Built in 1957, the Wellfleet Drive-In is the only remaining drive-in on Cape Cod, and also features a miniature golf course, flea market, and the Dairy Bar & Grill; I don’t see my cousins much; Donnie and Ben – both in their 20’s – are my mother’s brother’s kids; they grew up in Cape Cod; Donnie and Ben have always been my little cousins; not so little anymore, but still – they’re the closest things to the younger sibling I secretly always wanted; Donnie is the older and more serious of the two; he now lives in the dead center of Long Island with his girlfriend; every morning they commute an hour to their jobs – he in his pickup truck to the eastern end of Long Island, and she on the train westward, to New York City; Ben is my really little cousin—though he’s now in his early 20’s; I remember when there was only Donnie, no Ben ; and then Ben was born; as Donnie and Ben’s older cousin, it was my responsibility to make up stories that would terrify them (the “Gobbily Monster” was a particular favorite; I claimed that if they went outside at night their feet would be devoured and they’d become unpopular, stubby children); Ben was a goofy kid, a perpetual smiler; it always seemed like he’d rather be outside than in a classroom; he went to a year of college, but it didn’t fit him; Ben lives in Amherst now, a college town, but most of his friends aren’t students; he always seems to have a different job, what appears to be a perpetual hangover, and sometimes I wonder if I should push him more about his plans; but I don’t want to be the older cousin that is pushy about plans; maybe I want to be his friend too much; perhaps I’m not brave enough to ask the right questions; I see Donnie and Ben once or twice a year – usually in the summer when we’ve all made the trip to Cape Cod, where my aunt, uncle, and grandmother still live; and when we’re there, we spend a lot of time on the beach, eating lobster rolls, watching Cape Cod League baseball games, and especially, more than anything else – watching movies; a few years ago while I was on the Cape, I asked my cousins if they wanted to go to the movies; Ben replied, “I can just download something and we can watch it on my laptop”; I was aghast; I stammered, “But…but…but you’ve got that beautiful drive-in just ten minutes away”; this exchange was, I believe, the first time I officially felt old; there was clearly a generational gap between myself and my cousins, who, while less than ten years younger than me, are hipper, more tapped into whatever tech-trend is about to overwhelm the masses, but don’t recognize a simple fact: movies are better when they’re seen on a big screen, they’re better when they’re watched with a crowd of filmgoers, and, above all else – movies are simply more magical when they’re seen outdoors, under the stars, in the comfort of your automobile; the drive-in that I dragged my cousins to, the drive-in that we go to whenever possible, is Cape Cod’s gorgeous Wellfleet Drive-In; there are other drive-ins that I love – the Starlight Drive-In in Atlanta, the Vineland Drive-In outside Los Angeles, and the Swan Drive-In in Blue Ridge, Georgia – each one connected to secret memories and different times in my life; but it’s the Wellfleet Drive-In that I look forward to the most; I don’t think my cousins and I have seen many great movies at the drive-in; they’re popcorn movies; loud, flashy, silly – no matter; they’re a blast; we’ve got a drive-in ritual, my cousins and I; we fill up the bed of Donnie’s pick-up truck with every pillow we can find in his parents’ house – from beds, couches, puffy chairs – and then throw blankets and comforters on top of the pillows; we create, essentially, a giant, fluffy nest in the back of a Ford F-150; Donnie and Ben and I get to the drive-in early, when the sun is still up, and we back into a prime parking space; we undo the back of the truck, go to the concession stand, load up on two or three of everything they have, and then make ourselves comfortable; we wait; we watch cars pull up: high schoolers, families on vacation, older couples; everyone mills around, checks out the set-ups – who has lawn furniture? A couch?! An inflatable pool – really?; and then the sun sets; the buzz of insects grows; flashlights appear – their beams cutting across the darkness, occasionally intersecting with the car lights of latecomers; finally, the movie begins; last summer, we saw “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”; it was noisy and stupid, a bunch of clatter about not very much, but who cares?; it was kind of, sort of, well…sublime: the three of us were sitting in the back of a big truck, downing tons of sweet chemicals and frozen dairy products, situated in the center of a platoon of cars and trucks, dozens and dozens of tiny, whispered conversations simultaneously competing with Michael Bay’s opus, the buzz of summer bugs, and cars passing on the distant highway, while on screen robotic behemoths slugged it out for the sake of – I don’t know, I missed the plot (humankind? Robotkind?); that night – opening night – in late-June, we watched big machines on a big screen, while we sat in smaller machines, and we passed the popcorn, and Ben fell asleep midway through the movie, and Donnie nudged him with his foot, and then I dozed off for a bit – why not? I was lying on pillows in the back of a truck! – and when the film ended, and the credits rolled, it felt 10 degrees cooler than when the film began, and we were now covered in a light mist of dew; the whole night felt like a dream – my cousins and I, who don’t see each other nearly enough, coming back for this annual trip to the drive-in, where, when we’re comfy in the back of the truck, nothing ever changes; we could watch any movie, in any year, and despite what happens to the three of us in ensuing years – marriages, the birth of children, deaths of friends or relatives – we will always be the same, and be safe; in my mind, when we’re nesting at the drive-in, it is eternally summer; I can’t wait to return in June; if you go to the Wellfleet Drive-In, be sure to try the milkshakes and root beer floats at the Dairy Bar & Grill; they’re divine.
