Performance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Sprinkle

When we were students at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 90s, we had a few interesting guest speakers and the occasional crazy prostitute who used "shock value" to sell a really horrible performance to a bunch of fucked-up WASPs afraid of everything. It wasn't like I had tons of experience with middle-aged Jewish hookers, it was just that I already knew the deal: that it was a long dull prelude to her inevitable down-spiral into rehab, where she will try to shock the shit out of a bunch of mental patients who desperately need genuine psychiatric care over the hubris of some Jewish lady opening her legs without prompting from anyone, in a lame attempt to top the crying Albino Asian girl rocking back-and-forth in the corner of their white room because she fears being raped by her scary rabbit doll. 

It's just another game of one-upmanship for most native New Yorkers, used to seeing weird shit in the middle of what was once a normal workday, until some crazy guy flashes onlookers crossing a city street wearing nothing under his drab khaki raincoat other than a deranged expression, but that's a story for a rainier day than today. What's next? Toads falling from the fucking sky?! You know what I mean? It's, like, just another fucked-up thing you have to deal with because of other people's problems, when you really want to be at home with your feet up on a cozy ottoman, sipping a nice warm cup of honeyed herbal tea.

And that's exactly what it felt like for me to be in the audience of an Annie Sprinkle "show", and I use quotes as a description because there's no fucking way that what happened up on that stage was "art" for anyone other than my particular brand of fucked-up WASP's who were also my vegetarian housemates back in the day. I saw it as a cry for help that two very suppressed individuals needed, along with meds and sex therapy, the exact same boat as the poor ugly hooker onstage striving to be someone other than a banged-up prostitute looking for a second act. It was sort of like the political game of art school itself, albeit as a nastier version of the real school, where your psychotic prof is searching for shit-on-a-shingle served up to her as "art", as part of her anger issues with her more talented artist daddy....okay, but, fuck! Me and my broke-ass crew are paying for this joint right here!

Why give our hard-earned money to this fuckin' chick?! Why do I have to do art therapy with these fucking headcases?! Shit...I mean, man, I needed solid drawing skills like a daVinci born yesterday, not this shit right here, yo. That's how angry a R.I.S.D. experience gone wrong could be for us, because the meter was running at an exorbitantly high rate that was much higher than the highest priced call-girl in Manhattan, and that chick wasn't all that, bro. I felt that nervous with each passing dollar thrown away on crap, but my richer WASPier friends didn't care. Sue had (has?) a trust fund from her rich Boston lawyer dad (a well-respected tort lawyer she used to work for as a paralegal in between her questioning phases, like punk rocking in San Francisco), and Riddell worked the "perpetual student" angle as a local-yokel from rural Connecticut who got sympathy money from a New England state that still wants to believe they have strong homegrown talent among them. 

So, there I sat as a last-minute tag-along with them in a somewhat full auditorium, in the middle of the day, that was nowhere near as fully attended as the works of other major art stars of the day. We sat in one of the back rows that had a limited view of the stage, which suited me just fine. I had a feeling she'd be even worse up-close than from this relatively comfortable distance. She then asked the audience to line-up in front of the stage for a "viewing", which basically meant that this particular crazy lesbian spread her legs on a table, inserted a speculum, and then said through her mike that we could look at her cervix. WHAT?!!! Why the fuck would anyone want to get near her?! 

I guess that was part of the point, because even with heavy makeup and bleached-out hair, some of the attending lesbians couldn't get past the reality of her pasty flabby skin and banged-up face. I chickened out at first, but Riddell (as the hetero male in our trio), hopped up quickly from his seat, ready to have a look. I stayed in my seat looking at my assignments, but luckily for me, my hippie-mom Sue went to the stage to see firsthand. She came back to me in my seat, and said there wasn't much there. No shit! We went back down to the stage together, to give Riddell moral support for waiting on line on a side staircase leading up to the stage. We milled around the front of the stage, looking for any print materials that would back up her performance or artistic cred but, of course, there was none to be had, because she's a complete fucking hack. There were no drawings, no brochures, no artist statement (other than her onstage ramble of fake "artspeak" followed by a mental prepping to her audience about her nudity and insertion that was supposedly her "piece"), and no actual art at all. 

