by Linda Jaivin
‘My fellow citizens? I have an important announcement to make?’ She looked down at her notes and then up at the camera again. ‘I’ve decided that it is in the national interest to encourage certain types of cultural activity?’ She cleared her throat. ‘For example, I think that certain realistic types of painting should be okay? Like, if you draw apples and they look like apples, right? Or you draw a person and it looks like that person?’ She blinked. ‘It’s like taking a photograph or something?’
Julia groaned and put her fist in her mouth. ‘No,’ she begged, ‘don’t talk about photographs.’
‘I mean, painting in a realistic manner isn’t like chopping the heads off stuffed animals or making videos of people eating their breakfasts, or throwing scraps of yarn into piles on the floor, or putting, I dunno, yoo-rine in bottles? It’s like, real art?’
I threw my head back, threw my arms in the air and whooped. At last, someone was talking sense. ‘Yes!’ Sativa looked at me as though I’d just announced I had the ebola virus. Clearly, I was alone in my enthusiasm. Around us, the uproar was immediate. Decapitated teddy bears rained down on the screen. Maddie grabbed the first thing she saw—a videotape of Gabe eating his breakfast—and pulled back her arm to throw it at the television but Julia grabbed her wrist just in time. Destiny ploughed on, looking almost radiant. Though I strained to hear what she was saying, the abuse drowned out the sound of her words.
ZakDot leapt to his feet, skidded on a pile of yarn, and recovered his balance by grabbing onto one of Gabe’s plinths. A ‘D’ shuddered at the impact and tumbled off, just missing a row of urine-filled bottles. ZakDot scrambled up onto the plinth. It swayed dangerously under his feet. Someone shrieked and soon the entire attention of the room was focused on him. As the plinth settled, he struck a dramatic pose, one fist raised, the other clenched by his side. ‘Painters of the world unite,’ he declared in his most theatrical voice. ‘Lay down your brushes. Let’s call a strike.’
The cheers were deafening.
‘I shall be the first to put aside my brush.’ His voice quavered with emotion.
This was a bit rich, if you asked me. The only time ZakDot had handled a brush in three years of art school was when he dropped one into a vat of acid as a statement on the transmogrifying nature of art.
‘Who will follow me?’
Another roar.
I’m thinking, this can’t get any sillier. Then it did.
‘As a gesture of solidarity, I’m cancelling all commissions for paintings,’ Cashie declared to general approbation. She scanned the crowd for me. ‘It’s just a matter of principle, Miles. Nothing personal,’ she explained.
‘Fuck it,’ I retorted ungraciously. ‘I’d rather work on my own stuff anyway.’ I tried to haul myself out of the bathtub but the pillows kept sliding around underneath me.
‘You’re not, like, going to keep painting?’ Sativa prodded. I didn’t answer. She gave me a push—to emphasise her point or give me a hand, it wasn’t clear, but I finally cleared the rim.
‘Art will save the world,’ someone shouted out.
‘Art will save the world!’ the others chorused.
It was getting worse by the minute.
‘Where are you going, Miles?’ Gabe challenged. ‘Aren’t you gonna to stay around and help plan the strike?’
‘Actually, Rover, I’d love to but I’ve got some paintings to work on.’
Gabe glared. ‘Paintings? Guys, will you listen to this? Guys? Miles here has to go home to work on his paintings.’
The commotion died down and everyone turned to stare at me.
‘How could you?’ demanded Gabe. His tone was contemptuous. ‘You’ve always been an irrelevancy, Miles. Now you’re in danger of becoming a sell-out. Do you realise that you’re just playing into their hands?’
My face burned with humiliation. Irrelevancy?
‘Do you realise,’ I spat, ‘that if your cock is long enough to reach your coit, you can go fuck yourself?’
Gabe asked me to repeat myself.
‘I’d rather not,’ I replied. ‘I prefer taking on new aesthetic challenges with every work, unlike certain conceptual sculptors I know.’
‘Careful, Miles.’ He stepped in front of me.
‘What are you going to do?’ I taunted. ‘Bite me? Bark at me? If you get hungry, stop over for some Pal, okay? Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going.’
‘You’re being very stupid, you know.’
