Toxic, when I met him in '84, was nineteen, like Basquiat when Andy Warchol met him. I note thiscoincidence not to make some absurd compari-son, but because I like it. I like coincidences, and Ilike stories with happy endings. Because they'remagical.
And this is a story with a happy ending.He was an upbeat sort, cheerful and sweet. I knew he was from the South Bronx, from a family with Caribbean origins, like Basquiat.
He was really akid when I met him, but he was also one of thesoldiers "armed" by Rammellzee, the captain of anarmy of letters who equipped his army in a veryunusual way.
On those trains, he fought by makingdark, tough tags with hard, strong marks - likeHartung with canvases - and with a metallic tang, like the scrap iron of the trains he painted.

Like Toxic, each of Rammellzee's soldiers had aletter entrusted to him, in the name of which tofight the most exhilarating of wars, the only war weshould all make if we simply must make war: thebattle of armed letters.All of this took place in the Big Apple, in AlphabetCity, the Lower East Side and the Bronx above 24thStreet at the beginning of the 1980s.
So, Toxic was above all a warrior of art, but a veryspecial warrior, a black warrior, a king, like theones Basquiat depicted in his mythical and affect-ing paintings.

In fact, Toxic appears in three historic portraits byhis friend Jean Michel, one of which is present in'The Jean Michel Basquiat show', now on stage atthe Milan Triennial.This fact of having been for Basquiat not only aneighborhood companion but a brother, a youngerbrother with the same Caribbean origins, musthave been of fundamental importance for Toxic,five years his friends' junior.
But although celebrated and coddled by the kingof Graffiti, Toxic never let it go to his head.He looks the same now as he did then.
He's a laid-back king, an unaffected man-boy who doesn'tshow his 41 years, and you believe him when,pointing a finger at one of the panels on the wallsof the Triennial, he cries out," Nooo! It's not true!They lied! I never shared drugs with Basquiat likethese guys wrote.

No! Never with Michel! He lovedme, he protected me - once, in front of a guy whooffered me heroin, he tore up the house to keepme from doing it, to keep me from doing drugs.
Iloved him too, I would have wanted to protect himmyself, but it was really hard. I went to live inFrance before he died and we'd planned to take atrip to Africa together, so I was looking for acamper to rent.
He was my brother, Jean Michel.
I'm gonna sue these guys now, I'm gonna seek damages, you know! Who wrote this? Who? Who! Who! You've got to tell me who!".
I find difficult to calm him down and explain thatthe staff there in the hallways of the Triennal have nothing to do with the responsible parties and theexhibition curators.

Anyway I don't know whowrote it, or why, or for what clear and obvious reasons he or she did such a thing.
Watching him as he works himself into a rage, Idon't find it hard to believe now that he had had adifferent kind of life, healthier than the others.
Besides, if he managed to survive until now, andwithout showing his age at all, that must havebeen the case.
I know that he moved to a differentcontinent towards the end of the '80s, that he preferred France, Paris and Marseilles, and now the Tuscan countryside.
Instead of a New York that had become extraneous and somber, where deaths came one after the other and it seemed that black pride in art might only last as long as a fireworks flash due to the overriding power of hostile critics and the WASP majority of artists in the'80s, as Haring himself underlines in his diaries.The celebration of blacks in New York's museums lasted no longer than Warhol's prophesied fifteen minutes.
But those fifteen minutes were enough to earn aplace in history.
Certainly, the Mediterranean, its colors and its harmonies could have been the rightrefuge, a buen ritiro for someone who no longer wanted to watch his friends die in New York ofoverdoses, AIDS, melancholy and various otherthings.
A New York where the party was now over- in the name of AIDS but also of the Halleys andthe Koons - and where there was no longer roomnor a place for those who freely declared their ownidentities and interior diversity in the streets. Thecoup de grace was those very trains, the Graffitiststrains, which suddenly ended up in museums. These are things I have deduced, not things he'stold me. Toxic talks less than his friends. He talksvery little. He prefers to paint. Once when I askedhim he told me that he doesn't even know himselfwhy he left New York. Probably to save himself. And he would have saved Jean Michel, too, if ithad been possible."Excuse me. but why are vou called Toxic? You've never told me," I ask him at this point In the story. "Ah, you know," I add, "you can't presume that thecurators of an exhibition in Italy know all about youand the origins of your name...
maybe our catalogue compilers have misconstrued Toxic,' whichhere has an unequivocal meaning of someone whoioes drugs, an addict.
"Toxic, addict?" He says, "What are you talkingabout? Are you nuts?," he surprises me againpoint-blank.

