The Correspondence Artist

by Barbara Browning

  Binh is of medium height, with glossy black hair nearly as long as mine. His features are exquisitely delicate, almost feminine. His smile is radiant, easy, and entirely natural. I was surprised at how good his English was, as well as his German. He also speaks perfect French, but of course he ordered in Vietnamese. I asked him to order for me, since I don’t know a lot about Vietnamese food. He recommended the gói bo. I asked him if Tiger beer was any good and he laughed, saying I was welcome to try it if I liked but that he only ever drank Coca-Cola. On this point he was resolute. The waitress smiled knowingly. I just asked for mineral water.

  I guess you know what happened next. There were his appreciative comments on my perceptions regarding his work, the uncanny resonance between our sensibilities, my awkward, spontaneous admission of admiration and of nerves – and in a flash, there was Aafke, coming undone.

  After I’d dabbed the Coca-Cola out of my hair in the bathroom with damp paper towels, after Binh repeatedly tried to calm his ex-wife down on the cell phone and finally gave up, after she menacingly chased us back to Propeller Island on her scooter, after that confused scuffle on the sidewalk and my cowardly flight up the disorienting stairs, there I was: trying to pull myself back together from the counter-intuitive gravitational field of that uncomfortable foam pad above the ceiling, while a real bed hovered tantalizingly below me on the floor.

  Here’s that sestina I sent the paramour after the incident:

  Coca-Cola and Violence

  Recently I’ve been inundated with news of allegations that the Coca-Cola

  Company has been sponsoring acts of unconscionable violence

  Against union organizers at its bottling plants in Colombia. One photo

  Shows Isidro Segundo Gil, a union officer, murdered at his workplace. I receive this information by e-mail,

  As I’m on a list serve for those with an interest in labor politics. I’ve never seen

  So many messages about a particular multinational case of alleged abuse: at last count, 42.

  I’m sure I’m implicated, too.

  Not that I’ve been sponsoring acts of murder, but I’ve been known to drink a Coca-Cola

  On occasion. In fact, it occupies a conspicuous product placement in one scene

  Of my life’s cinematic version. A dramatic scene, with violins.

  A desperate woman is tossing a glass of the stuff on my head, screaming, “If you call again, if you send another e-mail, I swear I’ll kill you! I have a photo!”

  I’m not sure exactly what she was going to do with that photo, Whom she thought she was going to send it to.

  Actually, I doubt this photo exists. If it does, maybe she should put it in the mail

  To the Colombian bottlers of Coca-Cola.

  Wouldn’t that just prove, we’re all implicated in some kind of violence.

  I’m not making excuses for them. I never intended to provoke this scene.

  But don’t we all play innocent sometimes? That scene

  In the restaurant, the murder of Isidro Segundo Gil, some ostensibly platonic embrace captured in a telephoto

  Lens outside a hotel in Neve Tzedek – these are not random acts of violence.

  There’s a horrible mathematical logic to them. The balance of power between two

  Married people is as terrifying as the massive economic power of the Coca-Cola

  “Family” of products. In some Romance languages, the word “Coca-Cola” is female

  Although the CEO is quite distinctly male.

  His smiling, goofball, gringo mug can also be seen

  On the “killercoke.org” website, next to Isidro’s. The Coca-Cola

  Company probably never imagined this particular use of that photo.

  The website says Isidro’s children “understand too

  Well why their homeland is known as ‘a country where union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back.’” Violence

  Begets violence.

  It spreads with the exponential virulence of a list serve. My e-mail

  Is out of control. And in a dimly lit bar in Cebu City, or Abidjan, or Bucharest, two

  People might be unknowingly on the verge of an ugly scene.

  Nobody’s there to capture it in a photo.

  She’s smiling and touching his arm. He’s drinking rum and Coca-Cola.

