Dead Stars

by Bruce Wagner

  On Monday, she’s back at Ronny’s gig (McDonald’s commercial) loading film, checking exposure, all that, effin’ with the ƒ-stop, there she is again, the girlfriend with the kid from another planet (though girlfriend was probably better than “wife”) whose real passion is photography, yuck, & someone on the set, some prop person that’s always on his crew that she never particularly liked says, Oh, how was the show? I heard—I knew it was Saturday, but couldn’t—I tried to go, but——did you sell any—oh that’s so exciting! Ronny told me you did————all of it so, so, so . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  —————depressorama.

  She befriends the director of a gallery that sells Mapplethorpes & various others, your Nan Goldins & Sally Manns, your Arbus & your Eggleston, premium photogs if not dead then living in the city, the South, the etc. But the gal likes Jacquie more as friend than artist. She says viz Jacquie’s stuff that everything’s there but the point of view.

  The dreaded POV . . . .

  So——

  Jacquie decides on a project: she’ll take a pic a day (fixed tripod), from the window of their loft that looks out over the city & a little park—her point of view—deciding to do that for an entire year. She thinks that maybe she’ll—well no, she’ll definitely have a book at the end of it. Maybe call it “365 Days.” Having a book might—no, would definitely—make it easier to get a gallery show, she’d wind up with a slick portfolio at the very least.

  Meanwhile, she sells a few pictures to a downtown zine for $25 each, a quarterly of short stories & poems, her image graces the cover, they spell her name wrong, Jacqui no e.

  She’s excited about her project. Her biggest challenge is to make sure Jerry Jr. doesn’t run into the tripod, Ronny builds a bumper box around it, and every couple of days she gives Jerry Jr. the big stern lecture about being careful.

  When she gets to Month Four of the POV project, Jacquie sees a book at the Strand by a photog who took pics from her own window every day, fixed tripod, called “The Four Seasons.” She pokes around and finds three others, same deal, photographer’s POV, fixed tripod, one from a 5th-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen, the other from a brownstone on the Upper West Side, & cannot believe she didn’t know about the little sub-genre. Apparently Ronny didn’t either, or if he did, didn’t tell her. She felt like a fool.

  (At least she didn’t tell her gallery friend.)

  (Her plan was to wait until she was closer to the year-end mark before she told her gallery friend.)

  She’s pregnant.

  Ronny’s mood turns dark when she starts to show.

  She has a little girl in 1997, Jerilynn. Her mom dies that year, never having met her granddaughter. Her mom’s name was Lynn.

  Jacquie is 37.

  Jerry Jr. is 13.

  She stays with Ronny a full year before they officially end it. He’s been fucking the gal who gets him the big commercials, that was going on way before Jerilynn was born. She even thinks about moving back to Ocala. She’s sentimentally ill.

  She moves to Brooklyn instead. It’s affordable & there’s a community of single moms who made the disgusted exodus from the island. The moms were bitter, & bitterly hilarious. Sexy too, and lifted her spirits.

  She’s at a gallery opening in the city. A handsome older man is staring at her. Short. Looks familiar. She looks away, that coquettish reflex to The Gaze. She’s looking good if she must say so. That week she happened to have dyed her hair black, her hair is bangin’ like Louise Brooks. He approaches, says she looks like his wife when she was young. Very charming, thick accent, elfin eyes. He asks if she’s a photog, quickly interjecting “Oh, I hope not!” She says, “Well I am, but no one takes my work seriously. Because I don’t have a point of view.” He spittle-laughs. He appreciates the humor & that makes her feel good. She forgot what that felt like; to feel good from the attentions of a man. He asks her to call him. She looks at the card after he leaves: Helmut Newton. Hah! She feels like an ass for not knowing, a flattered ass anyway. Her Brooklyn friends egg her on, they have a field day. That he’s twice her age & married for a hundred years gets them in heat. They’re ferocious & funny & she doesn’t think she could live without them.

