Nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels

The other night some friends and I watched John Waters' 1974 classic Female Trouble. Most people find comfort in their roots, the place they came from. For me watching Divine run by seedy Baltimore row houses in her two-tone beehive hair and sequence animal print one-armed dress is familiar, it's comfortable. I'm lucky to say that I share my Towson High School diploma with both John Waters and Divine, fellow alums. Besides this, the John Waters vintage of bad taste was welcome in my house and often introduced by my dad. I remember watching Hairspray in middle school—which compared to the 70's Xrated classics seems like a Disney film— and loving the asthetic immediately.

As soon as someone got a driver's license in high school we migrated to
Fell's Point to scrounge through thrift stores and comtemplate what we would get pierced when we turned 18. Inevitably John Waters would be sitting with a friend, smoking a cigar, and selling vinyl records and ceramic figurines at a table on the pier. During sophomore year, Mr. Waters filmed Serial Mom in the halls of our high school, and all classes virtually stopped. Our faces were pressed to the windows watching Kathleen Turner's suburban mom run over a teacher, post parent-teacher conference, in her sedan.

I'm taking the "Lucky Streak" Greyhound bus to Atlantic City tomorrow for our annual family vacation at the Jersey Shore. My family moved several times when I was growing up, leaving and then returning to Baltimore, but I've spent every summer at the Jersey Shore; swimming, reading, napping, eating Jersey tomatoes and peaches and every kind of seafood, playing Hearts, and falling asleep in a room that faces the ocean on the land my great-grandparents bought. I can't wait to spend the week with a book in the sand. It's one of the most comforting rituals in my life. Comforting, just like Harris Glenn Milstead's obese Divine walking down the aisle in drag in a see-through wedding dress, no underwear, big bush exposed—It's just like a bedtime story, just like home.

Accessible Luxury

Polaroid of Roommates 

This Thursday I’m participating in an advertising "ideation" on the topic of pleasure. When my employment was thin a couple of years ago I signed on to the focus-group circuit, making my way through tedious arguments and repetitive catch-phrases while trying not to roll my eyes every other minute. It’s amazing how some people actually find a large supplement to their income participating in the round table medium.

One of the more lucrative focus-groups I landed was called the “Dove Manifesto” which eventually contributed to those happy ladies posing for skin firming ads that everyone seems to be talking about this month. I found the Dove discussion via word-of-mouth and pimped myself as a “beauty expert” due to my experience with the visual arts. Midway through the session I found myself arguing with Amanda Lepore about whether or not the size of a woman’s lips directly corresponds to her beauty quotient.

This week I’ll be discussing “pleasure” as a visual artist and member of the “accessible luxury” division of the group. I'll also probably eat too many complimentary croissants. We’ve been asked to bring in something that “pleases us,” as part of an ice-breaker activity, and so I feel the pressure of anticipating show-and-tell for the first time in about 22 years.

Last week JennyJ posted a challenge which falls somewhere between a self-help exercise and stream of consciousness brainstorming. I became absorbed in her list of “100 things you like in no particular order.” It’s quite nice to find you have a lot in common with someone who lives across an ocean, who you’ve only met in the blog realm. I’m not sure how this week's focus-group will play out, but I’d like to remind myself of my own version of accessible luxury, without thinking too hard, just letting 100 things that make me happy fall out of my head, no editing—It can’t be too hard—

