Wakefield

by Andrei Codrescu

  “I’m trying to understand,” Wakefield tells the boy with the bandaged eye. “How did you all know to come here?”

  “That’s funny. How come everyone thinks we came from outer space? We connected on the Internet, man. We trained for nonviolent resistance since last summer. The multinationals are destroying the planet, but nobody seems to know that, either. It’s amazing how much people don’t know. Ever hear of genetically engineered corn?”

  The boy has an age-appropriate sneer, and smells sweetly of sleeping bags, no showers, and youth.

  “Genetically engineered corn bad?” Wakefield baits him.

  The boy turns away, exasperated.

  “Sorry,” Wakefield insists, “but what exactly is cultural imperialism?”

  The boy turns his good eye to Wakefield. “That’s when Indian kids play with Mickey Mouse instead of kachinas. Kachinas mean something to their people. The mouse means nothing.”

  “He must mean something,” Wakefield says.

  “Yeah, he means money. A kachina tells the story of the earth, of the people, of dances, rituals, how to make rain.… Talk to the fucking mouse and see what he tells you.”

  “Well, good luck to you,” says Wakefield, walking back to the elevator, hoping the fire sprinklers haven’t destroyed his room.

  “Stay busy bein’ born, not busy dyin’, man!” the kid shouts after him.

  Certainly. He has a deal to that effect.

  What is culture? And what culture is being imperiled? Beyond his balcony the bay is a gray cypher, the mountains invisible. Should he feel sad because the French are unable to resist Big Mac? Since his experience with the hate-filled micronations in the Wintry City, he just can’t feel sentimental about this antiprogress, this defense of the past. He enjoys (intellectually) Baroque mittel-Europa for its hint of decadence, its illuminism and Mozart, but would he defend overpriced hot chocolate and a putti-filled Viennese café against McDonald’s? Not a chance. Where are you more likely to find somebody like the neo-Nazi Heider of Austria or another Milosevic? At Café Mozart or at the McDonald’s down the street from it? Whatever idea of European “culture” is hiding in Heider’s chocolate, they can keep it.

  Still, there is something disappearing from the world, something composed of many instances of tradition and skill, or maybe not disappearing, but translating. Maybe culture, like physical matter, doesn’t disappear, but is subject to infinite play, and the world is a vast workshop for making and remaking everything, including people, and the engine of this play is desire.… Enough, Wakefield warns himself, you’ll end up dematerializing.

  The Orchid, a so-called gentleman’s club, is just a few blocks from his hotel, so Wakefield walks there, bareheaded in the rain, to see how the strippers’ strike is going. A squarely built bouncer with black-dyed bangs and tattoos on her pecs guards the door.

  “Delegate or protester?”

  “Heads or tails?” Wakefield answers, then sees himself through her eyes. A middle-aged swaggerer with a long face, sad eyes, smooth shaven, no tattoos. More delegate than protester. “Really,” says Wakefield, “can one declare oneself so readily?” He glances behind her into the bar and sees the kid with the bandaged eye standing by a vending machine, looking uncertain. The kid looks up and Wakefield waves to him. The bouncer turns around and sees the kid waving back.

  “Okay,” she says, “you know the wounded. Go on in.”

  Wakefield heads straight for the boy, who is still pondering the vending machine. “It’s unreal,” he says, “there isn’t one thing in this fucking machine that’s not manufactured by a multinational.”

  “Aw, go ahead and have a Coke.”

  “I guess you think that’s funny.”

  The bar is occupied by all kinds of people, some of them watching the strippers, others deep in conversation. The stage with its shiny brass pole is bathed in red light; a bored Black girl with small breasts is pulling on her G-string, doing her routine. The tables directly in front of the stage are empty except for two enthusiastic women, fans or friends of the stripper on stage, waving dollar bills and wolf-whistling.

  The place has a blue-collar feeling, perhaps because some of the nonprotester-looking folks at the bar are heavy-duty lesbians wearing lumberjack shirts.

  The one-eyed boy has settled on some kind of peanut bar and sits on the stool next to Wakefield. “Sad, don’t you think?”

  “What’s sad?” Wakefield orders two longnecks from the bartender, who looks familiar. “Do I know you?”

