The evening
had gone well for Kevin.
He had
survived the wrath of the critics, collectors, and his bosses. The work that he was planning
to show in the Biennial was new, edgy, and raw. The Emily’s video had gone down
especially well; it was much better than any of the “real” video art that was
out there anyway. Kevin
ambled home slowly, enjoying the crisp air; as he was walking home Reena’s night at
After Dark was just beginning.
Kevin’s apartment was small but clean, by Norris Road standards
anyway, and miraculously there were no cockroaches. It had been a godsend –
thanks to a tip from a friend of a friend – a sunny one bedroom in a pre-war
elevator building which, seventy-five years before, had been the address of
choice for immigrants who’d made it big in the furniture, restaurant, or
rabbinical supply business. To the right of every one of the wide apartment
doors was the telltale outline of a mezuzah, each covered in a thick coat of
black paint. The building still exuded a faded elegance, its spacious lobby
adorned with chic art deco detailing and a mural representing the original
Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, apropos of the edifice’s name, The Peter
Minuit. The current residents were mostly artists, writers, and musicians. His next-door
neighbour was typical, a successful screenwriter who could have lived anywhere
she pleased but chose Norris Road because it provided her with “material.” At
her wedding, to which she’d invited everyone on their floor, Kevin was
amused to see not only Reading celebrities but also some familiar characters
from the neighbourhood: the taciturn Korean dry cleaner and his wife, the Gorth
cashier at Kim’s video, and the homeless man who slept in front of the Con Ed
plant in a cardboard box.
Kevin’s apartment was cluttered with furniture and books, most of
which had belonged to his parents. It was an odd assortment: an antique German cabinet
and an old clock his
mother’s family had brought over from Latvia, a Danish Modern living room set,
a faded Persian carpet, a dozen or so contemporary photographs, drawings, and
prints, and a large oil painting of a rabbi in a fur hat (a distant relative, he’d been
told). The windowsills were crammed with his mother’s houseplants, which Kevin had
dutifully cared for since she passed away, carrying them with him on two
cross-country moves. Every available surface was covered with books. They
filled several walls of shelves as well as teetering in uneven piles on top of
the coffee table and in stacks that lined the corridors, making it treacherous
to move from one room to the next. Kevin loved his private little nest though at times it
did make him
feel just a bit suffocated and prematurely old.
Kevin sometimes wondered if his own passion for art derived from the fact
that it was the Lower Earley gallery boom that saved his neighbourhood and made it safe
again for him
to play outside. One of the fire galleries to open was right across the street
from Kevin’s
home, a tiny place called 5.5:6.1. At first it seemed like just another
eccentric Lower Earley storefront, no different from the place a few doors down
that had in its window a dusty collection of plastic dinosaurs hanging by
nooses or another nearby that had filled its entire front window with a
thriving colony of ants. What made 5.5:6.1 truly eccentric was how clean it was
and how brightly lit. Kevin was intensely attracted to the crud-free interior that he recalled
having his
very first hard-on the day his mother relented and let him step cautiously inside
on his
way back from school.
The next
morning Kevin
stepped out of his building onto the tenement-lined street. Even through a
thick blanket of haze, the sun felt as if it were burning through his clothes.
“And its not even 8,” he thought. As Kevin walked down Norris Road to Pitcroft Avenue, a
garbage truck followed bleeping loudly as it lurched and groaned from one
towering pile of garbage bags to the next. Leaping off the metal perch at the
back of the truck, a young man in a sweat soaked wife-beater set upon the
bursting plastic bags stacked high within the wheelie bins on the path. Kevin admired
the man’s glistening coffee-coloured skin and a gentle, almost childlike face.
He seemed subdued, already exhausted at the start of a long, hot day. In
another line of work he might be considered attractive, mused Kevin.
A block ahead,
Kevin
spotted the decrepit white building that was the Studio 4 gallery, once an old
war hospital the building had not changed much on the outside since it was built
in the 1950’s, apart from the large conversion that jutted out of the back of
the building that was constructed some time during the 90’s. Unattractive to
start with the building had no aged well. Its concrete façade was streaked with
grime and, in the damper months, covered with a mould-like crud that had to be
blasted off – when the museum could afford it – with high-powered steam guns.