  Here in my city, in a trash can on Ludlow Street, I found a halfempty Coca-Cola and the remnants of an act of violence:

  A stained photo, and a ripped-up piece of mail

  With the words no consigo vivir sin tu

  In the three years of our romance, Binh only came once to see me here in New York. Even that trip wasn’t explicitly about seeing me, but there were no other pressing professional obligations to bring him here that time, and it was in a period of relative demonstrativeness on his part in our correspondence. I said relative. Of course, there were a few other times he had to pass through quickly for professional reasons – the opening at the Guggenheim (which was where he met Walter), his show at Barbara Gladstone – but these were fleeting and we hardly had a chance to relax. This trip I’m talking about was different. He said in an e-mail before his arrival that this visit would probably be “instructive” for both of us. I didn’t ask him to elaborate.

  I told Binh he was welcome to stay at our place, of course, which isn’t huge – but we do have a little guest bed in an alcove that has a separate bathroom. He likes to sleep in his own bed. He’s a physically affectionate person and he loves having sex, but he has a hard time sleeping and he likes to stay up late at night reading. The sound of another person breathing distracts him. He thanked me for the invitation but told me that his friend Naeem had offered him his empty loft in Tribeca. The place was enormous, and beautiful. I couldn’t blame him for accepting.

  The day he arrived, he texted me and asked me to come over. This was late May of last year. The weather was beautiful, and I walked down West Broadway. When I got there I took the freight elevator up. It opened directly into Naeem’s loft. Binh was wearing turquoise silk pajamas. Everything else was white. It was an enormous open space with four columns and stripped wide-planked oak floors. There were a couple of sheep-skin rugs scattered on the floor, and a big white platform bed at a skewed angle near a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. They were partially opened, and gauzy white curtains billowed over them. It was like being in a cloud. Binh smiled and embraced me wordlessly. He pressed his hard-on up against my body and we began to kiss. He smelled faintly of patchouli. It’s always like this when we see each other: we fall into each other’s arms and within minutes we’re fucking. It’s only afterwards, when we’ve gotten that out of our systems, that we actually talk. That afternoon in the loft was pretty heavenly. He always gets very animated after sex. I’m the opposite. For some reason he wanted to tell me all about Ozu and interior shots, something he’d been working out about the poetics of space, and it was fascinating but I was having a hard time responding coherently. I was still in a fog of sexual satisfaction. Fortunately he didn’t seem to notice. And then he sat up and said, “By the way, do you want to have dinner with my friend Matt and his wife? I forgot to tell you, they asked if we wanted to stop by around seven.” It was already six.

  It was all right with me. I showered off in Naeem’s austere black slate bathroom and climbed back into the slinky orange dress I’d worn. I had a little ziplock bag of edible flowers in my purse. I’d grown them on my balcony, and I brought them thinking Binh might want to eat them in a salad. Now I thought this might be a good gift for this couple. I was intrigued that Binh was taking me to a dinner party, apparently as his date. We hadn’t really appeared out publicly together – certainly not as a couple. At this point, partly on account of some media speculation regarding a few famously gorgeous women Binh had been spotted with, there tended to be photographers at his official appearances. This was just dinner with friends, but even in these more intimate contexts, we’d tried to avoid attention. It was partly b
ecause of Aafke, of course. I think we both knew some people might consider it a little inappropriate, our being together, but our discretion wasn’t about that. I am pretty sure that both of us would adamantly defend the right of any woman or man to find a personal or erotic connection with whomever she or he might choose. But though we were lovers, we rigorously avoided being a “couple.” As I said, when it started to feel like we were one, we both had a tendency to recoil.

  Binh had forgotten the address but he knew his friend’s phone number. He asked me to call from the taxi to get the house number. A woman with a slight accent picked up. Binh hadn’t told me her name, so I somewhat awkwardly said, “Hello, this is Binh’s friend – we’re on our way over but we forgot the address.” She told us, and the cab pulled up. We rang the doorbell. Björk opened the door.

