Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  The room is small, a single white open space, packed with a lot of white people.

  Kids from school are dressed down in street clothes, which is weird for me to see—T-shirts, polo’s, jeans, and shorts. I got used to the neckties and khakis and sport coats, so the casual ware looks foreign. But Plaids are still Plaids.

  Byron Hall teachers and Christian Brothers mill about too, the teachers in street clothes, and brothers in all black tunics.

  Father Vincent is the only priest in the joint, doing his God collar thing, and spends most of his time talking with Byron Hall students, whereas the Brothers stick mainly to the other faculty members, like at the mixer.

  Other art patrons look like complete foreigners—small pockets of rich, artsy people in turtlenecks and tweed blazers and dickhead soul-patch facial hair with black-and-white fedoras. My guess is that they live in the area or read about the exhibit.

  Some media arrive and gather material. Reporters for the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore City Paper scribble notes into notepads about particular pieces and interview attendees to get their reactions. Local news channels send reporters to cover the event. One-man camera crews mount hulking cameras on tripods. Beautiful male and female reporters apply makeup and practice their smiles in small mirrors, checking their teeth for stuck food.

  And then there are the folks that you can’t really miss at all. Some are in strollers. Some are in wheelchairs. They clearly know Mykel better than white-bread Byron Hall knows him. It’s the public version of the Black Awareness Table in the cafe. African American and Hispanic men and women celebrate in loud voices, shouting out his name every few words. All are well dressed—nothing but slick suits, big ties, Windsor knots, big lady hats, bright colored dresses, and enormous jewelry.

  A song ends.

  Conversation rises across the room.

  Mykel moves through, chilled-out, all swagger, trying to talk to everyone, while everyone demands he talk to them about his art. I remember when he said that everyone loves a black artist. Jimmy Two, someone all too familiar with crowds and boisterous attention, escorts a circle of females over to Mykel, who greets them each with a kiss on the hand.

  Each wall of the space features Mykel’s chopography and each wall looks almost exactly the same: random photographs chopped up and mixed together like a salad and framed under thick wood. Oval squares. Small squares. Long rectangles. Even a few triangles. The frames arranged to replicate a wall of family photos, varying in shapes and sizes. On a whole, it looks very professional, but I just don’t get it. The chopography. What it means. How it’s considered high art and not something I learned to do when I was in kindergarten. We did shit like this when we learned about consonant combinations from Miss Lydia.

  I ask Aimee a question, but she can’t hear me, which is a fantastic ploy for me to move closer to her. My arm presses into her breasts. She smells like a unicorn. My dick hardens.

  Miss Lydia was my kindergarten teacher and she was young and hot and had big breasts. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that she was young and had big ones. My favorite part of every day was when she’d stop by my desk and I’d feel her big breast press into my arm as she checked in to see how my craft was coming along. Her kindergarten projects were really no different than Mykel’s weirdo art. She’d give us a stack of magazines like National Geographic, Good Housekeeping and Time, scissors, paste, and a sheet of construction paper. Then, she’d ask us to cut out pictures of things that began with whatever combination we learned that day, like wh or th.

  This, to me, is the G-rated version of chopography.

  While similar, Mykel’s version is a far cry from the same fucking thing.

  Elephants with human heads.

  Lamp posts bursting into classrooms.

  Taxicabs parked inside basements.

  Blood-covered newborn babies with ram antlers.

  White people on the light rail, holding on to poles with black fingers.

  Black people with white feet on a beach.

  Men breastfeeding babies on bus benches.

  Women holding their penises while using urinals.

  Little boys jumping rope.

  Little girls in Boy Scout uniforms.

  Dogs fucking cats with dildos.

  Cats in a crowd, hailing cabs.

  Pillows giving birth to frozen turkeys.

  A table of multi-ethnic erect dicks with their passenger balls playing cards.

  Mykel’s chopography is, no doubt, some R-rated shit.

