A Curious Case of Urban Decay

Last weekend, I went to visit Murray in his studio, at his invitation.  We are not especially good friends, although this may change with some time.  It’s not that Murray and I are new acquaintances.  We’ve crossed paths several times, since we have a few social circles in common.  The culminating point for our amicability was at a gallery opening two weeks ago.  I had arrived to meet another friend who had actually given me the invitation to this event.  Coming late, I found that he had not yet arrived; he texted me a while later saying he was not coming at all.  Having ensconced myself in a corner by the bar, I decided not to leave.  I managed to secure a steady and free flow of alcohol from the bartender.  By chance, he originated only a few locales over from my own home town. We established a casual joviality that contrasted with the snobbery of the other guests.  Naturally, if you speak with anyone at these sorts of gatherings, they make a pretense of egalitarianism in an abstract sense.   Their classicism is nonetheless blatant.  They view the work staff with the same equanimity as a decorative plant or a trash bin.

I digress.  At any rate, I found myself alone in a maze of bewildering paintings and photographs of performance art.  Patrons of the arts, despite being devoid of aesthetic sense, surrounded me.  Their chief talent was to make cutting, sarcastic remarks while lacking any irony themselves.  This is the age we live in, where contempt is seen as a kind of moral virtue.  I overheard this conversation:

“You know, Donna has started going down to the battered women’s shelter.”

“Why would she do that?  Tom has never laid a finger on her.  He’s not that type.”

“Oh no!  I meant that she’s started volunteering there, after work and on Sundays.”

“Really?  Poor thing.”

“Why do you say that?  I think it’s kind of cute.”

“I think it’s sad.  Clearly she’s…I have to speak honestly as her friend.  It’s obvious she’s compensating for some kind of psychological inadequacy.”

“I mean…I guess you’re right.  I bet Tom has something to do with it.  You know, he’s started calling me and saying we should hang out more.  And I don’t think he means it in a “just friends” kind of way…”

So there you have it.  Normally one would think that volunteering to alleviate the sufferings of others would be seen as admirable.  Yet these two cultured, liberated young women viewed their friend’s charity as a kind of minor vice, or even an embarrassing weakness.  In the midst of this morass, I stumbled into Murray to our mutual relief.

Murray had come to the opening, ostensibly because he was one of the artists whose work was being displayed.  Actually, this was the secondary reason for his presence.  He had arrived with a companion, an impressionable young art history major he hoped to seduce.

“There she is, by that blown up image of Donald Rumsfeld,” he pointed her out to me after we made our perfunctory greetings.  ”Don’t stare, man.”  A slender girl with short red hair wearing a low cut burgundy blouse was standing next to a grotesque image of the former defense secretary devouring a map dripping blood, oil and sand.  Intently, she listened to a swarthy, handsome man with slicked black hair wearing a sports jacket over a muscle shirt.  He gesticulated with almost rehearsed gestures.

“She is good looking.  But it looks like you’re being edged out by the competition.”

“I know.  He’s a real bastard by the way.  He’s the son of the Ecuadorian consul and filthy rich from oil money.  I hate to say it, but he’s also really well spoken.  He drove here in a yellow Lamborghini.  She must have seen it.”

“Hmm.”  I try to avoid snap moral judgments based on the commentary of biased parties.

“I thought she had some substance to her, but fucking women…all the women here are so materialistic.  She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.  I hear he likes to choke women in bed.  Well, bitches, man.  They’re all the same.”

Of course, so are the men.  What really vexed Murray was that the Ecuadorian would succeed where he was clearly failing.  I can’t say I felt sorry for him, although I was glad to see him.  We talked about mutual acquaintances, and to my secret delight, found my reputation had preceded me.

“I always thought you were the most intelligent guy of that whole circle.  The rest of them were just full of shit, total poseurs.  But you were always sharp man…I’m not gonna lie, I loved hearing those ridiculously intense debates you would get into with random people.  You just made them shut the fuck up with your crazy, hairsplitting arguments.”  I beamed fatuously but was unable reciprocate with compliments of my own.  While I was content with Murray’s respect, his overriding characteristic was his talent for being outrageous. Or so I had been told.

Murray led me to a wall that displayed his work.  To my disappointment, it consisted of a series of black and white photographs of a nude blonde woman sitting on a horse, and then upon various other large ungulates.

“I fucked her,” said Murray as an addendum.  “You don’t like them do you?”

“No.  I’m sorry Murray, they’re pretty terrible.”