1. Polaroid camera
2. fat seagulls
3. walking a new block in New York
4. reading recipes
5. previews
6. a never-ending cup of coffee on the weekend
7. making lists
8. Baltimore
9. coarse salt
10. sleeping in
11. eye contact
12. John Denver
13. running in the street in Brooklyn
14. walking fast
15. cell phone etiquette
16. thank yous
17. canoeing
18. tequila
19. saying "fuck"
20. cars that wait for pedestrians
21. private karaoke rooms
22. deep breaths
23. sweating
24. looking at the tops of brownstones
25. eavesdropping on public trains and in public spaces
26. calling a long-distance friend
27. people who move away from the subway doors
28. cooking dinner for a group
29. meat markets and cheese stores
30. playing charades
31. laughing too long at a stupid joke
32. the tick of a sewing machine
33. missing a character from a book
34. nailing a Q and U in SCRABBLE
35. biking home at night from a friend’s house
36. talking about Rome with Caitlin
37. cracking lobsters
38. the painted steel elf that sits next to my grandmother’s fireplace
39. holding hands
40. a picture of my brother at age 3 wearing Mr. Potato Head glasses
41. thinking about my brother
42. bocce ball
43. the day a new season is evident
44. packing for a trip
45. washing dishes
46. walking around my neighborhood alone
47. night bugs that make sounds
48. drunk giggling
49. small world coincidences and aquaintances
50. dogsitting and catsitting
51. an unopened bottle of wine
52. a bottle of wine with one friend
53. forearms
54. sleeping dogs
55. cigars
56. making pie crust
57. looking out windows at people below, unaware of you
58. creative license
59. learning something new about politics
60. fixing my computer
61. napping with the windows open
62. Jersey tomatoes
63. remembering a word in Italian
64. tofu
65. hands on backs or shoulders
66. my parents visiting New York
67. recharging batteries
68. agreeing to disagree
69. rehearsal dinners
70. sleeping outside
71. jumping off high places into lakes
72. saying goodnight to roommates
73. teaching someone a new skill with words and example
74. curiosity
75. optimists
76. black humor
77. pessimists
78. hammocks
79. going to the movies alone
80. spending long Sundays with friends and their dogs, on a blanket with snacks in Prospect Park
81. exhaustion after a long day of work
82. Ithaca, New York
83. itchy grass in a big field
84. piles of books
85. knowing all the words
86. friends of different generations
87. anticipation
88. wrapping presents
89. mixing ink and water
90. older couples walking together
91. The Great Gatsby
92. talking about our family with my cousin Caroline
93. photosynthesis
94. epilogues
95. spell check
96. admitting a vice
97. apologizing
98. visiting the house a friend grew up in
99. road trips
100. August

The Gap

I spend the greater part of my work week teaching and interacting with college students. There are a handful of undergrads in the studio whose commitment to their work is motivating. There are some with an extraordinary handle on color and some whose line is intuitive and beautiful. It is good to be surrounded by people making art. It’s also frustrating, as I spend most of my time in the shop teaching, assisting and cleaning rather than drawing.

My job is certainly social, between demos on resists, etching, exposure and one-on-one critiques there is conversation, and music. The students entertain me by recounting their idiocy when they were drunk or high the night before or gossiping about professors. They make me CDs and t-shirts and bring in comics that I’d definitely never read on my own. It’s a funny match, I’m only slightly older by years and I think that is invisible to many of them. While I really enjoy the friendships, it’s my own vision that is colored by years in the working world. Sometimes however, I give myself away.

This month two students asked me to go to Critical Mass where they planned to sell their freshly printed “Fuck the MTA” t-shirts. I said I’d think about it, but by Friday I had plans for a dinner party at my house. The boys approached me at the end of class and I said, “Well I would but I’m having a dinner party...I just bought two pounds of mussels and I need to go home and soak and scrub them, and you know, I’d like to clean the bathroom before my guests arrive.” They looked at me blankly.

Later the next week during our “pre-college” program one of the high school seniors asked me for advice:
“Rebecca, I reeeeeally want to go to this show tonight and I don’t know how to get in, what should I do?”
“Well it’s been a while since I was underage, do you have a fake ID?”
“Ughhh, no, here’s my license how can I try to alter it??”
I took the license and tried to recall how people would re-mark the birthdate, until I noticed the little number and responded in shock, “You were born in 1988!?!”

I’m happy where I am, here in my late twenties, figuring things out. I’m happy that the mistakes I made in college and patchy confusion are behind me. It’s good to be reminded of this, even while I wear my new “Fuck the MTA” t-shirt home on my bike after work, over the Brooklyn Bridge.

A Moveable Feast

Last night I had one of the top ten meals of my life with part of my Brooklyn "family." I wanted to jot down the details so I wouldn't forget any of the courses, which were laced with little sidenotes, but I was too deeply involved in conversation and tasting to think about archives. Writing about a meal the next day is kind of like recounting a vacation when you are back in the office, chilled by AC and slurping down water cooler H20. But I'd like to rethink the delicious tastes regardless.

My Brooklyn friends have formed a club of sorts. We've known eachother for years some friendships emerging from college, and most of the time we spend together we do family-like things, cooking, picnicking, hanging out at home. Having this kind of base makes everything feel stable in the big city. We call our new club "Team Takeout"— we all enjoy running and eating, which is the simple basis for our organization. Having a "team" to run the Prospect Park loop in 90 degree evenings makes it far more likely that you'll finish. We meet on Wednesday nights at J's house and run the loop, catch up on the anecdotes of our past week, whine about our aging bodies, and about half way through, discuss what we will order for dinner. After the run, we clean up, order takeout, uncork the first of several bottles of wine and settle into the couch.

This week Team Takeout really cleaned up, and we went out to dinner at J's husband's Brooklyn restaurant. There were a few couples dining when we arrived. We orderd a Piedmont white, and started talking. J's husband, E, emerged from the kitchen and asked "Do you want me to cook for you guys? I don't think you even need menus." This was quite frankly, one of the best lines I can imagine; Not having to labor over twelve equally delicious menu items, avoiding entree envy, giving the chef complete creative liscence— all the makings of an exquisite evening and a perfect August meal.