  They begin a platonic relationship that lasts until his death. It seems to Jacquie that he never stops moving; he sends her obscene vintage postcards from France, Belgium, Monte Carlo, Morocco, Africa, the Canary Islands. For a man with a heart condition, rather astonishing. Whenever he’s in NYC, he calls for drinks or an early dinner. Invariably, just after she gets home, one of his assistants phones to say “Helmut needs you for a photo shoot in the city.” The jobs were always for three, four, sometimes five full days. She does anything asked of her: setting backdrops, changing cameras/lenses, even going for pastries. He loves that she’s unpretentious, there was something about her he admired.

  He’s a bright spot in her life . . .

  One day, she invites him for a serious coffee. A curious man, he immediately accepts. She’s nervous. It’s hard for her. She tells him that she’s thinking about taking pics again. He winces, then sees the depth of her terror and desire.

  She dares to tell him her problem:

  I have no real point of view.

  “Then you weren’t kidding!” (A pause. His eyes rabidly twinkling.) “That was what you said the first time we met.”

  Her lip wriggles as she speaks of her travails. She bares all, even tells him about the professor. She says she has the feeling that this is it for her (she’s 41 now)—either she makes her mark, or fades away.

  I am old . . . . . . . .

  “No,” he says, “I am old!”

  She begs him to be serious.

  And here is what he said:

  “I understand, dearest. I understand. You can’t think I don’t understand, can you? No. I know. I’m glad you had the guts to tell me what you did. It takes guts, I know. Not easy, not easy. It is never easy, it isn’t supposed to. Now you’ve got this off your chest, but you’re open—to advice, no? That is why you shared these things with me? Yes? Because there is something you can do about this——existential difficulty.

  “This ‘lack of a point of view’——”

  “Do you know what you need, Jacquie dear? To be banned. You need to create such a scandale that everyone knows your name! To make something truly disturbing, to make your own Sacre du Printemps, your ‘Rite of Spring.’ To cause a commotion, understood? You need to make art for the FBI! Art that forces the police to raid the gallery that was brave enough to exhibit the forbidden fruits of Jacquie Crelle! My dearest Jacqueline, listen to what I am telling you. You need to be threatened with prosecution and jail . . . . . . . . .

  “You must know the work of Nan Goldin? Of course. I really am very fond of Nan, she has a marvelous gift. Realism is not my thing—there is enough of it in everyday life! I spend my days trying to get away from it! But Nan really is very good at what she does. Do you know the photo of the belly-dancing kids? Have you seen her picture of the little girl? The little girl in the picture is about 4, no? She bends to show her little chat—bare as only a 4-year-old vulva can be! All very ‘playful,’ very ‘innocent.’ Ha! Well, Nan is one of those people who know just what they are doing. I am like that as well, or I like to think so. Here is where Elton John enters the picture—so to speak. Now, you must know I adore Elton, he is absolutely adorable, June & I got very close to him, & my God, the voice, the music, he has the whole package. It’s true he doesn’t collect my work, but I forgive him! He doesn’t want pictures of leather & tits & women holding whips on the wall. Well, maybe leather! Understood. I have no problems with it.

  “Elton owns a few hundred of her pictures, I believe. Nan’s. More or less. Some place in England wanted to show her work—not a big place, I think it may even have been outside of London. Being the patron of the arts that he is, Elton graciously loaned 150 images to wherever. To the venue. And of course, there was the usual complaint. Someone did
n’t like the little vulva! You see, the little vulva did its job, the little vulva works very well! The gendarmes say they received a complaint—& in came the storm troopers to pry the offending photograph off the wall! They took a few others with them too. A bare vulva leaves a bare wall! Now this photo of which I speak has quite a spread—Nan was very thorough. You can see the tiny pisser, even the darling shithole . . . well as you can imagine, an uproar ensued. You have the fascists on one side & the libertines on the other. It’s always the same, no? The fascists shout: Pornografi! Isn’t it what they always say? I am telling you, it’s true. ‘The artist must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law!’ Oh, how they rail, Jacqueline. And the libertines, they say: These are innocent portraits! To suppress them will have a—they always are using this phrase—chilling effect on terrestrial life as we know it! Chilling effect! They love that phrase! It rolls trippingly off the libertine’s tongue . . . oh, the two parties put on quite a show. And I don’t need to tell you what happened, Jacqueline, do I. You can guess. There was no prosecution . . . the sturm und drang came & went, like a summer storm. But the price of those pictures! They went through the roof!

