Dead Stars (12 page)

Jacquie decides on a project: she'll take a pic a day (fixed tripod), from the window of their loft that looks out over the city & a little park—
her
point of view—
deciding to do that for an entire year. She thinks that maybe she'll—well no, she'll
definitely
have a book at the end of it.
Maybe call it “365 Days.”
Having a book might—no, would
definitely—
make it easier to get a gallery show, she'd wind up with a slick portfolio
at the very least
.

Meanwhile, she sells a few pictures to a downtown zine for $25 each, a quarterly of short stories & poems, her image graces the cover, they spell her name wrong, Jacqui no e.

She's excited about her project. Her biggest challenge is to make sure Jerry Jr. doesn't run into the tripod, Ronny builds a bumper box around it, and every couple of days she gives Jerry Jr. the big stern lecture about being careful.

When she gets to Month Four of the POV project, Jacquie sees a book at the Strand by a photog who took pics from her
own
window every day, fixed tripod, called “The Four Seasons.” She pokes around and finds three others, same deal, photographer's POV, fixed tripod, one from a 5th-floor walk-up in Hell's Kitchen, the other from a brownstone on the Upper West Side, & cannot
believe
she didn't know about the little sub-genre. Apparently Ronny didn't either, or if he did, didn't tell her. She felt like a fool.

(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!

“Please listen, Jacquie dearest. Because I am being
utterly serious
. David Hamilton.
I bow my head to the Master.
But now I speak of
peri-pubescence
, which is a
littered field
. You'd have no chance there, no chance at all, & besides, there's no time, you would have to twiddle your twat waiting for Jerilynn to grow up. Where did you get this name, ‘Jerilynn'? It's
horrid!
Hamilton—I've known him for years, he lives in St. Tropez—peri-pubescence has been good to him! What they call ‘the sweet cusp of pubescence.' For me, it is
intensely
boring—I call it The Blah Lagoon
.
Hamilton once had a
stranglehold
, an absolute
monopoly
of the market. 11-year-old blondes with nipples a
bit
too large for their tiny chests—most of them viewed through linen curtains, nonetheless . . . what can one say? It's nice work if you can get it! Haha! Hamilton is absurd, but
attention must be paid
. His work is a
litigation perennial
. Every year, somewhere in the world there's a fuss, like clockwork, the man doesn't need to lift a finger (or a diaphanous curtain!), doesn't even have to leave his
balcony
. David is the king of the ‘landmark ruling'
—
you are
always
in need of the landmark ruling, darling! A landmark ruling in the UK declared his work indecent (which of course it is, but for
aesthetical
reasons!), it was so far-reaching that anyone who had his books
displayed
on their coffee-tables—that's a lot of coffee-tables!—if you had the Master's book in the privacy of your own home, you were at risk of arrest! The bobbies went on a
rampage
, clearing the bookstore shelves. David released one of those statements—oh,
that
you must do as well, the ‘released statement'—what they call a
measured statement of protest
released through one's
spokesperson
. We shall find you a spokesperson, my dear Jacqueline!

“Others soon got
wise.
Frankly, I don't know what
took
them so long. Jock Sturges . . . his pictures were
terrible
, terribly banal, in some ways far worse than David's. Because they
aspired
. To
Art!
He puts the kids on the
beach—
the beach! The mind staggers at the audacious paucity of imagination. Better they be posed reading a book through damned Victorian curtains than be
lollygaggling
on the beach . . . they're just nudies—you've seen nudist colony magazines? With the occasional hairy bush thrown in to give
absolution
to anyone who may have had a seizure of
guilt
when they found themselves lingering over the delicate line-drawn
y
of the hairless pubis at rest . . . or he throws in a Mom. You know, ‘If
Mom's
in the shot, she must have approved!' That way, you get the good housekeeping seal
. Very
clever. Wouldn't you like the good housekeeping seal, cher? There's Larry Clark—a
real
pervert, not a fake one like myself! But let's not talk about Mr. Clark, frankly I'm not too interested in exploring the endless mystery of unwashed 13-year-old boys, particularly not when they're shooting up!

“Cher Jacqueline, you will some day have a book of your own. We must find a title for it. One must always pay attention to the
titles
, they're
very
important.
The Age of Innocence—
that's David, of course. El Maestro!
The Last Days of Summer
is Sturges. A wonderful title, I have to say. I'll help you with that . . . you see, the title must let the people know what you're up to, what it's all about. They went after Sturges—was it '91? In San Francisco, of all places! They went completely
berserk
, it was a
crusade
, they were carrying torches! And yet . . . and yet . . . can you guess what's coming, my dearest? ‘The grand jury has refused to indict.' I am
telling
you, the grand jury
always
refuses to indict! It's a marvelous
game
, Jacquie, and you must start to play
toute suite!
Because it is a
very
lucrative one. Sturges made
millions
off the shenanigans. But the field is
too crowded
, cheri. Giants walked the earth before you; the ground is littered with scorched peri
-
pubescent & prepubescent cunts. You've got to go one better
.
Jerilynn—horrid name!—she's just turned 5, no? Little Jerilynn? Take courage! Take heart! The
pre-
prepubescent playing field is wide open! Why at the moment, I believe there is
no one on it at all!
Jerilynn's your ticket . . .