With all due respect to The Digital Indian, Sub Rosa, Johnnie Coleman, all the mothers out there, and all the wonderful, eager informants inside local governments and national corporations, the strangest phone call our office has receive to date happened on December 13 of this year. The quivering voice on the other end used the name Sharon Erickson, but said that that was not her real name. The story she described was so outlandish, it simply had to be true.
The call came in just after 3:30 that Tuesday afternoon. Disorienting introduction complete, Sharon went on to explain—rather matter-of-factly—that she had a story we might be interested in. Then another distressing pause…
Finally: “I went to school with Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh.”
I didn’t like the headline. “I’m not catching the significance, Ms. Erickson. Help me out. You did what with who?”
“I lost my virginity to Andy Warhol.”
“Please hold.”
I didn’t know much about Andy Warhol. From what I’d heard and read, there wasn’t much to know. He showed us our world by thumbing his nose at it. He made commercialism art. He made fame art. He made exploitation art. He manufactured art and Superstars in assembly line fashion, with his most precious raw materials being other artists, other outsiders, and proportion. No big deal. Not a new story. And I knew he was gay. Again, no big deal. But Andy Warhol taking the virginity of a young Pittsburgh woman sixty years ago did somehow seem like news. Or something. Worth looking into.
For whatever it’s worth, it’s legal in Michigan to record telephone conversations if just one of the parties gives consent. In this case, me. And because my journalistic ethics are similar to what I knew of Warhol’s own, I put Sharon on speakerphone and flipped on my dictation machine.
The following is a transcription of that recorded conversation:
ME: Sorry about that, Sharon.
SE: That’s OK.
ME: Do you still live in Pittsburgh?
SE: No. I moved to Flint in 1976 when my husband took a job at AC Sparkplug. I’ve been here ever since.
ME: But you went to school with Andy Warhol in Pittsburgh.
SE: Yes. Schenley High School.
ME: How did you meet Andy?
SE: Well, Andy’s mother would clean our house every week. I thought she was a great lady, always singing and laughing and telling stories about her boys. The thing she loved most to talk about was whatever project or funny thing Andy was up to. I knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was. Kids called him albino. He was so pale and thin and splotchy and shy. He just stood out. I thought he really was albino till I learned later that he had had the dance.
ME: Did you say the dance?
SE: Saint Vitus’ Dance. It makes you pale. And nervous.
ME: I see.
SE: Anyway, I was a year older, a grade ahead of him, but I became more and more intrigued by the stories his mother told about him. And I became more and more upset about the way the other kids treated him in school.
ME: So how did your relationship with him start?
SE: Well, I was what you’d call popular. In the in crowd. Well, one day I saw one of the popular boys I knew, who I thought was a nice guy, knock the books out of Andy’s hand in the hallway for no reason—just to be mean and get a laugh. You know how teenagers are. Anyway, I didn’t think it was funny. Poor Andy was on his knees, picking up the scattered mess of papers and doodles and breaking out in bright pink polkadots. I felt so sorry for him. So I went over and helped him pick up his stuff. I told him that I knew his mother a little and had heard about what a talented artist he was. He was very coy and apologetic, which I found very charming. And attractive. So with everyone still standing around pointing and laughing and gooning both of us, I asked him to walk me home after class. And he did.
ME: Did you start dating?
SE: No.
ME: How did your relationship become physical?
SE: Well, that same day.
ME: The day he walked you home from school?
SE: Yes. See, it was strange. So dreamlike. I think he was sort of in awe of me. I was rather pretty back then and I had had a lot of boyfriends already, but I had never met anybody like Andy. I think I was in awe of him. We were in awe of each other. And that encounter in the hallway was so perfectly Hollywood, you know, with the books and the hallway and the pointing and damsel in distress and the hero and all? Well, that dreamy movie feeling continued the rest of the day—but it went from cheesy teen flick to sweet romantic comedy to, well, science fiction.
ME: Can you elaborate on the details of that day?
SE: Well, I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was because I met him in a vulnerable and self-conscious moment and wasn’t driven away. Maybe it was because I was popular and attractive. Maybe it was because I knew his mother. Maybe it was because I was a captive audience—perhaps his first audience outside of his family. I don’t know. But the shy and reserved person I always knew him to be completely vanished. We were totally at ease with each other almost immediately. And Andy was—(laugh)—Andy was the goofiest, giggliest person I’d ever met. Honestly. It was like being in a cartoon. It didn’t know it at the time, but it was like being high. And the shift from what I thought he was to what it was like to walk and talk with him only added to the bizarre buzz. He seemed so sheepish and insecure, but that afternoon—(laughter)
ME: What?
