Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

(At least she didn’t tell her gallery friend.)

(Her plan was to wait until she was closer to the year-end mark before she told her gallery friend.)

She’s pregnant.

Ronny’s mood turns dark when she starts to show.

She has a little girl in 1997, Jerilynn. Her mom dies that year, never having met her granddaughter. Her mom’s name was Lynn.

Jacquie is 37.

Jerry Jr. is 13.

She stays with Ronny a full year before they officially end it. He’s been fucking the gal who gets him the big commercials, that was going on way before Jerilynn was born. She even thinks about moving back to Ocala. She’s sentimentally ill .

She moves to Brooklyn instead. It’s affordable & there’s a community of single moms who made the disgusted exodus from the island. The moms were bitter, & bitterly hilarious. Sexy too, and lifted her spirits.

She’s at a gallery opening in the city. A handsome older man is staring at her. Short. Looks familiar. She looks away, that coquettish reflex to The Gaze. She’s looking good if she must say so. That week she happened to have dyed her hair black, her hair is bangin’ like Louise Brooks. He approaches, says she looks like his wife when she was young. Very charming, thick accent, elfin eyes. He asks if she’s a photog, quickly interjecting “Oh, I hope not!” She says, “Well I am, but no one takes my work seriously. Because I don’t have a point of view. ” He spittle-laughs. He appreciates the humor & that makes her feel good. She forgot what that felt like; to feel good from the attentions of a man. He asks her to call him. She looks at the card after he leaves: Helmut Newton. Hah! She feels like an ass for not knowing, a flattered ass anyway. Her Brooklyn friends egg her on, they have a field day. That he’s twice her age & married for a hundred years gets them in heat. They’re ferocious & funny & she doesn’t think she could live without them.

They begin a platonic relationship that lasts until his death. It seems to Jacquie that he never stops moving; he sends her obscene vintage postcards from France, Belgium, Monte Carlo, Morocco, Africa, the Canary Islands. For a man with a heart condition, rather astonishing. Whenever he’s in NYC, he calls for drinks or an early dinner. Invariably, just after she gets home, one of his assistants phones to say “Helmut needs you for a photo shoot in the city.” The jobs were always for three, four, sometimes five full days. She does anything asked of her: setting backdrops, changing cameras/lenses, even going for pastries. He loves that she’s unpretentious, there was something about her he admired.

He’s a bright spot in her life. .

One day, she invites him for a serious coffee. A curious man, he immediately accepts. She’s nervous. It’s hard for her. She tells him that she’s thinking about taking pics again. He winces, then sees the depth of her terror and desire.

She dares to tell him her problem:

I have no real point of view.

“Then you weren’t kidding!” (A pause. His eyes rabidly twinkling.) “That was what you said the first time we met.”

Her lip wriggles as she speaks of her travails. She bares all, even tells him about the professor. She says she has the feeling that this is it for her (she’s 41 now) — either she makes her mark, or fades away.

I am old. . ….

“No,” he says, “ I am old!”

She begs him to be serious.

And here is what he said:

“I understand, dearest. I understand. You can’t think I don’t understand, can you? No. I know. I’m glad you had the guts to tell me what you did. It takes guts, I know. Not easy, not easy. It is never easy, it isn’t supposed to. Now you’ve got this off your chest, but you’re open — to advice, no? That is why you shared these things with me? Yes? Because there is something you can do about this— existential difficulty.

“This ‘lack of a point of view’—”

“Do you know what you need, Jacquie dear? To be banned . You need to create such a scandale that everyone knows your name! To make something truly disturbing , to make your own Sacre du Printemps, your ‘Rite of Spring.’ To cause a commotion, understood? You need to make art for the FBI! Art that forces the police to raid the gallery that was brave enough to exhibit the forbidden fruits of Jacquie Crelle! My dearest Jacqueline, listen to what I am telling you. You need to be threatened with prosecution and jail. . . …

“You must know the work of Nan Goldin? Of course. I really am very fond of Nan, she has a marvelous gift. Realism is not my thing— there is enough of it in everyday life! I spend my days trying to get away from it! But Nan really is very good at what she does. Do you know the photo of the belly-dancing kids? Have you seen her picture of the little girl? The little girl in the picture is about 4, no? She bends to show her little chat —bare as only a 4-year-old vulva can be! All very ‘playful,’ very ‘innocent.’ Ha! Well, Nan is one of those people who know just what they are doing. I am like that as well, or I like to think so. Here is where Elton John enters the picture — so to speak. Now, you must know I adore Elton, he is absolutely adorable , June & I got very close to him, & my God , the voice , the music , he has the whole package . It’s true he doesn’t collect my work, but I forgive him! He doesn’t want pictures of leather & tits & women holding whips on the wall. Well, maybe leather! Understood. I have no problems with it.

“Elton owns a few hundred of her pictures, I believe. Nan’s. More or less. Some place in England wanted to show her work — not a big place, I think it may even have been outside of London. Being the patron of the arts that he is, Elton graciously loaned 150 images to wherever. To the venue. And of course , there was the usual complaint. Someone didn’t like the little vulva! You see, the little vulva did its job, the little vulva works very well! The gendarmes say they received a complaint—& in came the storm troopers to pry the offending photograph off the wall! They took a few others with them too. A bare vulva leaves a bare wall! Now this photo of which I speak has quite a spread— Nan was very thorough . You can see the tiny pisser, even the darling shithole. . well as you can imagine, an uproar ensued. You have the fascists on one side & the libertines on the other. It’s always the same, no? The fascists shout: Pornografi! Isn’t it what they always say? I am telling you, it’s true. ‘The artist must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law!’ Oh, how they rail, Jacqueline. And the libertines , they say: These are innocent portraits! To suppress them will have a— they always are using this phrase— chilling effect on terrestrial life as we know it! Chilling effect! They love that phrase! It rolls trippingly off the libertine’s tongue. . oh, the two parties put on quite a show. And I don’t need to tell you what happened, Jacqueline , do I. You can guess. There was no prosecution. . the sturm und drang came & went, like a summer storm. But the price of those pictures! They went through the roof!

“I’m telling you, cher , England is always a wonderful place for ground zero. Because these tempests are closely watched by Americans — American media — like BBC costume dramas slowly making their way to the shores of American television… those English accents lend credence— they class it up, oh how the Brits can class up bare vulvas and shitholes! Ha! Saatchi is always a wonderful venue to have your ground zero. There was a skirmish in 2001—Nan, again! the woman is indefatigable! — the bobbies insisted the gallery remove the offending images toute suite! Saatchi refused; Goldin triumphed . And the prices? Up and up and up, up, up & away!