Me Talk Pretty One Day (5 page)

“When I bleat here on page seventeen, do you want me to just bleat or to really let go and ‘bleat, bleat’?” I asked. “I feel like ‘bleat, bleating,’ but if Mother/Destroyer is going to be crawling through the birth canal of concertina wire, I don’t want to steal focus, you know what I mean?”

He did. That was the scary part, that someone understood me. It occurred to me that a performance piece was something like a play. A play without a story, dialogue, or any discernible characters. That kind of a play. I was enchanted.

We found ourselves a raw space, and oh, how I loved the way those words tripped off my tongue. “We’ve located a great raw space for the piece,” I’d tell my outside friends. “It’s an abandoned tobacco warehouse with no running water or electricity. It’s got to be a good hundred and twenty degrees in there! You really ought to come down and see the show. There are tons of fleas, and it’s going to be really deep.”

My parents attended the premiere, sitting cross-legged on one of the padded mats spread like islands across the filthy concrete floor. Asked later what she thought of the performance, my mother massaged her knees, asking, ‘Are you trying to punish me for something?”

The evening newspaper ran a review headlined LOCAL GROUP PITCHES IN, CLEANS UP WAREHOUSE. This did nothing to encourage the ticket buyers, whose numbers dwindled to the single digits by the second night of our weeklong run. Word of mouth hurt us even more, but we comforted ourselves by blaming a population so brainwashed by television that they couldn’t sit through a simple two-and-a-half-hour performance piece without complaining of boredom and leg cramps. We were clearly ahead of our time but figured that, with enough drugs, the citizens of North Carolina would eventually catch up with us.

Eight: The nest builder announced plans for his next performance piece, and the group fell apart. “Why is it always your piece?” we asked. As leader, it was his fate to be punished for having the very qualities we admired in the first place. His charisma, his genuine commitment, even his nest - all these things became suspect. When he offered us the opportunity to create our own roles, we became even angrier. Who was he to give assignments and set deadlines? We lacked the ability to think for ourselves and resented having to admit it. This led to an epic shouting match in which we exhausted all our analogies and then started all over again from the top. “We’re not your puppets or little trained dogs, willing to jump through some hoop. What, do you think we’re puppets? Do we look like puppets to you? We’re not puppets or dogs, and we’re not going to jump through any more of your hoops, Puppet Master. Oh, you can train a dog. Stick your hand up a puppet’s ass and he’ll pretty much do whatever you want him to, but we’re not playing that game anymore, Herr Puppet Meister. We’re through playing your tricks, so find someone else.”

I had hoped that the group might stay together forever, but within ten minutes it was all over, finished, with each of us vowing to perform only our own work. I spent the next several weeks running the argument over and over in my mind, picturing a small dog chasing a puppet across the floor of an abandoned warehouse. How could I have been so stupid as to throw away the only opportunity I’d ever have?

I was at home braiding the bristles on my whisk broom when the museum called, inviting me to participate in their new “Month of Sundays” performance-art festival. It seemed as though I should play hard to get, but after a moment or two of awkward silence, I agreed to do it for what I called “political reasons.” I needed the money for drugs.

Nine: Watching the performances of my former colleagues, I got the idea that once you assembled the requisite props, the piece would more or less come together on its own. The inflatable shark naturally led to the puddle of heavy cream, which, if lapped from the floor with slow, steady precision, could account for up to twenty minutes of valuable stage time. All you had to do was maintain a shell-shocked expression and handle a variety of contradictory objects. It was the artist’s duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience’s job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours.

My search for the appropriate objects led me to a secondhand store. Standing at the checkout counter with an armload of sock monkeys, I told the cashier, “These are for a piece I’m working on. It’s a performance commissioned by the art museum. I’m an artist.”

“Really?” The woman stabbed her cigarette into a bucketful of sand. “My niece is an artist, too! She’s the one who made those sock monkeys.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I’m a real artist.”

The woman was not offended, only puzzled. “But my niece lives over in Winston-Salem.” She said it as if living in Winston-Salem automatically signified an artistic temperament. “She’s a big, blond-headed girl with twin babies just about grown. Everybody calls her the sock lady on account of that she’s always making those monkeys. She’s a pretty girl, big-boned but just as talented as she can be.”