Oh. It was kind of exactly what we expected, which was nothing. Afterwards, we grilled Riddell about what happened: "Yeah, it was awesome!" He said that he went up there, spoke to her two female "assistants" who may direct your questions to her as she reclined on a surgical table with a gynecological instrument and a microphone, then you peeked between her open legs that were covered by a white sheet like a doctor's exam, and then he saw a cervix as a 30-year-old guy. 

Jaded as we were becoming about our burgeoning learning in the art scene and its lurking pseudo-denizens, it actually bolstered our faith in our sometimes difficult-to-follow classes, because the real thing is never a substitute for pure bullshit. It was actually a great life lesson to learn, delivered to us during a critical time in our studies when we sometimes felt like giving up. After that, I knew without a doubt that I could be beat that crazy fucking bitch in art, design, photography, painting, nudity AND health care (along with everything else) any day of the fucking week, whether awake or asleep. Thanks. I guess....
 

Here's what it really takes for a "free ride" that's for less than half of us: http://www.risd.edu/admissions/student-financial-services/types-of-aid/RISD-financial-aid/

Nightswimming

In art school, real fun was hard to come by. Chills were plentiful, along with fear, hope, and crippling doubt. Combined with your average rich kids' inability to sleep at night without a safety net of cushy money and psychiatrist-prescribed pharmaceuticals, it led to some insane freak-outs, as we dared each other to the dizzying heights that are brought on by frustration and rabid competition. They'd show up to classes exhausted, with shaved heads, and really dark, unhealthy circles under their eyes, with the requisite heavy-lidded baggage. I've never met a more dangerously fucked up group of people in my life. 

When Littleton, Colorado erupted into murder and suicide from the particular kind of violence that is a rich kids' ennui, I wasn't all that surprised. I'd be openly talking about the toxic combo of money and madness for years, to anyone who cared enough to listen. That my theories about white men with money congealed in reality, into my very worst fears about life, actually scared me to death.

It was into this mix that someone in our group mentioned an empty rock quarry as a potential swimming hole. I was desperate for cool water, as an East Coaster. Summertime just ain't right without the beach and swimming to me. I jumped at the chance. We snuck onto the grounds underneath a chain link fence, and past the "No Swimming!" signs, giving it the right amount of transgression for rebellious youth. Of course, my crazy Yankee housemate, with his backwoods working-class attitude and lust for rampantly unchecked athleticism, spurred us on to higher and higher jumps. It was thrilling and really fucking scary (Kudos, Riddell). I mastered cliffhanging from across the quarry, my toes gripping onto a narrow rocky ledge, but the other side of the pond was even worse because it was much, much higher than it seemed.

If you've never free-falled into 30-40 feet of cold murky water that hides its' depth, I can't really explain to you. I asked my friend questions about it while in the water, trying to steel my nerves for the jump. We listened to him talk about the sharp edges of rusty metal that lay on the bottom of the small lake, since it'd been a teenage fad to dump your car there and claim it as a total loss from theft on your insurance, back in rural 1970s Rhode Island. Yeah, okay. That's it, huh?

I climbed up the rocky ridge to the other side, and stood there for a little while, my crazy friend yelling at me encouragingly from the other side of the pond, taking his umpteenth leap into the depths below, from even smaller and more dangerous footholds. Shit. I have to do it. I'm no chickenshit, dude. I did it, and instantly regretted it. I saw sharp rocks quickly rising up to greet me, and thought (really thought) I'd just made the worst mistake of my life. I could hear Riddell yelling that I didn't jump far out enough to totally escape danger ("Oh, no! She didn't jump far enough out!!"), and then I gasped, hitting the water at an odd angle that smacked me in the ribs hard. I could tell he was as scared as I was, and for the first time in my life, I thought I might drown. The fall took all the wind out of my lungs. I screamed underwater, water rushing into my mouth that I had no choice but to gulp down.

I did drown a little bit, but years of swimming lessons really paid off. I bobbed up to the surface, letting out the remaining air in my lungs by yelling out from the pain of my fall. There was silence when I broke through the water. My friends had been bracing for a possible rescue dive. My housemate laughed right after I surfaced. I quickly explained to my friends in the water that I hurt myself by slamming down hard, and that's why I surfaced screaming. "Oh, shit....", as the ones with less experience drifted away from me in the water. I treaded water lightly by myself for awhile, watching other kids take jumps. I was fucking done for the day, man. It was one of those rare brush ups with mortality that I've had over the years that never really leave you.

