Richard Bowes
MY MASK
My mother screamed at the sight of the black mask that had become my face—I was peering into the kitchen window at dusk on the day I was buried. Mine had been a closed-casket funeral. But now I was a ghost and free. If I’d been able to remove the mask and show her the blood and broken bones, the screaming would have been worse.
This encounter helped destroy any remaining bridges between my Living family and me. Right then I was mad at the world for letting me die, and mad at myself for the stupidity that had left me dead.
Burial clothes rot away in no time. But the clothes in which a ghost has died become like a permanent tattoo. The mask I died in will be my face forever.
My family didn’t know how to deal with me when I was alive. So it followed that they didn’t know what to think about the shattered bones, busted organs, and clinging flesh that was sent home in a body bag from the Big Apple—the remains of me: Raphael Marks.
Things in New York hadn’t been going at all badly until I let my guard down and luck deserted me.
From my grave I raged against my parents for dumping me in the family plot in Bellwether, Pennsylvania. I’d fled this nothing town at age seventeen. I’m lucky nobody there believed in cremation.
Ironically, as a kid, I thought ghost stories and movies were stupid. Getting laid out under the grass changed my perspective. Remembering that I’d been killed by a Living being I trusted, fueled me with so much anger I couldn’t think straight at first.
Time moves slowly in a graveyard. I discovered that many of the dead lay huddled in the dirt, terrified by the aggressive specters that controlled the place. They endured a kind of death within death. Over the decades they’d lost all memory of having lived, and became no more alive than the dirt that held them.
Never once did I consider taking that road. I wanted my life back and vowed to regain every bit of the amazing future that had been stolen from me.
Angry specters, uneasy in their graves and not interested in turning to dust, dominated the cemetery. Cross them and you’d find yourself disintegrating and awaiting a second death. Once I saw how the graveyard was arranged, I worked my way into the aggressive specters’ ranks, hanging out with them and sharing their rage. Paying unwanted visits to families, friends, and total strangers was how specters proved to themselves that they still existed. Anger made me rise out of my rotted casket and frighten young couples screwing behind tombstones.
When you’ve been dead for a while, it’s easy to lose track of time. It becomes something that just flows past you.
Then, one night, I floated by my family’s house and saw that it was deserted, with a FOR SALE sign on the lawn. I realized it had been years since I’d been around the old place.
There was, I realized, no purpose to my haunts, no direction. They always ended with me back in what I feared was my final resting place.
So I began paying attention to the world of the Living and looked for a way I could make a life there. I saw specters flying through the dark, some naked or just skeletons. Others, like me, dressed in the clothes they had died in, some with cloaks and flowing ribbons in their hair.
I began to feel something like nostalgia for the city where I’d died. More and more over the years I found myself called to that place where once heads had turned when I walked by.
In addition to the mask I’d worn when making illegal graffiti art, the leather jacket, black jeans, and ankle boots in which I’d lived and died were also now part of me.
I taught myself to fly by practicing short excursions. I swam through the night air and began following the Living, who drove or walked in the dark. They shivered and peered around like they sensed my presence. During the day the Living would see no more of me than a ripple of sunlight, a momentary shadow, as I went among them.
One evening when I felt I was ready, I left my grave and floated out of Bellwether, Pennsylvania, to the great city. I imagined with relish, the idea of New York’s curiosity about me growing when word spread that I’d returned. I promised myself to not be the same naive graffiti artist I’d been before I died.
Thinking about getting a new graffiti tag, I chose “Living Death.” Then I realized that my ghostly hand would pass through any paintbrush or spray can. But I was sure I’d find some other way to publicize myself.
It was just before dawn when I floated into the outskirts of the great city. In the dark I saw the towers of light across the river, felt the presence of my kind (whom I had never noticed when I lived there) amid the millions of the Living.
By daylight the place seemed to have changed into a city of glass in the three decades I’d been gone. The crowds, even the kids, lacked the color and style that I remembered. East and West, the Villages were tame. And graffiti, the little I saw, was tired and commercial.
For a few days I wandered among the Living, listened to their talk. Looking for someone familiar, I flicked through faces as if they were endless pages in a telephone book. This city needed a ghostly presence to make it alive, and I was the one who could provide that. I spoke my name in crowds and whispered my old graffiti tag “We Dis” even though it brought back bad memories. But my ghostly words attracted no attention.