  “Sure, if you watch television. I did a Maxdrip commercial last year.”

  That’s it. Wakefield gives his young friend one of the beers.

  “What’s sad is the trade in human flesh. We exploit everything, animal, mineral, and human.” The kid takes a swig, nearly missing his mouth because of his bad eye.

  “Try not to be so programmatic,” Wakefield suggests paternally. “People do what they want. They’ve been doing it forever. What makes you think it’s exploitation? They have a union.”

  “Yeah,” adds the bartender, “and most of them are artists. Caddy, the girl dancing now, is a filmmaker. There was a big art show by the sex workers last year.”

  Caddy finishes her dance and drifts over to the bar. “Tip for the dance?”

  Wakefield hands her a five. The kid looks away.

  “What do these lumberjacks do in real life?”

  “Drive trucks, cut down trees, drink. They really do! It’s kind of boring here without the delegates. Hey, kid, wanna tip me?”

  “He doesn’t approve,” says Wakefield.

  Caddy puts her arms around the kid’s skinny shoulders and rubs her bare breasts on his back. “You’re bony, boy. Tell Auntie C what’s the matter.”

  “I don’t know,” the kid says, afraid to move. “I came here to protest the ripoff of the planet by multinational corporations, and now I’m in a strip bar.”

  Caddy laughs heartily. “Titty bar, honey. Hey, I’m editing my new film, wanna know what it’s about?”

  “Sure,” says the kid, hoping she won’t stop pressing against him.

  “It’s about my friends’ rededication ceremony. Know what that is?”

  He doesn’t. Neither does Wakefield. He buys Caddy a champagne cocktail and she enlightens them.

  “Every year they rededicate themselves as a couple in an S and M ceremony. You know what that is?”

  “What, ‘couple’ or ‘S and M’?” says Wakefield.

  “Don’t get cute, mister, I’m asking the kid.”

  The kid nods yes, barely moving his head.

  “Sadomasochism is a very popular subculture here. So anyway, the film opens with all our friends at Teresa and Lu’s loft, everybody dressed in leather, high-laced boots, leather teddies, whips, chains, all that, beautiful women. We haven’t seen each other in a while so there is all this chat, Girl, you got a new clit ring, Honey, let me see your new tongue stud, and so on, girl talk. Then the maids of honor, haha, that’s an inside joke, set up the gear, the hooks in the ceiling, the silk ropes, the whips. Excuse me, honey, can I have another drink?”

  “My pleasure. What you gonna do with that boy?” asks Wakefield.

  Caddy’s still got her arms around the baby anarchist. “Make him protest till he comes.” She moves her hips and squeezes. “Anyway, then the girls get in a circle and undress the two sweethearts very slowly, making sure to kiss them a little and stroke them here and there.… So then you see them being lifted up and suspended from the ropes that have these velvet cuffs. Now they are both about two feet off the floor and the girls tie their ankles. The lovebirds are facing each other about three feet apart, looking into each other’s eyes. Now comes the fun part. Okay, there is soundtrack, too, this gorgeous piece of music performed by the Three S&M Graces—they just put out a CD. We all make a toast, and then the maids of honor stand behind each lady with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and they bring them down over their naked butts, sending the honeybees swinging toward each other
. They get just close enough so their tits touch, and then swing apart and back toward each other, and they never break eye contact. There is just enough slack for their nips to kiss, but nothing else, except for eye contact. The music crescendoes at this point and the maids are really whipping them now and there are tears in their eyes, great closeup here, but they never break eye contact. They are rededicating, see. They can take the pain for each other, it’s an offering, they suffer because they love each other. There is a great shot of the welts on their asses and backs, you can see them swelling, there’s no broken skin, no blood or anything. The maids are pros, if they break skin the blood cools off the pain, and pain is the point. Then just when they look like they are going to pass out, the girls let them down and lay them out on this bed all covered with flowers and everybody rubs healing ointment on them and they get kissed and toasted and fooled with. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Wakefield hasn’t touched his drink since Caddy started describing her film, and he’s gazing at her affectionately. The kid has simply frozen. A fat tear hangs from his eye. Caddy takes her arms from around him and laughs. The kid’s shirt is soaked, he’s sweating so hard.

  “How about another drink?”