SE: Well we were walking down East Elizabeth Street, a typical working class residential neighborhood, and Andy turns to me and says, “Follow me.” We walk up to some random house, ring the doorbell, some old man opens the door and Andy says, “Hello, sir. Would you mind if we come in to tell you the good news about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” We got the door slammed in our face. Andy turned to me and said, “Jesus. What’s wrong with him?” And we laughed so deeply—so honest and hearty and natural. Which is what Andy wanted.
ME: That’s hilarious. How old were you then?
SE: I was sixteen, almost seventeen. Andy was fifteen or sixteen I think. But that whole day was filled with those kind of silly little stunts and games—totally shocking to me, but sweet and fun and exciting. I was under his spell. Smitten. We would follow people for blocks because Andy was convinced they were FBI G-men. Like Hoover’s boys would be walking a Springer Spaniel through the park in the middle of the afternoon. It was so weird and thrilling. It was great.
ME: So how did this silliness turn into, um, sex?
SE: At the fish market.
ME: The fish market?
SE: (Laughs) Yes. Yong’s Fish Market. We were strolling by, and Andy turns to me and says, “Gee. I wonder if they have an electric eel.”
ME: An electric eel?
SE: (Snorts) Yeah. An electric eel. Andy said he had heard that the charge from an electric eel could knock over a horse. He wanted to see one. I don’t know if he wanted to do more than see it or just ask to be funny or what, but we went in and asked to see their finest eel. Neither of us actually expected them to have a tank of eels, but they took us into the back storage area and in the corner, there they were. Four electric eels in four separate tanks.
ME: Wow. That’s really odd.
SE: I know it. Who thinks to go electric eel hunting along Pittsburgh’s Strip District? But there we were, and sure enough, the hunt was a success! It was so surreal. I thought Andy was some sort of warlock or something. Conjuring up electric water snakes. The proprietor had another customer up front. He told us not to touch the tank and we were left alone.
Well, the moment was so intensely unusual and stimulating, I was turned on. I turned to Andy and planted a big wet kiss on him. I think he was sort of caught up in the magic of the moment too, and we just let ourselves go.
ME: So in the backroom of a fish market you and Andy Warhol…
SE: Well, without getting graphic, yes. It was great. Until—
ME: Until?
SE: This is hard for me. It’s why I’ve never told anybody this before, but you guys seem, well, and I’ve been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and Andy has passed now, and I don’t know, I have this unstoppable urge to finally tell this to somebody.
ME: It’s an honor you feel comfortable telling this to us. Really. It’s OK. You were saying it was great until.
SE: Well—Andy and I were facing each other, up against a load-bearing post in the center of the storeroom, our shirts unbuttoned. Goodness! This is going to sound crazy—
ME: Not at all.
SE: Well—the eels must have been watching us, or felt the surging energy in the room. One of them leapt from its tank and landed right between us!
ME: Goodness!
SE: You know that icebreaker game where you pass an orange from person to person using only your neck and chin?
ME: Yeah?
SE: That thought flashed through my head when I looked down at this hulking snake thing hanging between our bellies. But it was erased instantly when that eel unloaded its charge into us, hurling Andy to the floor and slamming the back of my head into the post, knocking me out.
ME: Crazy. Did you go to the hospital?
SE: No. Neither of us did. The fishmonger didn’t want to have to explain how he found two half-naked teens electrocuted and unconscious on his storeroom floor with an escaped eel writhing between them. And we didn’t want to get him—or ourselves—in trouble, either.
ME: What happened with you and Andy after that?
SE: We never talked to each other again. Partly because we didn’t know what to say. I think we were both bad at awkward, revealing conversations and good at turning anxiety about them into lasting neurosis. But mostly it was because my parents moved us to New Jersey shortly after.
ME: Did your father get a new job there?
SE: Not exactly. I was pregnant. My mother and stepfather weren’t keen on abortion or facing the fallout of that social stigma with their friends in Pittsburgh.
ME: So you gave birth to Andy Warhol’s child in New Jersey?
SE: Yes. A beautiful, energetic little girl. My parents insisted she be put up for adoption. I was resigned to this as my reality. It was best for them. Best for Andy. Best for me. Just the reality of the times and the situation. I trusted it was best for her, too. I called her Valerie. Valerie Jean.