1st Thurs at OMA

July 5 2007

"Hard to Cry with a Gun in Your Mouth"

Tonight was First Thursday at the Orlando Museum of Art. I’ve gone to special evenings at the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Met, but never here. Heard it was a big singles scene. Who told me that? K? S? Well I guess either of them and their respective husbands would know if it was a singles scene or not, if there was anything worth hunting. Never been my thing, singles places, but I guess I’ll be finding out at some point in the future. In any case, the place reeked of couples and coupledom. Not coupling, that’s a smell I enjoy. This was more....complacent.
The theme was illustration, artwork created for posters, publicity, books, newspapers, magazines. Diving into the surrealism of "Tsunami Moon", the genetic memory of "I’ll Never See Another Butterfly", and that of a friend of a friend’s work [www.briandemeter.com], the work that spoke to me, that hit me, that hurt me to look at it, was "Hard to Cry with a Gun in Your Mouth."
I know that feeling. The cold steel, grey or blued. Slick and hard and smooth. Sliding between my anxious hungry lips. Running my tongue around the sight and flicking it, sucking on the shaft. Cradling the grip in one hand, while the other strokes the chamber, making sure it does not slip from my eager mouth. Hoping for fulfillment. Counting the seconds until it shoots into my throat, into my brain...
Oh I cannot cry with a gun in my mouth. I will laugh with joy, but I will not cry.
There have been times when, speeding down a rain slicked road, the traffic poles were a beacon welcoming me, calling to me. If I swerved just a little bit...but the terror of not dying stops me. To risk, not death, but incapacitation? That I will not do. Trapped in a life I hate, a me I despise, is a sorry enough existence. To be trapped in a body, useless, my mind still functional? Who will pull the plug? Who?
If I cannot live, I do not want to be here.
Homicide can be more subtle than suicide . Driving a person to drink, to drugs, to self-doubt on a scale beyond imagining, making a person crazy enough to want to end life. If I have lost touch with this world, I might as well sever my links to it. But I have not lost touch. It was taken from me. And I want it back.
I will not die. I have a mission, a calling, a charge to complete. I have orders to follow and I cannot leave this world until my work is done.
I am not a gambler, spinning the chamber and cocking the hammer. I will love it, I will make love to it, but I am faking every second. I will pull away and let it discharge wherever it will but not into me. Oh no. Not into me. No. I have a life to live. And I will.
"And I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."