  “As many as you like.”

  “Okay, boys. Don’t forget, filmmaking is not for wussies. I gotta dance. Have some ones?” She takes Wakefield’s money and puts it in the jukebox. Soon she’s back on stage, swinging her hips to Waylon Jennings, and another man at the bar leans over to Wakefield.

  “Her film is going to Sundance. She’s first-rate. The first showing will be at my gallery, that’s where we had the sex workers show. Name is Palmer.”

  Gallery-owner Palmer and Wakefield shake hands. “Kid, this is Palmer, shake his hand. The kid is a protester.”

  They shake. Palmer says, “You wouldn’t believe how much artistic talent there is in this room. It’s the greatest art community in the whole country. There’s this Jamaican singer, Claudette, she’s one of the Three S&M Graces, she’s headed for a Grammy.”

  “Community,” sighs the kid. “That’s what it’s all about. You can’t stop a united community.”

  “United?” Palmer laughs. “They are unionized, but you can’t imagine how catty they can get, and jealous, too, just like artists anywhere. You know who chartered their union? The Teamsters, that’s who. Hard to believe, but it’s true. This community has some major muscle behind it. Where is your community, kid? I don’t see any of your pals here. Were they all arrested?”

  “I don’t really know any of them,” the kid bursts out with unexpected candor. He turns to Wakefield. “We all met on the Internet, like I told you.”

  Caddy is followed on stage by a bosomy mom with stretch marks who spanks herself energetically, and then by Claudette, the Jamaican chanteuse, looking like Josephine Baker, who moves to her own hypnotic, slow singing that makes the whole room fall silent. Magic, thinks Wakefield, appreciating the satisfying anonymity that a room full of strangers (it helps that they are naked) can bring about. Peace, born on the fringes, swamp flower of urban mal.

  Caddy brings Claudette over to meet them after her set, and orders more champagne cocktails.

  “Enchanté,” says Claudette, who used to be Claude.

  “I’m putting her in all my films,” gushes Caddy.

  “Me, too,” says the kid, with third-beer courage.

  “Darling!” Claudette kisses him on the lips.

  A pink feather boa like a free-floating spider web settles over the kid, wrapping him in sweaty heat and perfume. He’s a goner. The girls will eat him for breakfast. The songs on the jukebox get sadder and melancholy sweeps the room, a ripple at first, then a wave. It’s whiskey-golden, existential. Wakefield can’t see the shore; he’s happy again. Palmer offers to walk back with him to the hotel, and Wakefield tells him about the party he’s being paid to attend the next evening. Palmer claps his hands in wonder.

  “You’re going to be at the Redbones’ party!”

  Wakefield thinks so.

  “Phenomenal!” cries Palmer. “You know the party’s a benefit, don’t you?”

  Wakefield doesn’t know much. He’s only been told that it’s a party and he’s been hired to listen … to something.

  “You must be shittin’ me, man. It’s a benefit for the next sex workers’ show. The Redbones are raising money for film, studio time, equipment, art supplies, you name it. They’re gonna get the moneybags around here to write checks for a million dollars each. All the girls have applied for grants. I’ll be there, my friend.”

  Wakefield is not all that surprised. This is the West, after all, where good-time girls have always represented civilization, from the first whaling camp to the end of the gold rush. It makes sense that they should continue to uphold culture with their art. But he still doesn’t understand what his own role is. Be cool, he thinks, you’re being paid to do what you always do: plunge into the unknown. Still, it might be nice to know how he’s supposed to go about it. He checks the desk in the lobby and is given a message in an embossed envelope. It’s from his mysterious employer. A car will be sent to fetch him the next evening.

  The Redbones’ marble villa stands in a forest of first-growth sequoia on a bluff overlooking both the bay and the wide river flowing into it. The driver whistles admiringly as they follow the mile-long driveway to the house. A valet dressed like an escapee from seventies night at a gay disco rushes to open the limo door.