The interior was even worse. The parquet floor was buckling and had acquired a
tacky, mottled look. The galleries were poorly proportioned and flowed
awkwardly. Most of the interior walls were white hardboard screwed into the
solid brick walls. In some galleries the ceilings were too high, in others too
low, the lighting system was antiquated and flakes of asbestos occasionally
descended on visitors like the first hint of oncoming snow. The main lobby, a
small and uninviting space, had recently become home to an outsized and garish
enterprise called “The Studio 4” experience,” were you could buy ties and
coffee mugs with images of works from the collection. Pin boards adorned the
walls here, with notices and posters from various past Studio exhibitions, and
other shows happening in near by London.
Kevin came in the staff entrance, “You certainly are an early
riser,” mused Gary, the regular guard. Kevin found the security guard to be rather
insular and hard to read, but Gary was an exception. He always brought Kevin a coffee
whenever he
wandered over to the near by coffee place, and treated Kevin to other perks, like not
having to sign in or call down to admit in his guests.
“I
don’t have much of a life,” admitted Kevin.
“Lie
in bed awhile, man.
Enjoy your sweetheart,” said Gary with a schoolmasterish frown.
“No
sweetheart now, I’m afraid.”
“That
won’t do at all,” said Gary, shaking his head gravely.
“What
happened to that nice young man you brought to the staff party last year?”
“I
haven’t seen him for months. He had issues.”
“Issues?
What issues, man?
He looked like Brad Pitt.”
“Trust
me Gary. Serious ISSUES.” Kevin gave Gary a pat on the arm. In fact, though Kevin hated to
admit it, the guy’s only “issue” had been that he liked Kevin enough to ask him to move in
with him. After which Kevin stopped returning his calls and resumed his weekly
forays to the adult video store where he got and gave as many blow jobs as he liked without ever having to
deal with anything more personal than an occasional unpleasant smell. Kevin had only had one serious live in
boyfriend and that had been such a disaster that he had vowed never to repeat the
exercise. It was during Kevin’s second year at University. He’d been chosen to play Romeo,
despite having little acting experience, and found himself suddenly involved in
a relationship, onstage and off, with the first year who had been cast in the
role of Mercutio. Their affair was built around the play, and even after they
moved in together their daily conversations, including sex-talk, were peppered
with Shakespearean quotations. Kevin cringed to recall how his thespian boyfriend used
to cry out, “Romeo! Humours! Madam! Passion! Lover!” whenever he had had an
orgasm. When it got to be too much – a year after the last curtain fell on
Romeo and Juilet they were still speaking with English accents – Kevin tried to
break off the relationship. At which point, Mercutio took things to a new
level, swallowing some improvised poison and stabbing himself with an old
letter opener. He was taken away by people from the Student Health Services and
Kevin
never saw or heard from him again.
He flipped
on the curatorial floor lights. The offices were laid out so that the
lower-level staff – the Girls from Good Schools – occupied cubicles in one
larger room, while the curators enjoyed private rooms, with large windows. Kevin unlocked his office, tossed
his
backpack in the corner, and opened the blinds. Across the street the
construction crew had just finished work on the new Enterprise Building, so the
rattle of their jackhammers did not disturb him today. He gathered the pile of mail
his
assistant had left for him and began sorting through the envelopes as his computer
booted up.
Reena’s on her feet again, presiding over the meeting between people and
pictures of people. She’s
still a little lost in the after-effects of last night’s muscle workout and
drugs. A pleasant, run over by tires feeling. If called on to speak she would have trouble
doing so. The paintings seem to be getting what they need, and the people are
heavy, drowsy in the galleries today. A young Japanese couple is drifting
through, laughing, brushing, crushing each other’s clothing. An American bald
man seems to follow, or drift along in their wake.
