Problem in the HAMBURGER ROOM
1. The Hamburger
THERE IS NOTHING in the first room until we get there and that is why we love it. “This is not a gallery. It’s a hallway,” the guide says. We are both sympathetic towards the guide, who wears trousers one inch too short for her long and spindly legs. Such a trouser-wearer cannot be expected to know the difference between a gallery and a hallway, but having an inch less than us, as she does in several respects—not that we are bragging; we are not those kinds of men—we are inclined to think of her fondly as she studies us, the study in itself proving, among other things, that we are not in a hallway at all. We did not pay twenty dollars to see a hallway. And if we did, we will certainly demand our money back. We confer and decide to see where the gallery that may be a hallway will lead before we launch our tirade of righteous indignation upon a woman who is in need of pants with a longer inseam. We are not unnecessarily cruel. We have questions.
“No, that’s an umbrella stand,” the guide says.
“Yes, for umbrellas,” another woman says, bobbing her head around as though she thinks this is the function of a head on a neck. Her bulgy forehead lolls towards the ground like a slave to gravity, forcing her to snap her head back every once in a while in order to keep up with the conversation. “It’s just not raining today, that’s probably why you were confused,” she explains to us, her fat fingers dancing in a grotesque parody of raindrops, as though we did not speak the same language. Come to think of it, we do not. Come to think of it, we cannot understand a single thing she says, dancing fingers or no. She babbles on incomprehensibly and we exchange knowing glances, because we know that an astonishingly high percentage of New Yorkers are insane. Seventy-nine percent, at last count. It just happens to be the case that we are employed in the business of celebrating that fact. And we are on assignment.
“This way to the second floor,” the guide says with an air of superiority.
“Baa,” you and I say to each other. The insane woman overhears and raises the corners of her mouth, expressing amusement, pleasure, or approval with her face. It is amazing how barnyard animal noises can bridge barriers. Even though I am ready to crucify myself with umbrellas (there are a few) to prove my willingness to suffer for art, we follow our guide. We did not pay twenty dollars to be left behind.
But there is a problem in the hamburger room:
“I don’t get it,” says an old man with a cane. “What is it?”
“It’s a giant hamburger,” his wife says.
“I know it’s a hamburger. I’m not an idiot.”
“Well then, why did you ask me?” she says.
“What do you think of this?” (He is asking us, for he can sense that we are arbiters of taste.) “Is this what passes for art nowadays?”
Some questions answer themselves by being asked. We say nothing except to each other.
“Do you think they have hamburgers in the restaurant here?”
“They have a restaurant here?”
“Yes, and I could really go for a hamburger.” Somebody famous said that. Not the part about the hamburgers. The part about questions answering themselves. I said it. At least I thought it. Being that it is much harder to think something than it is to say it, and also much harder to say a thing than it is to do it, I think it is fairly self-evident that I do a lot of hard work. My position as a contributing member of society cannot be disputed.
“How much do you think this’d sell for?” the old man asks with a persistence that must have been instilled in the Great Depression or the Great War, whenever it was that he ate nothing but cabbage and wore his malnourished flesh like a badge of honour.
“I think I’ll have a cheeseburger,” you say.
“Seriously, this is what passes for art nowadays? Giant hamburgers?” the old man says again to no one in particular.
“Actually,” our guide says, “it’s what passed for art in the eighties.” I have a new appreciation for gallery employees the world over.
“Christ, what’s the point?” the man says. He is obviously missing the apocalyptic connection between the burger and his own mortality, between art and death.
“The point of art is the end of art. Art wants to put itself out of business, out of its own misery!” I shout.
“Shh,” you say.
“I think I’ll have a cheeseburger too,” I whisper back.
We consider another piece. It is a giant plaque. It was generously donated, a little plaque next to it tells us, by someone with a name so aristocratic I can barely make out the letters. Something like, Pierpointmorgansonrockefellersworthberg. The giant plaque, which the little plaque tells me is called “Art” and measures eighteen feet by thirty-six feet, says: Ego, by Me.
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it!” I say, not without some malice.
“Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” you say. You light a cigarette for dramatic effect and we are kicked out of the gallery, without enough time to pick up our umbrellas, should we have brought them.
I am at a loss, confounded by the subjectivity of metaphor.
I renew my suggestion for cheeseburgers.
2. Dead Things in the Air and Elsewhere
“I don’t understand the need for this,” you say as you are searched by a fat man with some sort of beeping baton. “This is an indignity. Do you know who I am?”
The fat man does not respond, obviously embarrassed by the fact that he does not know, or possibly the man is a deaf-mute. Possibly this is why his employers have given him a beeping baton.
“Communication technologies are the hallmark of the modern age. You may quote me on that,” I tell the fat, possible deaf-mute as I am asked to remove my shoes.
“For the last time, please remove your shoes, sir,” a woman in a uniform says. She evidently is not a deaf-mute, just culturally undereducated. There is no excuse for this, and I blame the public school system, the clergy, the government in power, the previous generation, and the general lack of appreciation for the arts.
“This is a travesty of justice,” I say.
