Dear Frances,
There’s been a great bondage that you’ve always known. Once we shared asthmatic anguish, heaving spheres of cultural rubbish to the wind, and making new amendments to the doctrines of our peers. Seeking rest, we went separate ways. My own voiced cheered me, a pile of memories made my name, but eventually we learned that it was just recollections of recollections, staler by the volume. In new-fangled bondage, I write you now. Certainly, as a Doctor, you’ve arrived on some genial pillow of ethical reason. Last I saw you, before your marriage, there was a content countenance that concealed, for once, no pain. While my quest for new material concealed a great deal of loss, I have no theme. The comfort that attenuating anguish once gave has left only barren trees, ravaged by the vulture known as the conceited author. There is no escaping the pomp and circumstance that swallows originality. Yet, my respite in this air-conditioned hell has shown that there’s no need for a theme. I’m transplanted indoors and sink further into the soil each day. With my Denver, who you belittled once as a fanboy gone awry.
Love,
Adrian
***
Dear Frances,
Denver has exhausted my resources. Unlike any other boy I’ve ever met. Barely put any effort into photographing him, but it sold well, since his eyes had an uncanny knowledge of the denigrated gaze of the old-money fags who bought his picture. He came in knowing the fact that gay male suffering has become increasingly of minor value, the more its ’80s scum pictorial Polaroids become fetishized by New York Magazine. He came in knowing that I’m in crisis. I think you knew this would happen. That’s why we haven’t talked in a while. I’ve been ashamed, ashamed that we are as insufferable as the plot points in High Art, or even worse…
He came in talking about how Mark Morrisroe had an indexical authenticity that nobody cares for nowadays, that there are so many selfies that a Kantian block has been hit, that nobody wants to talk about this “limit,” so they just do more and more portrait shows, hoping to contain banality through canon, token and fetish. How does he know this? How does he know that Alt Lit has outdone Dennis Cooper’s flat affect and has replaced Morrisroe’s authenticity? When he posed and said, “Yes, I’ll be your corpse-twink, because it just circulates me in a revolving door of signifiers that lead to no referent, no real corpse, no passion or murder.” There is no corpse in sight, it’s as you said — death is the most unlikable thing in the age of likes, since it is the limit to the limit. This is not like the usual F.I.T. student who fawns over me, then claims to know more about Warhol than I do. He actually does know something fresh. Of course, like every other college kid, he hangs flaccid on my bed. He went from hating me to liking me to liking me more… So it’ll take time, I guess.
When we went to see “Human Interest” at the Whitney, he said, “It makes sense that Schnabel is melting. It’s what everyone waited for, and next you’ll melt too. After the straight patriarch melts, all the gay Polaroids will melt too.” What about him? He knew his videos missed the era of Alex Bag, and his post-Sherman selfies missed the era of K8 Hardy. His frail coming of age already archived on Photobooth to the sounds of the Velvet Underground on Pandora. We share in the aesthetics of empty pretension.
Have you heard of Truvada? He takes this pill that prevents HIV. He and his friends take it, and talk about how Rent is stupid and inauthentic, as if that critical position were somehow authentic. They read The Gentrification of the Mind in their NYU classes, while making post-conceptual art. It turns out he is using me. That’s an age-old fact. But now I’m emptier than ever, just a figurehead gateway to some “official” archive. What he doesn’t know is that his Xtube videos are in better shape than my own archives! They will have far superior posterity. Or maybe he does know.
What does he really want from me? After the portrait hangs and he snaps another picture of himself next to it… What use am I?
Love,
Adrian
***
Dear Adrian,
It does not surprise me that Denver has this uncanny knowledge — youth always have an uncanny sense of the desire of the old, and old money even more so. It exists through and between generations. It’s almost fungal, this ancestral fungus.
Prep, it is called, displacing Rent into inauthenticity — what an idea. A strange reversal, we would think it was the preparation in itself that makes the one seem inauthentic. But no, it is now the preparation that is authentic and the unprepared, the trauma of contraction, that is fake. Your use comes from your uselessness, but then you know this better than anyone; only know the phallic capital from this “knowledge” has shrinkage.
You are the ventriloquist and he is your happy dummy.
Love,
Frances
***
Dear Frances,
Since twelve years old, you’ve seen my escapades, more than just through pithy eyes. And this new thing, I’m sure you’ll say is the same old thing. Haven’t I always claimed to blast off, stop gambling and hit the jackpot? Silly man! Tricks are for kids. You know, I’m an eternal puer. But now I’ve turned to bitter senex. And seek to become a foster parent! Again you’ll know I’m joking, a bad joke, one that draws further pathos from being written as printed letter.
You’ll appreciate the form of the letter, as a rhetorician and analyst, the letter that is always received, etc. And I will send it for a loop! Kindly burn these, by the way. Myopic drivel. Often our fetishes have been a topic of discussion, less and less since my writing’s absorbed each drop of erotic desire, but so too has your clinical practice diffused your libido. But if you saw a perfect thing summersaulting around your street, wouldn’t you shriek and reach out to the rainy days we’d run around the city from café to café, eating up culture, rinse and repeat, like fiends? St. Mark’s Place, where you grew up, had gone beyond beatnik, gentrification, simulacrum, melancholy, tacky, towards the suburban Gothic that eerily overtook the city street, replete with semi-visible homelessness.