  “I’m telling you, cher, England is always a wonderful place for ground zero. Because these tempests are closely watched by Americans—American media—like BBC costume dramas slowly making their way to the shores of American television . . . those English accents lend credence—they class it up, oh how the Brits can class up bare vulvas and shitholes! Ha! Saatchi is always a wonderful venue to have your ground zero. There was a skirmish in 2001—Nan, again! the woman is indefatigable!—the bobbies insisted the gallery remove the offending images toute suite! Saatchi refused; Goldin triumphed. And the prices? Up and up and up, up, up & away!

  “Please listen, Jacquie dearest. Because I am being utterly serious. David Hamilton. I bow my head to the Master. But now I speak of peri-pubescence, which is a littered field. You’d have no chance there, no chance at all, & besides, there’s no time, you would have to twiddle your twat waiting for Jerilynn to grow up. Where did you get this name, ‘Jerilynn’? It’s horrid! Hamilton—I’ve known him for years, he lives in St. Tropez—peri-pubescence has been good to him! What they call ‘the sweet cusp of pubescence.’ For me, it is intensely boring—I call it The Blah Lagoon. Hamilton once had a stranglehold, an absolute monopoly of the market. 11-year-old blondes with nipples a bit too large for their tiny chests—most of them viewed through linen curtains, nonetheless . . . what can one say? It’s nice work if you can get it! Haha! Hamilton is absurd, but attention must be paid. His work is a litigation perennial. Every year, somewhere in the world there’s a fuss, like clockwork, the man doesn’t need to lift a finger (or a diaphanous curtain!), doesn’t even have to leave his balcony. David is the king of the ‘landmark ruling’—you are always in need of the landmark ruling, darling! A landmark ruling in the UK declared his work indecent (which of course it is, but for aesthetical reasons!), it was so far-reaching that anyone who had his books displayed on their coffee-tables—that’s a lot of coffee-tables!—if you had the Master’s book in the privacy of your own home, you were at risk of arrest! The bobbies went on a rampage, clearing the bookstore shelves. David released one of those statements—oh, that you must do as well, the ‘released statement’—what they call a measured statement of protest released through one’s spokesperson. We shall find you a spokesperson, my dear Jacqueline!

  “Others soon got wise. Frankly, I don’t know what took them so long. Jock Sturges . . . his pictures were terrible, terribly banal, in some ways far worse than David’s. Because they aspired. To Art! He puts the kids on the beach—the beach! The mind staggers at the audacious paucity of imagination. Better they be posed reading a book through damned Victorian curtains than be lollygaggling on the beach . . . they’re just nudies—you’ve seen nudist colony magazines? With the occasional hairy bush thrown in to give absolution to anyone who may have had a seizure of guilt when they found themselves lingering over the delicate line-drawn y of the hairless pubis at rest . . . or he throws in a Mom. You know, ‘If Mom’s in the shot, she must have approved!’ That way, you get the good housekeeping seal. Very clever. Wouldn’t you like the good housekeeping seal, cher? There’s Larry Clark—a real pervert, not a fake one like myself! But let’s not talk about Mr. Clark, frankly I’m not too interested in exploring the endless mystery of unwashed 13-year-old boys, particularly not when they’re shooting up!

  “Cher Jacqueline, you will some day have a book of your own. We must find a title for it. One must always pay attention to the titles, they’re very important. The Age of Innocence—that’s David, of course. El Maestro! The Last Days of Summer is Sturges. A wonderful title, I have to say. I’ll help you with that . . . you see, the title must let the people know what you’re up to, what it’s all about. They went after Sturges—was it ’91? In San Francisco, of all places! They went completely berserk, it was a crusade, they were carrying torches! And yet . . . and yet . . . can you guess what’s coming, my dearest? ‘The grand jury has refused to indict.’ I am telling you, the grand jury always refuses to indict! It’s a marvelous game, Jacquie, and you must start to play toute suite! Because it is a very lucrative one. Sturges made millions off the shenanigans. But the field is too crowded, cheri. Giants walked the earth before you; the ground is littered with scorched peri-pubescent & prepubescent cunts. You’ve got to go one better. Jerilynn—horrid name!—she’s just turned 5, no? Little Jerilynn? Take courage! Take heart! The pre-prepubescent playing field is wide open! Why at the moment, I believe there is no one on it at all! Jerilynn’s your ticket . . .