  If a mental health professional ever got their mitts on one of his chopography puppies, Mykel would be thrown in the Shep for sure. I overhear some Inner Harbor, uptight, turtleneck-wearing dildo-douchebag refer to the chopography as “disturbed and disturbing.”

  To be honest, I completely agree, except agree completely separate from them and only to myself.

  85

  I grab a paper cup of red juice for Aimee and myself, even though we just had tea, and I select the wall near the front door. Aimee receives her paper cup with a smile and she follows me through the crowd.

  People are pushy as shit at art exhibits, it is pretty unbelievable—chit-chatting away without a clue who’s around them. I wouldn’t say that I threw any elbows or crashed into anyone, but I definitely kept some strangers on their toes.

  We reach a particular piece and position ourselves in front of it. Prime real estate.

  The photo is of the 55 bus approaching the stop outside of Byron Hall, except this is not your normal 55 bus. Instead, it has giant, leathery-looking, pterodactyl dinosaur wings stretching out from the sides. Spade-shaped blades spike along the roof of the bus like a stegosaurus. Tyrannosaurs feet and baby hands poke out from where the tires should be and an enormous mouth stretches below the front windshield that looks like it’s filled with big, old, bad shark teeth. The piece is framed in a simple, thin, black frame with a custard-colored matt behind the chopography. The name of the piece is Greatness.

  I step closer and see people I know inside the bus. The normal 55 driver who says sixty/forty is even there. I am not there.

  “I have no idea what this means,” I say.

  “An individual’s interpretation plays a major part. There’s a dialogue that takes place between the art and the viewer. Like that miracle line I was telling you about at the end of A Doll’s House. It means something different to everyone.”

  “I call bullshit. This is crazy. This doesn’t mean anything. It can’t possibly.”

  Aimee finishes her juice. “How does Greatness make you feel?”

  “Is this, like, a therapy session?”

  “In a way. Experiencing this type of art is like a therapy session.” She presses herself into me from behind, directing my eyes. “How does looking at this particular chopographical piece make you feel?” She is really into this exhibit and art viewing experience, so I dig deep and try to focus on this bus with the dino parts. Her hands cup my shoulders and stop me from swaying. I focus so hard I feel like a light bulb might burst somewhere in the room, so I stare straight ahead and really focus. I need to do this for Aimee so I push again and think the word concentrate over and over in my head, but I think it so much that after a while the word loses all meaning and doesn’t even sound like a real word and becomes the only word that I want to say at all.

  “What do you feel?”

  “I feel horrible,” I say.

  The problem is that I don’t feel horrible from the art, but rather absolutely terrified from failing to feel anything, failing to have a dialogue with this fucked-up bus. Before she turns this into a pop quiz and asks me why I feel this way, I turn it around on her and ask the same question.

  She thinks for a minute, then says, “He’s captured the feeling of an insider having to take the transportation of an outsider.”

  A group next to us talks about it too.

  “From some of the other pieces I’ve seen, this one seems like an early work. A bit too on-the-nose.”


  “I think we can easily connect the evolution of mankind to technology and the socioeconomic infrastructures constructed to prevent a return to primitiveness.”

  “I like the title. Greatness. But his images are too immediate. There needs to be more subtlety.”

  All I want to do is throw up. I can’t find anything relatable in these glorified collages. Here’s a piece of art. Let’s take a look at it. It’s a public bus with animal parts.

  We stop at the next photo of a beautiful, wild, garden of purple, yellow, red, and green flowers under a massive black sky stuffed with interconnecting and varying sizes of copper, gold, and white plastic tubing. In the middle, a very small single line of copper tubing runs down from the heavens into the garden. The title—Paradise Plumb.

  Aimee examines the holy hell out of the next photo, but I’m over it. This art makes me feel like I have to take a leak.

  I spot-check the crowd again and don’t see Mr. Rembrandt.

