“Those stores they’re looting?” Jax says to Monk. “I’ll bet most of them are the stores that charged them high interest to buy everything, from beer to washing machines. Sky-high interest, much more than the Valley or the white parts of town.” Jax chuckles. “I’ll bet the fire department will find all the arson started in the store’s finance department, folks burned up their files that showed how much they owed.
“Tell him about your square father,” turning to Sofia.
“My father’s a Realtor. He’s Mexican, but pawns himself off as white to sell houses.” Her lower lip creases into a frown. “He told me he knows some agents that are called blockbusters. They go into a white neighborhood, buy a house themselves. Then they sell or rent it to a black family, sell it way under market price if they have to. So the white neighbors panic, have to sell their houses, at reduced prices, to the blockbuster. My father’s a capitalist first and a human being second. So last year, when Proposition Fourteen was passed, you know, it struck down the fucking Fair Housing Act, right? ’Course, as a Realtor, he voted for it.”
“Him and the John Birch Society,” Jax says. “He’s also a member of the Committee of Twenty-five, this secret group of cracker businessmen trying to drive Negro stores out of business. Maybe that’s why you’re such a rebel, baby. Well, Monk and me can clean up.”
“Good.” Sofia sizzles out her cigarette in her empty wine cup. “I’m going to wash my hair.” She switches on the bathroom light, shuts the door.
Jax washes dishes as Monk dries plates and cups with an old rag, stacking dishes on the shelf. “Man, thanks for everything. I’m wiped out.”
“I bet. You can crash on the couch. It’s hotter than hell up here, but I have a sheet for you. We’ll sleep in tomorrow, so you can rest. Tomorrow I’ll finish my stencils and equipment, we’ll split when it gets dark.” He walks to the stacks of canvases, pulls off a worn sheet that shrouds half the pile, tosses it on the jade sofa. Back at the table, Jax drains the wine bottle into his plastic cup.
They splay on the couch. Jax lights a cigarette. They can hear the water in the bathroom as Sofia washes her hair. “Mind if I take a peek?” Jax nods at the blue notebook on the cushion. “I’ll show you some of my stuff later if you want.”
“Sure, man.” Monk hands Jax the notebook, leans back into the cushions, closes his eyes.
Jax carefully turns the pages of the notebook: the cover’s torn and faded now, only one tiny hole still fastened near the top of the mashed spirals. “Shit, you’ve found some amazing graffiti around town.” He turns pages, nods. A few pages fall out, and Jax picks them up off the floor.
Sipping wine, Jax turns pages, silently reads some of Monk’s notes, nods with each new page and graffito. “I like how you record exact locations, colors, surface descriptions, overlays, cross-outs … shit, you’re an art critic.”
“Maybe, but it’s an art that’s not recognized as an art. It’s communication. It’s language and code, hearts and minds. I think it’s the city talking. My theory is that America is a collection of cities, right? These cities are all planned and built by rich white men.”
Jax laughs. “You’re right. I never heard of a poor or female architect, I mean the firms, they’re all huge white corporations, right?”
“Yeah. So these developers have designed living spaces where they themselves don’t live. It’s like they built a city on Mars for Martians, then went back to earth. So now the people are left to try to survive in this artificial environment they had no say in making. The artists, the rebels, they’re always the first to be the canaries in the coal mines and sing the alarm when death is coming. So they interact with the city and create these records. Visual and written records, a voice to both the inanimate and the have-nots. Anyway, I think it matters.”
“Man, you really get it. Shit, this is incredible. This cat’s really good,” tapping another loose page. “smOG. His technique is amazing. Those drips he sometimes paints … they’re intentional.”
Monk nods. “He’s a new voice out there.”
Jax leafs through some pages. “You write stories too?” He’s staring down at a handwritten page, its title underlined: Mosley Terrance and LAMA. Turning a few more pages, more hasty paragraphs titled Shen Shen in Chinatown.
“No, just some notes. People I’ve met, some of the places. A woman I met said I should write everything down … but I haven’t had much time.”
Jax nods, turns pages, stops. “Who’s this? No way … this can’t be.”
Monk gazes at the notebook, nods. “I’ve only found two in two years.”
“You think that’s him, that’s genuine?” Jax exhales smoke.