I drifted into art galleries and bookstores. In one: a big color photograph on a wall riveted me. It showed a figure falling to earth from the roof of a tall building. The falling figure wore a black mask and black clothes. There were several shots of his descent.
The title was Icarus 1987. I realized that the figure was me falling to my death thirty years before. And the photographer was Denny Wright, a lover of mine.
Then I overheard a very pretentious couple behind me talking about going downtown to view the display of art in contention for the Double/Annual Awards.
Mention of that event caught my memory. Like the photo, the awards, held every two years, was a major event. One in which I’d once participated in my first time in New York. And I suspected it was one of the reasons my time here had ended.
Since I was still relearning the city, I followed the couple like they were a hunch. When they hailed a cab I got in with them. The driver, I could tell, sensed an invisible passenger. But on that sunny afternoon a ghost was invisible to the eye. And he was, after all, a New York cabbie who just shook his head as I floated in.
GWENDA
The museum we went to was not the dowdy uptown one I remembered. The lobby was vast. An almost-blinding sunlight poured through glass from three sides. I looked around and noticed someone who seemed to stare at me from afar through dark glasses.
And I knew her! I’d forgotten about Gwenda and couldn’t imagine how she saw me when nobody else could. But by accident I’d found what might be a useful Living person.
Gwenda Pinsky was an art critic a few decades older than I was. When I first hit town she did me some small favors, gave some attention to We Dis, the graffiti tag I shared with a guy named Graham Kreel. We Dis fought hypocrisy in art and the world.
Gwenda once did me the big but dangerous (as it turned out) favor of nominating me for the Double/Annual Award. Thirty years later, walking toward her, I realized she wasn’t looking my way and couldn’t have seen me if she had been. Her eyesight was gone.
I spoke her name as loudly as a ghost can. When I knew she’d heard me, I spoke my own name.
She reacted with surprise but also with disbelief and anger. So I told her a few things that only she and Raphael Marks would know.
Even then she said, “This is a perfectly assembled scam. I have no idea why anyone would assume the identity of a dead artist in order to fool a blind art critic. But your imitation of Raphael is so lovely that I can’t make myself shout out for you to stop.
“Your encountering me at this new museum in the fever pitch of the Double/Annual is a perfect choice for your game. Back when I was a curator and decided fates, Raphael Marks (whom you mimic so well) and his graffiti were a controversial choice of mine. One I have never regretted, though it haunts me.”
I half whispered, “Every two years that award sorts out the winners and losers. In that sense I was a winner.”
She then said, “My own fate is of a kind not much in evidence at art shows. Quite possibly I am the only ‘visually impaired’ individual in the building.
“Voices connect me to the world. I sit and listen to middle-aged failures whose careers took wrong turns and the disgruntled young, probably doomed to be unrecognized, all bitching about the politics of art.
“Now I am not interesting or important or new enough to make anyone but you stop and listen to what I have to say.”
We talked briefly about Denny Wright and his photograph Icarus 1987. I probed her for news about Graham Keel, my partner in We Dis (also my murderer, but neither of us mentioned that). She claimed to know little about Graham.
Then, Gwenda listened to her phone. Everyone seemed to have one in his or her pocket. She said, “The person who helps me get around will be here soon.”
I saw someone heading toward us, said good-bye, and floated back into the crowd.
When Gwenda was younger and sighted, her understanding of art was nothing compared to her command of gossip and intrigue. Watching her talk excitedly into her phone, I knew that she was spreading word of my return.
ICARUS 1987
That night, I stopped by Denny Wright’s loft for a surprise visit. Gwenda, when I’d asked, gave me the same Soho address that I remembered from back when he and I were broke and in love.
My plan was to arrive close on the heels of Gwenda’s phone calls. Soho had changed from the empty streets and artist/landlord turmoil I remembered. In those days, Denny and I had lived and worked in a tiny sliver of a studio. Now, according to his name on the doorbells, Denny owned the third and fourth floors.
At midnight the street level boutique windows displayed slim, wide-eyed figures in low blue lighting. Across the street a woman walked a pair of large dogs.
Denny wasn’t home. But being a ghost is all about waiting. I slipped through the building’s door and into the foyer. Within an hour a taxi pulled up before the building. Denny, nicely aged and nicely dressed, got out and glanced around.
I wondered if he was expecting me. Denny came in the door but I stayed in shadow. He walked right through me. I whispered his name. He jumped back and cried out.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered. “I thought of you all the time I was gone,” I lied. “When I came back here, I discovered you had caught the attention of the world the day I died. Those shots of me falling may have kept my name alive. No, don’t cry. I still love you in my own way.”