GOLD HILL
•April 21, 2010 • Leave a CommentLocated in Boulder County, Colorado, Gold Hill was the epicenter of the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859; Gold Hill is a “census-designated place” (CDP); CDP’s represent unincorporated villages and towns whose boundaries are not legally recognized, but maintain a concentrated enough population to demand statistical recognition as a “place”; the metaphysical questions unwittingly created by the United States Census Bureau’s definition of “place” are dizzying; my bedroom, for example, is a “place” – though its population density has varied from year to year; in the year 2000, the population of Gold Hill was 210 (humans; assorted flora and fauna were not included in the findings); some time ago, I flew to Denver for the (second) wedding of a dear friend; we met in college, senior year; I rented a PT Cruiser – a car that I have unresolved feelings about (its appeal seems to be compactness and the more ineffable “retro” nature of its styling, but: it’s sort of ugly, you know?) – and, while leaving the Alamo (car rental), I turned on the radio, landing on “I Can See for Miles,” by The Who; now, I’ve never been fanatical – or even much of a fan – of The Who; however, while driving into the Rocky Mountains, slightly awed by the sheer size of the mountains, I found myself moved by the song and the obvious lyrical timeliness (“I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles”); I haven’t made a conscious attempt to listen to The Who since that ride; I drove through the heart of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s campus; then I took a left, ascended a curvy mountain road, and eventually arrived at an isolated, 19th century cabin on the outskirts of Gold Hill; this cabin belongs to an old high school friend (we dated as teenagers) and her fiancé; they’re both experimental filmmakers – focusing on nature, the process of exposing film emulsion to unique elements (ocean water, boiled books, etc.), and typography (especially in the books and journals of 19th century naturalists); their work is esoteric and yet possesses surprisingly universal appeal – not unlike that titan of experimental filmmaking and long-time University of Colorado professor, Stan Brakhage (R.I.P.); the cabin of my friend from high school and her fiancé is a creative-person’s fantasyland: bookshelf after bookshelf of first-editions, a bathroom converted into a darkroom, offices with walls of glass (and mountain views), gorgeous pine tables with room for every film splicer and Steenbeck imaginable, and a sleek refrigerator (important for its contents: mountain-caught trout, goat cheese, fresh berries, and nerdy Colorado microbrews); we hiked to a ridge and watched the sun set – though the black bears that had been sighted nearby were, gratefully, unsighted; we ate until our guts were stuffed, made a fire, and told stories until late in the night; apparently, while courting, these two read every Sherlock Holmes novel and short story together – aloud; as I fell asleep that night, I could hear snow sprinkling on the windowsill; I did not expect to see my high school friend and her fiancé again for some time (thought, surprisingly, our paths crossed three months later in – of all places – Rotterdam, Holland); I left the mountain cabin early the next morning, went to a farmer’s market, ate a couple tacos, and, and on a whim, got reflexology (my first time) on a sidewalk in front of the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse; it felt good; then I drove to a hotel in downtown Denver, found a store that could help supplement my ragged suit-and-tie apparel, and went to my college friend’s (second) wedding; the wedding proceeded sans hitch or even minor hiccup; I didn’t attend my friend’s first wedding, though I did find myself in the company of her and her (ex) husband during the waning days of their marriage; I was supposed to stay with them for one night – though a blizzard prevented me from leaving, so I stayed four nights; believe me: four nights in the center of a disintegrating marriage is a poor vacation destination; wedding number two, a formal affair, felt right and true; I left the reception early to watch “Zombieland,” because I knew nobody at the wedding and, well, I was excited to see “Zombieland”; the next day, the newlyweds left for Mexico (and presumed connubial bliss); I returned the PT Cruiser and flew home; all the roads in Gold Hill are as they were in 1859: dirt; if you do go to Gold Hill, I recommend staying at the Gold Hill Inn & Bluebird Lodge; the Inn is the finest place to stay in Gold Hill (as well as the only place to stay in Gold Hill), has live bluegrass, generously proportioned drinks, and perhaps most important: it feels like the sort of place that locals would claim is haunted; I haven’t heard those claims, specifically, but in any “census-designated place” there always seems to be at least one person who keeps running into ghosts; right?
