Art’s Theory 7

chapter seven

Live Nude Girls

          No matter what was said a few chapters ago Sam Bored is not considered a romantic locally.  Most other artists found him to be oddly intellectual and prone to scientific reasoning. His postmodern paintings use hard-edged sculptural forms in three dimensional spaces.  These illusionistic images are both mentally trompe l’oeil and physically impossible.  Like Sam, the paintings look rational enough at first but soon change into something much less predictable.

          Sam sat alone in his studio, oddly depressed by the wad of money in his hand.  He felt like a sellout.  A corporate criminal, an economic force behind the worst kind of human exploitation, now owned his best work.  Like all commodities in a capitalistic system, Sam had his price: cheap.  The hypocrisy hurt worse than a punch in the gut.  He sparked a lighter and took a deep drag off a freshly rolled joint.  If only he had a fireplace to pee in ala Jackson Pollock.  Looking down he saw a six-legged roach on his studio floor.  The bug’s random movements seemed so mechanical.  Sam’s delusional mind imagined it to be a robotic “bug” left by Mr. Probity to spy on him.

          With his left foot, he flipped open the overdue library book on the floor.  An encyclopedia of optical illusions, it contained a comprehensive sampling of hidden images, visual conundrums and various graphic designs that exploit the limitations of human eyesight.  Sam had always been fascinated by our optical formation of reality and loved the visual shock of realizing that things are not always what they seem.  Color, itself, is an illusion – it only exists in our brains.  For some mysterious reason our eyes can only detect the narrow band of electromagnetic radiation known as the visual spectrum.  Since Newton passed sunlight through a glass prism and discovered a rainbow of colors, science has assumed the cones in the back of our eyes see different wavelengths of light as specific colors.  But then Edwin Land produced full color images by projecting one black and white image through a red lens with an additional black and white projection superimposed.  No one seems to have a good explanation of how all the colors show up and how they get assigned to the correct objects.  Land’s demonstration always reminded Sam of how a broken shard from a hologram still contained the entire image.  Could it be that an electromagnetic wavelength doesn’t determine the color?  Is light a wave or a particle?  It turns out to depend on which one we look for.  Light can be both a particle and a wave, but never at the same time. 

As Alice would say, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

≈

            Yttib Yddub looked up from his pulp fiction novel about Sam Bored to survey the space plane’s interior.  The two day journey to VER seemed to get longer and more futile with each trip.  Factory production for his company, like all the others, was way down.  Add to that the free-falling quality control statistics and the upcoming labor strike and one could understand Mr. Yddub’s desire to just stay home.  But there was no getting away from it back on REV where the citizens are irate over product shortages, safety recalls and price increases for devices that no longer work properly.

            All Yttib Yddub could focus on was his pending retirement.  The company gave him a huge bonus to stick around and train his replacement.  But finding good applicants who are willing to travel to VER was getting quite difficult.  The big salaries used to provide a qualified pool of talent until all the social unrest broke out on VER.

            Mr. Yddub had gotten used to the bizarre bug world – well maybe not the darkness. Unlike REV, the bug world moon did not rotate on its axis, always showing the same face towards its giant gas planet host.  This caused VER to not have normal day and night cycles.  Instead, the bug world had very long periods of daylight followed by equally long spans of darkness.  Intense summer like heat during daylight periods got replaced by a frigid cold endless night.  These extreme cycles of light/heat and dark/cold caused unpredictable ice melt floods that quickly turned into inferno like droughts.

            For the whole history of the bug people, when the binary sunlight on VER was blocked by the gas giant planet, HUE, they all feared it would never return.  The panic and resulting chaos was something their species had struggled to overcome.  It wasn’t that they couldn’t remember the last time the phenomenon had happened.  The bugs were just inherently pessimistic, like the Mesopotamians.  Lately the mass hysteria has been replaced by adolescent bugs using the darkness as an opportunity to act up.

            Wow!  He spends way too much of his time thinking about vermin.  Yttib Yddub returns to his half finished novel and attempts to escape into a water world blue planet where bugs only come in very tiny sizes.

≈

            Sam’s out of body experience is amplified by Brian Eno tape loops bathing the studio in an ambient atmosphere of hypnotic sounds.  He is engulfed in a dream state, floating near the ceiling and looking down on his body slumped into the comfy chair.  Ten minutes later, the Eno tape is playing an up-tempo selection.  The lyrics slowly enter Sam’s unconscious mind – words about Van Gogh.

          “On a hill, under a raven sky

          I have no idea exactly what I’ve drawn.

          Some kind of change, some kind of spinning away

          With every single line moving further out in time.”

          A roach falls from his resin-stained fingers and lands on the paint splattered floor.  Feeling even more antisocial than normal, Sam decides to forgo meeting up with Zia and being forced to endure Max’s insults.  With cotton mouth and nothing to drink in the studio, Sam bravely heads out for a quick beer.

