confessions IV

I was finally star-struck at work. So star struck that I broke down and told the star I was a fan, something I’m totally against, for the idea of infiltrating an artist’s life with your own selfish need to make yourself known has always seemed a bit…tasteless. But I lost it on Saturday. It was Annie Sprinkle!

She had come to the info desk to ask for a wheelchair. Spilling out of her low-cut dress, I’d recognize her chest anywhere, but when she gave me her license (in exchange for the chair), and I saw her name, the fact that I am a fan of her writing just CAME OUT OF ME. I HAD NO CONTROL. I was shaking and smiling and I showered her with tickets and told her if she needed anything to just ask. She was amazing and so kind. She even asked my name. When she smiled the little diamond on her left canine tooth glittered. She introduced me to her mother and her partner, and when she left, gave me (and R) her cards.

While an undergrad, I read a lot of Annie Sprinkle’s writing and looked at a lot of her art. Thanks to the post-feminist backlash (a period for which Generation X is the sole heir), I was given the opportunity to explore and study sexual paradigms previously unavailable, for the most part, to women. And not only did I have the chance to study these ideas, but, thanks to the era, I had the chance to evaluate these paradigms without a social filter. Annie Sprinkle’s sex-positive intellectualism was (and is) by far my favorite.

It was a joy to meet her.
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After work, later in the evening, I sucked it up and met some friends in Chinatown for the CalArts MFA show.

If you’re not familiar with Los Angeles, CalArts is the city’s renegade art school: many of my co-workers and many local artists are involved with the institution, Michael Asher, for one. I’ve heard tell that when CalArts started, it didn’t issue grades. Since then, while it has tweaked its grading process, but continuted to be the epitome of *artschool. *Free. *Creative. One frequently hears Oh, that’s CalArts for you.

From all the rumors I’ve heard about the school, I was expecting the art show to feature actual souls on canvas. I was expecting shit-paintings and throngs of people painted white stampeding through the streets, movies of internet suicides. It thought there would be images of Islam, or dissected octopuses, or…or…

I took the train, but ended up walking from Union Station instead of taking the Gold Line…so I was late…so late…A had to wait for me…by the time I got there, I was sweating and breathless, and she was calm, sitting on the bench, waiting, a bit socially anxious, and dressed to the nines in a purple cardigan set and matching purple eyeshadow.

She said the shows were uninspiring.

But she’s a depressive like me.

And as we walked through the galleries (and looked for beer), waiting for Aa and Il, we saw some interesting stuff. But it was pretty tame. Very delicate. Light. More concerned with delicacy of design than intellectual politics.

There were print-outs of crumpled paper. A tiny terrarium of tropical plants, some paintings of closets, some optical illusion-ish wall-sculptures.

No souls. No shit.

We saw some people we knew and did the stop and say hi thing.

Then Aa and Il showed up. Aa knew a lot of people, so Il and A and I stood around and talked about our periods.

We continued to walk around. The galleries were shutting up, and I needed to go to the bathroom, so we walked over to Mountain Bar, where one of us had a panic attack, so we scurried back out into the streets, through an alley of supermarket fun rides, over to Hop Louie.

At the bathroom, a single stall at the back of the bar, I had to wait while some chick took forever powdering her nose.

Then, we sat and chat…tryied to figure out if we wanted to get a drink or leave…Aa&Il were both tired because they’d been working all day, and they’re moving into a new place, and they just got a new cat, and it’s the end of the semester. A was thinking about boys. And I always turn into a pumpkin at midnight. So we decided to call it a night.