HAOLE
•November 5, 2009 • 1 CommentA Hawaiian word meaning “foreigner”; this term, which predates Captain James Cook’s 1778 arrival in Hawaii, has also come to refer more generally to Caucasians; another Hawaiian nickname for white people—especially tourists—is “shahkbait”; you don’t want to be called shahkbait; some time ago, I found myself in Maui—with my father; we spent a few days at a hotel called Mama’s Fish House, by the beach in Paia (a laid-back town that’s home to Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson); my dad enjoyed himself in Paia; he ate; “I appreciate any culture that makes Spam a staple,” said my dad; I tried to keep dad from ordering dessert after every meal—pineapple upside down cake, coconut pie, haupia—but in my heart, I knew it wasn’t a battle worth fighting; rather, I knew I couldn’t win; my dad has a big personality—and Type 2 Diabetes; on our last day in Maui, we woke up at dawn to drive the winding Hana Highway; we visited a famous break called “Jaws” and watched local surfers from the safety of the shore along with other oglers; a Rastafarian with a longboard gave us the finger and called us “shahkbait”; road signs were, mostly, missing (supposedly yanked down by locals to discourage adventurous haoles—like us); we stopped at a wayside park called Kaumahina, which had a stunning view—and a prominent sign reading “no soliciting”—but dad and I were more interested in the family of feral cats that comingled with a band of aggressive, wild chickens; I fed the chickens bits of my apple core; dad gave them Hershey’s kisses; the next day, we drove to the airport in Kahului; with an hour to kill, we went to a shopping center with a Borders and a Starbucks; my father and I got into a fight when he ordered an Iced Caffe Mocha and an Old Fashioned; I asked him not to eat so much dessert—at least in front of me; he reminded me that he’s my father, that I can become patronizing and idiotic, and then he proceeded to order a second Old Fashioned; I couldn’t watch; I went to Borders and looked at a picture book about large jungle cats; two hours later, my father and I boarded different flights; on the plane, I kept mentally replaying the incident in Starbucks, and I became upset for being so controlling; my father likes doughnuts, it’s that simple; he’s 63; I should’ve let him eat his Starbucks doughnuts in peace; at one point in Hawaii, the last day of the school year was known as “Kill Haole Day”; Kill Haole Day seems to be a tropical cousin of “Beat Up a White Kid Day,” which coincides with May 1st—May Day; Beat Up a White Kid Day has been a long-standing tradition in Cleveland public schools; seriously; while I am no supporter of random violence, this seems to be a fascinating inversion of traditional race/power dynamics; in “Maximum City,” Suketu Mehta’s analysis of Hindu-Muslim violence in Mumbai, he writes eloquently about “the powerful wish of minorities all over the world to be the oppressor rather than the oppressed”; for me, this is a troubling, cynical thought; I’d prefer an alternate path, one where—as Will Oldham (aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) sings: “You do what you want/And I will do what I want/I’m now free of master and everyone/servant of all and servant of none”; that being said, I’m not one to speak: my father and I recently had a two-hour-long quarrel about a box of Thin Mints.
