by Chris Kenry
I considered this and remembered the “Piss Christ.”
“Interesting,” I said, “and I see your point, but a lot of shock art is so offensive I think the message gets lost. Don’t you think when you offend people you just alienate them more and then they just cling even more tightly to their own beliefs?”
He thought for a moment.
“Maybe, yeah, but that’s why I try and keep it funny. If you can make people laugh, they’ll remember, and if they remember, they’re more likely to give it some real consideration later. But I’ll admit, in some pieces I do deliberately try to piss people off. Obviously you’re not over the moon about Robert Mapplethorpe, but you have to admit his work, because some of it is so offensive and controversial, has been seen by minds that never would have seen it otherwise. It’s subversive. It plants a seed in the mind.”
The rain came down harder.
“Do you want to go back to my place?” he asked, teeth chattering. “It’s not far if we take the shuttle back. We could dry off.”
I was cold, so I nodded and we made our way up the street.
“Did you ever work in a gallery?” Ray asked later, as we sat on the shuttle. I thought of lying again, but didn’t, and just shook my head.
“I mean with your degree and all, seems like you would have.”
I remembered the postcard on Andre’s fridge: Maggie the Cat and her frustrated glare. I remembered all the fights with Paul, and how he’d implored me to go after a career using my degree, and how that had always confused me. Get real! I’d thought. I knew I wasn’t entirely stupid, but I always thought there were lines of smarter, more capable, more organized people ahead of me. I felt the same about my looks—I knew I was good-looking but was never satisfied with my body, never felt really confident. No matter how much I worked out, no matter how big and strong I got, inside I was still the awkward little boy who struck out at T-ball.
Ray went on, oblivious to my thoughts. I pushed them aside and gave him my attention.
“I’d like to have my own gallery someday,” he said, “just for contemporary stuff. Different from anything that’s out there. Less stuffy, more accessible.”
“I agree with you there,” I said. “Most galleries are about as lively and inviting as the dentist’s office, and they always seem to be run by such uptight people. I know they’re going after rich clients, but that’s no reason to be so boring.”
“Totally,” Ray said. “I know it’s a business, but you’d think for that reason they’d want to get people in there and expose them to things they haven’t seen or thought of before.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Cool. We’re on the same page. We’ll open a gallery and run it together—how’s that sound?”
“Sounds great,” I said.
Get real, I thought.
The section of the city in which Ray lived was about to be transformed. In fact, I doubt the house we returned to that day is still standing today. It was a triangular area comprised of several blocks, hemmed in by Broadway, Speer Boulevard, and Thirteenth Avenue, and was once a residential area. At the time it was mostly parking lots with a few neglected houses dotting the asphalt landscape. The large city jail dominates one edge of the triangle, and consequently most of the houses that remained had been turned into bail-bond businesses and were painted in bright primary colors or bizarre patterns in order to catch the eye of those in need of their services. Ray’s was one of the very few that hadn’t been altered, and he was one of a handful of people, other than prisoners, who actually lived in the area. Recently, because of its proximity to downtown and the views it affords of the Art Museum, the new library, and the capitol building, the land value has skyrocketed and it is now known, named by some optimistic developer, no doubt, as the Golden Triangle. The old houses and small apartments that had been falling down anyway were helped along to their demise by eager builders anxious to replace them with swank new condos and lofts to accommodate the city’s swelling moneyed population.
As we approached his house that afternoon (a dark green, two-story pile of loose bricks and rotted shingles that looked as though it had just been pulled from the bottom of a lake), the first thing I noticed—indeed how I realized it was his house—was the red station wagon parked out front. The same one I’d seen parked out in front of Burl’s last weekend. However, viewed in profile, it became obvious that it was not a station wagon at all, but a hearse.
“Nice car.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sobering, isn’t it? I got it from a friend of mine.”
He opened the front door and I followed him into a dark foyer.
“Give me your coat,” he said, peeling it off my wet shoulders. He switched on a light and hung my coat from one of the many hooks that lined the wall. They were not metal hooks, nor even wood, but were all the amputated front legs of unfortunate animals, turned upside down and bent at the joint. I helped him off with his coat, hung it on a dainty white hoof, and followed him into the house.
“We’d better take off our shoes,” he said, kicking his off and stamping up the dark, narrow staircase, while I remained below trying to untie wet laces with fingers made less than nimble from the cold.
The door to my right was open a crack. I nudged it open a little farther with my shoulder and peered in, but the room was too dark to see anything. I stopped myself suddenly with the thought that maybe he had roommates, or maybe the ground floor was rented by someone else.
I took off my socks, which were sopping and had stained my feet brown, and followed Ray’s wet footprints up the dark wooden stairs. When I reached the top and pushed open the door it was all brightness. The walls of the large room were white and almost free of decoration. The ceiling followed the roof lines and was therefore very high in the middle, but along the sides scarcely a foot of wall space separated it from the pine floor. Four skylights gave views of the gray sky above. Against one wall a large mattress and box spring rested on the floor, covered by a heavy white comforter and several white pillows. Books littered the floor by the bed, and there was a full ashtray on the bedside table. On the far wall was a brick fireplace, also painted white, and in front of that was a small, tan canvas sofa, which partially blocked my view of Ray, who was squatted down by the fireplace adjusting the gas flame. The only other furniture in the room was a large TV on the floor opposite the bed and next to that an equally large stereo. In the two opposing corners stood two identical speakers, at least five feet tall.