We sat upstairs in his wonderful loft. In shadowy light, Denny stared at me with wide eyes and shaking hands. He put away quite a lot of wine.
“The New York art world is talking about Gwenda’s calls,” he told me. “Tonight at dinner, everyone remembered you.”
He asked if I wanted to hear her on his cell phone and I nodded. She said, “This is Gwenda Pinsky and I know my communication has been spotty over the last decade or two. But I am either the first person to encounter Raphael Marks thirty years after his death, or I’m a blind fool.
“He asked after you, Denny, and I told him what I knew. Then he asked about Graham Keel and I remembered not including Keel’s name with Raphael’s when I placed We Dis in the 1987 Double/Annual Award. Keel seemed more like an assistant than an artist. And given what happened, I thought it best not to dwell on that with Raphael.”
I gestured and Denny shut her off.
“Everyone in downtown New York knew you back then,” he said. “You took me to the Mudd Club in that abandoned part of Manhattan. We walked down deserted streets and climbed corroded stairs. David Bowie was at the club that night. Political graffiti was all the rage. Even he was happy to have met the better half of We Dis.
“Most of what I have I owe to knowing you. Thirty years back, my business card should have read, ‘Gay photographer with an unbreakable crush on Raphael Marks,’ ” he said.
I knew this living person was totally mine and quite useful. So I told him, “You screamed when I got knocked off the roof of the Levanal Building. But you went on shooting.”
Denny flinched and looked away.
“I want to do a variation on that day. I hope you’ll be moved by what I intend. Because I’ll need your help to make it work.”
Then, I said, “As part of this I want to talk with Graham Keel, maybe come to understand him and his motives.”
Denny was amazed that I would ever speak to Graham. He said it showed my great heart. The Living love things like this.
Denny told me about Keel’s new art gallery and where he hung out and where he lived.
KEEL
The gallery was downtown on an old block that had suddenly become all wine bars and antique stores. It was evening when I arrived. A kid hell-bound on a bike came out of a side street and rode past me. I could see right through him.
I’d known nothing about ghosts when I was first in this city and had little to do with them on my return. Only when I thought about the ghost kid later, did I wonder if he’d been following me.
I knew the gallery would be closed. But I saw a light in an office and floated through the front door. The art on the walls was all black and white angles.
“Symmetry, making a comeback?” I murmured. “Thought that died a couple of years before I did.”
Graham looked up. He wore gold-framed reading glasses and had lost most of his hair. My old partner squinted in my direction but he never showed surprise or fear. I had to give him that.
“The ghost thing felt like a scam when I heard about it the other day,” he said. “I guess now I’m a believer.”
“Some say a murderer,” I whispered.
“I hope you know better than that, Raph. Certain people see me as the villain who hated Raphael Marks for being so much more talented and beautiful than I was. So I pushed you over the edge and watched you die.”
“That was my take at the time.”
“It’s on record from when the cops found me that I was vomiting and crying my heart out at my closest friend having slipped out of my grasp.”
“I would shed tears for you if only I had tears,” I said.
“They arrested me for trespassing and defacing property. Not for murder or assault of any kind. Please tell me you know it was an accident. All anyone talked about was your art. No one knew I invented the devil/angel logos we used on every graffiti design We Dis created.”
I remembered the logos as something we had done together but that wasn’t why I was there.
As Graham Keel spoke he pulled on a very nice velvet jacket. Then he said, “It’s been fascinating talking to you. But I’ve got to be home.”
His audacity reminded me of old times. I glanced at a photo on his desk of two teenagers who had the misfortune of looking like their father. “I’m coming with you,” I said. “I’d love to meet your family.”
He was shocked by the very idea. But that night, run though he did, Graham Keel discovered that I would be with him everywhere he went unless he did a few things for me.
Over the next couple of weeks he used his connections, his skills, to do what I wanted. More than once he told me the pressure I used was killing him. I didn’t say (because it might give him ideas) that the last thing I’d want was to create a ghost like him in my town.
We Dis
Thirty years ago he and I stood amid the rack and ruin of the West Side Highway and the catastrophe that was the Hudson shore.
We had looked up at the Levanal Building, fifteen stories of black cement. The place exuded evil. It was said they specialized in smuggling weaponry for third-world cartels. All we could think of was how our graffiti tag We Dis would look on that top floor.