IDES OF MARCH
•April 7, 2009 • 1 CommentThe 15th of March, according to the Julian calendar; the Julian calendar amended the Roman calendar; the Julian calendar was born in 46 B.C.; two years after the creation of the Julian calendar, its founder was slaughtered; the Liberatores who assassinated Julius Caesar committed, in their words, “tyrannicide”; a couple years ago, I found myself in Washington D.C. during the Ides of March; my friend Pamela, who was working at the Smithsonian, told me about a secret collection of seized war art—owned by the U.S. military; she asked if I’d like to see the secret art collection; I said yes, of course; the collection was in the basement of an anonymous D.C. office building (standing between a hotel and a Starbucks); the collection was viewable by special appointment only; after checking in at a security desk and leaving our driver’s licenses, we were led to the basement by a talkative, middle-aged curator; we passed through a series of doors and finally arrived at a set of thick metal doors requiring a security code; our guide typed the code and we entered the storeroom; the sight was a mundane nightmare: hundreds of Nazi propaganda paintings seized at the end of World War II (featuring Adolph Hitler in various Norman Rockwell-esque portraits, standing in Bavarian town squares, surrounded by a crowd of children with ice cream cones and adorable puppies, to whom Herr Wolf was no doubt telling a rousing joke about strudel, or gypsies); in the corner was a massive steel bust of Hitler’s face, sitting on its side, with a yellow note card reading: “Hitler head, artist unknown”; there were also paintings of Saddam Hussein seized during the first and second Gulf Wars; the curator took joy in watching Pamela and I try to make sense of the startling collection; after 45 minutes, the curator quietly asked: “Want to see the prize of the collection?”; we silently nodded, and were led through another set of locked doors into a cramped room with a filing cabinet against the wall; the curator unlocked one of the drawers and slid it open, revealing six watercolors painted by a young art student named Adolph; the watercolors were all postcard-sized images of nature settings and town squares; these paintings were competent, realistic renderings, a bit stale, but not bad; I was reminded of the title of Hannah Arendt’s most famous work: “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”; I then ascended the steps and went to get a Venti Americano at Starbucks; I called my then-girlfriend to tell her about the breathtaking tour; she answered the phone from an airport in Houston, crying; I had no idea why she was in an airport; she said she was flying to San Francisco to see her cousins; she was distraught; “I need to be with people who love me,” she said; she then turned off her phone and flew to Atlanta; she spent the next five days with her ex-boyfriend; this was not a good time for me; it ended badly, and too late; St. Ides is a popular malt liquor marketed towards African-Americans and enjoyed across America by teenage suburban poseurs; about St. Ides, the Notorious B.I.G. rhymed: “I used to be a hustla/now I’m a 22 brew guzzla”; Ice Cube, in one of his numerous raps shilling St. Ides, spat the line: “Yes, it’s the S-T Crooked I-D-E-S”; Elliot Smith, who died too young (stabbed like a suicidal Samurai), sang: “When I walk around here drunk every night/with an open container from 7-11/In St. Ides Heaven/I’ve been out haunting the neighborhood/and everybody can see I’m no good”; my favorite line of dialogue from William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is said to Cassius by Brutus in Act V, Scene I: “…this same day/Must end that work the Ides of March begun./And whether we shall meet again I know not./Therefore our everlasting farewell take:/ Forever and forever farewell, Cassius!/ If we do not meet again, why, we shall smile;/ If not, why, then this parting was well made.”
L’ARCHIDUC
•November 18, 2008 • 4 CommentsLocated in downtown Brussels, Belgium, L’Archiduc is a hip, U-shaped Art Deco jazz bar with a dark history and a buzzer at the steel front door (which must be rung to gain entrance); opened in 1937, L’Archiduc was popular with Nazis during the occupation, though people do not talk about that much now, instead preferring to discuss the jazz ghosts who haunt the walls and famed 1929 piano at the center of room: Miles Davis, Django Reinhart, and Stan Brenders (icon of Belgian jazz, former owner of L’Archiduc); what sort of barflies would populate L’Archiduc at 4 a.m. on a random Thursday morning (while Scott Walker howls on the stereo), you may wonder; well, I will tell you: my old college friends, Shelly and Travis (who arrived that afternoon from Paris and London; Shelly is writing a book on the history of espionage in France; Travis slept with 17 women his freshman and sophomore years of college; walking back from a sushi restaurant one chilly night in October of our junior year, Travis confessed that he was gay, and had known since he was twelve years old; when I asked Travis why he’d kept it a secret for so long, he replied: “It was easier that way”), Francisco (a Chilean film projectionist who gave me an autographed copy of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”; the autograph belongs to Francisco, not Ms. Klein), Anique (who learned English while studying for a year in Canterbury, and subsequently has a British accent when she converses in English; most of Anique’s family, who are Polish, were killed during the Holocaust; Anique’s great-grandmother survived by starting a fire while making soup in one of the camp kitchens; she fled with six others during the commotion; Anique’s mother is a noted sexologist in Brussels; both Anique and her well-known mother see the same astrologist, religiously), Julie (who works with the deaf, and explained to me that American Sign Language is different than sign language used in Belgium; sign language used in Belgium is different than sign language used in France; I do not know if the Flemish have their own sign language; Julie is also a puppeteer at the famous marionette theater, Toone); there were others, but I will never know their names; these include the drunken, stumbling, elderly woman, who kept saying “I am from Maine” (with a Belgian accent), the flamboyant cripple with the V-neck Cable sweater and a cowboy hat who kissed everyone in the bar on the lips, the cool Moroccan who chain-smoked Gauloises by the piano, the Adidas-clad Japanese B-boy who nodded to the music with closed eyes, and the shy peroxide blonde who snuck over to the piano and began to clumsily, beautifully play “We Are the Champions”; Queen never sounded so fragile and dreamy; that pre-dawn moment—when everybody in the bar looked with tired eyes at the piano-playing girl, and we all wanted her to play well, to astound us, even if her fingers were not up to the task, and we clapped like lunatics when she self-consciously stopped mid-way through the song—made me feel both at home and grateful to be a tourist; believe me: at L’Archiduc, smoke still gets in your eyes.