‘I’m stupid?’ I snorted. ‘When your IQ reaches 60, Fido, you should sell.’
Julia stepped between us. ‘Aren’t we all on the same side here?’ she wailed. ‘I mean, why can’t everyone just be nice?’
At this point the poet stepped forward and cleared her throat.
‘NICE,’ she bellowed.
Like everyone else, I was distracted by this interruption.
‘Nice is what Costner copped from Madonna.
Nice is what people don’t mean when they say good onya.
Nice is the colour of your girlfriend’s hair.
Nice is the slides you took Over There.
Nice is a film you thought was shit.
Nice is a fuckwit a bogan a twit.
NICE IS FOR NANNAS WITH PROZAC BREATH.
NICE IS ACTUALLY SOCIAL DEATH.
NICE IS AN EMOTIONAL PALLIATIVE.
NICE IS A SEDATIVE EXPLETIVE.
I SAY NICE WHEN I MEAN NASTY!
I SAY NICE WHEN I MEAN NASTY!
NASTY NICE! SUGAR & SPICE!
REDBACK VENOM ON MY THUMB,
COME AND TASTE IT EVERYONE.
IT’S NICE! NICE! NICE!’
When she concluded her recitation, I turned towards the door again. My nose ran straight into a freight train that came in the shape of Gabe’s fist. I heard a sharp crack like a bullwhip. It was starting again. People were trying to kill me, this time not to promote my career but to put a stop to it. I took a wild swing back at Gabe, missed by about a mile and sat down with a thud, holding my nose and swearing. I was astounded to see him hit the floor immediately afterwards. I was certain that if I connected I’d have remembered. A long pair of legs in tracksuit pants planted themselves in front of me. I looked up to see Maddie slapping her palms together, as if to indicate a job well done.
There followed what I believe is referred to as a melee.
Surrealism
ZakDot and Maddie dragged me upstairs. I should have just called it a night, gone to bed and sulked. Instead, I shook them off, stomped into the studio, grabbed my palette knife and attacked the canvas on which I’d begun to work in some of the figures and background. Unfortunately, it being a commission and all, the canvas was first-rate, twelve-ounce, and the knife just bounced off it.
They observed my tantrum in silence. Finally, ZakDot spoke. ‘You know what the most brilliant thing about calling a painters’ strike is?’
I was scrabbling on the floor for my Stanley knife and didn’t answer.
‘No one would notice.’
‘Ha, ha.’ I wasn’t laughing. I released the blade and attacked the painting. The sound of the ripping canvas sent Bacon fleeing for the security of the lounge-room sofa.
I saw Maddie raise her eyebrows at ZakDot. ‘You’re a dickhead, Miles,’ she said, ‘but I’m fond of you. Look after those cuts and bruises. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got unfinished business with Woof Woof.’ She patted me on the bum and split.
ZakDot looked at me as if he were minister for tourism and I was a koala who’d pissed on a visiting dignitary. ‘You’re not really going to keep on painting, are you? It’s embarrassing.’
‘Pretend you don’t know me then.’ I hated the world. I tore some sketches down from the wall and crumpled them up. Still, the little censor in the back of my brain stayed my hand when it came to the better ones. The ones I could see framed and much admired and studied in the sort of major retrospective of my work I imagined galleries would be putting together in fifty years
or so.
‘Don’t try to stop me,’ I raged at ZakDot, hoping he would.
He stepped aside. I stormed out of the warehouse.
The Church of Our Princess Diana had just concluded its evening mass or whatever it was they celebrated. Lack of mass perhaps? To reach the stairs, I had to negotiate a clutch of faux-princesses twittering in the hall. During the course of the evening’s merriment, I had lost the collar of my shirt, and acquired the imprints of fists and feet on various parts of my anatomy. A small cut above my eyebrow was producing a steady trickle of blood down my face. My nose was swelling. At my appearance, the Dianaoids went silent. Before I knew what was happening, they were fluttering around me in a collective dither.
‘Are you—a landmine victim?’ asked one, barely able to contain her excitement. The others held their breath, waiting for my answer.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ I said, thoroughly vexed, shaking off their hands. Feeling suddenly faint, I crumpled to the floor, my stomach heaving.
