5/4/03
Al,
You’re coming to New York! I can’t wait. I have a show opening, so you can help me set up and spy on all the important fuckers. Your baby will be a great disguise—nobody pays attention to mothers, do they? The idea of domesticity erases any notion of creativity.
How are you doing? I know it’s so hard for you right now, I know you’re still grieving, but I’m pleased you’re coming. I couldn’t do this without you. In his way, I’m sure your dad would have understood that too. I think he would have been proud of us both. The timing of this show is bad, but I couldn’t say no. It’s what we dreamed of back at grad school. It’s the tittyfucking Whitney! I hope they like my stuff. I mean, I guess they must, because they already friggin’ asked me, didn’t they? But I still have to pinch myself and check this is real. It terrifies me that it’s a new piece. If they like it, it should help me get a grant, but if they don’t, my whole career could just fizzle and die. What would happen to me then? I’d probably fizzle and die too. I used to think I didn’t care, that I made things just for me. But now the stakes are higher, turns out I really do.
Will it be weird to leave Marc? Or secretly a relief? It’ll be the longest you’ve looked after Lizzie alone, right? Does it worry you that you’ve got seventeen more years of this? I feel trapped if I work on a performance piece for longer than a month. I could never do a Linda Montano. I mean, it’s not the most difficult thing to wear the same colored clothing every day and live in a one-colored room, but still. It’s the dedication, the kind of meditation on your art: deciding to live it every second of every day, whether or not anybody’s looking. I’m too bad at making decisions and sticking to them. I mean, I’m earning money now and getting commissions, but I still don’t always wake up feeling like an artist. Does that make you laugh? I’m not anything else, am I? Not like you: mother, wife, teacher.
I bet ORLAN wakes up feeling like an artist. All that plastic surgery to give her the Mona Lisa’s brow protrusions, the chin of Botticelli’s Venus, Diana’s eyes—it’s a genius concept, but what does it feel like to be the Frankenstein’s monster of idealized female beauty? Can you imagine transforming your flesh for art? Making that kind of commitment? I suppose you have transformed your flesh. Somehow doing it for a child seems more acceptable than what ORLAN does. I love that someone’s out there doing it—I mean, I think we need it to exist for art’s sake—but everyone I know is like, “Yeah, she’s doing cool work, but I’d never go that far.”
Mostly I just like being anonymous. I had a fight with the Whitney’s PR guy because he wanted me to send a picture for the flyer. I like being able to sit with the audience and experience what they’re experiencing. More than that, I want my identity to be an irrelevance. It’s getting increasingly hard to remain private, though. People want to put a face to the work, to draw meaning from who you are, place you in a safe little box and say they understand you. I’m like, what the cock? I feel like my face’s lack of celebrity is as much of an accomplishment as if I was plastered all over billboards. You have to work to be stealthy in this city. What if we don’t all want to be Andy Warhol? I mean, it’s bad enough that your skin color and the way you talk and where you went to school and the parts between your legs influence the interpretation; now it’s all about your online presence and building a brand. Vito Acconci said he stopped doing live performance because he felt like everyone knowing what he looked like put more emphasis on the cult of his celebrity than on his actions.
I’m getting a bit obsessed with this life-as-art-as-celebrity thing. Britney may not have an output beyond cheesy pop and a kiss with Madonna, but she’s a living performance, isn’t she? She’s more committed to the character she’s created than I am to any of my pieces. I leave them in the gallery or on the street and move on. She’s still partying and performing wherever she goes. And we’re all watching, like she’s there for our consumption. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if kids end up studying celebrities alongside Montano’s Seven Years of Living Art?
It’s such a delicious mindfuck. I need you to help me work it out. I need you, period, actually. Sometimes I think I need you more than anyone needs you, Al. More than Lizzie and Marc and your silly students. I can’t wait to have you here.
See you very soon, babe.
Am x
MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 2003
I glanced at the old woman’s face. Who was she? A neighbor, perhaps. Marc was by my side and I entertained a brief fantasy that he might lift me up, carry me away from this woman, away from all these solemn strangers eating canapés and spouting clichés.
“It was a lovely service,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. Marc was watching me. That morning I’d sobbed so violently I’d fallen to the kitchen floor. He’d tried to catch me, ended up crouching and cradling my crumpled form. I loved him for it, but it wasn’t enough to stop me crying. He was trying to be my rock, I knew. But what use is a bloody rock when you’re burying your father? He’d held my hand during the service and now, at the wake, he’d appointed himself my personal bodyguard. He was ready to whisk me away as soon as I gave the nod, as soon as he thought I couldn’t stand it anymore. And his presence, well, it meant the world to me, even if it couldn’t actually fix the world.
A couple, now, were giving me their condolences. I nodded and said the right things, but my mind was wandering. I was thinking about last night, when I’d found Marc standing over Lizzie’s cot, deep in thought. I’d wanted to ask what he was thinking, but hesitated. These past few weeks I too had stood over our child and thought the unthinkable. My warped mind had tried to picture our beautiful little girl one day sitting on a wooden pew sobbing for us. How could I reconcile my own mortality with my love for my child? Or my husband? I didn’t want to have these thoughts, but they barged their way into my brain. Would it be better to be the one buried or burying? Could I cope with going through this again? With Marc in the coffin? With nobody by my side, nobody to catch me when I fell to the kitchen floor or bring me fresh tissues and tell me I was still beautiful even with snot running down my face?
I blinked and realized I was about to cry. I said a flustered thank you to the couple before me and turned to Marc with a panicked expression. He understood. He placed a protective arm around my shoulders and led me toward the door. I slumped into his torso and imagined the respectfully apologetic expression he was directing toward anyone trying to interrupt our exit. Once, I thought, I’d been an independent, capable woman. I’d flown off around the world, taken risks, felt like my life was my own. Today, though, I needed this man. I needed our family, our life. The relief of submission was absolute.
Marc led me to his car. He strapped me into the passenger seat and kissed my forehead before walking around to the driver’s side. I looked over at him releasing the handbrake and checking his mirrors and let out a sob. If I couldn’t live without Marc, I realized, the only alternative would be to leave him to bury me. To condemn his heart to be broken and him to face all this, plus the rest of a lifetime alone. Could I do that to him? Maybe we could die simultaneously, so romantically co-dependent that one heart could not continue beating without the other. Could that happen except in a film? And what about our daughter then, left to bury both her parents at once?
“We’re home,” Marc said as we pulled into our street. “Let’s go inside and send the babysitter home. We can lock all the doors, snuggle up with Lizzie and shut out the world.”
I nodded and offered a weak smile. The answer was obvious really. Marc knew what to do, how to act, how to cope. I, on the other hand, would be lost without him.