SANTA’S VILLAGE
•November 5, 2008 • 3 CommentsA colorful Christmas-themed amusement park located in Sky Forest—a tiny San Bernandino Mountain community near the ski resort of Lake Arrowhead, California—Santa’s Village opened on Memorial Day weekend, 1955 (over a month before the opening of nearby Disneyland); the 15 acre, Technicolor dreamland of Santa’s Village—with ginger bread houses and toy shops—felt like a real world approximation of the Burl Ives narrated, stop-motion classic, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”; of course, the inexplicable giant mushrooms that dotted Santa’s Village also gave it the appearance of Japanese psychedelia, as if Mario and Luigi traveled to the North Pole; earlier this year, I found myself knee-deep in a “bad patch” of Odyssean proportions; I was not much good to anyone; to riff on “Laid,” the mid-90’s, minor hit by the British band, James: I was so depressed that I was becoming a bore; my friend Kate wanted to cheer me up, so she asked if I’d like to take a trip to her childhood home—Lake Arrowhead; I did; this was my first time visiting Lake Arrowhead, and I was excited; I had known Kate for a couple years, but in that time, it had always been a peripheral friendship; I felt like I knew the shell—not the yolk—of her personality; Kate has a gentle demeanor, full of smiles and laughter and skilled, subtle evasive tactics that allow her to leap-frog over any conversation topic that is even vaguely personal; Kate and I left after lunch and arrived in Lake Arrowhead in the mid-afternoon; Kate told me, “I lived in 18 houses before I was 18 years old”; I was given the full tour of this fake Bavaria—which evoked similar theme-towns like Solvang and Helen—from Kate’s childhood homes to the lake, the mini-golf course, and Rim of the World High School; Kate was a fine tour guide—it felt like she’d given the tour many times before; as the sun set over Lake Arrowhead, Kate lobbed a bomb: “On the outskirts of town, there’s a place called Santa’s Village. I went there a ton during my childhood, but it shut down ten years ago. Then it burned. Now it’s abandoned. There’s a lot of melted plastic reindeer and stuff”; I insisted that we go there immediately; fifteen minutes later, we parked our car in the parking lot of Santa’s Village, which was being used as a lumber yard; with the twilight sun peeking through the pines, we tip-toed into the abandoned Village; it was stunning: buildings made of candy and ginger bread, an anthropomorphic Bumble Bee monorail—all filthy, rusted, and overgrown with weeds; this place resembled the North Pole—in the middle of a Nuclear Winter; location scouts for horror films need look no further than Santa’s Village; then, when I thought it could not get any more surreal, Kate opened up; “My parents met here,” she began; Kate, who had revealed of all two or three childhood details in the years I had known her, continued her story; Kate’s mother moved to California with her twin sister when they graduated high school, and when her sibling began stripping in Los Angeles, she left for the mountains; with no friends or family in Lake Arrowhead, Kate’s mother took a job at Santa’s Village, tending the reindeer; she soon fell in love with a fellow employee—a local boy who sold hot chocolate—and within the year, she was pregnant; Kate’s father had a cheating heart, and before Kate turned five he was kicked out of the house for numerous affairs with women and men; he caught hepatitis C, went to prison for robbing liquor stores with a 10-guage shotgun, and died in his cell; meanwhile, Kate suffered through her mother’s numerous abusive boyfriends, who made a habit of paying the rent—but also raping the pre-pubescent Kate and occasionally holding her down so their teenage sons could learn about sex; Kate still has a problem with people touching her armpits and shoulders; Kate’s mother moved to Apple Valley, found God, and married a Pentacostalist; Kate spoke in tongues until she was 15, when she promptly emancipated herself and caught a bus for Los Angeles; Kate got a fake ID and began stripping in Hollywood as well as finding work on the Renaissance Fair circuit as a “wench”; with money in her pocket, Kate set her sights on a childhood dream of acting and working in a dentist office; with no formal education, Kate worked as a dental assistant in Sherman Oaks, occasionally drilling cavities and putting silver fillings in the mouths of patients; Kate also declared herself a