering where it had come from, what the artists were like, what I’d been wearing when I found it, what my hair had been done like, every last detail. It made me happy for a minute. I don’t just collect things like Basquiats; that would be ridiculous. Every last piece there, whether it’s by someone who’s well known and magnifique, or someone who’s just coming up, means something to me. Each one of them is inside of me, in a place I can feel moving through me like my blood. I know that sounds kind of stupid, but that’s how it feels; there’s no other way to describe it.

As I stood there one day, I removed a woodcut from the storage room and propped it up against the wall. It was a picture of a boat on the sea in the rain, done in stormy greens and blacks and muddy blues. In the boat, one man was beating or killing another man, who had his arms raised up above him. It all took place under a full moon, and was very noir-pulp. I loved it for how simplistic yet daring it was. Those men in that boat were really so far removed from life that they appealed to me. It wasn’t Basquiat, that was for sure, but it was really, in its own way, remarquable and moved me just the same.

2 One weekend, I was so bored that I went for a pedicure with Tina. My stepmom Tina is the worst, so you know I was pretty bored. She’s a tall, blond, leggy woman from the Midwest who came to New York City to be a model. She made it, too, for a little while, which I guess is the best you can realistically hope for as a model. But she knew her days were numbered when she got her first wrinkle, so she grabbed onto my dad at a cocktail party and hasn’t let go since.