Derek Jarman: A Biography

11. The Billboard Promised Land

11 The Billboard Promised Land In later years, Jarman would put a jaunty gloss on his recollections of his first transatlantic trip – a gloss perhaps not entirely in keeping with the underlying facts. Through Roger Jones he had been given the name of a New York priest who might offer him a place to stay. The instant they met, the priest ‘piled’ Jarman into a cab. ‘We’d hardly gone a block before his hand was on my crotch. I decided the best course was to pretend it wasn’t happening, and stared resolutely at the architecture whizzing by, hoping that the taxi driver wouldn’t notice. At the mission in Henry Street I found all the priests were after me, all of them unbelievably forward. I felt as though I were a lottery ticket.’1 A few months earlier, the Beatles had been mobbed by hysterical girls on their arrival at Idlewild Airport. Now Jarman, suitably attired in his ‘Beatles hat’, was being subjected to a similar experience by a group of ecstatic priests in the most unecclesiastical of garb: tight jeans and T-shirts. Although to a certain extent flattered by their attentions and highly amused by the service the next day at ‘an Episcopalian church which they called “Mary on the Verge”, where the altar boys were all strikingly good-looking, and spent the entire service cruising the all-male congregation, winking at them through clouds of incense and lace’,2 Jarman was in fact far from ready for a ‘priestly gang bang’.3 If he had come to America for sex, it was sex with Wright. As soon as he could, he fled by Greyhound to Calgary, scribbling ersatz Ginsberg as he went: MANHATTAN LOWER EAST SIDE these fooly wastes teasing mortality dethical streets wailing the sirens knell for oediple Europe’s distracted sons leaving paternal warehouses singing a new world song4 Jarman found Wright working as a swimming-pool supervisor. He himself landed a job measuring abattoirs. Their free time was spent either at Wright’s pool or on trips to the Rockies, where on one memorable occasion they took off their clothes to sunbathe in a cutting by the railway. As the Canadian–Pacific rumbled past, they threw their arms around each other and defiantly embraced within sight of the observation cars. ‘It was a moment of naked triumph,’5 Jarman would later write, purloining (and misremembering) the title of a Hockney painting in order to give the moment mythic weight: ‘we two boys clinging together’. Wright’s account is markedly less mythic: A letter arrived from Derek announcing that he would shortly be arriving for a visit. Since his feelings for me were not mutual (he was so stiff in his body, almost frozen solid, that sensuality was difficult), I felt somewhat uncomfortable. Would his expectations overwhelm me? He arrived in early July, all bright and enthusiastic, with his box of oil paint and a roll of canvas. Mom and Dad quite willingly provided him with a room and Derek was off on this ‘Canadian Adventure’ with a somewhat dubious Ron in tow. I have to admit that Derek was already one of my cultural icons at age 21. Unlike myself and most of the people I knew 100 Derek Jarman who basically accepted the terms by which the world presented itself, or complained that it should change, Derek gleefully and energetically saw the world as a giant playroom inviting him to dismantle and reconstruct as he moved along. He produced a dizzying painting in oils of a circus world where the characters seemed to be spinning on a carousel, or flying about like phantoms in a dream . . . A party was in order, Derek decided. I was enthusiastic at first, but perplexed when he began decorating the living room with plant stems, not attractive plum blossom-type plants either, but weeds, rhubarb leaves, potato tops standing in jars. He decorated the mantelpiece with boxes of detergent and bottles of bleach. I have absolutely no memory about the party, just the decor. The peak of our visit, literally, was a hike up a rock slide area to the top of a mountain in Yoho National Park . . . In his first autobiography, Derek described this visit. The pivotal words for his experience seemed to be ‘outrageous’, ‘daring’. The hinge of his memory was an incident I don’t even recall, but am certain that...