The woman who invented selfies

It took a while for Brigid and I to get to know each other, not to mention like each other. But then it was total lifelong devotion. At first, when I started out at Interview, in 1970, Brigid would give me The Glare, which was the negative equivalent of Nancy Reagan’s The Gaze. One or two seconds of that killing look were enough to put across Brigid’s message: stay away. But a few years later, she gave up speed, moved to a proper apartment on East 22nd Street, and took a steady job as receptionist and transcriber of Andy Warhol’s tapes at the new Factory at 860 Broadway. That was when we bonded.

Our newfound friendship was partly based on our shared Republican roots —her Dad was a close friend of Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller; my Mom had been a Republican party precinct captain in Plainview, Long Island. We also shared the highly developed appreciation of absurdity that you needed to survive at Andy Warhol Enterprises, to get what was going on and go along with it.