It Had Been Years (35 page)

Steve blushed embarrassed by his inevitable response, which despite his discomfort he gave honestly.  “Because I’ve been behind that bar for a year, hoping someone would notice
me,
take the time to talk to me.  It was something I was doing to create a life beyond my job.” 

Christy focused the words were all too
true,
they cut her like a knife.  Her grasp around him loosened, she stood phased by his answer as he offered,
“
I’d better go” he felt exposed, like he had said too much.  The words however heartfelt and honest perhaps ruined the dream, in the seconds after they left his lips he thought he could feel the magic just disappear, that was after all the very nature of magic it often disappeared mysteriously into thin air.

“No” she answered softly, her own deepest fears from earlier in the week coursing through her mind.  “I want you to stay” pausing “longer.”  Steve was not use to being invited to a woman’s house.  Now it has happened twice in two weeks he stepped towards her “If you don’t mind.  Are you sure it’s OK?” 

There was no answer at least not verbally instead she took him gently by the hand and led him back to the sofa where he sat instinctively.  The pair talked until the light of day, each bearing their souls to each other openly allowing the other to see what was so beautiful inside of each of them.  Steve eventually left and Christy once again not only woke up alone but went to bed the same way.  Some things just take time but each them spent their last waking hours that early Saturday morning thinking that what had just happened was just like heaven. 

Nadrea
and Vincent arrived in Lower Manhattan looking like they were dressed for an edgy photo shoot just add some black grease, saturating light and props. 
Nadrea
was in her skirt and black heels offset by a dark sleeveless blouse and neckline that plunged beyond her breasts nearly to her navel.  Vincent’s muscles and lean waist were obviously straining parts of his shirt.  Dinner was salads and a few more drinks which kept the couple buzzing nicely in a semi intoxicated state as they arrived at the gallery.  The rooms were dark with models set in staged scenes throughout.  Upon entering there was a roped off area with the first set of models bathed in warm red and hazy green light, each of them and their pale skin and undernourished bodies were more reminiscent of heroin addicts than of models.  The night wasn’t about still art and beauty but it was about the expression of nontraditional beauty, images that were all
to
real, depicted not by professional models but the wretched and pierced tattooed youth of the underground club scenes, the audience was a depraved mixture of the Manhattan elite and the Goth and punk rock underground.  A mixture of soft blonde haired patrons in dresses and suits were meandering through the make shift gallery next to girls with pink and blue hair, worn out combat boots and suicide heels.  Their ripped opera hose and tawdry attire typically failing to cover their abundant piercings, in direct contrast to the well manicured art crowd set.  Moving past the opening display next to the bar against a worn exposed brick wall is the next display
an
haunting image titled one last time.  The model on the floor legs spread and pierced breasts exposed her dark fire engine red hair cut into a short bob her nose piercing hanging ominously downward just above her blood red lips.  Her head thrown back held there as if in the
throes
of passion a hand reaching between her spread legs, at first glance it looks like nothing more than an alley way masturbation image but on closer inspection her wrists looked split and she was sitting in a
pool of blood drops set in place as if frozen in time droplets hanging paused on the tips of her fingers motionless as they headed toward the floor.  Other props floating seemingly motionless, suspended horrifically in the air.  The models face twisted in a mixture that’s contours alluded to exquisite erotic pain, the point of release and resolution of tension. 

The next stage was set as a club scene Vincent aloofly noticing the participants and white string sectioning off the entrance in its single pathetic strand.  The setting was a club scene with lights flashing through the small dark 3 sided room.  A single chair and small bistro table littered with an assortment of beverages was crowded into the corner.  The people consisted of three males and two almost underage girls, (if not legitimately under age) danced away in the room to the overhead sound track.   Each lost in their own worlds and moving in an un-rhythmic and unsynchronized mass casting shadows throughout the space much like the well dressed patron who typically spent their time casting dispersions as carelessly.  It was odd to Vincent to celebrate this modern difference and adaptation of beauty.  Years ago, in actuality not so many years ago, black pant and boots wearing punks sporting Vandals or The Clash T-shirt were not celebrated, they were not adored, and certainly by the main stream they were not lusted after.  Not as images or objects by the main stream yet here were the elite admiring these Lolita’s like beauty queens or horses.  These very people were once considered losers, the misfits of the counter culture’s own counter culture.  Now the lost souls were celebrated, sadly as living art, and exploited for art’s sake.  He wondered why the genuine articles which could be admired, daily in coming and goings, ignored by most, shunned by many were here on display.  Had they somehow become safe because they were on display and contained by a magical piece of white string. 
Gawked at like circus freaks and zoo animals but Vincent wondered if their spirit had been broken like wild animals now on display in the zoo.
 

