fool. Thinking to amuse his date, a scintillatingly beautiful freshman from the Midwest named Shelley Albin, he pulled over, laughing, and said, “Here’s Lou! He’s very shocking and evil!” making, as it turned out for him, the dreadful mistake of offering “the lunatic” a ride.
Although in no way as twisted and bent as Lincoln Swados, Shelley was as perfect a match for Lou as his roommate was. Born in Wisconsin, where she had lived the frustrated life of a beatnik tomboy, Shelley had elected Syracuse because it was the only university her parents would let her attend. In preparation for the big move away from home, Shelley, along with a childhood girlfriend, had come to Syracuse fully intending to mend her ways and acquiesce to the college and culture’s coed requirements. Discarding the jeans and work shirts she wore at home, she donned instead the below-the-knee skirt, tasteful blouse, and string of pearls seen on girls in every yearbook photo of the period. When Lou hopped into the backseat eager to make her acquaintance, Shelley was squirming with the discomfort of the demure uniform as well as her dorky date’s running commentary.
She vividly recalled Lou’s skinny hips, baby face, give-away eyes, and knew “we were going to go out as soon as he got into the car.” She also knew she was making a momentous decision and that Lou was going to be trouble, but that it certainly wasn’t going to be boring. “It was such a relief to see Lou, who was to me a normal person. And I was intrigued by the evil shit.”
The feeling was clearly mutual. As soon as the couple let Lou off in front of his dorm, Reed sprinted into their room and breathlessly told Swados about the most beautiful girl in the world he had just met, and his plans to call her immediately.
Lincoln had a strangely paternal side that would often appear at inappropriate moments. Seeing his role as steering Lou through his emotional mood swings, Swados immediately put the kibosh on Reed’s notion of seducing Shelley by informing him that this would be out of the question since he, Lincoln, had already spotted the pretty coed and, despite not yet having met her, was claiming her as his own.
Lou, for his part, saw his role in the relationship as primarily to calm the highly strung, hyperactive Swados. Reasoning that the nerdy Lincoln, who had been unable to get a single date during the freshman year, would only be wounded by the rejection he was certain to get from Shelley, Lou wasted no time in cutting his friend off at the pass by calling Shelley at her dorm within the hour and arranging an immediate date. That way, Lou told himself, he would soon be able to give Swados the pleasure of her company.
Shelley Albin would not only become Lou Reed’s girlfriend through his sophomore and junior years—“my mountaintop, my peak,” as he would later describe her—but would remain for many years thereafter his muse. “Lou and I connected when we were too young to really put it into words,” Shelley said. “There was some innate connection there that was very strong. I knew him before everything was covered up. My strongest image of Lou is always as a Byronesque character, a very sweet young man. He was interesting, he wasn’t one of the bland, robotic people, he had a wonderful poetic nature. Basically, Lou was a puffball, he was a sweetie.” For all of Lou’s eccentricities, Shelley found him “very straight. He was very coordinated, a good dancer, and he could play a good game of tennis. His criteria for life were equally straight. He was a fifties guy, the husband of the house, the God. He wanted a woman who was the end-all Barbie and would make bacon when he wanted bacon. I was very submissive and naive and that’s what appealed to him.”
But Lou also had his “crazy” side, which he played to the hilt. Like many bright kids who have just discovered Kierkegaard and Camus, he was the classic, arty bad boy. Alternating between straight and scary, Lou reveled in both. “There was a part of Lou that was forever fifteen, and a part of him that was a hundred,” Shelley fondly recalled. Fortunately for Lou, she embraced both parts equally. And going out with Lou gave Shelley the jolt she needed to throw off her skirt and pearls for jeans and let her perm return to her natural long, straight hair. Seeing her metamorphosis, the boy Shelley had left so brazenly for Lou was soon chiding her, “You went to the dogs and became a beatnik. Lou ruined you!” In fact, Shelley, an art student, had simply reverted to being herself. But she enjoyed the taunt, knowing how much Lou liked it when people accused him of corrupting her and enjoyed the notoriety it won him. Shelley was also astonishingly beautiful, and to this day, Lou’s Syracuse teachers and friends remember above all else that Lou Reed had an “outrageously gorgeous girlfriend who was also very, very nice.”
