It is 1982. I just turned 14 last month. It is the summer before 10th grade. I am at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. I am staying in what used to be a hotel that the camp randomly assigns to campers. It’s not fancy, but it’s better than the cabins. It’s really cool because I am with a group of girls from Long Island. It’s like they are a gang of Rizzos from Grease.
Through his life’s work as a social justice organizer and archivist, New School professor and alum Ted Kerr encourages us to think in multiple timelines and ever-expansive networks of memory, particularly as it relates to the world of HIV/AIDS.
The phrase “particularly in these times” stands out to me.
Boxes in the trunk of the Toyota Corolla Azure her mother sold when they got to the city. Their neighbor played “Purple Rain” every morning. Blue stripes on the city bus. Blue Man Group in Union Square. Public school, plastic chairs. First test. “Sorry kid,” when Natasha’s teacher handed her a blue pen.
I love referring to my surgery as a boob job because it makes people do a double-take. I see them recalibrate, “What kind of gay are you? Where are you coming from and where are you going?”
Ms. Zeller told us, “if you scrunch all your fingers and toes and hold it for about ten seconds and then release, that’s kind of what an orgasm feels like.” Glancing down I saw twenty pairs of feet, all wearing the same green knee high socks and black shoes, lift slightly off the floor as we all clenched our toes.
Driving gingerly driving motherly.
It is summer and all my friends are dying.
I was 15 in North Myrtle Beach,
skateboarding towards 420 World
under the stale haze of old billboards and tattered confederate flags. Big Mike worked there,
and it’s where the porn was.
When a people are made into numbers, by nature, they become divisible. By design, subtractable.
click to enlarge This pastel and watercolor work was created in response to the death of George Floyd followed by Black Lives Matter strikes and looting in New York City at the time.
Because in the dim parking lot
one man’s sobriety was a flower for his truths;
because Max’s hair in the rain.
There are people who talk about the Internet or reading PDFs, but the thing is, those people are all wrong. That’s the great truth of it; no matter what happens with smartphones, or streaming TV, or people ordering books off of Amazon, I think the written word is here to stay. People will always like to read physical books. For anyone who is thinking about a career in writing, there will always be demand for that and there will always be opportunities for that.
But you cannot pick around home. Maybe your home, but not my home. I can throw the doors wide–and often do so with open arms–but to refuse a beam–whether it be a corpulent bird or a hi hat trill–is to cripple such a font to its foundation. For it comes from the depths of my soul, indivisible and not mine, but inherited slowly over time with no recipe to speak of, only a dance rediscovered over and over with folkish steps, a memory recognized when lived out with abandon. I cannot choose what bubbles up from this stew.
I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when he is struck by the Seurat painting, except there’s no John Hughes movie soundtrack in the back, and I fail to fall into the painting the way Cameron does. The pressure to discern meaning increases when other people are nearby. I’m afraid that they see something I can’t.
Dream about the heart-shaped leaves
on the thin branches of the purple tree.
You know the one.
Where the butterflies
sleep amongst the flowers,
Blessed by the tears of the clouds.
As I write this, my tastebuds pucker, saliva gathers greedily at the inside corners of my cheeks. In my mind, I see the almost hysterical orange-red color, the slightly greasy surface of Catalina as it oozes out of the little round hole in the white plastic bottle cap. Catalina is a gift my mother gave me before I left home to raise myself at 13 years old and, though it may seem strange, I don’t regret this gift.
Bothwell’s use of glass is guided by her belief that the material creates a kind of inner space when transmitting light. Curiously, as it moves through her creations, the light itself undergoes a kind of transmutation, which forms an aura around the object. These pieces carry Bothwell’s intuitive awareness of metamorphosis into the space they occupy, responding to and then transforming the light that surrounds them. Her works are physical metaphors of the constant change we undergo at any given moment.
Remember, dying ain’t pretty, and you can’t let the kiss of death linger too long. Pretend that you love him. Pretend that you are Milton’s little girl. Pretend that the pain is too much to bear. Do not laugh at how botched your aunt looks. Instead, kneel and pray—pretend to if you cannot.