“Thank God.  You’d have to be fucking stupid to find them good.  I don’t know what I would have said if you said you liked them.  I think I would have had to despise you a little, either as a liar or an incompetent.  Now I like you more.”  I nodded at this faintly homoerotic praise.  “No, I just did these because I’m a whore who needs to get paid once in a while.  My real work is at my studio apartment.  It’s too good for these aesthetic prostitutes.  You should come see them this Saturday.”

“Ok.”

“And I’m not just fucking saying that.  Come Saturday afternoon and look at them while we have a drink together.  Look, I’m not trying to fuck you or anything, I’d just feel better if you saw my actual work and say that it’s good and validate my belief that the last three years of my life haven’t been a fucking waste.”

“Ok.  I’ll bring some Black Label I have lying around.”

“Haha, all right.  You look like you would…you look like you just stepped out of a board meeting or something.”

“Thanks.  I like looking that way.”

“I’m not a homophobe by the way.  My younger brother’s gay.  I just think two men should be able to hang out and bond over things that interest them without having sexual aspersions cast on them.  I hate how friendship gets trivialized as latent homosexuality.”

“I agree.”  To be fair, it’s easy to imagine Murray as bisexual.  Although quite successful with women, he has a faintly feminine air about him (which I’ve noticed is not uncommon with womanizers.)  He is lithe and moves easily, with a narrow, chiseled face framed by hair that almost reaches his shoulders.  He often wears button up shirts partly undone in public, which I find disconcerting.  I rather suspect he wears eyeliner.  To my embarrassment, I’m actually relieved to look more typically masculine, although I know this is silly.  I’m a little shorter, with broader shoulders and a somewhat more muscular build which makes me seem more stiff and formal with my movements.  I have a large blob of a noise that I have broken before, and a wide, toothy jaw.  My girlfriend assures me I look rugged, and I appreciate her affectionate euphemism.  Another contrast between Murray and me is that I tend to dress more conservatively in tailored clothes, thanks to the affluence my job offers.  I apologize if this makes me seem vain, and I know it’s a little crass to bring up.

By now, the bartender’s largesse was making itself felt within my bladder.  I excused myself to the men’s room.  After relieving myself with an orgasmic sigh into the spotless urinal, I returned to find a rancorous scene.  Murray had interposed himself between the art student and the Ecuadorian and his loud remarks were escalating from passive aggressive to openly hostile.  I watched in fascination.

“You’re great man,” proclaimed Murray as he clamped a hand on the Ecuadorian’s shoulder.  “I mean you really are.  You bring style to beating the shit out of women.”

“What the fuck’s your problem?  Get your hand off me you fucking queer.”

“I bet diplomatic immunity really comes in handy when you’re explaining a chick’s black eye to the cops, huh?”  Murray! exclaimed the art history student with an impotent shriek.

“Fuck you puta.  Get out of here and go suck dick in an alley.”

Now, there are some who know Murray and claim that he is utterly shameless.  This is untrue.  What characterizes Murray is that his sense of shame is simply delayed; he does not link embarrassment to his immediate actions.  In and of itself, this is not remarkable and most anyone who is intoxicated experiences this phenomenon.  While this trait probably aids Murray’s promiscuity, it also bleeds into other aspects of his social life where greater restraint is desirable.  As I made my way towards the combative pair, Murray loudly speculated on the Ecuadorian’s character, and postulated that his parents were actually incestuous siblings, and that the Ecuadorian himself was a likely rapist.  As the Ecuadorian launched himself against Murray, I was close enough to block the insulted party and twist his arms to the side.  We fell to the ground and briefly wriggled like mating grasshoppers.  Within minutes, Murray and I were expelled from the premises, and I cannot say this was undeserved.  Since the Ecuadorian’s father, the consul, had generously helped fund the gallery opening, he was allowed to stay and I hear that the gallery’s owner apologized to him in person.

***

The following Saturday I made my way to Murray’s apartment.  The neighborhood deserves some remarking upon.  It consists mostly of Victorian era buildings and red brick town houses that reminded me rather of British urban residences in their style.  Demographically, it is inhabited by retired black couples and increasingly, much younger whites, such as Murray.  My profession is in urban planning, so these pedantic details are of interest to me.

I knocked on the door of the address Murray had provided.  A minute later, his disheveled head appeared out of the second story window and told me to climb the stairs to his apartment.  I entered the building and made my way up.  The door to his place was ajar and I let myself in.  Murray’s studio was fairly large and spacious and he can probably able afford living there thanks to rent control.  The first things I noticed were his paintings, which surprised me, as I had merely been expecting more mediocre photography.  Murray’s paintings were actually of high quality and I will describe them presently in greater detail.  Murray himself was sitting on a long sofa by the open window, smoking steadily and wearing only his boxers.