"This name was given to me when asa kid I played basketball - since I always won,made all my shots, I became "Toxic' which meansI was scary, dangerous, poisonous.
You got it now? This name did not mean drug addict,absolutely not."His explanation leaves rne completely disarmed, in- — '-stressed.
I feel guilty about the oncewho dont know, the ones who ingenuosly or deliberately wrote on that wall.
"My God, what a mistake our critics made they're so used to digging up dirt!" I exclaim.
In effect, Toxic today seems the model of a perfect"New Age" man.
He doesn't eat pork or red meat,prefer refers vegetables, stays away from bread.
Henooses healthy and appetizing menus, reflecting the tastes of a real health-nut and a slow-foodgourmet.
But what an unimaginable transformation for a guywho in the '80s lived in the South Bronx and in '87in a squatter's flat in Via Borsieri and went to painttrains at Garibaldi Station in Milan! Who kn - r \fanyone in this inattentive city of mine realized that those train cars weren't graffitied by just anyone, but by Rammellzee's most illustrious soldiers,Toxic and A One!
But there have been so many changes since then!-xi -inother incredible thing - Toxic now speaksgood Italian and French and really seems like aserene, healthy, proud man - in short, just like thatking his big brother Basquiat would have had himb& ; •: •'"-, absolutely spontaneous - o : ca"'thelp but note the joy and pride he shows here,with me, seeing each other after more than twentyyears!Twenty-two years have passed since I started talk-ing about him, that time, at the Graffiti exhibitionthat Renato Barilli did in '84, in Bologna.
One yearafter the death of Francesca Alin.Another death that was hard to accept, becauseFrancesca was part of the Graffiti world, hadbecome one of them, and her premature passing"ad sl locked everyone, struck everyone, KeithHaring in primis, who, in his diaries, defined her ashis best interviewer.
But also A one, Rammellzee,Toxic, Koor especially.
She had been the first tonferview them, she had found them and pulledthem out of the Bronx and put them in the bestEuropean magazines.
She had contributed muchto their success, to bringing them into white peo-ple's history for the first time, because they werethe ones who spoke the real slang of Two-thou-sand, a language that, incredibly, included all thearts, from break dance to hip-hop to rap to com-puter art to Graffiti.
Then, I interviewed A one,Rammellzee and Toxic and wrote about them for 'Segno' and 'Frigidaire in the second half of the'80s, and I became ^""'"ated with their strangeand complicated stories, and those letters which,as Rammellzee told me, had, in monks' illuminatedmanuscripts, been the basis of the culture thatsuddenly fell apart 3000 years ago.
The letters,having escaped, then fell into the improper andtyrannical possession of languages, spoken lan-guages, uncultivated and lacking the sacrednessthat had divided us: Americans, Germans, French,Italians, Russian, Japanese, blacks...
Thus GothicFuturism or Nymphism or Ikonoklast Panzerismwould have restored regality to letters, as well asthe prestige of those who celebrated them, likegeneral Rammellzee and his followers, from whomthe world, civilization and Lucy - the first, prehis-toric black woman - were born, and thence, letters.My interest in them continued.
I think that's whyToxic never forgot about me, and there's also thefact that his life has been different from the others'.Today, Toxic can not only be proud of having sur-vived an almost completely lost generation, but healso knows that he is the king of a black clan,which for the first time has made its boisterousand victorious entrance into the history of whitepeople's art.He is not just a survivor, no: he is a king.
One ofJean Michel Basquiat's kings, and now he's talkingto me.He is the only one left to chronicle the brothers,the black kings of Jazz, boxers, dancers and final-ly, western art.Among other shocking things, he also tells me thatKeith Haring didn't do trains - only blacks didGraffiti on trains, never whites (he underlines thiswith proud irony): he himself, Rammellzee, A one,Koor: they are the real Graffitists, because dangerwas their vocation.Going around at night, in the depths of darknessand in the depths of the earth to paint subwaytrains with their stylized, wonderful, primordial andeven gothic letters.Letters out for a ride.
Because the general was theonly font of light, and he directed his energytowards the trains, leaving them free to inventthemselves.This is why alongside those prehistoric Writers' let-ters there appeared cartoon faces, smaller writ-ings, colors and joy and the crazy personal ideolo-gy of the graffitist.There's a photo of Toxic and me together inBologna at the Graffiti exhibition held at the Galleryof Modern Art in '84.
We were a lot younger, butno less proud than today.For the first time, the Bronx Graffitists appeared inItaly, an unfortunately they seemed like orphanswithout their Italian vestal, without Francesca.Francesca, who had stated loud and clear, in thepages of Flash Art, how the entrance of blacks intothe history of art had happened at that verymoment, at the beginning of the '80s.
And not somuch with Basquiat, she maintained, as withRammelzee, A one, C one, expressions of a social-aesthetic and historic movement of liberation,unexpected protagonists of a triumphal entrancefrom the street into the world of New York Gallerieswith a capital G, with those names they'd coined:"Ikonoklast Panzerism," "Nymphism" or "Gothicfuturism," which had more to do with Europeantradition than with American tradition.Too bad that Basquiat never managed to enjoy thatgrand period, of which he had been one of themost important initiators and supporters, Toxic saysto me.