“Hang on, we’ll have some heat here in a minute,” he said, rising and pulling off his wet shirt, again revealing the piercings on his chest. He removed the rest of his clothing, and again I had a view of the rest of his body, lean and smooth and wet from the rain which dripped from his hair. My pulse quickened and I noticed that my palms were sweaty.
“Give me your clothes,” he said, standing naked before the fireplace, clearly intending to stand facing me while I undressed. “I’ll take them down and put them in the dryer.”
I’d been naked thousands of times at the gym in front of several men, and sometimes even took pride in strutting around, towelless, admiring myself in the mirrors. I had no reason to be ashamed of my body or my penis (even though I was afraid it would appear smaller than it normally was because of the cold), but for some reason I felt shy then. I hesitated a moment, standing stupidly, listening to the drips from my wet clothes hitting the floor. I did not hesitate for long, however, as I realized with alarm that soon I would not have to worry about my penis appearing small. On the contrary. I could feel it straining against the wet fabric of my underwear. I took a deep breath and started unbuttoning my shirt, all the while trying to imagine as many repulsive things as I could, anything to halt the progress of my erection. I thought of guillotined heads, my naked grandmother, a basket of dead kittens, my authorizations job....
I quickly finished undressing, tossed my clothes over to him and then watched as he took them back out the door and down the stairs. I we
nt over to the bed, grabbed a sheet from under the comforter, and wrapped it around me like a toga. Feeling relieved, I took a seat on the floor next to the fire and had just gotten comfortable when it started up again. It was the sheet that had triggered it this time, infused as it was with his smell, much the way old track uniforms issued at the beginning of the season in high school were permeated with the faint scents of the previous wearers.
Bloody car crashes, farm machinery accidents, lung cancer ... I thought desperately as I heard him bounding up the stairs. He laughed when he saw me in my improvised Greek attire.
“I do have some clothes you can borrow,” he said.
“No!” I said, my cock now rigid and pressed up against my stomach. “Uh, I’m fine like this.”
“Okay,” he said, walking over to the bed. He whipped off the other sheet and tied it similarly around himself.
“Looks comfortable enough. Do you smoke?” he asked, and I knew somehow that he didn’t mean cigarettes.
“Not often,” I said, remembering the last time I had smoked. It had been at the drive-in with some friends, and I had been so overcome by giggles that I was banished to the playground next to the concession stand, where I was quite content to swing all night singing an endless version of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
He pulled a small pouch out of his backpack and from it he took rolling papers and a film canister and set to work rolling a joint. When he’d finished, he lit it, inhaled deeply, and handed it to me. Weak, pathetic victim of peer pressure that I have always been, I took it and inhaled the acrid smoke just as Carey had taught me, being careful not to wet the end. It was strong and I coughed, revealing my rookie status. I took one more drag and handed it back to him.
“This is a nice place,” I said. “Is it all yours, or is the downstairs rented out?”
“Oh, I rent the whole thing,” he said. “It’s falling apart, so the rent’s cheap. I live up here pretty much, and the downstairs is where I do all my work.”
“Ohh,” I said knowingly, imagining cellars full of whips and chains, or mirrored rooms with large beds canopied in red velvet.
“My artwork,” he said, successfully interpreting my “Ohh,” and correcting me. “The work you’re thinking of I try to do at their place, but if they don’t have one—and a lot of them don’t—we’ll usually get a room somewhere. I try not to bring people back here. This is my space.”
I wondered if I should feel flattered that he had brought me here. I puzzled over it a minute but then concluded only that I felt hot, and, as my “condition” had improved enough that I could stand without tenting my toga, I got up and moved back to the small couch.
“We can pull that closer if you want,” he said, nodding at the couch and getting up to help me. I swayed a bit, feeling the first wave of the pot, but together we pulled the couch closer to the fire. Then it started. Suddenly I thought there was nothing so absurd as me pulling the couch—Imagine! The whole couch!—nearer to the fire! And I fell down on it in a fit of giggles. Ray was laughing now too, albeit somewhat unsure of the reason, and sat down beside me. He got up again and grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the mantel, lit two, and gave me one. I was halfway finished with it before my giggles subsided, and we sat quietly, slouched down, mesmerized by the fire.
“Do you think I could do it?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“You know, the thing that you don’t do here.”
He laughed. “You mean hustle? Sure you could. I mean I don’t really know you, but you’re young, you’re good-looking, you’ve got the body. It’s just a matter of whether your head’s in the right place. It’s not just about sex.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, and tried to sit up.