  Binh, of course, had neglected to tell me we were having dinner with Matthew Barney and Björk. Julian Schnabel was also there. He was telling Matthew Barney a big, evidently funny story when we walked in. He paused when he saw Binh, and came running over to give him a bear hug. Björk was soon affectionately stroking his hair and telling him how well he looked. Binh and Matthew Barney exchanged some kind of special, complicated handshake. They all turned to me politely and smiled when Binh introduced me. I handed Björk the ziplock bag of slightly wilted flowers and said, “These are edible. If you want you can put them in a salad.” She was very nice. She ran over to Schnabel and said, “Julian, look, Vivian brought us edible flowers! Here, eat one!” They each took a little limp blossom and chewed on it. They both raised their eyebrows and smiled.

  The dinner was very nice. Although he’s soft-spoken and his English is a little stilted, Binh likes to tell long stories. Sometimes you wonder where they’re going, but in the end there’s usually an interesting, unexpected image or a fragment of poetry or something that makes them memorable. Everyone seemed fascinated. Then Björk started to tell an anecdote about her childhood in Iceland, but I noticed that Binh seemed to be spacing out. I think he was listening to the music playing in the background. It was the soundtrack of Pierrot le fou. Quite abruptly, he said to our hosts, “Well, thank you very much for this lovely dinner. I think Matt is tired and we should let you get some rest.” Schnabel looked surprised, but since Björk and Matthew Barney didn’t seem to be objecting, he said he’d walk out with us. We embraced on the sidewalk and Schnabel hailed a cab. Binh walked me home.

  Naturally, I’ve changed the identities of the generous, attractive celebrities at the dinner party. I’m sure Björk is also very nice, but I’ve never actually had dinner at her house. Why should it matter anyway that you’d recognize their names? Why should I have felt at all out of place that evening, or two days later when Binh and I were flipping through art magazines at Naeem’s loft and Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson suddenly buzzed up because they knew Binh was in town and couldn’t resist popping by?

  Binh stayed in New York for a week, and we saw each other every day, but slept apart. In addition to these purely social visits, he had a few informal meetings with curators and dealers. I tried not to appear overly expectant. He came by our place one afternoon and spent about an hour looking at strange animation sites on the internet with Sandro. Sandro asked him to tag a DVD with a Sharpie. They like each other. Sandro doesn’t tell his friends his mother’s sleeping with Duong Van Binh. I don’t think it’s because he thinks it would be unseemly because of our age difference. Sandro and his friends are very open-minded about these kinds of things. I think he just doesn’t want to look like he’s bragging. Also, I’ve asked him to be discreet.

  I don’t know how “instructive” that time of Binh’s in New York was.

  Monday, June 4, 2007, 7:17 p.m.

  Subject: Octopussy

  I woke up early. Sandro was HILARIOUS over breakfast. I can’t even remember all of it, but he kept calling me Dr. Octopussy and there was something about Spiderman and using his superpowers to increase our wireless capacity. Totally Monty Python.

  I have the impression that he was being so entertaining on purpose, so I wouldn’t miss you. But I’ve stopped agonizing over our goodbyes. Maybe I’m getting used to this. I didn’t suffer in March, and I feel okay again this time.

  I loved seeing you here. I wanted to introduce you to my friends. We only got to see yours. I liked them all. But you would have liked mine, too. That business of finding a common language, I think we still haven’t gotten there exactly. You understand I’m not talking about your English, or my French. It’s something else.

  You’re a very complicated person. Sometimes I feel extremely close to you and other times not. You’re Ultra-Sensitive, and then not. Sometimes I think your politics are smart and provocative, sometimes I think they’re just terrible. Sometimes I find the world of publicity that you inhabit kind of baffling. That business with Kate Moss.

  And then there are these other moments. That afternoon at Naeem’s when you drew those flowers on my wrist – I’ll never forget that, it felt so fragile. In those moments, I understand everything, I feel everything – I just started crying remembering it. Your drawings, your photographs, your videos, the way you understand books and films – there are times when I think that I understand you in a very particular way, that you understand me too. And your tenderness in bed, when we’re almost entirely still, that subtle movement, so sweet and at the same time so overwhelming. I love that.

