Letter

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I told Alex at the coffee shop jokingly that I was going to see a play called “Straight White Men” because I wanted to see something about people just like me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As the audience walks into the upstairs theater at the Steppenwolf, a hiphop tune blares and two transgender actors in bedazzled jumpsuits shake their hips to the booming bass when not showing people to their seats or handing out earplugs. When the show begins, the same pair go up on stage and explain that the music was meant to make us uncomfortable the same way that people like them—neither he nor she but they—often feel in the larger culture. Then they reassure us that the rest of the evening will only concern normal men who identify as men so we can all rest easy. I was hoping they’d turn the music back on after they were done talking, but no such luck.‌
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‌The set is a typical American living room. Our host/ushers escort two white men onto the stage and place them on and behind the centrally-located couch. The one sitting down starts to manically jab at a video-game controller, aiming his efforts out at us, the fourth wall, while the other one harasses and distracts him, trying to get him to stop playing and pay attention to him rather than to the game. They are meant to be grown brothers lapsing into childishness on a Christmas visit to their childhood home. The father and third son arrive and more horseplay ensues. Just so us rubes in the seats don’t miss the message, the sons play a customized version of Monopoly renamed Privilege. I get up and leave after twenty-five minutes.‌
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‌Walking down Halsted in the pelting rain toward the shelter of the Apple Store’s overhanging roof to wait for the bus home, I wonder what pissed me off so much about the play. The characters seemed based on sitcom archetypes rather than living people. Judging by the hearty laughter of the rest of the audience at their antics, this was not a problem for anyone but me. The abrasive intro set up an expectation of something that might challenge but what I sat through was a tired pastiche reenactment of scenes from TV shows. I wondered whether the playwright had met any actual people in her life, let alone the titular straight white men.‌
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‌In an interview I found online the playwright talks about challenging herself to write about what she dislikes and makes her uncomfortable. She wants to write the play she herself least wants to see. Well, she certainly succeeded in writing a p[ay that one straight white guy couldn’t sit through. I wasn’t shocked or offended during my twenty-five minutes at the Steppenwolf. Straight white men in this country have reached our nadir at this point; a glance at the news any given day will convince any idiot of that. I have no problem with critiques of the patriarchy or knocking those in power off their pedestal; I just didn’t see anything on that stage which reflected any sort of lived experience or had anything meaningful to say. ‌
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‌In the couple reviews I read when I got home there’s mention of conflicts between the brothers about life-goals and direction later in the story; some kind of critique of capitalism as well. I didn’t stay long enough to see any of that. Ideas are fine in a play (or in any art) but they can’t be delivered without first selling one on a premise. If you’re gonna write a polemic you better be damn clear on what it is you’re haranguing about. The magic of theater is its capacity to take us into another world—be it kitchen-sink or flight-of-fancy—but this night I was just left fidgeting in my seat. I kept thinking back to the booming music before the play started and those two actors in jumpsuits dancing up and down the aisles. I wanted to watch more of that. Instead, what I got was a failed attempt at a dramatized lecture on the hollowness of the dominant culture. I would’ve been glad to’ve had my assumptions undermined or to’ve even been offended a little. Some of the reviewers of this play wondered whether the playwright was on the side of the white guys or making fun of them. My confusion was more fundamental: I couldn’t believe a single thing I was seeing before my eyes.‌

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Porkchop and I didn’t always get along. But because he had been Shay’s companion for about eight years by the time her and I got together, dealing with him was the price of admission. Like his owner, Porkchop had personality to burn. For a being who weighed under twenty pounds he had a mighty gravitational pull. There were few rooms he ever entered in which he wasn’t the center of attention.

For the three years we lived together I walked him around the long Beverly block from Shay’s house almost every day. The first couple hundred steps would usually be a sprint with me huffing and puffing to keep up. Then, like a rubber band, he’d change direction and investigate the first of a dozen smelling spots along our route. We’d stop-start our way all the way back home. In the winter months, when there was salt on the sidewalks, I had to put little orange balloons on his feet to protect his paws and a sweater to keep him warm. He tolerated it until the instant his feet hit the ground; then he was ready to run.

Because I didn’t have a day-job most of those years, Porkchop and I were in the house alone a lot. You’d think he’d get used to me after awhile. But almost every time I’d get up from the table he’d start barking as if I was an intruder in the house. Little dogs can be pretty neurotic and nervous about movement in their vicinity but I couldn’t help but take it personally at times. In my darker moods or when Shay and I weren’t getting along, I’d interpret the way he looked at me as malevolent; like he was just biding his time, secure in the knowledge that I’d be gone soon enough and he could have her all to himself again.