  “Jerilynn is your point of view! ça va? Take courage, Jacqueline!

  “And you must have a cold, hard look at Sally Mann. She is the Ideal—the class act. That’s what you want to shoot for. Sally’s the template, the Gold standard. She lives in Virginia. She was thrown by a horse & broke her back. A terrible thing. We spoke every week of her convalescence, for 2 years. I called from wherever I was in the world. Sally made her bones with those family shots—the Huck Finn nudies. At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women. Can’t beat that for a title, can you? I’m telling you, titles are everything. That was something Sally knew very well . . . now, I don’t believe they ever went after Sally in the courts, not as far as I know, but she was banned in the media. (Which is what we hope for you.) Banned by Artforum—Artforum! Can you imagine? A superstar! She worked in wetplate collodion. Used a very old camera, an antique, an 8 × 10 bellows. Which I think is very shrewd. You see, when you embark on this sort of thing, it is my strong feeling that it is a very good idea to approach the work via a defunct process or difficult-to-use camera. Don’t go Goldin. And the most important part of Sally’s example—listen closely, Jacqueline!—was that she shot her children, then moved on. She didn’t make a fucking career of it. Take a lesson from that, Jacquie! She’s doing wonderful work at this time, she’s in her prime, hasn’t a thing to do with naked kiddies . . . & that’s where you want to land, Jacquie dear. Sally Mann showed there can be light at the end of the vulva!

  “In summary:

  “A gallery shows your pics. Someone complains—& if they don’t, pick up the phone & complain yourself, just don’t tell em it’s you! The gallery gets raided—by gendarmes or even better, the FBI. (Scotland Yard’s a coup.) Then: the tiresome wave of fascists & libertines. A celebrity speaks out in your favor, crying ‘It’s just a mom keeping an innocent diary of her babies!’—they’re always good for a sound byte. Because it’s important in this phase that you stay out of the fray. An articulate celebrity gets you lots of mileage, that’s money in the bank. They’re First Amendment whores . . . but it doesn’t really matter, because that storied ‘fierce debate’ will follow, & if you’re lucky—a media firestorm! Jacquie, there’s one thing that is guaranteed—people will know your name. Your supporters will invoke Caravaggio and Degas; there’ll be sidebar editorials in the Times on Nabokov & Charles Dodgson; ‘chilling e
ffects’ and ‘landmark rulings’; the sound & fury of grand juries, signifying nothing . . . sales, sales, sales!”

  Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,

  Ripe I cry,

  Full and fair ones,

  Come and Buy!

  CLEAN

  [Jerzy]

  Stars Without Makeup

  Ooo-woo . . .

  . . . his stomach had that perfect, empty, racy feeling, & the flit, skipping beats. Ooooo. The reason being, the reason why, because what he did was put the crystal in a sheet of toilet paper, a little mound, & then he swallowed it. Swallowed the little biscuit. What he was doing now was, he got a tweet from a trusted twat that Renée Zellweger was at Peet’s—Montana & 14th—sitting in a chair at a farthest-away outdoor table, reading. Hunched over, deglammed, in a North Face vest. No makeup. Incognito. (Same Peet’s frequented by the over-the-hills: Molly Ringwald, Marcia Cross, Kate Capshaw.) Though Renée’s time was over (her cognito place in the sun), she hadn’t quite entered the Where Are They Now? newstand magazine cycle; but was definitely in the Fast Track To Washed-Out Hagdom internet rinse n spin. Not so wonderful a place to be, because any missteps came across as global FAILS.

  730AM . . . got the tweet, swallowed the speed, & waited. Then, BLASTED out of bed & into his 2002 grody-interior’d Range Rover, rocketing to Peet’s (she wasn’t there, might be in the head), then over to Whole Foods—Montana & 15th—to wait. Radio on: hip hop. Frank Ocean. Hip hop could actually make good white person morning music, if you played it lowish.