‘A sick child,’ one of them suggested in a tremulous whisper. ‘Maybe he’s a sick child?’
I confirmed this speculation by throwing up on her shoes, which had inexplicably loomed up in front of my face. They were made, I noticed, of shiny pink satin. They looked expensive. Dabbing at them with the corner of my sleeve, I mumbled an apology into her ankles. I realised that I was clutching her knees with both hands.
Her reaction was no less fierce for being delayed. By the time I escaped the now frenzied pack of princesses by crawling into the stairwell and locking the fire door, I possessed a brand new set of abrasions and contusions that had yet to be inventoried. A cursory glance down at my clothing made clear that the attack had done nothing for my sartorial dignity or general well-being. I felt hideously sober. I realised I was clutching a blonde wig. I detached the rhinestone tiara from the synthetic tendrils, put it on my head and ventured forth into the world.
I stumbled towards Broadway. As I made to cross the road, I had to leap out of the way of a limo with tinted windows that had neglected to signal its intention to turn. ‘What is this?’ I cried, as the limo slowed to a halt. ‘Indicator exemption week for fat bastards in big cars?’
The driver lowered his window and hollered, ‘What’re your eyes—painted on?’ Then he frowned. He appeared to be listening to someone in the back seat. He pulled over, but I wasn’t worried. What was he going to do? Beat the crap out of me? Frankly, I didn’t think there was any crap left for the beating.
The driver stepped out of the car. He was in uniform. He held open the back door for another man, who stepped out with a wry smile on his face. He looked weirdly familiar. But where would I know someone like this? He was a study in masculine elegance, from the silk-weave jumper hanging off his coat-hanger shoulders down to his pressed chinos and boat shoes. The sculpted lines of his torso were visible even through the loose fitting linen of his shirt. His dark hair sprang away from his high forehead and curled towards his collar. His goatee was too neatly trimmed. A stud sparkled in his nose. He looked me up and down. ‘You an artist?’ he asked.
Bloody hell. What was his game?
‘You’ve got paint all over your skin and clothes,’ he observed. ‘You also look like you don’t have a lot of friends at the moment.’ I stared at him sullenly, suspiciously. I still couldn’t work out where I knew him from. I could feel my skin trying to sneak off somewhere safe.
‘Give me a call,’ he said. He flipped open a small silver case, extracted a business card, and held it out towards me. ‘I could be your friend,’ he offered, in a voice so oily you could’ve sold it for eight dollars a tube.
I figured he was a rich pervert who liked to fuck dirty-looking boys, and I was certainly one dirty-looking boy. I took the card and, without looking at it, flicked it into the gutter. ‘Fuck off,’ I said.
His eyes darkened and he shook his head. ‘Your choice, of course.’ He got back into the car and was gone.
The card blew away.
Heading up George Street, I passed the hock shops, video game parlours and the tapas bars. I found myself in the middle of the movie strip. My brain was aching and I needed a diversion. Hollywood films were exempt from the culture tax; Doppler’s advisers concluded that they didn’t really count as culture. Apocalypse Then—the Hale Bopp Story was playing, as was Babe 3—Pig in Parliament and a couple of films based on video games. Others starred giant monsters, aliens, natural disasters and Gwyneth Paltrow. I dug into my pockets but only came up with $5.30. Not enough for a ticket, even with a concession card. I smiled bitterly to myself, thinking of Gabe’s accusation that I’d sold out.
Yes, I thought, jangling my precious little cache of coins, you can say whatever else you will, but you can’t say I’ve sold out.
Selling out. What does that mean anyway, for an artist? In my experience, when artists accused others of selling out it simply meant that the people they were criticising were selling more artworks than they were.
It occurred to me that passers-by were giving me a wide berth. The artist’s plight was to be marginalised and misunderstood, but this was ridiculous. I started to laugh.
A bloke with one squint eye and a vivid scar on his chin who’d been slouching against a poster of Mel Gibson reached out and patted me on the arm. ‘Got a ciggie for an old painting teacher?’ he rasped. I gave him the last of my Drum and rollie papers, and on impulse the $5.30 as well. ‘Conquer Olympus, my lad,’ he said.