“No, sir,” she says, “this is JFK security.”
I am so glad to be leaving New York, where all the escaped mental patients think they have a sense of humour.
“Destination, sir?” the woman with my shoes asks.
“Destination?” I say. “Up, most definitely. Up into the cloudless climes and starry skies, or somewhere in the general vicinity, at least.”
“Business or pleasure?” she asks.
“Pleasure, always pleasure. I never conduct any business.” This statement is somewhat truer than I would like. It is degrading to soar among the heavens on one’s way to the glittering galas of Europe when one is lodged in economy seating next to a plaid shirt, overstuffed with skin, connected to a potato chip-smelling mouth that insists on telling all within smelling distance about the tire business in New Jersey. But our magazine is working very hard to increase its readership, and these things take time.
I explain this to the woman who has my shoes, and all she says is, “Have a nice flight.” I start to suspect that everyone in New York is not crazy, but rather that everyone in New York is a robot. This is the new millennium and I am shocked by nothing, least of all by mechanical people. Mechanical people are not new, I suspect. Rather, I’m inclined to believe that the mechanizations have just made their way to the surface. Now we can see what was always there, clanking underneath.
You are waiting at our gate, looking through a dirty window at the jet in which we will be flying. “In some cultures, to travel in the air is to go against the gods,” you say.
“Really, which gods would those be?”
“Dead ones, obviously.”
“Right, God is dead, in both the singular and the plural. But you have a rosary.” I point to the beads twisting wildly in your hands.
“I have a fear of flying, so I prefer not to take chances.”
“I have a fear of flying too.” I walk y
ou over to an airport bar, conveniently located a mere promenade from the machine that will hurtle us into the sky with all the fury of those dead animals that have become increasingly combustible over the past few million years. It is a kind of recycling program: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This is what our dead gods intended.
“I’ll have a martini,” you say.
“We don’t do martinis here,” the bartender says with a look in his eye that seems to suggest he doesn’t trust fashionably dressed men in Italian leather shoes.
“What do you do?” you ask.
“Beer,” he says proudly. Apparently he invented the drink himself.
We sip our beers and for some strange reason this causes both of us to feel more connected to the earth: rotten plants and dead animals. Planes into air. Bodies into pulp. God into death. Robots with beeping batons. “The circle of life!” I say, and we drink to that. “Speed!” you say, and we drink to that. “Death!” I say, and we drink to that. “ART!” we say together, and drink to that, intoxicated by what we suspect is much more than pilsner lager. As we drink we become our own work of art, writing ourselves with every laugh and slurp, wondering how it is that so many people refuse to be their own authors.
“That’s just it,” you say. “There are no more people. Only robots. And robots can’t write worth a damn!” You smash your glass on the floor, a gesture I respect: you always know how to round out a good idea. The bartender, however, does not appreciate the finer qualities of the English language. There is some suggestion that uniformed robots will be coming soon to deal with us, and as neither of us feels particularly interested in dealing with any more artificial life than is absolutely necessary to sustain our own, we run. This, I suggest, shows that we have a sense of humour and are therefore not robots, but rather animals. Indeed, we run with the reckless abandon of animals who one day will be dead; of animals who will use dead animals to launch themselves, dying as they are, closer to the sun, which is only partially visible from the double-paned window of a jumbo jet with exits located at the front, side, and back. Take note of the safety card in your seat pocket. In the unlikely event of a water landing, put on your lifejacket, slide down one of the rubber slides. Refrain from jumping about like animals close to death.
“I wanted the aisle seat,” you say, and I come to understand sacrilege.
3. Antelopes and Other Fashionable Ladies
Someone famous is now two and a half hours late, and so consequently young people with clipboards and headsets are frantic and a woman with an unseen and exotic pet in her purse is demanding a dish and a bottle of distilled water. Of course, no one is naming names, but we anticipate a lady of a certain age and British accent who will be wearing a short skirt of the style designed to make people say, My God, I wish I had thighs like that, even though nobody has thighs like that, not even the lady in question. But still we want to see her in the hopes that a flake of her shed skin will land on us as she breezes by, and we will imagine that it is a piece of her halo breaking off. Despite the fact that there must be girls backstage taping their breasts into mesh halter tops, we feel compelled to look at the empty chair that is cordoned off with a ribbon of white silk. From our previous experiences with giant hamburgers, we know that a cordon means art. We didn’t fly here defying unknown, potentially dead gods for nothing.
There are protesters outside with placards that read, Faites attention! We are not sure to what, other than the cordoned-off empty chair, but we agree, and so while waiting we join in with the chant that is slipping itself through the doors the clipboard people are opening and closing, opening and closing to the rhythm of their heartbeats: Animals are people, too! People are animals! Suddenly another, somewhat complementary chant springs up: Women are people, too! We object to objectification!
“Repetition is the sincerest form of stupidity,” you say to me between chants.
We continue chanting because we are bored and because we know that eighty-three percent of Parisians are insane. It is fine to shout about wanting to be women who want to be people. We are inside the protective circle of diaphanous gowns and outrageously applied eyeshadow. Everything is simply fabulous.
