Hello you lovely people. It’s been a while. What’ve you been up to?
IS THIS A MASTERPIECE?
unprophetic magisterial
here
unpainted heft;
impersonality registers departure; mind
word, within fades; wisdom deflected
stars stuck widow;
red globe theory ambush; thing maybe
was the I, self-locked
plywood scenes explode; paperback
abdominal nervous comfort; female roast
masking tape
I like beautiful things as you can see…
Going up the stairs to my living room, every guest meets this one eye to eye. Normally, I don’t even comment on it, I just stand back and take note; watch how people react to having it shoved into their face. Some say nothing at all and walk on by. Others’re quite shocked, if they say so or not. You can see the conflict negotiated in their facial muscles. Then there’re those who find it quite amusing or ask me something about it. Whatever the reaction, I get an insight into my visitor and a feeling for how to deal with them in future; you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Everything you see here is for sale. For the right price you can walk off with anything that takes your fancy… That one’s nice, isn’t it? The Temptation of St Antoine. Watch your head. This used to be an old barn. Some of the beams are low.
I spent over ten years in and out of museums and galleries. Three weeks in Paris every summer, soaking up culture. Especially with my second wife, Marianne. Hélène, my third wife, was a blockhead. I don’t think she’s ever read a book in her entire life. She thinks she’s smart, but a person’s face’ll always tell you if they’re bright or not. And I don’t care how much of an effort she goes to with her make-up and her hair-do, when I look at her now, all I see is a face that looks like a pair of skidded knickers.
IS THIS A MASTERPIECE?
thing maybe was the I. amputating itself
Know what I love about art? What? You can’t talk about it and about progress in the same breath. Art cancels all thought of progress, of movement towards an absolute good. It shows us for what we are: constantly plagued by abdominal nervous the same old Question. Would you agree with me that the Image is subordinate to the Idea? A sign of the Sign, with Man (I mean you as well of course) of course desperately clutching to some semiotic turf or another for fear of slipping off into that unbearable place?
Take a look at this one. Have you ever seen a tackier, more peevish frame in your entire life? Picture’s a masterpiece, far as I’m concerned. But that frame? What an eyesore! At first I wanted to dump it and get a decent one, something ornate and gilded. And just as I was about to, I thought, hey no, don’t do that! Keep the original frame for its documentary value. Show it to some poncy fat-arsed historian, they ought to know a thing or two, might even take it off your hands for a pretty price and have it on show in a museum somewhere with people less cultured than me straining to hear what he has to say, to hear his story, vivid for the moment but which’ll recede soon to be usurped by its own unreality, soon to becousin our dreams. That, essentially, is the problem with language; it’s a lie with complete faith in itself. To speak is to lie and to want to be lied to. But I’m digressing. Point is: I kept the frame.
That one twist more, that one step further in the proclivities of your imagination, and the ugly is ugly no more. Just goes to show; there is no truth, but that we make it. String half a dozen people in front of a work of art, each will come to a different truth. What is art? Who decides what’s precious? Who, authorised to confer such an etiquette on an item; to brand the hide of the cow? Am I the masterpiece? Why am I not the masterpiece? There is no art. No science, at least no justifiable border between the two. There is only… imagination, desire and the quest; need, the willingness to construct that other world which is so much more beautiful, more reliable than the one we live in. What is truth? Truth is every single man… Anyhow, some first class Czech impressionistic paintings hanging in my bedroom. Show you later. Maybe.
*
The innocence, the joy, the fear of discovery. Too many had told her why she should not do-think-say-ask-try the things she did-thought-said-asked and tried.
Fuck you all.
Fuck all of you!!!
My life.
My way.
*
– Open it.
– What is it?
– Just open it.
He shook the box: light…
She smiled.
– No! Don’t open it until I’ve gone.
*
– And?
She grinned at him three days later.
– I made a blood sausage with it. Blood sausage with horse chestnuts. Delicious!
I am as I am I please whom I please What is it to you What has happened to me Yes, I did love someone Yes, this someone loved me As young kids love each other Knowing Innocently How to love one another And that with such glee…
Can be mean little buggers as well, though, can’t they? They’ll slit open animals for the fun of it and lie through their teeth. They’re the best and worst in us in miniature. Whatever.
I love the smell of you. After you had gone the other day, I refused to wash myself. She came home later, wanting, the usual, but I couldn’t touch her. She slept on her side of the bed and I on mine. (Yes, she recollected, he had pulled her to that side of the bed…) I on mine, enveloped in the odour of your juice and sweat. She? She washes at least ten times a day, how’s a man supposed to get excited if he doesn’t have the smell of you in his nose? We wash far too often. Should only wash when we really need to. You should get Him not to wash for a while so he stinks of man, then you give him a royal blow job, he’ll spray like a whale, I swear.
You, you smell fantastic, your tight, juicy foufoun. I read a book once, in French it’s called Le Nez; The Nose. Know it? It’s about a man who kills virgins so he can use their odour to produce the ultimate perfume. That’s one crazy shit, but I understand him. When I sniff my fingers, hhmm, I smell you. I run my fingers under my nose right in front of her, and remember you. I’m not going to wash that bedsheet. Going to keep it somewhere safe so I can smell you when I want to.
My wedding day, right? First marriage, and I’m at my in-laws. The future bride and her parents had gone to the hairdresser’s. We were celebrating the wedding at home, so the bride’s family had asked a neighbour to help out with serving the guests. She was a young, unattractive girl. Come and help me, come and scrub my back for me, I called out to her. She came and scrubbed my back. Thick as a plank, she was. Get in the tub… She was a country lass and boy, did she smell of c(o)untry. I moved my head down there to get a whiff of her, but believe me, one whiff was enough, even for a man like me. We had a real good shag right there in the bathtub. Then I got dressed and got married.
In the village of my childhood, you wore your underwear for the whole week and washed at the weekend. (Girls as well?) of course girls as well! The air was rank by Friday! And our culottes yellow up the front, brown up the back. (You look happy at the recollection of it…) of course I was happy! Life was simple, but sweet… This is the smell I have in my nostrils till today. This smell, this innocence, of unwashed sex.
In the old days, all the children slept in one bed. Of course there was incest going on. So what? You always hear about fathers raping their daughters. Now you listen to me. Half the time, it’s not rape at all. Those girls want it. They want to make the experience, then when they get jealous of their fathers, they accuse him of rape to get their own back and the poor bastard ends up in prison. We were kids, but we weren’t doing anything abnormal, see? Kids are like this. Kids are sexual beings, too.
Boys were trying it out amongst themselves as well of course they were. I saw my brother get buggered by the boy next door. He was a good bit older than us and he’d often come over to sleep at our place on a Saturday night. Once I heard these noises coming from my brother’s bedroom. I went in, flicked on the light. My brother was on his knees, this other big boy had him by the hips and was giving him a royal humping. I think I said something like; you dirty bastards, that’s what girls are for! I think I also grabbed something and beat my brother across the backside with it. He knows I saw him though we’ve never openly spoken about it. See, it was just like that and do you think things have changed? Are you saying that I come from a family of mental cases? (So, who was humping you…?) I’ll tell you one thing, though: it doesn’t smell the same…
I am as I am
And it’s right that way
What more do you want
What more must I say…
Joan Barbara Simon Author 