  Father Vincent stands by the DJ’s booth with Frank and Anthony, all three drinking the red juice, making their way around the room together at a turtle’s pace. I am so freaking happy to see Frank and Anthony. I honestly didn’t know that they’d still be enrolled as students after everything. If Brother Lee had been the one to break up the infamous hallway showdown, I’m sure they’d be gone for good. Cam and his shitbirds aren’t anywhere to be found. I don’t see Cam or the Plaids or Coach O’Bannon anywhere, but I know they’re around. They’re always around.

  At the front door, Brothers Bill, Fred, and Lee greet the guests as they arrive. This isn’t a school-sponsored event, but Byron Hall very purposefully positions themselves alongside him. The Brothers welcome a couple coming through the door—she has the skin of solid white porcelain and he has the skin of yellowing death.

  Sherman holds Franny’s arm for support as they stop at the table for some juice. He wears a plaid old-timer’s cap and a heavy overcoat even though it’s still summer weather outside. His clothes swallow him whole, they’re so baggy, but he never stops moving, always putting one foot in front of the other. Franny doesn’t look like she’s all that interested in the art on the walls, but Sherman is, which makes her smile because that’s all that matters to her. They pass Father Vincent and Frank and Anthony and stop at Greatness nearby.

  She sees me, and smiles. I hold Aimee’s hand again for Franny to see and she laughs. Sherman can’t understand what she is whispering in his ear at first, but eventually he does and looks over at me, lifting up the brim of his hat to see better. He flashes me two thumbs up, but it’s half-hearted at best as he breaks eye contact with me first and then from Franny, moving on to the next chopographical art. Franny is pulled right along with him. She almost trips but regains her balance, looking back one more time.

  I wave to her and she waves back and that is that.

  86

  There are exactly three different techniques one can use to survive an art exhibit.

  First, there’s the Chin-and-Lean: cross one arm across the chest and bend the other arm up over the one across the chest and rub the chin. Then, after a good chunk of time passes, lean to the right. Hold this position, like stretching a muscle. This will make a person look retarded, but so long as you don’t say anything and continue to shift from right to left, people will think there is some serious art-soaking happening.

  There’s also the Nose-to-Art: this starts from a standing position approximately ten feet away from the intended target. (TIP: this generally works better on larger pieces of art.) From the standing position take one exaggerated step forward, bringing both feet back together in a stationary formation. Then rest, never breaking eye contact with the art. Every three minutes take another giant step forward until you are eventually standing directly in front of the art, your nose almost touching it. Take two steps back. Rest. Then one step forward. Continue until someone approaches and follows a similar pattern of advancing and retreating. This is the electric slide of art watching.

  Finally, there’s the Soft-Laugh-and-Nod: self-explanatory. It’s encouraged to mix nodding, smiling, a quick headshake, or a heavy sigh into the laughter. This will undercut everyone’s own bullshit art ego because they will believe that someone understands or sees something in the art that they themselves have not yet found. Welcome to the mindfuck. Yes.

  87

  I follow Aimee around the room, rotating through my art survival techniques when I see myself on the wall. A small group gathers in front of it. Rembrandt is one of them.

  I’m in an oval frame in the corner of the room, near the DJ booth. Without thinking, I execute the Nose-to-Art at an accelerated rate of motion. The chopographical art is of my world. Quite literally. It’s me, Jeremy, driving my father’s BMW while my father sits in the passenger seat. The photo looks too real to be a fake. I can’t place the photo at first. I’ve never driven his car, or any car for that matter. I look closer. My father’s head was cut and reattached to my body, clutching a book bag to my chest, a Limp Dick at my neck. My head on my father’s body, Windsor knot wrapped tight. There is a price. $65.00. Title of the work: Little Men. That fucker.

  Aimee doesn’t get my frustration. She doesn’t understand why I’m upset. My arms flail about, while she executes the Chin-and-Lean. I tell her how I have been plagiarized and that if she doesn’t see it then she is not the girl I thought she was.