“Simply fabulous,” I say to the craggy-faced woman with the microphone. “I love it because it’s so wearable. I think it really speaks to what women want nowadays, which is to be treated like people.”
“Yes,” you say, “people who are animals!” You embarrass me when you take a sly, claw-like swipe at the camera, but what does it matter. It’s only television.
Then I am no longer embarrassed, or bored, or just pretending to be bored for effect, but I am happy. Happy and I know it. I clap my hands.
The black man is seven feet tall and wearing mink. His walking stick raps along the floor with a noise that sounds like take-that-and-take-that, and take it we do, for who is going to object to the sounds of a seven-foot, mink-clad black man? There is always a chance that I was wrong about the death of the divine.
Out of the penumbra of this Goliath appears a Venus, caressed by a dress the colour of lilies gone bad, and carrying a fan, perhaps to encourage enthusiasm from the nipples of the mesh-shirted models, who are only just beginning to teeter their way around. Yes, the lights are dimmed and the music thumps inside my ribcage, but I cannot turn my attention away from this lady seated eight rows ahead and to my right, behind a silk ribbon.
“It’s starting,” you whisper to me.
“I know,” I say, looking, “but the show must go on.”
Darkness overtakes the crowd, and we are forced to watch the stage. This speaks volumes about the way people think of art: they love the scenery, but can’t find the subject. They aren’t selling art on stage, those hawkers of mesh and tit. They just dress up women who look like antelopes and call it art, attaching a price tag for authenticity. They sell the simulacra, but they are content to let the real thing sit in the darkness with her sunglasses on, when anybody knows that she needs light to shine. I’m putting that in my review. Not the part about the reflection, but the part about the antelopes. This is why I do what I do—I see the truth in advertising. Looking at the male models, I realize they all have the sharp eyes of lynx. This can’t be an accident. Not in a business where women are girls are antelopes are the antimatter between silk and chiffon.
“La femme, ce n’est jamais ça,” says a woman sitting next to me. She nods as though it were a cultural activity, which it is in certain circles in Paris. To nod is not necessarily to agree, but rather to include oneself in what potentially suggests exclusion. To nod is to accept.
“Why is it the women all look like antelopes?” you ask me, and I suddenly realize why we are such a good match. Professionally. That’s as far as my interest goes, the fact that I fell asleep on your shoulder during the plane ride notwithstanding, though your eyes are very blue.
“Do you think it’s a birth defect,” you continue, “or just some kind of eye-on-the-side-of-the-head aesthetic?”
“These girls are just too modern for their own good.”
“Do they sell hamburgers here, or are the French not very into that?” you ask.
Now the chants are coursing in over the music: fur is murder, leather is death. The antelopes look skittish. The man in the mink coat is on a cellphone, escorting his Wilting Lily out a side entrance, and over a loudspeaker no one knew existed, a voice as deep and as intimidating as a god’s says, “Children of the new generation, do not be afraid.”
For a moment I think people are having seizures, but it turns out that they are dancing, flailing their arms and legs with deliciously reckless abandon, kicking over chairs, roaring with pleasure as they vomit champagne into their handbags, scaring the antelopes. One of the lynx pounces and brings an antelope to the floor, her tits still snug in her shirt, thanks to the technological miracle of double-sided tape. The lynx and the antelope roll about violently, until the antelope hits the lynx in the head with a folding chair with white silk ribbon on it.
; “The animal kingdom,” you say as we watch transfixed. There is a bartender abandoning his post. The champagne bottles sweat dejectedly and we know that some injustices cannot stand. We’ve a long night ahead of us, and a man cannot write without refreshment. We gather the perspiring beauties in our arms and make our way to the dance floor. We have work to do.
“Hello,” I say into my phone as we dance, “Marjorie? Take this down.”
We sip from the bottles and wait for the morning papers. The Word is now ours, Marjorie our secretary-Moses, and we are waiting for our disciples to flock to the magazine sellers and the street vendors. We swagger down the street. We have lost our money and our plane tickets, and forgotten where our hotel is, if we even had a hotel in the first place. But there are much more important things to worry about.
The show, you say to one scandalized old lady walking a dog, must go on.
The D AND D REPORT
THE DEAD BOY’S NAME was Ronaldo Diaz. I remember that he drowned at a public pool in Chicago during the family swim hour. He was a weak swimmer, the newspaper said, who managed to slip into line for the waterslide and get lost in the splash of other, happy children. He was an only child, and he was there alone. His mother, a single parent who worked the day shift at Safeway and the night shift at Fresh ‘n’ Go Variety, had sent him to the pool because it was only June and already a vicious summer, the kind that made the city open emergency cooling centres for homeless people and initiate rolling brownouts. Mrs. Diaz was quoted as saying that all she wanted was for Ronnie to have a little fun after school. She didn’t have air conditioning and the pool was free—what else was she supposed to do? “All those lifeguards are white,” Mrs. Diaz told the reporter. “You tell me why they didn’t see him.” There was going to be an inquest.
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