“I don’t know. They’ve been copied over, traced, preserved by other artists. But there’s a hint … the Aztec temples and jungles look three-dimensional … the impossible colors and depths … a kind of geometry that shifts and the eye can’t nail it down—”
“But El Tirili must be dead, if he ever existed. He was supposed to be painting, when, in the forties?”
“The thirties … maybe the twenties … and before, in Mexico or who knows?”
“Fuck, you have to take me and show me this.” Jax turns pages, sips wine. “You’ve seen him too? Bozo Texino?” Monk grins, nods. “Jesus. Texino, the ghost of the boxcars.” Jax studies the graffito on the page: a sideways figure eight—like the symbol for infinity—bisecting an oval face; this horizontal eight is the floppy brim of a cowboy hat, the upper half of the face becoming the hat … the lower face shows slit eyes and a frown that always flows into a protruding cigarette or cigar jutting from the face. Under the visage are some painstakingly etched numbers and letters. “We’re living in the days of signs and wonders. I saw one of these on a railcar in Oakland.”
Monk nods. “This one’s scratched on a tanker car in a switching yard along North Broadway. The tanker’s from Oklahoma, and the date—1932—is scratched in it too.”
“Thirty-two? Shit.” Jax taps the graffito.
“Yeah, Texino’s monicas are all over the states.” Monk’s animated, passionate about his notebook and its underground signs.
“Monicas?”
“Monicas, slang for monikers. That’s what the hobos and tramps who rode the rails called all this early graffiti. This one, you could tell by the etching lines that it had been redone, scratched in over and over, to preserve it down each generation.”
“Shit, to keep the movement alive, each Texino a fuck-you to the establishment, to the railroad,” Jax excited, grinning.
“Yeah, a big fuck-you to the Pinkerton goons the railroad hires to beat up any riders it catches. But there’s more going on with graffiti like this, man. Some of these signs go back to the Civil War, back to soldiers and blacks riding the rails to escape the South … Texino’s face morphs over the years … carved into old wooden trains, then painted with grease and chalk onto iron sidecars, sometimes a slave’s face or a plantation master’s face … and there’s more, codes within the signs. Those letters and numbers … they’re messages about paths to the North, locations of safe havens for freed slaves … even the position of his cigarette changes, pointing like a compass toward safe tracks or routes to avoid.”
“You’re amazing, man!” Jax shakes his head as he slowly turns the notebook’s pages. Monk watches, thinking about his dizzying gallery of graffiti and tags, of Bozo Texino, the two—if they’re genuine—of El Tirili’s space-warping visions … and now that gangster Standard’s living, tattooed signs: if he can only piece it all together, see the greater design in his path south, his journey; and something else, half glimpsed, perhaps some reason why he’s a witness to all this destruction.
Jax’s mustache crinkles into laughter. “Hey, here’s yours truly.” On the page Monk’s sketched a large vertical drawing of a billboard advertisement: GOLD MEDALLION HOMES NOW IN GARDENA! An attractive white housewife leans over Dad in his easy chair, handing him a martini as he reads the newspaper. A little boy plays with
a toy train on a throw rug. But Jaxsy’s signature is spray-painted near the bottom, and now it’s an art installation: Mom’s left eye seems to be bruised … and her cleavage has been enhanced, as has the angle of the little boy’s joyful face, now seeming to stare not at his father but at his mother’s breasts in some kind of Oedipal rapture … and Dad’s newspaper masthead and headlines read THE OUTER PARTY … CONSUME, OBEY. “Is it still intact?”
“It was a month ago. I’ve got four or five others of yours, stuff you did on walls, even that one off Grape Street, that big, abandoned office window where you painted faces, but their eyes are the clear window parts so it looks like the eyes reflect the empty office space inside. It’s all still there. The taggers and bombers, they respect you, man, no one’s painting you over … never even seen your signature flipped.”
“Wait a minute! Man, you’re too much, what’s a bomber? What do you mean, flipped?”
“Some of these huge graffiti, they cover up and erase the whole building or wall, like a fucking bomb destroyed everything but the message. Flipped is when the graffitist signs another tagger’s name upside down as a sign of disrespect.”
“Shit, you’re schooling me, Monk.” Jax drains his plastic cup of wine.