Juxtapositions are no longer between high and low, zigzagging light shows and video joyrides, but between us and them; a kind of class warfare that’s never externalized, but rather, takes place inside, and withered us all away in hyper-personalized tautologies that could not tolerate the presence of others. Still, we once found a way to touch that fire of eternal laughter, a secular Jewish heritage, the thunder of apartment-based breakthroughs that shook the pavement. And now we are dry as dust. St. Mark’s Place tourists are realer than us. Even Taylor Swift’s multimillion-dollar Tribeca apartment (across the street from J. Butler) has an authentic libidinal thrust we lack.
If the first step for the philosopher is to claim to know nothing, the twink’s job is to play the know-it-all. Reclined on my couch, Denver spits out any thought that comes into his head.
“That’s actually the thing I don’t like about your work. It’s rooted in such banal fetishes. Art should blow apart the fetish, and like show something existentially truer. That’s why I would say you’re really more of a bohemian artist.”
“And how should I better myself?”
“Like take a stance against the neoliberal idea of art as presentation of aristocratic fetish, take a harder stance, and reveal something uglier about yourself.”
“That’s a very dated notion of radical art. You know my radicalism comes from flat affect, and that was a dialectical move that was edgy and innovative in the ’80s. More so than some sort of socialist realism or sentimental existential art.”
“Geez, you really don’t like when I criticize you?” He seemed, for the first time, genuinely turned on. But he wouldn’t move toward me. And he was starting to piss me off. As I reached in to kiss him, he flinched.
“Why do you want me?”
Then I made the rehearsed plea that he’s a genius, and we passionately kissed. But he didn’t want to spend the night. He tied up his boots slowly, and I joked that he looked like a Hitler youth, my standard refrain. The haircut is in style, as you know.
“That’s what I’m going for — the blonde beast.” I stared at him, suddenly shrinking down. With self-possession he continued,
“I go for the Walter Kaufmann reading on that. That the blonde beast is not an Aryan thing — but a universal notion of power.”
Then he left without fanfare. Not bad. Ah? I actually think you’d like him. He reminds me of you.
Love,
Adrian,
***
Dear Adrian,
As much as I enjoy relegating things, and you, to the same old thing, I should more fairly say that it is not the same old thing but many variations on the standard. There is the language of passion and the language of tenderness. Ferenczi would say that children understand in the language of tenderness, and adults in the language of passion. I’m sure you will disagree. But you, you speak so often in the language of passion. And, admittedly, self-congratulation as well. Circumstance is inevitable and annoying. But pomp, pomp is another and higher level of necessity.
If tricks are for kids, and kids are for you, perhaps tricks are for you as well? I think you like turning a trick, and have an ace up your sleeve at all times. Then have it slip out, sloppily, and enjoy that awkward moment when it’s half-out your sleeve and all are watching in shock at your deviousness. I would not call you a Peter Pan, as you label yourself, a puer aeterna. I see you as more of a Captain Hook—powerful, injured and always chasing after the boy who flies while you cannot. There is a reason jealousy is a feeling but envy is a sin.
Till soon,
Frances
***
Dear Frances,
Classical art, as an aphrodisiac, requires the pup to supplement the void of failed romanticism. If and when transgression died, its ruins repaired me. He broods a lot. I’ve scrolled through this brooding and discovered a heart — and heard its telltale pumping. Can I write about being entranced by love with any degree of truth? Or will you doubt my feelings for Denver, forever?
Yes, I’m cursed to only see the fetish, but Denver is walking me out of this! Today, he even scolded me simply for how I looked at him! I think this politically uptight generation is actually quite good. I’m ready to be converted. It’s very Victorian how we all set up these little traps for ourselves to fall into on the Left. On the other hand, he still needs to be taken care of, at a very basic level. He walks slowly, a result of a childhood trauma. And he’s too talkative, which covers over a very basic physical insecurity. His hands are cold. I’ve taken to plopping them limp onto my neck and putting them in a strangle pose. It relieves tension for us both.
Yours,
Adrian
***
Dear Adrian,
You attribute my hesitations to cowardice. This is a mistake, maybe the mistake underlying all your mistakes. Not all consideration for others is morality, and not all morality is cowardice. And so permit me to speak now again from my place of hesitation — who is this young pup, and how young? This is not an attack, I simply seek knowledge due to my epistemophilic impulse.
I’m writing from my mother’s house, where I’d give anything for a newspaper, a square of cement, or any other trappings of civilized life. Having to self-soothe to forget the paradox of my mother, my coffee habit has gone out of control. She needs saving from her need to be saved, which she can’t be saved from, because she can’t be saved. What can one do with that except watch?
Whether or not it is love, our lyric “I” seems always entranced; intoxicated by one idea or boy or patient. I know this to be an exhilarating and yet exhausting way to be. Being the patient requires patience, but it’s worse pretending not to be one.
Is it too soon to come and visit you, and the boy (is it still Denver?) after I return?
Till soon,
Frances
***
Dear Frances,
You fatigue me. I feel the skin of your letters as an artificial thing; your weather, your moss, your surroundings, all tautological boundaries. I can’t answer your questions because they are itchy and annoying. You both want to deflate me. There’s no desperation left for New York’s male artists. We are a pampered layer of decadent fat, giggling like Jello, as our nasty Babylon falls. I’m ready for him to stick a knife in it. And you should join. Yes, please! Now he’s desperate to meet you. I think he wants to be an analyst too.
Love,
Adrian