Shelley Albin had a unique face. Looked at straight on, what struck you first were her eyes. An inner light glimmered through them. Her nose was straight and perfect. Her jawline and chin were so finely sculpted they became the subject of many an art student at Syracuse. It was an open and closed face. Her mouth said yes. Yet her eyes had a Modigliani/Madonna quality that bayed, you keep your distance. Her light brown hair reflected in her pale cream skin gave it at times, a reddish tint. At five feet seven inches and weighing 115 pounds, she was close enough in size to Lou to wear his clothes.
“We were inseparable from the moment we met,” Shelley recalled. “We were always literally wrapped up in each other like a pretzel.” Soon Shelley and Lou could be seen at the Savoy, making out in public for hours at a time: “He was a great kisser and well coordinated. I always thought of him as a master of the slow dance. When we met, it was like long-lost friends.” For both of them it was their first real love affair. They quickly discovered that they could relate across the boards. They had a great sexual relationship. They played basketball and tennis together. When Lou wrote a poem or a story, Shelley found herself doing a drawing or a painting that perfectly illustrated it. She had been sent to a psychiatrist in her teens for refusing to speak to her father for three years. Lou wrote “I’ll Be Your Mirror” two years later about Shelley. And Shelley was Lou’s mirror. Just as he had rushed a fraternity, she, much to his delight, rushed a sorority and then told them to go fuck themselves an hour after she got accepted.
“His appeal was as a very sexy, intricate and convoluted boy/man,” Shelley said. “It was the combination of private gentle lover and romantic and strong, driven thug. He was, however, a little too strong, a dangerous little boy you can’t trust who will turn on you and is much stronger than you think. He had the strength of a man. You really couldn’t win. You had to catch him by surprise if you wanted to deck him.
“The electroshock treatments were very fresh in his mind when we met. He immediately established that he was erratic, undependable, and dangerous, and that he was going to control any situation by making everyone around him nervous. It was the ultimate game of chicken. But I could play Lou’s game too, that’s why we got along so well.
“What appealed to me about Lou was that he always pushed the edge. That’s what really attracted me to him. I was submissive to Lou as part of my gift to him, but he wasn’t controlling me. If you look back at who’s got the power in the relationship, it will turn out that it wasn’t him.”
Whereas the entrance of a stunning female often offsets the male bonding between collaborators, in the tradition of the beats established by Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady, Lou correctly presumed that Shelley would enhance, rather than break up, his collaboration with Lincoln. In fact, it became such a close relationship that Lou would occasionally suggest, only half-jokingly, that Shelley should spend some time in bed with Lincoln. Their relationship mirrored that of the famous trio at the core of their generation’s favorite film, Rebel Without a Cause, with Lou as James Dean, Shelley as Natalie Wood, and Lincoln as the doomed Sal Mineo.
Lou presented Lincoln to Shelley as an important but fragile figure who needed to be nurtured. Lincoln was homely, but Shelley’s vision of him in motion was “like Fred Astaire, Lincoln was debonair and he would spin a wonderful tale and I think Lou could see this fascination. Lou felt very responsible and protective toward Lincoln because nobody would see Lincoln and we liked Lincoln.” The first thing Lou said to Shelley was, “Lincoln wants you, and if I were a really good guy, I should give you to Lincoln because I can get anybody and Lincoln can’t. Lincoln loves you, but I’m not going to give you to him because I want you.” Shelley realized that many of Lou’s ways of being charming and his gestures were taken straight from Lincoln. “A lot of what I really loved about Lou was Lincoln, who was in many ways like Jiminy