A lot of that is projection of course. We’re always projecting feelings and motivations on those around us, be they two- or four-legged. But of course he did outlast me. He was Shay’s faithful companion for about fifteen years. Up until last weekend. He had lost his sight and hearing over the past couple years, but his tail still wagged and he still had an appetite, so Shay would make sure to keep him away from stairs and not leave him alone too much. However, in the past few weeks he had stopped recognizing her and she made the decision to put him down. I offered to be there the way I was when she had to do the same with her cat, Gustav, but she declined my offer. I understood, as we had only just begun to be friends again after little to no contact for about a year. Still, I would’ve liked to have been there to pay my respects. I raised my glass in his honor at the bar more than a couple times that night.

RIP Porkchop. You were a pistol.

p.s. I’m honored to be drawing the band during a performance of Herbie Hancock’s “Flood” LP on Wednesday, March 1st. I’ll also have a show of paintings up on the walls for the night as well. Details here.

p.p.s. I wrote more about the Raymond Pettibon show for Vol.1 Brooklyn and took my first stab at theater-reviewing for the Reader.

I was gonna go to New York a couple weeks ago to see Raymond Pettibon’s retrospective but a snowstorm cancelled all flights in and out of the city. I had planned to go to the museum with my friend Gil, but because I had to reschedule the trip to last Wednesday he couldn’t make it. It was probably just as well that I went through it alone. The sheer volume of work alone required all my attention. Also the fact that Pettibon’s pictures have to be read as much as seen would’ve left me little chance to socialize.

In one of the pieces about his childhood a young Pettibon says, “I want to read the pictures.” when first looking at art. That’s what I did for about three hours last Wednesday. As a rule, I barely read wall labels in art shows. I want to take in the pictures with my eyes, free of language. Pettibon makes this impossible. You can’t just look at his drawings because then you would miss at least half the experience. So I moved slowly from piece to piece, over seven hundred of them, on three floors of the museum, reading and looking, looking and reading. Every now and then I’d step back and look around, sneak a peek down the hallway to the next room, then dive back into the text. The experience was kind of like reading a book but not in your head but out in the open; not sitting still but walking.

It being New York, I instantly recognized a couple of my fellow visitors. Kim Gordon crossed my path several times which was a bit distracting. Not because I wanted to talk to her about Sonic Youth or talk to her at all but because I know her and Pettibon go way back, so seeing her made me wonder what looking at all his stuff was like for her and that took away from my own concentration. Still, I was glad she came to give one of her peers her time and respect; it’s one of the best feelings to know other artists appreciate what you’ve done. I also saw the tattooist and artist Robert Ryan strolling through with friends. My friend Tim put out a beautiful book of his work last year. I’ve never met him, so to see him here was like seeing someone from a book suddenly come to life. But then much of the experience during those three hours had a dream state feel to it.

By the time I made it down to the second floor (I’d started on the fourth), I began to hit a wall. I couldn’t read every single line in every picture but had to pick and choose. Sensory overload is a common thing on any museum visit but this was different because of all the words swimming in my mind amidst all the images. It was one of the most intense art experiences I’ve ever had. Because I’ve done art myself for over thirty years, it gets harder and harder to get out of my own way of thinking and just appreciate someone else’s way of looking at the world. Pettibon did that and I’m grateful to him for it. If I lived in New York, I’d go to the show every day for an hour for a week, but I don’t so I had to be satisfied with the compressed three hour chunk I could afford. Then I left and went around the corner to Katz’s for a pastrami sandwich. It was a cheesy tourist move but that’s what I am in New York so I felt no shame about it.

Before heading back to LaGuardia, I met my friend Mick at a place called the Peculiar Pub. I walked in a couple minutes before they were open, interrupting the bartender’s phone call with her mother. She was saying how she was going back to school. She sounded excited. Then Mick came and we talked about Pettibon, about the tour he was planning for his band, how he was about to move because he and his roommate had unexpectedly won the low-income housing lottery. He’d been talking about leaving to go back to his native Detroit but paying half as much in rent was giving him pause. Of course it was also half the space, so much of his belongings would have to go into storage. At one point the conversation drifted to amusement parks which seemed appropriate because that’s what New York City feels like these days. He’s been there awhile now but said he could never think of it as home.

I “met” Mick on Twitter but we’ve since developed an actual friendship. I had a few interactions with Pettibon on Twitter as well but don’t know if we could be real friends. What he does on there is very much like what he does in his pictures. It’s elliptical, sometimes inscrutable, but often hilarious and almost always poetic. He’s not really one for straight answers. In any case, I’ve been off Twitter two years so I wouldn’t know how else to reach the man. I’m just glad he does what he does.

p.s. I wrote about the French poster show at the Driehaus for the Reader.