“A lot of times you have to do more. You have to be a counselor to guys who are married or just coming out, or a baby-sitter for the ones who just want someone to go out with. You have to act interested in the sex, of course, but that isn’t half as hard as acting interested in what they’re saying sometimes. You have to make sure they’re having a good time. I’d say half the time it’s great. Fun. But the other half can be as exciting as a math problem.”
“Sounds like living with Paul,” I mumbled.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“If you’re really interested I can introduce you to some guys, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You might hate it.”
He got up and went into another room and came back with a box of Rice Krispies Treats. We ate and talked, and, emboldened by the pot, I thought of asking him about his mottled hands. I looked at them as he ate, and then I noticed something that made me shiver and feel instantly lucid. As he tore open the wrapper of another treat I saw, on each wrist, a vertical scar almost identical to Hole’s. I grabbed one of his wrists in mine and looked at it. His shoulders tensed.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
He looked down at his wrist.
“That? Oh, I cut myself shaving,” he said, and flashed a sardonic grin.
“No, really.”
He looked thoughtfully at both wrists. “I ... don’t know,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s ever asked me that. Everyone else just thought it was the drugs, but they were just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. The truth is, I was sober when I did it.” He paused, and chewed slowly.
“I guess I felt trapped. I wasn’t happy with the way things were but I didn’t see any way of changing them.”
I nodded, understanding. I swallowed hard, feeling like I might cry, although more for myself than for him.
“What ... changed your mind?” I asked, still clinging to his wrist, eager to hear his answer. Eager to hear what he’d grabbed onto to pull himself out.
He laughed, took back his hand, and took a large bite of his treat, mumbling something that sounded like “Taxes hurt me” or “Take me Thursday.”
“What?” I asked. He chewed slowly and swallowed.
“Taxidermy,” he said, grinning broadly. “I know it sounds stupid but that’s it. That’s also how my hands got stained—I know you were wondering about that. Everybody does. I was a little careless at first with the chemicals.”
He held up his hands and gave me a good view of the dark stains on both sides.
“See, when I was doing methadone treatment I was in this resident clinic and shared a room with an old guy from Montana. He used to lead hunting trips before he got hooked. He wanted to talk and I needed something to do with my hands, so we made a good team. He taught me and talked me through most of it, and I totally got into it. It’s a great thing to know, and it’s going to be very important in the future.” I gave him a confused, questioning look. He sat up on the edge of the sofa and faced me.
“It’s like this,” he said. “As time goes by the world’s getting smaller and the population’s getting bigger. We’re all fighting for a limited amount of space, and the animals are the ones who suffer for it. Man is the dominant species, and we’re taking over all of the animals’ habitats. At the rate we’re going extinction for many species is inevitable. In fact, there have been five massive extinctions in the Earth’s history, and scientists are speculating that right now we’re smack-dab in the middle of the sixth, so preserving animals may be the only record we have. I’m willing to bet that in a thousand years good taxidermy work will be prized and inspire as much awe and wonder as the Egyptian mummies do today. My work will be a valuable historical record. If I can learn some more, that is. There’s this school in Paris I’d like to go to. There’s one in upstate New York, too, but the one in Paris is supposedly better....”
Wow, I thought, and shook my head, this stuff’s stronger than I thought. I was finding it increasingly difficult to stay awake, and I leaned over drowsily on the couch and rested my head on Ray’s lap. He talked on and on, and I listened, but I wasn’t hearing. The last thing I remembered before I fell into sleep was gazing drowsily at the flames and feeling his fingers run gently through
my hair.
I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it was dark outside when I awoke and I was alarmed for a minute as I struggled to orient myself and remember where I was. I had been moved from the couch and was now sitting up on the bed, my toga still firmly tied at the shoulder and Ray’s sheet covering me. The fire was still going, but had been turned down. I felt like Kim Novak in Vertigo, when she wakes up naked in Jimmy Stewart’s apartment. I got up and went over to the small kitchen, where I drank three large glasses of water in quick succession. Ray was not there. Nor was he in the bathroom. The door leading downstairs was open and I could hear music playing. Spanish guitar. I felt for a light switch but, feeling only smooth wall, I inched my way down the dark stairwell. At the bottom I hesitated. I was still curious about the room to the right and I now knew it was not someone else’s, so I nudged open the door. Again I felt for a switch, found one, and turned it on.
It was a small room, maybe twelve by twelve, and was clearly the room where he did all his painting. There was an easel and several canvases, some painted and some blank; there were paint tubes, large coffee cans full of brushes, and some sort of small paint sprayer attached to a long air hose. The inside of the fireplace, evidently no longer used, had been painted to resemble fire, and on closer inspection there were little painted devils peeking out from the flames. Several canvases hung on the walls, abstracts mostly, and more were stacked against one wall. I looked through one pile of small drawings. Most were of faces, male and female, while others were of cars, a package of cigarettes, various dogs. All had been executed quickly, some on napkins or notebook paper, all with pencil or pen. I heard a noise coming from the other side of the foyer, so I quickly set the drawings back down, turned out the light, and left the room. I crossed the dark foyer and pushed open the door to the other side of the house.