Toward the end of the spring semester of 1967 Smith ends up at his address by mistake while looking for a friend; several months later in Greenwich Village she asks him in Tompkins Square Park to pretend to be her boyfriend, the two are at once drawn to each other, and she moves in with him (by other accounts, they met in 1968).
winter 1968 – 1969
A trip to San Francisco
Back at Pratt Institute since September 1968, during the winter break he travels to San Francisco, telling his friend Judy Linn that he has to find out once and for all whether he is gay; he stays in a commune and will later call the trip a turning point in his life. On his return he begins to bring homoerotic imagery into his art, making collages from gay pornography and sculptures that explore male sexuality.
June 1969
Leaves Pratt without a degree
Mapplethorpe was due to graduate in June 1969 but failed his psychology final, leaving him one course short of a degree; after five years at the institute he leaves and moves to a loft on Delancey Street on the Lower East Side — his arrival in Manhattan coincides with the Stonewall riots.
July 1969
Move to the Chelsea Hotel
After a neighbour is murdered in the building, Mapplethorpe and Smith flee the Delancey Street loft and check into the Allerton Hotel; he is gravely ill with a high fever and they cannot afford a doctor, and after several days Smith carries him down the fire escape and takes him by taxi to the Chelsea Hotel (by other accounts, the move took place in 1970). There she persuades the manager Stanley Bard to give them room 1017 with her artwork as collateral.
1969–1970
Max’s Kansas City and connections in bohemia
Sandy Daley, a filmmaker and photographer living at the Chelsea, takes Mapplethorpe and Smith to Max’s Kansas City, a restaurant and bar where artists, musicians and Andy Warhol’s circle gather; they spend their evenings there until the rock promoter and writer Danny Fields invites them to his table, which both regard as an important breakthrough.
July 1971
Meets John McKendry
Croland introduces Mapplethorpe to John McKendry, curator of photographs and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who becomes his first significant benefactor: through him Mapplethorpe reaches Henry Geldzahler, who introduces him to David Hockney, and the photographer Francesco Scavullo, and later gains access to the museum’s private photography collection, studying works that had never been publicly exhibited.
