On October 2, 1967, Andy Warhol stepped onto the runway at Salt Lake City Municipal Airport. He was at the start of a lecture tour of the West, and the University of Utah was to host his first appearance. A crowd of students was gathered beside the terminal, yet no matter how hard they strained it was hard to get a clear view of him. Warhol was a turmoil of tics and gestures. His head was buried deep in the collar of his black frock coat, his fingers constantly worried his deathly pale face, his sunglasses completely obscured his eyes. At one point, a sharp gust of wind fanned a cloud of white and silver powder from his hair, momentarily turning him into an albino whirlwind, but no one thought much of this. After all, this was the enigmatic Andy Warhol, king of Campbell's Soup and New York cool. Powdering his hair was probably the least of it.

Swept into the back of a car by his assistant, Paul Morrissey, Warhol found himself sharing his seat with Joe Bauman, a 21-year-old editorial assistant at The Daily Utah Chronicle, the university newspaper. Bauman noticed that Warhol's face wasn't naturally white but was also caked in powder. "What's that on your face?" he asked. "Oh," mumbled Warhol, "I have a skin condition."

It was a quiet ride after that. Spying the student's camera, Morrissey forbade him to take any pictures, explaining that Warhol was a very shy man. Nevertheless, while Warhol read what the local press was saying about his visit, Bauman surreptitiously leaned his camera back on his lap and clicked.

The lecture was a disaster. After arriving 45 minutes late, Warhol proceeded to show a half-hour scene from his film, **** (1967), without any explication. The crowd was restless. At the film's end, a stilted question-and-answer session took the place of the promised lecture. Warhol's responses were non sequiturs or conversational dead ends. When asked what the film was about, Warhol responded, "I really couldn't explain it." When asked what his role was in the production of his films, Warhol replied, "I start them, I think." More questions were asked, but Warhol seemed bored and uncomfortable. He said nothing about the movie; indeed, he didn't seem to care about it at all.

Warhol would appear at three more universities in Oregon and Montana, each time seeming unenthusiastic, uninformed, and under the influence. Occasionally, his head would loll toward the table as if he were in a trance, and Morrissey would be forced to leap in to fill the void. However, once Warhol was out of the lecture hall and casually mingling with the students, he seemed much more cheerful and friendly, like a whole new person. In Missoula, he gleefully signed students' draft cards. In Eugene, the students plied him with marijuana. Andy Warhol, it seemed, was great fun. The only problem was that this wasn't Andy Warhol at all.

Meeting Allen Midgette isn't easy. He doesn't have a cell phone or an email address. Fortunately, he is gregarious and is well known in the shops and restaurants of Woodstock, New York. I eventually got to meet him by flooding the town's eateries with letters addressed to him.

Midgette commutes into Woodstock most days, hitching rides with whoever is driving past the rooming house in which he resides a few miles outside town. The building he lives in is nondescript, but open the doors to his tiny apartment and you enter a 150-square-foot sylvan glade, constructed of paper leaves and real tree branches. Ornate golden sconces and plinths adorn the walls, which are painted a bright, light blue, strangely reminiscent of Warhol's Shot Blue, Marilyn (1964). A fragrant haze hangs in the air. Part boudoir, part bower, this is the home of the man who was once Andy Warhol.

Before becoming Warhol, Allen Midgette had lived many lives. He had stowed away on a ship to Europe, befriended the young Bernardo Bertolucci, and appeared in the director's first two films. Back in New York, he had become the lover of the choreographer Jerome Robbins, and the live-in companion of the tortured actor Montgomery Clift. It was as Clift's guest that Midgette gained his first visit to the Factory, where he would end up dancing for Judy Garland, Tennessee Williams, and Rudolf Nureyev. (Seeing Midgette flailing around the dance floor, Nureyev asked him, "Are you a madman or a sexy bitch?" Midgette responded, "I'm afraid I'm a madman.")