The boy wasn't just loaded with genius, butalso with affection, having chosen as his putative''ather Andy Warhol, the friend who had advised,admired and loved him like a real father.
It was strange that such a unique and exceptionallove as the one the two artists shared - a love ofspirit and intellect, complicity and affection, humorand sympathy - wasn't enough for his Caribbeanfriend.White people's yearnings and obsessions, the tics,"he drugs, sickness and money (he was alwaysafraid that his paintings would cost less than KeithHaring's) had destroyed him, leading first todepression and eventually to death.In short, even though Jean Michel was rich andfa o,!& iaxis wouldn't pick him up - he alwaysad to depend on white people even for these stu-pid things, send a white guy ahead of him, maybea guy like Keith Haring. And in restaurants they stilltreated him poorly, like a second-class citizen, abum. Because black people's entrance into whiteart history through the graffiti door wasn't exactlypa:niess.
Like the story of Martin Li.': .:; K^ ;another black king, Toxic continues to tell me.I tell him that Keith Haring himself disowned whiteculture in his diaries."Most white people are bad.The white man has always used religion as ameans to satisfy his own greed and aggressive•ower hunger. Business is just a synonym for con-trol. Control of the • • - ody, the spirit.Control is bad. Ass the stories of the white man'scolonization and domination are full of terrifying.?c;socies of abuse of power and maltreatment ofpeople. I'm sure I'n; 10' vhite on the inside."(Diaries, p.
149)He doesn't say anything, I can see that he's notcrazy about Keith Haring.In the portrait I'm looking at with him here at theMilan Triennial, he also looks like a black king, anAfrican, a primordial ae,i ,g, a king with a king'saura and the magic hat of a shaman, hands raisedas if performing a rite and two mysterious wandscrossing atop his head, beyond the aura.In another image I see his friend A one, who's nolonger with us. Another African king.
A One movedto Paris with Toxic for a while, then he died.
He.-.as around thirty, like the others.But Toxic is here in r ;,f me, alive and well, andtogether we're looking at the splendid exhibition ofhis best friend Jean Michel Basquiat, at the MilanTriennial.Toxic doesn't have dreadlocks, his shoes aren'tfalling apart, he's not depressed.
He's dressed inEuropean style, with the simple elegance of goodtaste.
Italian good taste.Just seeing him standing there practically seemslike a miracle to me."Did you know that Andy Warhol was afraid ofRammelzee?" he asks me all of a sudden, yetanother of his affirmations that have the power tothrow me off."Samo knew it, and we used to laugh about it,even though Samo loved Andy - not in the physi-cal sense, in that sense he liked women.
Madonnawas one of his women.
Back then she was like us,poor, hungry, genius."I recall that back then, at thirty, when I met Toxic, Iimitated Madonna too, especially that ironic, luxuri-ous style of hers.
I went around with Russianwolfhounds and wore fake pearl necklaces andenormous, second-hand fox stoles.
Toxic remem-bers me like that - maybe I remind him of her, too- yes, Madonna - because I put on the same sortof crazy get-ups, but as a popular song from thatperiod by Loredana Berte went, "I'm not (I wasn't)a lady." Back then, I felt the tidal wave of theirenergy, I perceived that wave like my DNA, like myown blood.
I felt under my skin the same excite-ment as the black Graffitists - A one, Toxic, Koor,Ero, Phase Two...Uniting the kingdoms of the museum and thestreet, of counterculture and dreams, experiencingthe emancipation of desires and the success of theheart, that was the energy of those years.
Livedamid trash and Champagne in Italy and in the EastVillage.
But times are different now, how different Idon't know either.
Currently, Toxic is working on awall in a suburb of Florence for an informationtechnology company called Bassnet, a wall thatBassnet shares with a school.I have noticed that on that stupendous wall, Toxic'scolors are very different than before.
They'vebecome airy and clean, the blue is cerulean andhas great depth.
Spontaneously, I tell him that Idon't see the sharp red and blue and purple andgray, or all the black of his early graffiti.I tell him that I see the Mediterranean sun, the col-ors of Africa and of Marseille.He laughs: a pure, sweet, disarming smile, thesame as ever, a child's smile, with an infinitely clearand good light behind it.That light has come back into my life after manyyears, and it does me good, because the positivememory I had of him has not only remained unal-tered, but the image of the Toxic of today makeshim even more a real hero in my eyses.
One ofthose heroes who last and make happy endings.Not a fifteen-minute hero, but one of a thousandyears, a thousand tempests, a thousand dawns, ahero of two worlds and two seas, a hero and long-voyage captain who surfs amid the waves of lifeand comes out safe and sound and pure and fullof joyous energies in a desert of art that isn'tAfrica, that often doesn't encourage, in which Ioften find myself lost, incapable of identifying withand staying in.Me, someone who knows things.