Teller and Croland on Mapplethorpe
TELLER AND CROLAND ON MAPPLETHOROPE
DAVID CROLAND: I grew up in New Jersey but moved to New York when I was seventeen, became a model when I was seventeen, because I was an art student and someone told me, ‘You should be a model’, and I said, ‘Well OK’, so I was. But Robert and I met in 1970, at the Hotel Chelsea, on 23rd street, you know the Chelsea Hotel of course. And I was brought there by a friend of mine called Tinkerbelle, like in Peter Pan except her name was Tinkerbelle, who was a friend of Robert’s, and we went to Robert’s room, which was as big as a couch, it was the tiniest room you’ve ever seen. And he was in the room with Patti Smith, they were lovers, they were living together in this tiny tiny room, and I walked into the room and I just thought ‘wow this is a very small room, and look at this boy and girl’. We were pretty much on top of each other, that’s how small the room was. And then about a week later, we became boyfriends, almost a week, but we didn’t tell anybody. Because Robert was kind of secretive about our… Private, it was more private in those days a little bit, people weren’t as distracted as they are today, with their cell phones and all this stuff they’ve got today. So it was more underground, the whole scene and how you behaved also. So that’s when I met him, didn’t tell anyone we were boyfriends until at least two months…