“They’ll study artists like you someday, Jax.”
Sofia steps out of the bathroom, a white towel wrapped around her hair, a plastic bottle of shampoo in her hand. “You boys still talking shop? You come with me.” She crooks a finger at Jax. “You’ve got paint all over your hair.” Jax shrugs, closes the notebook, sets it on the cushion next to Monk. “You’re next,” to Monk. “We found you lying in garbage,” she grins, “you can’t go home to Karmann smelling like a wino.”
Jax walks past the big window, rummages in a coffee can on his shelves next to the rows of spray-paint cans, tosses a wide rubber band atop Monk’s notebook. “Here. It’s falling apart.” He follows Sofia into the kitchen area.
Sofia leans a chair against the sink. Jax sits down, cranes his neck over the sink as she turns the faucet on over his black hair. Ray Orbison’s crooning through the tiny radio, Pretty woman … mercy.
Monk pages through the notebook, but his eyes are heavy. He stretches the rubber band over the notebook and sets it on the floor.
Someone taps Monk’s shoulder. He opens his eyes. Jax is standing there, the milk crate in his hand, cigarette in his mouth, drippy hair. “Your turn. I’m taking my nightstand and retiring. See you in the morning.”
“Try not to burn the mattress up.” Sofia kisses him. “Come on, Monk.”
Monk sits in the chair wedged against the sink. He feels cool water soaking through his matted hair, then her fingers as she rubs shampoo into his scalp. He closes his eyes: her hands feel so good. An electric tingling races down his spine, into his groin; it’s been too long since he felt a feminine caress, soft, little hands … Karmann … Say something, stay cool.
He opens his eyes. “So how’d you guys meet?” On the radio, Skeeter Davis sings softly: Why does the sun go on shining?
“Me and Jaxsy? In New York, around ’63. There was this artists’ commune, Fluxus, it’s still there.” Her fingers massage lather into his hair, it’s like his brain is submerged and she’s rubbing the spongy lobes and canals.
“Fluxus?”
“Yeah, it’s an underground art movement, started in Amsterdam, then spread to London, New York, lots of places. Their manifesto is to purge bourgeois art, anticommercial, it’s right up Jax’s alley. Anyway, I was born in Mexico City. My mom’s an artist in Mexico City, my dad, well, I told you about him. They got divorced a few years after I was born. Living with my mother, I wanted to be some kind of artist too. I ended up going to this great art school in Buenos Aires. I got into the underground art scene. Apprenticed with León Ferrari, he’s this amazing provocador, a master of protest art and what we called happenings. He showed me this sketch he’s working on, this sculpture of Christ crucified on a Vietnam War bomber … a fucking genius. We were trying to rattle the government and the pope, anything subversive. Installing mattresses around the city, encouraging people to fuck … hanging slabs of meat dressed in brassieres and panties,” she says, smiling. “León knew some artists in Fluxus, so I ended up in New York. Working, learning with the group, you know, all avant-garde artists, that’s where I met Jax, over on Canal Street, they called the studio Fluxhall.” She begins to rinse his hair in cool water, rubbing, stroking his head. “He was dating this crazy Japanese artist, her name’s Ono. I called her Oh No,” laughing. “But one thing led to another and we got together. He helped me get my visa, then we split for Frisco for a while. He and some of his guerrilla buddies did this installation that blew everyone’s minds. They draped this huge mural canvas down over one side of the Golden Gate Bridge, a perspective painting so it looked like the bridge and the road arced up into the sky and clouds…”
“That’s fucking crazy.” Monk grins.
“That’s where Jax really found himself. You know, it was Dada and Duchamp in the air, making art by pasting things and using signs and found art, then reinterpreting it, jamming its signal. They called them ready-mades, so Jax saw a billboard and it was love at first sight. You’re all done.”
Sofia rubs a damp towel into his hair. He stands. “You smell better. Get some rest.” She lights a last cigarette. “Good night, Monk.” Smiling, Sofia pulls his face down to her with her wet hands and kisses him on the cheek. She walks toward the mattress in the corner, where Jax softly snores in the shadows.