          Reflected lights bounce off wet steamy city streets, creating a sparkling warm evening glow.  Sam rotates back towards the green entry door and turns his key in the rusted deadbolt lock.  As he returns his attention to the rain-soaked street, a stray dog appears out of nowhere, looks him directly in the eye and turns to lead the way.  Following the dog down the sidewalk feels like déjà vu all over again.  As conscious thought wakes Sam from his trance, he nearly steps on a wino passed out on the concrete. 

          Sam is surprised by the homeless man’s appearance.  Not the patina of grime, all the street people had that – it became their skin tone.  His ear, the guy had the longest ear Sam had ever seen on a human.  The top was nearly level with the top of his head, like a dog. 

          Sam crouched down to get a closer look and found a face covered in fine gray hairs, increasing the dog-like look.  But then Sam noticed the guy’s jaw line and stood up in fright.  More than his ears, the sharp-edged Dick Tracy jaw had to be a birth defect, or the result of some horrific accident.  Sam was repulsed by a vision both impossible and, somehow, familiar.  Using his foot, Sam nudged the guy awake.

          “What the fuck?” the incoherent drunkard slurs up from below.

          “You’re not looking so good, buddy,” Sam observes.

          “Fucking motherfuckers gonna fuck with me?  Jive shit bastards!”

          “What’s with all those sirens?” Sam wonders out loud, stepping around the street person and jogging up to the corner.  He sprints towards a police barricade and is engulfed in a sea of flashing emergency vehicle lights.  By the look of that blood stain on the sidewalk, somebody must have died.  He tries to get closer only to be rebuffed by a nearby cop who commands him to leave the area.

          Sam wandered over to the television trucks parked on the side street and caught a reporter doing a live feed for this breaking news story.  Asking around, Sam is told that some nut had jumped off the hotel roof.  But what was worse, or better if you’re a news show, was the freak existence of video tape.  A traumatized Japanese tourist had captured the impact while filming his wife exiting the swank hotel.  What a bonanza for the local affiliates, the only dilemma being how much gore could they show without angering their voyeuristic audience?  Cut at impact or show the blood splatter onto the cameraman’s wife?  There will soon come a day when nothing will shock us anymore.

          Sam felt sickened by the video being edited inside one of the television trucks.  The violent image of a human body exploding upon impact with the pavement was stuck in Sam’s mind.  He hypnotically walked for blocks, wandered across the railroad tracks and entered a bright red door below the flickering neon sign advertising: Live Nude Girls.  As his eyes adjusted to the pitch blackness of the strip club, a deep voice commanded, “Five bucks, Buddy.”

          “What?” creeps out of a shell-shocked zombie.  Sam can barely hear the bouncer over the subwoofer beats booming out of this den of iniquity.  The ambience of the music transports him back to the cult of Dionysus.  Reconnecting to his prehistoric ancestors, Sam’s mind was assigning control over to his brain stem and body.

          “Sam, how the hell are you?” the doorman asked with the tone of his voice now an octave higher.  “I didn’t recognize you, come on in bro.  Viper expected you to drop by weeks ago.”

          Sam thinks he says thanks, but never utters an audible sound.  His blood sugar bottoms out as he plants himself on a barstool facing the stage. 

          The strip club’s new tiki bar theme featured photo murals of tropical beach paradises and specialty drink mugs in the shape of Easter Island heads.  Waitresses wearing grass skirts over animal print thong panties and matching push-up bras glide through a crowd of mostly male customers.  Surrounded by primitive torches that remain cold by order of the Fire Marshall, these men are the misbehaving husbands and boyfriends from the suburbs, in the city for some erotic entertainment.  The tiki bar and stage are constructed using bamboo flooring on top of actual six inch thick jungle bamboo poles.  These focal points of the interior face each other, separated by groups of tables and chairs.  Framing both structures are eight foot tall fake palm trees that fool more clients than the breasts jiggling throughout this adult venue.

          “What-ul-it-be?” an impatient bartender asked an out of focus Sam.

          “A pint of Bass ale, please,” Sam barely managed to speak out loud.

          “Put it on my tab,” a sultry voice of temptation pierced the darkness.  With jet black hair and liquid brown eyes, Viper clicked her way up to him while balancing on six inch heels.  Decked out in her stripper costume and makeup, she looked like a pagan goddess searching for a sacrifice.  As if her visual appearance wasn’t enough, an intoxicating aroma of essential oils surrounds her flawless glowing body.

          “Well if it isn’t my old friend, the G-string queen,” Sam perked up with a smartass grin on his face.

          “Fuck you asshole!”  Viper’s expression turns hard – that steely snake eye that allowed her to survive, a look Sam is familiar with.  She barely paused before adding, “Don’t you still owe me money for modeling?”

          “I didn’t know you were actually keeping track of the hours.  How am I supposed to pay you?  I’m not exactly made of money.   Well, actually, I do have a wad in my pocket tonight.  Believe it or not, I just sold a painting to an evil old man an hour ago,” Sam confessed.