We started with a yellow tomato gazpacho and heirloom tomato panzanella with mild goat cheese and peaches. Next arrived rainbow trout over sweet corn and chanterelle mushrooms with a grilled peach, a perfect sweet and savory balance. We ordered a bottle of Pinot Blanc from the North Fork and moved onto an Intermezzo of buttermilk peach sorbet with currants. The meal proceeded: olive oil seared tuna and grouper over sweet red peppers and a bitter but flavorful lemon jam, followed by veal with roasted beets and onions, crispy yellow squash, eggplant caponata and ramps. The portions were all perfectly satisfying without being overindulgent. Finally, we stuffed ourselves with a sample of four desserts-- a warm chocolate cake with olives and ice cream, panacotta, homemade mint and bittersweet chocolate ice cream with cherries, and a summer berry crisp. Uffa, era buonissimo.

We talked about families, work, bosses, sex. Periodically E came out to check on us, giddy with his last creation. The restaurant was fairly quiet so he was able to spend time creating our meal and I imagined that this kind of off-menu tasting experience might be similar to how I approach making an etching—keeping in mind the number of processes I've learned, acquiring a new vocabulary for subject matter, planning the production with flexibility for new marks and change and then trying to separate my mind from my well trained hands and let them do the work.

I love the process of putting ingrediants together and venturing away from a recipe. I know I'm forgetting half of the accents E so delicately served us. The meal was phenomenal and unexpected, sensory-loaded. And the company, of course, restorative, hilarious, comforting. I never want to stop appreciating friends who have known you long enough that you don't need to explain much about your thought process or mood or humor. It just is.

E works harder than most people I know with longer hours and less free time, but he is damn good at what he does, I think he's one of the best. Though the field seems a bit cutthroat, I suppose it is rewarded with social prestige, as it should be. Of course I am slightly partial to people who get their hands dirty, and spend their time making things. But regardless it is just so positive to see someone who has found the work they are meant to do. After dinner I biked home through Gowanus, the neighborhood pool was closed, reflecting, the streets quiet beyond 3rd Avenue and finally the heat had settled a bit. I slept well for the first time in weeks.

Negotiations

This morning A, the two-year-old I take care of several days a week, asked me for a bite of my bagel, I handed it over to her and watched as she ate all the cream cheese off the top. Then she gave it back and I spread a new layer and dug in to my breakfast, tasty though a little soggy. A is not a big fan of clothing lately so after a couple screaming fits as I came after her with a shirt, I dressed her for the park in a diaper, hat and shoes and then covered her little body with a thick layer of 50 SPF sunscreen which sat on top of her skin as a slimy coating for nearly an hour. When we arrived at the park a greasy imprint of her torso remained soaked in my shirt. Later on the edge of the sandbox, with sweat dripping down my back and sun scorching into the part in my hair, I allowed A to cover my legs with the Brooklyn grade A sand (past sandbox excavations have unearthed used condoms, broken glass, and rat poop). I’ve now returned to the house, whipped up some mac and cheese, only for A to ask me for oatmeal, and finally settled her into her nap. I am officially wilted.

I’ve always taken care of children, somehow it’s been the kind of extra cash that fits in, and makes sense, and I guess I’m pretty good at it, maybe because my sense of humor is just bizarre enough to appeal to them. When I lost my job two years ago, a good friend’s father simultaneously had a new baby with his second wife, and I signed myself up for more lessons in the language of baby negotiations. Overall I’ve learned much about human beings, we are extremely complex and intuitive creatures and the tiniest event at an age of just a handful of months can make impressions that might sit below the surface but never quite fade away. The way we acquire language is fascinating, mimicking words, then stringing them together, putting the first person off till a later date. Babies are underestimated, they read adult emotion very well and they react, their personalities are intact from day one and then gently melded by surroundings. And overall I think that we slump into this world as kind creatures, selfish but social. We want to know others and learn from them and human touch is very important. Then I’m not sure what happens…

I love the girl I take care of now. I’ve fed and talked to her since she was 5 months so I feel we do have a very specific friendship. And though sometimes this job does seem in direct contrast to my career, I’ll often think, maybe it’s not. Most of the visual imagery I work with relates to human emotion and the processes of communication and relationships, and bodies we move around in. When you take a minute to de-focus, there isn’t much of a distance between 3 and 30. Somedays though, I’m selfish too, I just want my own bagel, straight from the toaster, with smooth cream cheese, no finger prints, no stray crumbs.