I looked into this woman’s face, her fuzzy jowls hanging like saddlebags, and I pictured her reclining nude in a shallow pool of peanut oil. Were she smart enough to let me, I could use her as my living prop. I could be the best thing that ever happened to her, but sadly, she was probably too ignorant to appreciate it. Maybe one day I’d do a full-length piece on the topic of stupidity, but in the meantime, I’d just pay for the sock monkeys, snort a few lines of speed, and finish constructing a bulletproof vest out of used flashlight batteries.

Ten: Quite a few people showed up for the museum performance, and I stood before them wishing they were half as high as I was. I’d been up for close to three days and had taken so much speed that I could practically see the individual atoms pitching in to make up every folding chair. Why is everyone staring at me? I wondered. Don’t they have anything better to do? I thought I was just being paranoid, and then I remembered that I was being stared at for a reason. I was onstage, and everyone else was in the audience, waiting for me to do something meaningful. The show wasn’t over. It had only just begun. I reminded myself that this was my moment. All I had to do was open my prop box, and the rest of the piece would take care of itself.

I’m slicing this pineapple now, I thought. Next I’ll just rip apart these sock monkeys and pour the stuffing into this tall rubber boot. Good, that’s good. Nobody pours stuffing like you do, my friend. Now I’ll snip off some of my hair with these garden shears, place the bottlecaps over my eyes, and we’re almost home.

I moved toward the audience and was kneeling in the aisle, the shears to my head, when I heard someone say, “Just take a little off the back and sides.”

It was my father, speaking in a loud voice to the woman seated beside him.

“Hey, sport,” he called, “what do you charge for a shave?”

The audience began to laugh and enjoy themselves.

“He should probably open a barbershop, because he’s sure not going anywhere in the show-business world.”

It was him again, and once more the audience laughed. I was spitting tacks, trying my hardest to concentrate but thinking, Doesn’t he see the Botticelli hanging on the wall behind me? Has he no idea how to behave in an art museum? This is my work, damn it. This is what I do, and here he’s treating it like some kind of a joke. You are a dead man, Lou Sedaris. And I’ll see to that personally.

Immediately following the performance a small crowd gathered around my father, congratulating him on his delivery and comic timing.

“Including your father was an excellent idea,” the curator said, handing me my check. “The piece really came together once you loosened up and started making fun of yourself.”

Not only did my father ask for a cut of the money, but he also started calling with suggestions for future pieces. “What if you were to symbolize man’s inhumanity to man by heating up a skillet of plastic soldiers?”

I told him that was the cheesiest idea I’d ever heard in my life and asked him to stop calling me with his empty little propositions. “I’m an artist!” I yelled. “I come up with the ideas. Me, not you. This isn’t some party game, it’s serious work, and I’d rather stick a gun to my head than listen to any more of your bullshit suggestions.”

There was a brief pause before he said, “The bit with the gun just might work. Let me think about it and get back to you.”

Eleven: My performing career effectively ended the day my drug dealer moved to Georgia to enter a treatment center. Since the museum I’d done a piece at a gallery and had another scheduled for the state university. “How can you do this to me?” I asked her. “You can’t move away, not now. Think of all the money I’ve spent on you. Don’t I deserve more than a week’s notice? And what do you need with a treatment center? People like you the way you are; what makes you think you need to change? Just cut back a little, and you’ll be fine. Please, you can’t do this to me. I have a piece to finish, goddamnit. I’m an artist and I need to know where my drugs are coming from.”

Nothing I said would change her mind. I cashed in a savings bond left to me by my grandmother and used the money to buy what I hoped would be enough speed to get me through the month. It was gone in ten days, and with it went my ability to do anything but roll on the floor and cry. It would have made for a decent piece, but I couldn’t think about that at the time.

Speed’s breathtaking high is followed by a crushing, suicidal depression. You’re forced to pay tenfold for all the fun you thought you were having. It’s torturous and demeaning, yet all you can think is that you want more. I might have thrown myself out the window, but I lived on the first floor and didn’t have the energy to climb the stairs to the roof. Everything ached, and even without the speed I was unable to sleep. Thinking I must have dropped a grain or two, I vacuumed the entire apartment with a straw up my nose, sucking up dead skin cells, Comet residue, and pulverized cat litter. Anything that traveled on the bottom of a shoe went up my nose.