But back up on the safety of the warm rocks, laying out and drying in the sun, we were happier than we'd been in awhile. So much so, we convinced each other to ride out there on a stifling warm summer night, a night so muggy, it begged for relief. I was a lot safer than my previous trip out there, because sharp rocks don't exactly look nicer under scant parking lot spotlights, but we were buoyed up by our nighttime adventure. Some of us descended into madness and never came back from its' gripping depths, like Greg and his sometime-love Crystal, with the long dark hair. He hugged her briefly on the rocks, in a rare warm embrace of the true boyfriend/girlfriend type, before she wriggled out of his grasp to escape to safer waters like the rippling blackness below.

He was routinely having nightmares, which he tried to capture on film in grainy black and white (and he did get it, as one student duly noted during a crit), the hauntings of madness combined with searing brilliance, hard work, and born-to-it-ness. He looked at me after she left his arms, trying to regroup from the sting of her leaving by shaking out his tight curls, opening his eyes really wide and saying to me shakily, "I've never felt this clean, you know. This water...." he trailed off, shivering in the night, ...."it just makes me feel so clean, you know? I've never felt this clean in my life!" I didn't understand, because quarries aren't exactly filled with pristine spring water, especially those right outside of a major urban area, so I quizzed him further, but to no avail. He repeated it, and I was baffled by it again.

On the ride home, we fell silent as a group, in our caravan of cheap, college-kid cars, watching the moon through open windows, a stark difference to the chatty excitement of our semi-drunk and raucous ride out there, because there ain't nothing' like the feeling of somnolence that comes over your limbs after a long day (or night) of swimming, like those times when your parents drove you back from a beach vacation during summer's off. I remember Greg mentioned the magical way that the moonlight had shimmered on our wet skin like diamonds, and the feeling that anything could happen (which it did, because we summoned it up out of the water for our creation), and that this was the one final, brief respite of summer session before we bore the full, crushing weight of the highest Ivy heights during a real semester, ill-prepared as we were with our small, hard, working class lives.

It was a lot to consider, you know? Take the time out this summer during your vacation to charge your batteries. You don't want the burn-out of an empty and used old battery that's about to be discarded by your respective industries, because when you let someone (or something ) use you like that, you don't ever get it back. And they just throw you away to get another one to feed off of creatively. You are their business; the beating, breathing heart of it. Remember that, through all the games and petty roles being played out in front of you daily, in some generic overly air conditioned office environment. Be unique. Be you. And persevere.

Turning Japanese

http://godzilla.wikia.com/wiki/Shobijin

I met Atusko as a transfer student to RISD, over the foundation summer session that's required for each and every student. No one gets a waiver, not even Picasso himself (and he probably would've been kicked out for being a total fucking dick who couldn't paint, anyway), because they do not accept studio credits from any school on Planet Earth (or famous artist, living or dead). She immediately didn't like me, but given her rather traditionally affluent Japanese upbringing, she chose to hide it in plain sight, which is really odd when you are exposing yourself in intimate studio classes everyday.

But, like any other generic wanna-be "art fag", she chose to do bitchy battle with me (mostly one-sided, because, honestly, I had no fucking clue what she was thinking most of the time, nor did I really care) by sublimating her lesbian energy towards me in strange and unusual ways. I didn't know she was bisexual until later on in the summer, when my gay fashion design friends finally told me, as we sat gossiping about her and all the other students. 

She was a total snob in crits, and overly sensitive. She cried a lot, which gave her very red eyes all summer long, and led to a series of drippy red paintings that were either about human blood or being gay and rolling around in period blood with her ex-girlfriend. We didn't really know, and besides that, it was total schlock shock value and really gross. I should be perfectly honest with you at this point: I have never had a lesbian friend. Ever. I've never met a gay woman who actually liked me enough to be a real friend to me.

Anyway, into this heady cocktail of insane competition and mind-blowing academics, she chose to betray another female student by being one of the weirdest assholes I've met to date, and that is hard to beat for a New Yorker, so it actually helped me to remember her over the years, when I would have forgotten her as just another rich Japanese girl with a typically short haircut that they liked in the 90s. Through her friendship with my friend from Minnesota (who would become a housemate and roommate with me for much longer than I ever wanted, but that's another great story or two), I could at least be around her without being a primary target, because my fag hag fashion friend diffused some of her gay anger at me, and life itself.