Monk sinks into the couch, pulls the cool sheet to his waist. He closes his eyes, grateful for the darkness, the quiet. Somehow he’s found this refuge from the blood and fire outside, if only for a few hours. Each minute with his eyes closed is like surrendering to an eternal dream of peace and warmth. Now these two souls that chance or fate or whatever ruled these strange days had found him, healed and trusted him, shined a light for him when he’d lost his way. His arm slips to the floor, his fingertips resting on the notebook, then he’s asleep.
18
It’s just past sunset as the VW chugs south down Hooper. They head west on Ninety-first Street, crossing South Central. On the horizon is the Harbor Freeway; traffic is light tonight.
“I’m glad you’re tagging along—pun intended.” Sofia’s eyes in the rearview mirror crinkle in amusement and everyone laughs. Monk’s wearing a clean blue T-shirt Jax gave him. He’s feeling better after sleeping away most of today’s light in their loft. He can’t remember meeting anyone like them; he feels this instant connection with them, a mysterious forging of their souls. Monk knows they’re best friends, but he has no idea how, maybe it’s chemical or cosmic: even these silences between them seem like a glowing, kindred bond.
“We’ll get you to the harbor, man,” Jax smoking his usual cigarette.
“Look at this shit.” Sofia shakes her dark hair and points at a huge, glowing billboard: a beautiful, light-complected black woman in a business dress and pleated jacket stands by the office cooler, folder in hand, chatting with her white, handsome boss. JACKIE GOT THAT RAISE! in bold white letters. RAISE YOUR EXPECTATIONS WITH SNOW COAL WHITE MAKEUP TONES!
“I’ve seen them all over town,” from Jax. “Must be a lot of sisters want lighter skin.”
“You mean the brothers want them to have lighter skin,” Monk smiles. In the rearview mirror, he can see Sofia’s eyes crinkle with laughter. “Most of my so-called friends, they’re always trying to pick up white girls.”
“They can’t say we’ll make you look white so you can get a better man, or maybe even pass as white.” Jax shrugs around, grins. “So they use code words like fair, Caribbean, pearl. There’s another company, called Nerola … they’re on my hit list, I’m working on some designs for these motherfuckers, a little truth in advertising.”
“Fucking propaganda.” Sofia downshifts, stops at a stop sign. “Everyone on the street knows lighter-skinned blacks get preference over darker blacks. Who are you going to
hire, Mr. light skin, straightened hair, yes sir no sir? Or Mr. black as outer space, kinky Afro, yeah man, noah man, sheeeeet?” Everyone laughs.
“And those skin lighteners they use have this chemical ingredient called hydroquinone, to destroy dark, unwanted pigmenting cells. Trouble is, it’s highly addictive. Wanna quit? If you stop using their stuff, your skin turns even darker than its original hue … no consumer is more loyal than the addict.”
“That billboard company, it’s the biggest in L.A.” Sofia shifts gears, hands the cigarette to Jax. “No accident their name is fucking Medusa.”
“The Gorgon?”
“Media Environmental Displays, USA.” Jax exhales smoke. “You know what happens when you stare into the Medusa.” Jax widens his eyes, splays his fingers on top of his cap, waves his fingers like grimy black snakes. “Medusa and these companies have technology. This is the twentieth century, man! They have computers now. Brushes, spray cans, stencils, so quaint and nineteenth century. In New York, we heard they were experimenting with giant video loops … soon they’ll be projecting ’em on buildings.”
“On the clouds, raindrops, the fucking sky itself,” Sofia says.
The concrete web of the Manchester Avenue off-ramps and the Harbor Freeway pass over them like a vibrating, rumbling crucifix. Down Flower Street now, Sofia cuts the headlights and pulls up in front of an alley. “Gimme fifteen, baby.” Jax grabs the canvas bag from the backseat. To Monk: “Wanna come?”
“Yeah.” Monk climbs from the VW. They watch a single red taillight disappear down Grand as the VW’s headlights blink back on.
They move silently through the deserted alley. A few blocks ahead, a glowing bank of billboards rises along Century Boulevard.
“Here are the satanic windmills,” Jax chopping through the chain link with a bolt cutter from the canvas bag. “Call me Quixote,” pulling away the shorn fence. “After you, Sancho.”
Walking behind the shadows of the steel scaffolding, “A fool’s quest, then, fighting Madison Avenue?”
Graffiti Palace Page 20