  “Is that you?” she asks, shifting from her right to her left, looking retarded as one does doing the Chin-and-Lean.

  I point to each of my heads—the real head and the chopography head. “That’s me.” I point to my bodies. “And that’s me.”

  A security guard, some beefy, bald-headed fuck, approaches me. “No touching the artwork, sir.”

  “Who is the other person?” she asks, noting the other dissected body and head.

  “My old man,” I say. I lower my hands, which pacifies the security guard

  “Mykel did such a good job. It’s so seamless,” she says. “You can’t even tell.”

  “I don’t like it,” I say, tapping the canvas, first my head then Dad’s body.

  “It’s art, Jeremy. It’s expressive. It’s not reality. It’s the perception of reality.”

  “Hands,” the security guard shouts.

  “This is me,” I say, tapping it. “Not you,” I say. I flip him the middle finger. “I don’t see a bald ass head in there, do you?” I tap the canvas again.

  The guard comes at me.

  “Okay,” Aimee says, taking my hand.

  “This water buffalo doesn’t scare me. I have bacne that scares me more than him,” I say.

  “I think it’s time to go,” Aimee says, slipping her soft hand inside mine again. “It’s time.”

  I look for Frank and Anthony and Father Vincent, but all I see are the Brothers.

  A fucking familiar voice oozes out behind me.

  “This is such a sweet scene. Like Sleepless in Seattle or some shit,” Cam says. “Are you on a date?” he asks. Cam sees the chopography on the wall. “Little Men.”

  Five plaid monkeys flank us, all looking at my photo. Each wears a white polo shirt and some varying base color of plaid pants.

  “Look at Gay Jeremy and his Gay Dad,” Cam says. “Little Gay Men.” He lisps and limps his wrist and does other shit that makes me want to cut off his hands and feet and head and throw his body in the Chesapeake Bay.

  “Jeremy, I need you to listen to me,” Aimee says. “Right now, in this moment, you need to decide what it is that you want to do.”

  She is right. I can’t run forever. I can’t hide forever. I can’t pretend to go unseen. I need to stay in the moment. Have faith. Feel love. Hope for a miracle. Then I see my bus brother from another mother, Mykel.

  Mykel counts cash at the door. A group of girls in short skirts and glittery tops hang out near him. They whistle at him every time he bends over. He takes several twenties from an older woman and hands her a red dot that she places on the art she purchased. I t
ake my wallet out, count out cash, and hand it over to him.

  “What did you think?” he asks, counting a wad of cash again for his group of admirers.

  “You’re good, man. I don’t know how you do it. Maybe it’s a black thing.”

  “Hey, maybe it is.” He folds his cash and puts it in his pocket. “Where’s your girl?”

  “She’s waiting for me. We’re leaving. I just wanted to buy the Little Men.”

  “You can put a red dot on the frame and take it after the exhibit,” he says.

  “I want to take it now.”

  “Not possible,” he says.

  “Extra twenty,” I say.

  “After the show.”

  “Extra forty,” I say.

  Mykel checks his watch.

  Jimmy Two stands with the group of girls off to the side, waiting for Mykel. The room is thinner now than it has been, as people make their way back down to the street. The girls move closer. They call out his name, sing-song. Sing it in songs and say what kind of lewd, sexual things they would do to him if they ever got him alone. He checks his watch again. Brother Lee steps between Mykel and the girls.

  “Do not get distracted, Mykel,” Brother Lee says, “You finish here and then you can go there.”

  “Not at all, Bill. I’m good. I’m right.”

  Mykel and Brother Lee shake hands.

  “You really liked it though?” he asks.

  “Little Men?”

  “Because I know how much you hate people calling you that. It was all you talked about for a minute. But I had to name it a version of that name. That is you. You are it. And I needed you to know that.”

  “I am your little man,” I say. “But your little man only.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear, son.” He takes back the red dot. “Just take the damn thing, while I get at these females.”