One day that summer we somehow managed to look enough like delivery guys to invade the building and access the roof. We took turns, as always. One would hang over the front of the roof spray-painting our smiling devil/tearful angel graffiti and our slogan.
The other would hold on to the painter.
Across the way Denny had managed to climb up onto an abandoned elevated railroad. He had his camera out.
I was just finishing the words:
SATAN LIVES HERE
WE DIS/KNOWS THIS
Then the hands that held me slipped away. And I fell screaming and smashed face-first onto the cement.
At our recent reunion I had promised Graham Keel I would never bother him again if we could duplicate the Icarus event with a few variations.
He didn’t trust me, nor I him. But he had the sometimes amazing ability of the Living to organize.
When I saw the Levanal Building again it looked the same as ever. But its name had been changed and its surroundings were transformed. The abandoned railway was now an elevated scenic park. There was a promenade along the river. The glittering glass museum I’d been in was a neighbor.
What’s more, the Levanal’s current ownership was anxious to be connected with the arts. Graham Keel managed to make sure they never quite grasped the history of what was about to be enacted on their premises.
I was going to duplicate my famous fall. Except this time I would do it as a ghost. If I understood this city as I believed I did, my reenacting that moment and walking away from it would mean that by tomorrow morning nobody would be talking about anything else.
I stood on the edge of the roof, saw the crowd looking up from the railroad park down below. In the mix I spotted more than a few of my own kind. They shimmered in the evening sunset—that light when we’re easiest to see. I knew almost nothing about them and felt I had no time to learn.
Graham Keel came near me and whispered, “I never had a brother. We could have been brothers. But all you did was push me aside, ignore me in public. When you got in the Double/Annual I didn’t even get mentioned. That’s all I could think of that last time. . . .”
“Bygones,” I said and stepped off the roof. With luck, I’d never see him again.
I held out my arms without fear as my weightless body slowly fell and the Living ones below, with their cameras and binoculars, caught sight of the flickering in the twilight that was me. I came down lightly, feet first, on the ground. There were gasps and applause along the railroad park. People knew they were seeing something they previously never imagined. There would be different ideas as to what it meant.
Denny had let it be known that this event was connected to his Icarus 1987 photo. He wrote that it would capture the ghost of the late artist Raphael Marks. That brought attention, which was good. It also raised arguments about the existence of ghosts. Those arguments had seemed to involve Denny and his photos more than they did me. That was bothersome.
As I touched down, Denny was looking up into the air. Others were pointing. I moved out of the building’s shadow. And against the sun setting over New Jersey, I saw, in black silhouette, a woman with long flowing hair and dressed in 1890s fashion, floating against the evening sky. Denny stared at this apparition and only glanced my way when she disappeared.
People were talking, some were yelling. There was no coincidence involved. The incredible specter had appeared at that moment to steal my glory.
I wondered who had arranged this and what Denny, or for that matter, Graham Keel, would tell the world. It would be their story. It felt like I’d just had a lesson of what happens when one like me puts his reliance on the world of the Living. Mistrust is never a bad idea and I had let myself forget that. I stood in full view of Denny and others among the Living as they called my name and tried in vain to catch sight of me.
As the sun went down over New Jersey, I saw more and more of my own kind. They flew above and sometimes right through me. The ghost kid on a bicycle was there. He may have been trailing me all through my recent visit.
I knew this was a moment of decision. I could flee or stand them down. And alive or dead, I was not going to leave this place again.
That night I caught flashes of my kind under the streetlights. Specters walked, floated, flew down the darkest streets, and I followed them. The faces were young and old, recent and historic. Some almost seemed to be among the living until I looked closely. Some clothes and bodies bore—like mine—the story of the wearer’s death.
As I looked at them, they stared at me. I heard it whispered that I had brought attention to our kind and some specters weren’t pleased with this.
We had gathered on a deserted side street leading onto the West Side Highway. Cars whizzed by, doubtless not seeing us. The side street was undergoing repairs; I could look into a dark pit and see a trench full of the dirt and clay that lay beneath the city. I thought of the graveyard at home and the ghosts I’d seen buried there.
I didn’t want to think that’s why I was here. So I told the crowd about how I’d been betrayed and murdered by the Living. They listened quietly and some nodded their understanding. But this is a tough town. And I’ve seen ghosts force other ghosts to give up their lives.
I told them how much I wanted to be among them, and privately hoped that this time, my existence in the city would not end anything like the way my first time had.