Unrequited love and emotional dependence on Jon Gould

Andy Warhol’s attachment to Jon Gould is marked by a persistent mismatch between the intimacy Warhol hopes for and the limited, often professional connection the diary records. He tries to bring Jon closer, reads missed plans as evidence of rejection, and remains emotionally invested even after agreeing not to write about Jon’s private life. The diary’s record of that restriction makes the relationship’s central tension especially clear: Warhol must conceal its personal dimension in writing, yet his disappointment continues to shape how he describes his days.

Pursuit and the hope of closeness

The diary shows Warhol trying to create opportunities for a relationship to develop. On May 12, 1981, he called Chris Makos to discuss the previous evening with Jon and offered Chris a gold watch if he could persuade Jon to do something with him. Warhol acknowledged that romance might not result, but still wanted Jon to move in, hoping that living together would allow something to develop. The gesture joins emotional hope to practical arrangements: a shared home seems to offer a route toward intimacy even when romance cannot be assumed.

An earlier visit captures the different expectations the two men bring to their time together. Warhol spent an hour at Jon’s West Side apartment while Jon balanced his budget and reread Popish, asking what Warhol described as serious questions. Warhol found the discussion intolerable and left at one o’clock. The scene does not establish what Jon intended by the visit, but it shows that being together did not necessarily give Warhol the kind of emotional connection he wanted. Time in the same room could remain awkwardly ordinary, while Warhol continued to hope for a more consequential bond.

A boundary on the diary

The limits of Warhol’s access to Jon become explicit after a trip from East Falmouth back to New York. Jon had decided to visit his family in Amesbury rather than return with the group, after reporting that his grandfather had suffered a stroke and his dog had relapsed. Warhol was deeply unhappy on the flight and felt that the trip had brought no progress in the relationship. More consequentially, Jon became angry when he learned that Warhol had written personally about him in the diary and said he would stop seeing Warhol if that continued.

Warhol accepted the condition, deciding that future diary entries would treat Jon only as someone working for Paramount Pictures with whom he was trying to develop scripts and films. This was not evidence that the feelings themselves had disappeared; it changed what Warhol permitted himself to record about them. The diary therefore preserves both the attachment and the boundary placed around its narration. Personal intimacy becomes unsayable there, while business remains an acceptable subject.

Missed plans and emotional fallout

The distance persisted despite Warhol’s efforts to continue seeing Jon. On June 12, Jon was back in town and said he had assumed Warhol was going away, so he had made other weekend plans. He said he would call but did not. Warhol described the relationship as having fallen apart and tried to tell himself to pull together and find a new outlook. Watching Urban Cowboy made the evening harder: the film’s connection to Paramount reminded him of Jon, and he cried himself to sleep. The episode shows how an ordinary entertainment could reactivate the disappointment he was trying to manage.

When Jon eventually called on June 21, he said he had returned from Utah and was at the Gulf + Western building. He offered explanations for not coming over, including tiredness and having lost his luggage and keys. Warhol doubted the account, noting that Jon said it was raining when it was not, and decided that the relationship was over. He went to bed with Valium. The decision did not bring immediate relief: the next morning he reported a disastrous night’s sleep and described his weight loss as frightening, even while acknowledging that he liked being thin. The diary links relational distress with physical vulnerability without establishing that one caused the other.

Longing within a narrowed relationship

The emotional strain surfaced again in August. After seeing Mommie Dearest, Warhol reflected that he identified with Joan Crawford when she was rejected as too old and discarded by Pepsi. Later, after walking with Jon on Columbus Avenue, he woke from a nap feeling depressed and miserable, comparing the feeling to his early days in New York and describing a fear of living alone. He also recorded weighing 115 pounds and insisted that appearance was not the real problem. The entry places loneliness, insecurity, and the relationship in close proximity, but does not make Jon solely responsible for those feelings.

By December, the diary’s agreed business framing had become particularly visible. Brigid Berlin was dyeing the surgical corsets Warhol wore around his stomach after the 1968 shooting. He admired the colors but felt that no one would see them on him because nothing was progressing with Jon; they only worked on scripts. The entry brings private hope and professional routine into the same frame. The work continued, but it did not provide the intimacy Warhol wanted. Across these episodes, the relationship remains unresolved: Warhol keeps reaching toward closeness, while the diary increasingly records distance, missed expectations, and a connection confined to collaboration.