A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head, and called it a night.

A few of my former friends showed up at the performance, looking just as sweaty and desperate as I did. Following the piece, they invited themselves to my apartment and I welcomed them, hoping that somebody still had some drugs. It turned out that they were thinking the exact same thing. We sat around making small talk and watching one another’s hands. Someone would reach into his pocket and we’d all perk up until the hand returned bearing nothing but a cigarette. The shame was nothing I ever could have conveyed with thimbles or squirt guns filled with mayonnaise. A fistful of burning hair could not begin to represent the mess I had made of my life.

I thought briefly of checking myself into a hospital, but I’d seen what those wards looked like and I’ve always hated having a roommate. Perhaps this was something that with hard work and determination I could overcome. Maybe I could sober up, get my personal life in order, and reevaluate my priorities. Chances were that I had no artistic talent whatsoever. If I were to face that fact, possibly I could move on with my life, maybe learn a trade and take pride in my ability to shingle roofs or knock the dents out of cars. There was no shame in working with your hands and returning home at night to a glass of ice water and the satisfaction that you’d brightened someone’s afternoon with a pock-free fender. Lots of people did things like that. You might not read their names in the magazines, but still they were out there, day after day, giving it all they had. Better yet, I decided - at the age of twenty-seven - to return to art school. They’d have plenty of drugs there.

Twelve: I take my seat on the cold concrete floor, watching as a full-grown woman kneels before an altar made of fudge. She’s already put away a gingerbread cabin, two pints of ice cream, and a brood of marshmallow chicks - all without saying a word. The effect is excruciating, but I have no one but myself to blame. I find myself attending these performance pieces the same way certain friends drop by their AA meetings. I still do a lot of selfish and terrible things. I do not, however, treat myself to hot-cocoa enemas before an audience of invited guests. Minor as it seems, this has become something to celebrate.

The woman onstage has tottered on stilts fashioned from empty cans of Slim-Fast. She’s taken her eating disorder on the road, conditioning her hair with whipped topping and rolling her bangs in finger-size breakfast sausages. Just when I think she’s finished with all her props and is ready to toss up an ending, out comes a bust of Venus made from cake frosting. Looking around, I notice my fellow audience members examining their cuticles and staring with great purpose at the exit sign. Like me, they’re thinking of something positive to say once the spectacle is over and the performer takes up her post beside the front door. The obvious comment would come in the form of a question, that being, “What in God’s name possessed you to do such a thing, and why is it that nobody stopped you?” I’m not here to cause trouble, so it’s probably best to remark upon a single detail. When the time comes, I take her sticky hand in mine and ask how she manages to keep her frosting so stiff. This is neither damning nor encouraging. It is simply my password out onto the street, where I can embrace life with a renewed sense of liberty. The girl standing in front of the delicatessen stoops to tie her shoe. I watch as farther down the block a white-haired man tosses a business card into the trash. I turn for a moment at the sound of a car alarm and then continue along my way, unencumbered. No one expects me to applaud or consider the relationship between the shoelace and the white-haired man. The car alarm is not a metaphor, but just an unrehearsed annoyance. This is a new and brighter world, in which I am free to hurry along, celebrating my remarkable ability to walk, to run.

You Can’t

Kill the Rooster

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, my father was transferred and our family moved from western New York State to Raleigh, North Carolina. IBM had relocated a great many northerners, and together we made relentless fun of our new neighbors and their poky, backward way of life. Rumors circulated that the locals ran stills out of their toolsheds and referred to their house cats as “good eatin’.” Our parents discouraged us from using the titles “ma’am” or “sir” when addressing a teacher or shopkeeper. Tobacco was acceptable in the form of a cigarette, but should any of us experiment with plug or snuff, we would automatically be disinherited. Mountain Dew was forbidden, and our speech was monitored for the slightest hint of a Raleigh accent. Use the word “y’all,” and before you knew it, you’d find yourself in a haystack French kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.