“Cigarette?”

“No thanks.  My girlfriend nags me if she smells smoke on my clothes.”  At this point, I noticed the bundled finger lying probe next to Murray. From the long black hair and exposed shoulder I gathered it was a naked woman.  The blanket gently rose and fell like an evening tide.  Her snoring neatly coincided with the rumbles of cars on the street.  The scene was so picaresque I actually whooped with laughter.  The snoring continued unabated.

“She’s a stripper,” nodded Murray.

“I don’t believe you.  And she’ll be angry if she hears that.”

“She said she’s doing it to pay for nursing school.  Anyways, she was so drunk, that when we came back here, she passed out right away.  When she wakes up, she’ll probably want to leave without even doing anything.  Besides, you’re here now.”

“I can leave.”

“Forget it.  Could you pour me a drink?  There’s ice in the freezer.”  I poured scotch for the both of us and the ice clinked like coins in a pocket.  I remained standing and Murray stood up to close the door and then joined me. Together we examined his paintings.

My first impression of them was that they were very stern, even austere.  The paintings had the sparseness of sand dunes about them, and this made a favorable impression upon me.

“These are very good.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not bullshitting you either.”

“I can tell.  Thanks.”

Their one fault was a lack of variety in style.  They were all abstract paintings, assembled forms of nature and geometry without even a hint of anthropomorphism.  Not even a fish or an insect could be suggested from this ominous collection of images.  They were apocalyptic, or even primordial.  There was something disturbingly anachronistic about Murray’s creative labors.  I enjoy classical and Renaissance art, mostly because of their inherent humanism and my fascination with classical Antiquity.  Yet there was something forbiddingly medieval about Murray’s work.  He could have accompanied Mohammed in the destruction of the old Arab idols since his imagery was utterly devoid of the iconography of living entities.  I sensed the old iconoclastic Byzantine emperors would have approved of these oil based platonic forms stretched across canvass.  To find the sort of images in nature that Murray had painted, one would have to examine shapes at an almost molecular level, an array of fractals and crystalline structures.  I glanced at Murray, who had the aura of a desert ascetic about him.  His eyes carried a justifiable pride in his work.

The uncompromising sterility of Murray’s paintings was not their only remarkable trait.  I noticed that he had given a great deal of attention to lighting and the spatial arrangement of the forms.  Within a space of uncertain and perhaps infinite dimensions and glowing from an unseen source of luminescence, they seemed to acquire a quantifiable depth.  Needless to say, there is no point in simply describing them.  One would need to personally view a range of snow clad mountains in Antarctica to comprehend the impact Murray’s artwork forced upon a viewer.  Murray sat down again, satisfied with my silent appraisal.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he took a deep drag and then continued.  “Your girlfriend, quite a few of the people we know in common don’t like her.  I haven’t met her, so I don’t yet have a personal opinion.”

“Of Monica?  Well, she can rub people the wrong way.  She is very judgmental and sharp in her observations in others.  I admit she does it to feel superior, but she at least doesn’t slander people or say untruthful things about them.”

“But given, she’s a little harsh, unfeminine even.”

“I find her very attractive.”

“Well fine, I’ve seen her picture and I agree she’s attractive.  But you like that she can be a little cruel?”

“I do.  And I like that Monica’s very upfront with these supposedly negative traits.  She’s not sneaky. Because let’s face it, individuals surprise us all the time with departures from their usual behavior, and when Monica surprises me, it’s through acts or expressions of gentleness or affection.  And then I feel closer to her.”  Murray winced and nodded.

“That’s pretty rare.  A lot of girls I know like to affect a certain manner, especially a literary or artistic pretension but end up getting emotionally damaged in their relationships.  Then the façade falls away as they become embittered.  It’s pretty unattractive.  But I have to admit, I do a lot of the damaging myself.”  Surprisingly, his callousness made him more agreeable, probably because it stripped away any sentimental hypocrisy.

I drained my glass and migrated back to the bottle of scotch.

“Let’s finish this between us,” I proposed, “man to man.  Then when your stripper wakes up, let’s go on an all night bender.”  Outside, the sky was pleasantly overcast.

“It’s 2 o’Clock,” Murray noted, but the notion clearly appealed to him.

“It will be 3 by the time we finish.  But make sure we don’t leave her here, because she might steal something.”

“Good call.  Well, drink early, drink often I guess.”

And that’s pretty much what we did.