“They’re like caged lions” he stated. 

“They are nothing like caged lions, Vin.  What they fuck are you smoking?” 
Nadrea
shot back but only half heartedly, she was interested them as meat and as objects not people.  Vincent added. 

“You’re wrong they are like caged lions, this is not their natural habitat. No matter how hard they try to make the zoo a savannah it’s not.  It loses its edge and these sets have made them lose theirs.” 

Nadrea
listened and wondered why he cared as he continued.  “They are like a faded shirt not nearly as brilliant as it originally was, but in the wild they were magnificent, seen as they intended to be seen, tight knit communities form to share common interests and protect themselves from the uncertainty that is the world, their fate or the own doubtful security from rivals.” 

Now though they were just models, the views, some moved by quickly many however would linger longer.  Vincent wondered that once these models were put back into their own proverbial wild would fade into oblivion, into the main stream of society, most would in the end eventually lose their edge, their zest for life and their freedom of choice and expression and
the
began to blend in.  They would become another bland face in the mass of an average existence. 
Nadrea
saw things differently, she saw them as unique objects, she still couldn’t seem them as people, there was no purpose in humanizing them,
they
were on display as objects.  Each object was ripe with its own erotic possibility. 

Soon
Nadrea
found herself at the bar ordering a Typhoon Martini consisting of Kettle One Vodka, Coconut rum, tropical punch and Coconut milk.  Vincent chose a bottle of “Liquid Salvation”.  It was nothing more than a flask shaped bottle of purified water sporting a sultry she-devil and a statement whose font that looked eerily like
Nadrea’s
own hand writing boasting

“Pure Water for an Impure World
” .

The next scene was set with a girl, perhaps barley in her late teens posed in at first glance a sexual interlude occurring in the bedroom section of the of the girl next store suburban décor catalog.  Her stockings tattered and torn dress draped off of her shoulders and her breasts concealed with an almost juvenile bra, intertwined with a woman who looked like an accountant in her mid 50’s at first conjured a series of disturbing images.  The scene titled “Mercy
Lost” made one wonder who
was the girl
and who was the woman?  A relative,
A
whore? Which was the one whoring herself? Was it a view into an incestuous act all too familiar for a tragic victim or was it
mere
a passing act of love or lust between two willing and consenting individuals who found their own needs fulfilled in the other?  Was it for love or for money until further study and inspection one couldn’t be sure.  At first Vincent spotted a picture, it was of the woman in the bedroom and a young girl, a fair skinned freckled little red head sporting a pastel flowered dress and white jeweled sandals.  The woman many years younger than now was holding the child lovingly in her arms.  Both of them couldn’t have looked any happier.  The next picture he saw was taken maybe four years later, the pair in shorts and sneakers standing in front of Cinderella’s castle in the early morning Florida sunshine.  The girl perhaps ten and slightly disheveled standing side by side with her glowing mother, life had yet begun to take its toll on her.  Then next photo was of the girl maybe 14 with all the awkwardness that that age brings, her hair longer than ever and flowing in dark curly streams of red, the mother dressed in her conservative church going woman’s attire it might as well been a picture from a mother and daughter magazine.   The mother looked older, more corporate, almost detached. A chillingly cold vision compared to her earlier expressions of joy.  Something had changed beyond their ages which inevitably march on relentlessly with the cruel passing of each second of our own existence.    Glancing across the dress to the far end stood
a lone
5x7 the girl’s beautiful long red locks had been died the blackest black, not a natural brunette but a horrific shade of the dark color.  The length shortened the long curls now looked bent and wiry.  Her pale complexion offset by blood red lipstick, bondage pants and a misfits t-shirt that looked old enough and big enough to have been worn by Glen Danzig years before she was even a lust filled action of her parents.  Soon many of the viewers who took more than a few passing seconds concluded that it was not lovers embrace but a physical confrontation between a mother an
d
daughter. Perhaps over her life’s choices, her apparel or the emotional distance that had come between them.