Close to midnight on the deserted Pitt Street mall in the business district, I encountered a dozen people wearing aeroplane life jackets and oxygen masks strutting up and down the empty mall. They were holding blank placards and chanting ‘bumbumbum beebumbumbum beebumbumbum’. I stood there watching them for ages but couldn’t work out if it was a protest demonstration, surreptitious performance art or if they were just wackos.
This was a general problem, I found, of millennial life.
In Hyde Park, I came upon a fellow wearing an old-fashioned suit and bowler hat and holding up an apple, just like in that Magritte painting. Upon spotting me, he put down the apple and, from a pile of paper at his feet, picked up a reproduction of a Juan Devila with one hand and a Cezanne with the other. He flapped them about like wings. ‘When the Apocalypse comes,’ he intoned, ‘life under Clean Slate will look like Dejeuner sur l’herbe. There will be fatwahs for all. Fires and no sale. Fahrenheit 452 is the temperature at which art burns.’
An old bum prodded me in the ribs. ‘Got any spare change?’
‘Sorry,’ I replied, turning out my pockets to show him. ‘I’m an artist.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his hard old face dissolving into sympathy. He scrounged in his own pockets and came up with fifty cents. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘go buy yourself some new clothes.’ Then he handed me a flask. ‘By the way. I like the tiara. Nice touch.’
I’d forgotten about the tiara. I searched for something to compliment him on. ‘Groovy medallion,’ I said at last. It looked rather classy, even if it was hanging around his filthy neck by a piece of frayed twine.
‘That’s me Strayun Literary Society medal,’ he said proudly, fondling it with his blackened fingers.
It turned out he was a well-known writer. His books had been part of my high school curriculum. He’d been hit hard by the new taxes, but the final blow had been the abolition of writers’ festivals. Despite the awards and two books on the bestseller list, he’d been homeless for years. Thanks to the festivals, he survived on per diems and long subsidised stays in five-star hotels. ‘And book launches. Not much food but there was always free piss. Those were the days.’
I can’t remember how long I sat with the writer under that big Moreton Bay fig, drinking and talking about life. Eventually, he nodded off. I eased his jacket up over his slumped shoulders and placed my tiara on his head. There was no one else about except a few optimistic Mormons and a lone pickpocket, whom I recognised with a shock as Tony, the former café owner and pianist. He didn�
�t seem to recognise me. I wandered down William Street as evil-looking smoke-glassed casino buses streaked past. Clean Slate encouraged gambling—it kept people from doing art.
At King’s Cross, a section of Sydney too adult to be given a diminutive nickname like Paddo or Chippo, a spruiker pinched my shoulder and intoned the strange mantra, ‘hamburger and pussy, pizza and anal.’
The world was making less and, less sense.
‘Wanna lady?’ A trannie flaunted her breasts at me.
‘Wanna get on?’ whispered a dealer, raising an eyebrow.
‘Wanna punch in the face?’ snarled a man in a hooded sweatsuit, upon whose territory I had, it seems, inadvertently stepped.
‘No thanks,’ I replied, ‘already had one tonight.’
A Hare Krishna offered me wisdom. I turned it down.
A Scientologist offered me a personality test. I was afraid of failing.
A Christian marching band offered to save my soul. I asked how much they wanted for it.
On the corner of Bayswater and Darlinghurst, a superannuated arts bureaucrat hissed for my attention. He flashed a tattered Strayer Council ID. ‘Uninformed police patrol this train,’ he said. He handed me a small bag of pills and powders just as he passed out, sliding down the window of Condom Kingdom, his sparse but oily hair leaving a streaky trail on the glass.
I was not very good at taking drugs. The next thing I knew I was splayed across the pedestrian overpass to Paddington, with my hands clamped over my ears to prevent my grey matter from leaking. I noticed the road below, decided to make some grand pronouncement on art and instead spewed over the rail onto another one of those Stygian casino buses.
Bellus homo
It was morning. My back was stiff, my hands were cold and my face was pressed into an iron rail. Lifting my head, I rubbed my cheeks and could feel tracks that the rail had made. My eyeballs throbbed and my stomach was curled up around my Adam’s apple. I looked around and was shocked to realise that I was sprawled on the front steps of an elegant terrace house in what appeared to be the heart of Paddington.
