26. art-n-sacto nr. 2
“Ruff Ruff. I am not home right now. I am probably out rummaging
through trash bins, picking through garage sale items, visiting a
thrift store or gleaning vacant lots for valuable finds. You know
what you are supposed to do after the beep. Recycle!”
“Denver, that is an awful message on your answering machine. I hope
you take that off. God help you, Denver. Where do you think you were
born? I certainly wasn’t raised with you. It makes me so mad I could
spit. I am sure that Mom doesn’t call that often. She’d have a heart
attack if she heard your message. I know you’re home. Why don’t you
pick up the phone? Don’t you have any sense? Now listen up, dad and
mom had an accident. In fact, dad had two. They had to go to Mercy but
they’re home now. Apparently, dad got mugged at work. Some guy there
hit him over the head with a coffee mug. Mom’s circulation collapsed,
I guess from house cleaning or something like that. The paramedics
destroyed their home. I think the insurance will pay for everything.
You could call them and ask them if they are all right but I suppose
that would be too much for you to do. You don’t even pick up the
phone. I just called to let you know.”
As a rule, Denver never picked up the phone when it rang, always
screening his calls to avoid exactly this type of caller.
So to do, thought Denver, and blinking his eyes open, glanced at his
oversized plastic wristwatch wall clock. Not even noon and already
hotter than a witch’s tit in a brass bra in hell, he thought and
threw off his soaked bed sheet. He lay quietly on his bed, listening
to the streets of sacramento pass by outside his open window. He
could already hear the whooshing sound of polyester rubbing between
sweaty thighs as neighborhood ruffians on skateboards whizzed by and
terrorized unsuspecting state workers walking to and from work. He
could hear vagrants, probably overdressed in three layers of
clothing, shuffling down the street with their shopping carts,
searching for aluminum cans, empty bottles and stray food scraps. He
imagined the local artists types seeking refuge in air-conditioned
coffee houses, hanging out, wasting time, but looking great.
The Art Lush would stop in between teaching art classes at elementary
schools. The Art Shit and the Art Fag would be sitting at a coffee
table with the Art Diva in sunglasses. The Art Stud would be waiting
in line before the Art Dresser and the Art Wurst, probably on their
way to work. All would be talking about the almost things that they
were going to do, all busy in their own worlds. Oh, long live the
world of selfmade reality, Denver thought to himself. Their good life.
His aversion to humanity intensified as the summer progressed. In
general, the summer brought out the worst in everyone, changing even
the meekest of souls into perspiring lunatics. He thought of how
people turned into slow moving blobs, about how his own vision was
blurred by the constant sweat pouring from his forehead and the glare
caused by the afternoon sun. It was no wonder that sacramento had one
of the highest mortality rates in the nation. The summer heat drove
people to murder, massacre and malice. He would find even himself
spinning absurd thoughts that grew stranger and stranger as the sun
got hotter and hotter.
At present, Denver felt that his life was going nowhere fast, as if a
time warp had occurred, and events were repeating themselves. A
feeling of frustration crept into his heart and he rolled over and
stared at the yellow wall. He heard a car driving by with the radio
playing the hit song by The Geniuses, a local band, who only months
earlier was simply a garage band, playing local gigs in and out of
the valley. Suddenly with the release of their single, a cheesy
remake of an old Norma Child song, the band had gained instant
recognition. Now journalists from trade magazines were asking their
opinions about world politics, the sacramento art scene and the price
of rice in Blyte. Denver felt that he had the right to answer these
questions, that it was his voice that should at last be heard,
screaming from the top of the capitol dome while pulling on his
penis. “Lesbians of the world unite and take over.” He rolled out of
bed.
He walked into the bathroom, took a pee in the washbasin and went
into the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee and do his usual
creative search for breakfast before returning to his bed with a tray
to write in his diary. Denver was currently using his diary as a
personal record of previous actions or pithy utterances to be used in
case he had to defend himself when hostilely confronted by a lover,
friend or business associate.
June 21,11 a.m. Heatwave 100°/66° Sunny, Not a cloud in the sky.
Dear Diary. How cum I can’t get anybody to pay $5 dollars to lick my
pussy when all I ever do, is let it hang out on the streets of
excremento?
Denver sat in bed, thinking, sipping a cup of coffee and occasionally
jotting down a sentence. He attached his latest acquisition from the
Art Angles to a blank page in his diary and took a big yawn. His mind
drifted through his reality, turning his world into a cuisinated messy
pink-colored pulp.
Sex, Denver wrote. That was reality. He started to sing, “My man is
gone. How am I going to get through? How am I ever going to find a
man in this town? This town of many frowns.” He stopped singing and
in the silence of his bedroom he reflected on his status in society
as a homosexual.
He had known the evil hand of discrimination ever since he was a
child. Kindergarten, the great social equalizer, was where he had
learned the social pecking order, which held true to this day. He
learned early on that his only chance for survival was to accept this
vicious hierarchy and exploit his given social position. Denver
venerated his differences until finally, labeled a ’freak’ by his
peers, he was left pretty much alone to develop independent of the
rigors of their strict social conformity.
To complicate matters, Denver was a fag and, even though at a pre-
sexual age he did not understand the connotation of the word they
were calling him, he sensed its derogatory nature. Hence, his
homosexuality became a matter to disguise, or serious physical
consequences could occur. Though exuding no sign of femininity in his
character, he lived in constant fear of being beaten up by the
grammar school bullies. In order to withstand the years of religious
and social conformity, he had remained non-plussed, mild-mannered
and asexual.