vegan and started an animal rescue business, living in an apartment with two other strippers and a half-dozen feral cats, dogs, and a tropical parrot; I knew none of this when I met Kate; to my knowledge, she was an actress with a couple pets; with the sun disappearing behind Santa’s Village, the shadows multiplying, Kate finished the story of her life, and we walked back to her Kia; we didn’t say much on the drive back; “Tusk,” by Fleetwood Mac, played three times before I turned if off and opted for a hip-hop radio station; I thanked Kate for the tour of Lake Arrowhead, but didn’t mention her story; when she dropped me off, I gave her a hug and said, “See ya soon”; I slept badly that night; I wasn’t sure whether I was more shaken by Kate’s story or the ghostly Village, which felt suffused with the collective emotions of four decades of eager, joyous children and their parents, now all adults (or dead); after searching the internet the next morning, I found an image of an early-1960’s postcard from Santa’s Village that shows a group of attractive, female “elves” waving at the camera, the candy-cane headline reading: “You’ll lose your heart!”; Santa’s Village was famously open 364 days a year—every day except Christmas; you can learn a lot about a person by how they celebrate the holidays.
THE DAUGHTERS OF EDWARD DARLEY BOIT
•August 30, 2008 • 4 Comments“Four corners and a void” is how one critic described “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit”—the 1882 portrait of sisters by the 26 year old American expatriate, John Singer Sargent; influenced by Velazquez, this shadowy painting depicts the four Boit sisters (Julia, Mary Louisa, Jane, and Florence), none of whom seem to find much pleasure in posing—or in life; in “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” Sargent—the “accentless mongrel”—seems as fascinated by the massive, twin Chinese vases as he does by the young females; grimly psychic, the painting forecasted the girls’ future; none of the sisters would marry, and the eldest two—who cower in the rear, hiding from Sargent’s gaze—suffered from mental illness later in life; Stanley Kubrick must have studied this penetrative painting when he was in pre-production for “The Shining”; I saw “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” in 2002 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; that summer, my ex-girlfriend was working at “The Atlantic Monthly,” and I was staying with her, blocks from Harvard Square; I grew up in a college town, and July in Cambridge—with summer students, hackey sacks, and bad street performers—makes me nostalgic for childhood; one Saturday, we went to the MFA with our friend, Eve; when we turned the corner in the museum to find the Boit sisters staring back at us, I felt my breath stutter; the girls appear profoundly afraid of their depictor, their eyes begging (“Take us with you!”) and their awkward posture revealing: “You’re just a painter. You have no idea how bad it gets sometimes”; my ex-girlfriend had her own demons, and though she denied them, they owned real estate on her face; I once took a photograph of her getting dressed behind a lamp in a Boston Hilton, and when I showed the photo to Thomas Roma—a talented, honest New York photographer—he said it was the best work of mine he had seen; Roma also said the image appeared to be from the point of view of a predator; he suggested I read a Don DeLillo story called “Baader-Meinhof” that had just appeared in “The New Yorker”; it was a creepy, stalker story set in an art gallery, and while I enjoyed the writing, I found the suggestion a tad bit unflattering; in The Modern Lovers song, “Girlfriend,” Jonathan Richman sings: “If I were to walk to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston/Well, first I’d go to the room where they keep the Cezanne/But if I had by my side a girlfriend/Then I could look through the paintings/I could look right through them/Because I’d have found something that I understand/I understand a girlfriend”; I once saw Vic Chesnutt—no stranger to pain—open for Jonathan Richman at the Bowery Ballroom; in his nasally drawl, Vic said, “I’m a nihilist. And Jonathan is a smile-ist”; some people like to have somebody to talk with while looking at art in a museum; they enjoy debating meaning, naming cities and dates; not me; I prefer just to hold hands and stare; if it comes down to a blinking contest, I always win; but those Boit girls have got me licked; they can stare forever.