  By contrast, Wakefield is ushered into the house by a doorman as solemn (and as ornate) as Kaiser Wilhelm. There are already a few dozen guests in the vaulted great hall, sipping champagne served by a liveried waiter, but their costumes (it is, apparently, a costume party) pale beside the collection of modern masterpieces that occupy the large space. Wakefield’s attention is drawn to the visual anxiety of a gigantic Rothko monochrome, but a playful Dubuffet sculpture beneath ameliorates the effect immediately. Flanking the Rothko are glass cabinets crammed with Greek antiquities. This tension is repeated between a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon and a kore from the sixth century B.C. On another wall an early Picasso nude and a small Giacometti sculpture on a pedestal keep company with a medieval tapestry and a large Attic amphora. A roaring blaze in the immense fireplace casts a red glow over the endless Aubusson rug that covers the marble floor.

  A female voice interrupts Wakefield’s self-guided tour. “Mr. Redbone collects Greek antiquities, while my passion is modern art. My first husband collected mistresses. I’m Aphrodite Redbone. Mr. Wakefield?”

  Wakefield is unaccountably glad to grasp her languid hand.

  Mrs. Redbone herself appears to be a triumph of cosmetic surgery. Tonight she is in flapper dress and mood. “What did you think of our riots?” Mrs. Redbone inquires.

  “I don’t understand global,” mutters Wakefield.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” she reassures him, laying her skeletal, gorgeously beringed fingers on his arm. “None of the fortunes here are global. Mr. Redbone is in lumber. Western lumber. His father was in lumber. His grandfather was in lumber. Doesn’t own Indonesian hardwoods, I made sure of that!”

  Arriving guests begin to fill the room, without obscuring the art.

  The theme of the event is Art Sluts, which explains the parking valet in hot pants and the hors d’oeuvres in modified genital shapes. A fat gangster in a white suit, perched on a tall Beuys chair, remarks to Wakefield, apropos the skinny Giacometti: “Looks like he needs to eat some pussy.”

  Palmer arrives, wearing a tuxedo jacket over his boxer shorts; his long, white legs end in a pair of Arabian slippers.

  “There he is, the bad boy!” calls Mrs. Redbone.

  The actual “art sluts” begin arriving, dressed quite tamely in contrast to the interpretations the moneyed patrons have given the theme. Caddy, gripping her video camera, looks like a schoolteacher at the prom. Claudette has on a low-cut sequined white gown. Western fortunes and their spouses ride in on an effluvia of Belle Époque frills and Moulin Roug
e ruffles. The Three S&M Graces, clad in professional-looking leather, set up their instruments near the glowing hearth.

  “This is all quite amusing,” Palmer confides to him. “The wives are all their third or fourth; some of them even worked at The Orchid. You can’t really tell the old money from the new, not that there is much old money in the West. It’s mainly a difference between hard goods and the new economy.”

  An equestrian “art slut” in jodhpurs and jeweled brassiere vibrates on the arm of an old man wearing a top hat and silk scarf, Montmartre ca. 1910. Wakefield tries to suppress a giggle.

  “Don’t knock it, baby,” says Palmer, “that man has a hardware empire. He could plier out your teeth one by one.”

  Wakefield is feeling a touch of anxiety. Why is he here? The mysterious lumber baron still hasn’t made an appearance. The other guests, Wakefield notes, have finished with polite champagne and are bellying up to the bar for stronger liquor.

  Mrs. Redbone latches on to Wakefield’s arm again, and introduces him to a tanned art administrator without a wrinkle anywhere. Wakefield is familiar with these body-laundered bureaucrats, the pressing and ironing that goes beyond clothes.

  “The director of our art museum.”

  Wakefield isn’t sure if “our” refers to the Redbones’ private collection or some public institution. The value of the holdings is probably equal.

  “Isn’t this marvelous? Very much your idea, taking the museum out of the building.… I can’t think more ‘out’ than this,” says Mrs. Redbone.

  The director is not entirely comfortable with Mrs. Redbone’s interpretation of his rather more abstract idea. “We must also have gravitas; that is what constitutes the Museum’s essence,” he answers crisply.

  “Oh, you’re so droll,” Mrs. Redbone dismisses him, and leads Wakefield toward a smaller salon, where Claudette is surrounded by admirers. Standing apart from them, studying a small Hans Arp painting, is a thin reed of a woman whose mushroom-pale shoulders are almost hidden under an extraordinary hat. She peers out from under the vast brim at Wakefield with violet Elizabeth Taylor eyes.