At first, he had no other choice but to suppress his nature, but
gleaned much needed information about society’s so-called perversion
>from the way others treated him. He was aware at an early age of the
blatant social contradictions that occurred within his own peer
group. He grasped how easy it was for the class bully or a bubble-
headed cheerleader to manipulate others if they had the goods to hold
court. Television confirmed his early observations about the world
beyond the playground by mirroring conflicting views in religious,
political and social thought. It seemed that everyone, from his
fellow classmates to religious icons, managed to say one thing and,
later, do exactly the opposite without batting an eye or anyone
paying a damn bit of attention. Denver came to understand that it was
the act of doing and not the act of saying, unless written down, that
proved a human’s worth.
Being cast as an outsider, Denver searched for an outlet for self-
realization. He discovered the arts as an means for communicating his
hidden sentiments publicly. He developed his creative strategy by
combining subliminal social manipulation and mass marketing
techniques, using a populist approach to engage a wide spectrum. As
he delved deeper into the layers of the so-called art world,
disappointingly, he found it not only a refuge for society’s immoral
mandate, but also the last bastion for the white male supremacist. He
accepted the challenge and found a purpose in life that would
constantly challenge him to learn.
He had long ago concluded that the art academy might churn out free
thinkers but it had little to do with contemporary culture and, along
with classical music and the chair, were forms of art or design, that
should be allocated to the halls of antiquity. The academies are
simply permanent cocktail parties with built-in studios for learning
the trade.
Funny, Denver wrote, most of the students are female, minorities or
gay, and most of the professors are male, white and straight. Those
who do get through have fucked their way to the top. Is the result
only artists dressed in black who will later be re-amalgamated into
the academic goo? Or brainwashed academic blondes who are unable
to separate themselves psychologically from the academic world?
The art academy is an institution leftover from previous centuries of
western supremacy, and has remained a cultural model to uphold. The
fact that the concept of institutional art was transplanted to the
new world makes even less sense.
Are art schools only self-perpetuating institutions? Is culture
defined by an intellectual class as a cleverly devised survival
technique to carve out a permanent niche in a patriarchal society? A
system that ignored the masses who are the culture and instead lives
a lie in their own spun out institutions.
I know what they meant when they proclaimed that painting was dead.
Artists churned out from the academies are old-fashioned. Painting is
only one and a very limited media of expression. Contemporary artists
nowadays do not restrict themselves only to one medium. When moral
integrity and academic art mix, real time art gets boring.
It is a vicious circle. The token white, straight male students
either become collectors, gallery owners or remain artists. It is all
so incestual. The trust fund white males, who were given a purpose in
life by attending the academy, are the ones who buy art from their
frustrated artists, former school chums turned gallery owners, who
market their white artist friends’ work, and the only thing that
really sells is tits and ass. Nothing has changed. Within the gay
community, the same is true. If it’s not homo-erotic or deals with
the prevention of sexual diseases, I cannot depend on aid from my
sisters.
Denver put down his pen and sighed, flustered that he would die in
poverty like most creative artists, only to later have his works
exploited by anal-retentive assholes calling themselves art
collectors and who would make millions.
Denver pondered on how he had arrived at the art world and realized
it was, in the end, his parents, the way they were, the way they had
raised him, the examples they had set for him, which had made him the
creative artist he was today.
I got to love them for who they are, but I hate them for what they do.
The telephone rang and he let the answering machine record the
caller. “Hello Denver. It’s me, Vella. I am still alive. Is anyone
there? I got your message the other day. Thanks for calling. I know
what you are going through. I’ve been alone ever since Chad said he
couldn’t live with me anymore. I haven’t had sex in five years. My
cat is dying. It got bit by a dog. I spent two grand getting its leg
reset. It practically hasn’t moved since I brought it back from the
vet. Why does god always do this to me? He’s always taking people
away from me. Pray for Kuckla.
I am in a sinkhole. I am not answering the phone lately. I did a
terrible thing. I ordered thousands of dollars worth of stuff from
mail order catalogs and charged them all to Chad’s charge card. The
mailman won’t pick up the packages anymore. I’ve got unopened boxes
lying all over the apartment. I don’t pick up the phone because I am
afraid of collectors. I know how you feel. I’ve been mourning for
years. I’m back to tip-toeing around the apartment afraid that the
police are going to come after me. I think it is a felony what I did.
Charge card fraud. I am just a bit wigged out. I went to a bar the
other day and got beat up. There’s this guy there who looks like a
satanist. I see him at the bar all the time, playing pool. I said hi,
then he beat me up. I don’t understand. These guys don’t try to steal
from me, or rape me, they just beat me up. I said hi and he said,
’Fuck you, I’ll kill you.’ It’s not as if I find satanists
attractive. I am not a social worker. So I stay in spinning in my
apartment, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and watching the
psychic channel. I wish that I could find that pot that I lost.
Somewhere in this apartment is a half a pound of grass that I’ve
misplaced. Denver, if you want to talk to me, ring twice and hang up
and call again, otherwise I won’t pick up the phone. Okay. I love you.”
Silence reigned for a brief moment. In the very vague distance Denver
could make out the sound of the railroad signals announcing an
oncoming train. It was 11.11am. The first of three daily passes of
the mile-long train that temporarily cut the Grid in half was passing
one block east of his apartment.
Denver sat thinking about his last testament, waiting for the train
to pass before inscribing it in his diary. Later, he would draft an
official document that would block any party from making money from
his art works after his death. All profits would go to a super fund
that would collect interest forever, or until it took a state decree
to divide the funds among the masses because it had grown so big that
it would create a socialist state, or at least decent health care for
the world. It was a nice dream.
After reading the last line he had written, he drew a smiley face
with a teardrop at the end of the sentence. He snapped his diary shut
with one hand, threw the book on the bed and got ready to go to work.
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