  But I think it’s good that I also have these little moments of alienation, which you must also have. I told you, I’m trying hard not to like you too much. I want to look you in the eye. I taught you that expression we have. Even Steven.

  I found you more beautiful than ever. I love your smell. When I’m near you I can only think about fucking. I can’t believe you want to recuperate the image of Ronald Reagan. You even said something nice about Nancy. It’s unbelievable.

  I’ll read the book you gave me and I’ll tell you what I think. I’ll also tell you when the podcast is done – any day now. Tell me if you read Aciman.

  I send you a kiss. V

  Maybe I should explain a thing or two. The line about Ultra-Sensitive referred to the condoms Binh likes. I crocheted him a really lovely little condom pouch out of metallic yarn, that just exposes the top of the little square of plastic wrapping where it says “Ultra-Sensitive.” I showed him that and said, “Ultra-Sensitive – that’s you.” He smiled and said, with his very subtle, slightly formal accent, “Not really.”

  I’d rather not explain right now the line about Kate Moss. I don’t have a lot of patience for that kind of thing.

  Binh responded to my e-mail, as he sometimes does, with a .mov file. He’d edited it out of some clips of my eyelid that he’d shot while we were together. He did this one afternoon right in the middle of our sex. We’d been having sex, missionary style, which frankly is Binh’s favorite, and of course my eyes were shut, but when I opened them I saw that he was looking into them very intently as he pumped up and down. He slowed down a little and said, “Has your right eyelid always been that way?” I asked him what he meant. He said that he’d noticed that my right eyelid was a little lazier than my left. It’s funny because I’m vaguely aware of this, but it’s not the kind of thing most people would notice. It’s very subtle. It’s nothing a doctor ever raised with me, or even my mother, for that matter. I asked Sandro later if he’d ever noticed this and he had no idea what I was talking about. The only other person who ever commented on this, sort of, was Florence, who told me when we met in college that she liked to watch my “slow blink.” She also liked to watch my lips when I pronounced words that began with the letter b. I love Florence.

  Anyway, it’s true, when I blink there’s a very slight lag time between my left and right eyelids. I think it might become slightly exaggerated when I’m in or near a state of orgasm. This may have something to do with Binh’s having noticed it. He’s also extremely attentive. So right then, in the middle of this, he pulled over one of those somewhat antiquat
ed little eyeball-shaped webcams, and started shooting some very low-resolution, grainy shots of the motion of my slightly retarded right eyelid. We weren’t laughing. It was very intimate. It was sexy. At some point later he also pointed that eyeball at my vulva and I think that material came out looking very abstract, and beautiful. But that’s not what he sent me. Ultra-Sensitive as he is, Binh wanted to show me we were looking each other in the eye, naked, with all our touching peculiarities. That is, I think this is what he was showing me. This is a still from the .mov file:

  I found it very poignant. I felt like no one had ever looked at me that closely.

  A few weeks later, however, when he appeared, self-satisfied, on the cover of Paper magazine with Chloë Sevigny and Scarlett Johansson licking his stomach, the thought struck me that maybe he was just documenting my imperfection.

  The paramour can, in fact, be pretty unfeeling sometimes. I can’t say I wasn’t forewarned. I don’t just mean that sweetly formal “not really” to my offering of the title Ultra-Sensitive. The initial scene at the restaurant, that placid “what you’re saying is extremely flattering to her” – that should have been a dead giveaway. Later, when an e-mail contained a reference to “that beautiful, dumb Thai girl with whom I’ve been screwing,” I had to pause to wonder if anybody were getting messages referring to me as the paramour’s “intelligent but only reasonably attractive” American sex pal. Maybe this kind of comment about the Thai girl will make you question the paramour’s supposedly excellent gender politics. Sometimes I think that myself, but I don’t think it’s reducible to machismo. After all, Tzipi says this kind of thing on a regular basis. The question of racial objectification also seems to be threatening to rear its ugly head. I wonder if it will at all complicate things if I tell you that the paramour is the griot superstar, the international dreadlocked dreamboat, the Mick Jagger of Mali, Djeli Kouyaté?