          “I’m so happy for you, how about forking over my cut, Rembrandt.”

          “Take it easy, Aphrodite.  It was only a grand.  You make more than that every week just changing your clothes to music.  After I pay my back rent to Zia and buy some paint, I’ll be lucky to have anything left for food.”

          “You don’t look like you’re starving to me; and the money I make dancing is beside the point.”  Viper looked deep into his eyes and complained, ‘You’re no different than the rest of these peep show perverts, except for you I give it away.”

          “It’s for Art’s sake,” Sam lamely joked.

          “Fuck you.  Stop pretending to be so naïve.”

          Sam put his hand on her luscious brown shoulder and returned her intense gaze.  “I can pay you right now if you need me to.”

          “You can pay me with your time.  I need you to do something for me.  Be back here at closing time to help me out and I’ll forgive what you owe me.”

          “To do what, exactly?”  He did not like the ambiguity of Viper’s bargain.  She traveled among much rougher company than Sam – no one’s idea of a tough guy.  Sam was a lover not a fighter and not that great of a lover either, by the way.

          “A very grungy looking old woman somehow got backstage into the dressing room last night.  I was alone back there at the time, so I stood up to go alert security.  But before I could escape the homeless woman spoke and your name quickly came up.”

          “Me?  How am I involved?”  Sam’s voice has taken on a slightly frightened tone.

          “It’s a long story Sam.  You know, she sure seemed to know a lot about you,” Viper purposely added to Sam’s paranoia.

          “Like what, exactly?”

          “Oh my God Sam, the way her skin wrinkled deep into her face was freaky.  It was hard not to stare at the poor woman’s disfigured face,” Viper over emoted.

          “If you are trying to freak me out, it’s working,” Sam confessed.

          “Sorry, that was not my intent,” Viper lied and then slowly licked her dark red lips.   She made eye contact with Sam and tried to read his mind – a power she has not managed to acquire, yet.  Stepping into his personal space, Viper touched her cheek to Sam’s and whispered moistly into his ear, “I don’t have the time to explain all the details right now.  I’m up next - gotta go.” 

          Viper turned quickly, paused for effect, and then slowly walked away from Sam without looking back.  Her smell was now all over him and, for just a second, he wanted to consummate their bond.  As Viper’s stiletto heels tapped across the bamboo floor, Sam ogled the world’s most incredible ass.  Every guy here would give a week’s pay to bone her.  Many of them will waste that money just for lap dances from the club’s most popular stripper.  Viper had been offering herself up to Sam for years.  And even though Zia never believed his denials, Sam’s relationship with the stripper had always been strictly platonic.

          Lust – one of the deadly sins.  Lust is an all consuming animal instinct known quite strongly to the male adolescent mind.  It assures our procreation and survival, but limits our intellectual potential.  Our minds belong to the world of the gods while our bodies live in the animal kingdom.  Civilization results by containing our animal urges; mind over body.  But in this nudie bar the animal brain dominates all in attendance.

          Sam sat back and let out a sigh of frustration; another perfectly good high ruined.  As he gulped down the free beer, a favorite Roxy Music song erupted with the roar of a motorcycle.  Love is the Drug, while unusual, was far from the strangest song Sam had picked for Viper’s striptease.  In the past, she had danced to David Bowie’s Cracked Actor, Iggy Pop’s Gimme Danger, and Frank Zappa’s Dirty Love.  Such musical selections separated Viper’s act from the typical rhythm and blues or contemporary disco soundtracks most dancers used.  As much as he loved these lyrics, “Love is the drug and I need to score,” his all time favorite choice for her was a new song by the Violent Femmes that just repeats its title over and over: Dance Mother Fucker Dance.

          Viper slithers onto the stage and the entire world comes to a halt.  Conversations end mid-sentence and all eyes turn to survey her flawless body -the rhythmic undulations of exposed flesh seducing everyone in the club.  The bouncer, the bartender and even the other dancers can’t resist her allure.  A perfect pair of light brown breasts with erect nipples is released from bondage.  Sam thinks they surely must contain the milk of the gods.  By the middle of the song, the whole room wants to take the vixen home and make her breakfast.  When she turns around, bends over and slides her thong to her ankles, the entire audience is reduced to prematurely ejaculating naughty little boys.  By the end of her act, every penis in the room is giving her a standing ovation.

          Sam finished his English ale and ducked out of the strip club before Viper could return and pressure him into doing something he would regret.  He loved seeing her naked, but, lately, the modeling sessions had devolved into some weird emotional bonding.  Viper had thrown up her entire dysfunctional life while posing nude in his studio.  With no father in her life, she had become dependent on Sam’s Alpha male attention.  But the combination of father figure and sexual tension made Sam feel like an incestuous pervert.  As he climbed the stairs and keyed the studio door, a ringing telephone echoed inside the darkened space.