Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

Brava Tierney,

brava— in the years that followed their initial acquaintanceship — after Tierney made her bones — she had more time to hang out, & they saw each other a nice handful of times a year. Jacquie of course never told Tierney what she was working on, it would have come across as rip-offy. Keep your work close but your frenemy closer. She was relieved upon learning that Tierney’s new oeuvres was not of the prepubescent ilk. But it was Helmut — always Helmut! — who finally offered some helpful remarks. Just do it, dear heart, you won’t be ready to show for a few years, by then the wheel will have turned, the market will be ready again. In the meantime, it was rough to watch Tierney’s sold-out shows, when Jacquie had nothing to show but her unconvincing sangfroid——

Brava, Tierney!

Brava!

Sitting behind her little counter at Sears, on a slow morning, reliving when the unthinkable happened (Newton’s Second Law of Motion): Scotland Yard swooped in, The News of the World demanded the gallery be closed, headline-blasting ‘A revolting exhibition of perversion under the guise of art’—

Take it down take it down take it down!

Now museum, now you don’t.

Word circulated that Ms. Gearon was facing a possible 10 years for daring to thumb her nose at the Child Protection Act. Publishers were ordered to remove hundreds of copies from bookstore shelves… but the Sturgis Effect kicked in, each banned book acquiring a weedy, hard-to-kill, proliferative 2nd life. . the numbers were climbing, the sales were soaring, and. . she’s. . off—& running! — — Tierney played it demure & perplexed, very very smart, stating again & again for the record that she was just a mom. . mom first , artist second. . who are these people that wish to pillory a mom? To destroy her for daring to see her children through a child’s eyes? J’accuse!

& again the unthinkable (Newton’s Third):

THE CROWN RELENTS!

NO CHARGES FILED!

Tierney was actually supportive when Jacquie had her Media Moment in the tail end of 2003. She was gracious, never making Jacquie feel like she’d appropriated TG’s work . She was one of the first people Jacquie showed her pictures to, inviting her over to the house to see them. Jacquie felt compelled to remark just once that she’d begun shooting her daughter before ever hearing about or seeing Tierney’s portraits. Tierney was unruffled & even generous of spirit. She can afford to be, thought Jacquie. She can famously fucking afford to.

. .

There she is, having a bite in the Sears employee lunchroom. She imagines forgetting why she sought the job in the first place, not that she knows exactly, only that her instincts told her there is something here. . but now a greyish depression enfolds her like a flu & she imagines what it would be like to soon forget what her instincts said, just to have the job, no grandiose motive behind it. . or even worse, to realize she has no viable instincts anymore — though maybe that would be better than where she found herself now, today, at this moment , being that place of beaten down, too-much awareness. So maybe it would be for the best to simply forget the vague, bullshitty reasons she made up for herself to explain why she’d been compelled to work at Sears, all for the best to just start forgetting a little day by day about who she was or thought she was, who she imagined herself to be by definition of her so-called career, maybe to forget or cut off at the root her impossible daydreams of resentment & impossible eventual triumph, forget about all that & just become a hardworking, pleasant demeanored, dreamless dumbass full-time employee, that would be better, much, might just work out, anything would be better than being the loser she’d begun, with unruly stamina, to consider herself these bygone days.

In the unmedicated flu of depression — like one of those Point Dume ladies who make Schnabelly collages from broken shells & hunks of yarn, or paint eternities of gloopy red acrylic valentine s, Brentwood ladies who go thru “wearable art” phases, in their clunky La Jolla boutique-bought precious stoned necklaces & their bold, striking color summer dresses to wear on cruises — no — another fantasia intruded. . she’d become the maker of those things, pathetic little craftswoman struggling to pay the rent on her Eagle Rock/Reseda/Studio City sublet, with the dusty clangy Calder knock-offs & a 70-lb. chalcedony purple-mawed healing shard plunked clumsily atop the corner of the welcome mat, New Age paperweight overkill… in her fever of insignificance, her fluish narrative of oblivion & loss of self, she became the servant of a widow who travels the world taking pictures for submission to National Geographic ’s reader photo contest (a woman who’d won three times in 10 years): mist-filled, dentist’s calendar-worthy, Cambodian temple ruins; fly-swarmy, cretinous-smiling, Machu Picchu vendors dressed in bold, striking colors ; spectral Varanasi ghats neutered by that very calendarized eye. (It was telling that in her grim idyll, Jacquie’s employer was the picture-taker, not she.)

Lots of gremlins today!

Another dismal reverie that somehow alarmed her with its aura of veracity began with Jacquie, improbable survivor of multiple metastasizing cancers, meeting a rich alcoholic slob on a cruise, the broken-bloodvesseled type who wears a captain’s hat. Now when she gets tipsy, she gets maudlin (the figment of her in the scenario, because in real life she never got tipsy, in real life she got shitfaced ), wondering what her charming new friend will think when she spills that her two grown children refuse to speak to her anymore, & she’s never met her grandkids. Will he judge me? All she could do was see her with him in the dining room, then having an intimate talk on deck, saw herself breathe deeply, close her eyes & hope he maybe had a similar history— some kind of estrangement, wickedness, at least a little unexpected child death, something, anything but a healthy thriving relationship with his kids, Lord please no, not that. She already saw him (in her fluish head) nodding off in his ludicrous cap as she told him about Jerilynn & Jerry Jr., coming to from his nod, shaking his head in empathy, or making a damn good show of it, when the truth of it is he’s muttering under his breath Jesus THIS cunt must be some piece of WORK. To have 2 kids , not one, but 2 blow her off! She’s probably fucking nuts but the crazy ones give the best head

what would it be like what would it be like to blow a rich, alcoholic, borderline-homely slob in a captain’s hat on a cruise, the sheer desolation of it, the aloneness, she could taste the crud of his dickskin, what would it be like what would it be like what would it be like to be on a cruise in a stateroom blowing gagging swallowing & maybe embarrassingly upchucking a little afterward, hoping he didn’t notice/hear but knowing he did, and even though he began each morning vomiting the first drink before he put on his cap, even though, still, watching your little barf he was almost as disgusted by you as you were of yourself , though he’d never be able to be quite that disgusted, no one would, no one could possibly be, what would it be like to be told right after emerging from the bathroom with the heartburn of your miscarried puke what would it be like to be told that he really needs to sleep, he’s not feeling well, not at all, the best thing for him to do when he feels this way is go to sleep. Alone———