And so, unbeknown to her, I actually learned a lot about her by being part of a group, and listening to my new arty, wealthy friends speak. They thought they were extremely sophisticated, which was funny for me as a New Yorker. We'd trade stories about where we were from, and we were from all over the globe, in several different languages. I knew she loved her brother, and that she did the same weirdly passive-aggressive and oddly sexually hostile thing with him over his girlfriend, because in "Depressionville", it's okay to sabotage other people's relationships if you can justify it by claiming "jealously" (even if it's incestuous, which is very cool, hip, and strange). With her, it came about at a red-faced and drunk "goodbye" family dinner at a sushi joint, with lots of free-flowing sake. She showed me the pictures from their last visit, as we sat talking and smoking.

By the end of the summer, she tried to convince me that her zitty, greasy-haired, and dyed blonde roomie was as beautiful as a Supermodel, and that Pam's sister was just as gorgeous, too! "Look, MAAHHRIE!" She showed me some glossy mag of a skincare ad with two blue-eyed models: one blonde and one brunette, like the American sisters she was now lucky enough to know firsthand. "Here's PAHHM, and her seester!". Uh, okay. I didn't have the heart to unload my brief experiences with New York, photography, and modeling, which would have driven her madder anyway, so I just said "Yeah", briefly and noncommittally, and let it drop.

She must have sensed that I had some edge I wasn't divulging to her right away, because she nervously fretted around my summertime dorm room in an old house owned by the school, finally landing on my old cassette types, to scrutinize them and judge my musical tastes. Uh oh. This was also really bad dyke territory for me. Chicks could always tell I really knew music by my collection. And there it was: her dip-shit, passive-aggressive opening: "Ohhhh, MAAHHHrie..." she tsk-tsked over my tapes, "you must not like women!" She pulled out one cassette, "See? You have no music by women!!" It was a frightening thing for her to say aloud, because we were in a room full of just female artists, and every single one of them wanted to sabotage me without getting caught.

It was a great move, but unfortunately for her, I actually did have some female recording artists hidden into the mix, with serious tastes in punk rock, New Wave, Ska, R&B, Jazz, and the blues: genres classically difficult for American women to succeed in. I hit her with Exene Cervanka from the L.A. band "X" and Chrissie Hyde from "The Pretenders", but she clammed up coldly, narrowing her eyes at me viciously. Okay, fine. I also have ONLY BOYS in my family, Atsuko. Oh, right! She brightened up at the suggestion that led to her ripping apart her brother's girlfriend, hence the photos she busted out and passed around.

But it led us to better places conversationally, and the room once again opened up to other people wandering around the dorm, looking for something to do after summer studios quit for the day. A nice gay Mexican kid wandered in with his new redhead "bestie" from Long Island (they LOVED dishing over gossip mags and worshipped Linda Evangelista like she was a plastic mannequin), which spread the weirdo tension around the room more equitably. We got higher and drunker, which led me back to happier memories, too. She dropped an A-Bomb then that I never forgot, and it was the most charming thing I knew about her during our brief and tense acquaintance. 

I must have been talking about watching monster movies with my bros, when she cut in excitedly, to top me in the conversation: "Yes! I know what you mean, MAAHRIE. When I was leetle girl in Tokyo, I cried when I saw Godzilla on t.v. I ran to keetchen to mom, and ask her if Tokyo was burning and people die. 'No, Atsuko!', my mommy said. 'Look! Only on t.v. Eats not real!' And she pull back curtain in keetchain to show me city. Not burned! Tokyo okay!"

Hahaha! Awesome!! I didn't care that she hated me in what passed for "subtle" in Japan, or that each and every student in the room wanted to kill me and eat me (or sleep with me) to get ahead. I only knew that one other kid there that summer thought monster movies were great, and I could finally have a decent, well-informed conversation with another girl about my love for all things Mothra and Ghidorah. Finally! 

It was a first for me outside of my immediate family circle. So, for that brief respite, during that overwhelmingly hot and unairconditioned summer, I thank you, Atsuko, for finally being real with me, for a moment anyway, in a faraway land that must have been very scary for you, despite all of your family's money, connections, and prestige. "Look out, Atsuko! IT'S GODZILLA!!"