Moving to the next set contain four young men, one dressed as a scruffy bike messenger sporting long dark greasy locks, his knee length shorts were most certainly once pants, pants that more than likely had been acquired at a second hand store. He stood with a ghost like presence next to his Italian bike frame, purple and green.  The next young man with bushy black hair, an unassuming stance and his rotund belly ballooning out his D&G, baggy jeans and red converse chucks, draped in a soaking wet and grease filled apron holding a bus boy’s container and rubber gloves straining to reach the middle of his forearm.  His fingers stubby and short, stretching the fingers of the gloves like overstuffed sausages about to split their casing.  Then next man was more a boy of 18 dressed in a body that was so under nourished that Vincent couldn’t tell if he was dying of some wretched disease, a hopeless addict or simply hadn’t taken the time or cared enough to eat.  He would have looked at home in jeans and a t shirt on a farm except for the fact he wore only olive boxer shorts and boots while sporting a Mohawk.  It made him
different,
it put the edge on who he had become.  The final male looked like the all American male, short neatly groomed haircut, toned muscular body holding a sign that read “DEAD”.  The skin on his face made to look decayed and
shredded,
his attire that of a soldier, his hands soaked in blood but otherwise he was perfect.  Was he the one who was dead, was the blood his or the blood of others that he had spilled?  Did he go about his ominous tasks with willing fervor of simply as part of what he needed to do to
survive.

Before long
Nadrea
had begun making her way around the room, Vincent left to his own devices as she flitted from conversation to conversation.  A litany of old friends, lovers, acquaintances and total strangers milled about to fill the nearly overcrowded room even more.  The music buzzing through the makeshift gallery went silent.  The buzz of conversation filled the air, echoing mercilessly off the hard brick walls before being absorbed in part by all the warm flowing flesh that made up the audience.  The noise of conversation continued to crescendo as conversations multiplied and mutated, people straining more and more against the noise in the room to be heard by those next to them.  Ten minutes pass and the display light went dark, shadows were now being cast from the
main gallery lights, causing shadow to overlay shadow with a warm yellow glowing haze, not the crisp clear light one often associates with art on display, not the stoic cold white light that offices use, a fluorescent mixture of well lit and completely cold.  No the lights were a warm hazy yellow. The models shaded in appearance then waited a few minutes later as the house lights began to dim floor lighting came up in the set, the figures became more ominous, darker and haunted, illuminated with varying shades of green and reds. “
hey
” rang out over head.  A drum and bass rhythm began then it was punctuated with electronic bursts and melodies that resolved in to devils third after devils third.  Notes feared in medieval time, sounds that when combined were thought to bring Satan to the world, slow and dark were the sounds.  “
hey
, hey, hey!” words called.  The din of the room dies down as two men take
the until
then empty main stage next to the DJ’s set up.  It was a small stage with a basic black stage curtain behind it.  One man a tall thin Arian type, short blonde hair and ice blue eyes, a poster boy for the mid 1920’s Nazi’s if there ever was one, his utilitarian dress, the second man short and sloppily dressed not at all primped and pressed stood holding the microphone.  As most people focused their attention on him a small pyrotechnics explosion went off “Now you are the art!” he screamed with a maniacal hoarseness into the
mic
.  Flames shot up on both sides of him lingering for a few seconds as the curtain opened. Fog escaped as it spread to its width and more models began to emerge, walking across the stage, and down the stair in the front.  Old men dressed as Goth and Punks, old women many well into their 60’s or even 70’s moved forward dressed as out casts and freaks as the single electronic tones and a loud crescendo occurred of
Feuer
Frei
by
Rammstien
. Dozens of bodies walked off the hazy fog filled stage the older models were joined by the younger tattooed, pierced and dyed hair youth clad in wing tips and conservative apparel, they mingle with the crowd while those on display came away from their sets crossing the previous un-crossable little white rope line that had separated the art from the gallery patrons.  The models moved like zombies in a George Romero movie, accosting the viewers and dragging them back to pose with them in their scenes.  Hoards of photographers shot digital image after digital image of the exchanges and interactions as well as the posing.  The pace was
frenetic and the energy grew more and more palpable with each passing second.