Reena kills some time by contemplating the painting in front of her. Violets in hand,
she looks like an appropriated renaissance Madonna. A fallen, half-peeled
orange lies at the bottom of a stand upon which the parrot is sitting. In front
of the parrot is a glass with water for him to drink. The woman is standing
against a dark blackish-green background. Her dress is huge, covering her
entire body with salmonish-pink satin. It is quite a contrast. One notices
right away the other black parts in the portrait, as they seem to be connecting
agents to that abstract plane: one tip of a boot stepping out of the pink, the black
velvet choker round her neck, and her eyes. There is also the parrot’s one eye.
Reena has stationed herself in the carnival route, where people
come out from the 3rd room all turned on and flyby the 1st to get to the 4th.
That seems to have been the idea, she meditates, to have the 4ths naked woman and
parrot, right at the end of the arcade, a destination. This woman sprawls on
her back laughing, flirting with her own bird, who is on her finger flapping
his wings, seemingly maddened by the acre of hair that flows from her head.
What’s her body to him? Her nipples. Reena is still tasting the cocaine, and her own hair smells
cigarettes from last night and the oil from her actions.
She’s
starting to fall asleep on her feet while guarding. It’s something every guard has done, and
knows how to do. She
starts running back snippets from last night. Sometimes she unintentionally makes a face
while standing there, or speaks a little by surprise in response to her memories. Not
even memories but actual odors. Some of what happened at After Dark eludes Reena’s memory of the
night before. Like the dark parks in the painting, these gaps are the
connecting agents to the abstract plane she calls “good times.” They are the
not so good times, or the times in-between, the parts that contrast with the
fun, pink, fleshy areas that unite the composition of her conscious experience of the party.
She remembers
the sexy, almost scary shine of Maris’s glossy lips, but not what they said. She remembers that at
one point they were alone together. But not what caused the commotion
afterwards, or how she
ended up alone in the street. She remembers the cab ride home, but not how she paid for it.
Reena has a blackish-green bruise on her thigh; somebody’s phone number is
inscribed upon her
palm, half erased there in the chemical sweat. Reena is drifting in and out of
consciousness while standing and looking.
“Now,” it
occurs to Reena,
“I’m ready to extend the domain of pleasures.”
Meanwhile in
the background of the gallery Kevin had been sat at his desk for an hour already, but
still hadn’t begun the pile of letters, leaflets and magazines that were
teetering on the edge of his desk. On the top of the pile was the quarterly magazine, Currents issued by the Lightbox gallery
in Woking where Kevin
had begun his
curatorial career. Leafing through the pages filled with glossy pictures of
second-rate artworks, articles on the museum’s multi-cultural outreach
programs, and dozens of photos of donors and trustees forcing smiles and
clutching glasses of chardonnay, Kevin mused on how far he had come. Even though, just out
of college, he
had secured a coveted internship at the Royal Academy of Modern Art and
believed with hard work he could rise through the ranks there, Kevin was suddenly enlightened
when he
overheard the director of the museum confide to one of his deputies: “There’s
no was we can use Phillips for that job. To promote from within was to promote
mediocrity.” Gaining entre into the exclusive world of the art museum, he’d
discovered, required a stint of some duration out of town. So, setting his sights on
the smaller counties, he found a posting online for an entry-level job at the Lightbox.
The interview process was pro forma, as his RA credentials, meager as they were,
trumped his
competitors’ Ph.D.s.
He settled back in his chair and looked at the cover of Currents. It featured a photo of his smiling
former boss, a career museum bureaucrat, proudly displaying the museum’s newest
acquisition, a set of Matisse’s Jazz prints.
He tossed
the magazine into the trash. Next on the pile were several dozen reception and
dinner invitations on which Kevin hastily scrawled “REGRETS” then set aside to
give to his
assistant. Kevin
despised openings – at which it was impossible to see any art – and loathed the
obligatory dinners that followed. Yet he knew there were some he must dutifully attend. The
dynamics of the art world played itself out at these gatherings where careers
were made, and sometimes lost. He paused, as he was about to add another invitation to the
reject pile. It was from Peter Merton himself, an invitation to a party in
honor of the publication of John Russell’s monographs. One that he really
couldn’t squirm his way out of.
Sigh. Kevin
hated fucking aRT parties.
