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Travis Jeppesen is bad. The United States–born, Shanghai and Berlin-based writer, artist, and critic has been rebelling against the staid, familiar form of “critical” writing and churnalism overtaking many art publications, so often press releases by another name, by carving out a form of art writing that rises to the occasion of art itself. In his most recent book, Bad Writing (Sternberg Press, 2019), Jeppesen investigates work that is capital-B Bad, an epithet he uses as a descriptor for art that disrupts our aesthetic and moral sensibilities and thus is able to claim its title, rightfully, as art. Over the course of a month this spring, we exchanged emails discussing this goodness and badness; debating the limits and murky boundaries of art and literature; of language and image; of the individual and collective.

Above all, Jeppesen, and Bad Writing, misbehave. His criticism enlivens images and indulges the sensual and the sick. It pushes art and language to their breaking points and asks them to flex some more, all to make us reconsider how and why we should write about art at all.

Drew Zeiba: The essays in Bad Writing, if that’s even the appropriate word, were written over a relatively long period. How did this line of thinking, about b/Badness and the limits and possibilities of art writing, begin for you? And when did you realize you were writing a book? 

Travis Jeppesen: Most of the pieces were written over a five-year period, from roughly 2011 to 2016. Some of them were the direct result of specific commissions, but a big bulk of it went into my PhD dissertation (called a “thesis” in the UK), which I undertook at the Royal College of Art in London and finished in 2016. Towards the end of that period, I realized that I would eventually turn it into a book—essentially much of the criticism and ficto-criticism I was writing during these years were all interrelated, thematically. The same concerns just kept coming to the forefront, no matter what topic I was addressing. Someone said that artists who write criticism inevitably end up writing about themselves, about their own work through an examination of other subjects. Certainly, Bad Writing can in many ways be read as an elucidation of the aesthetic underlying my novel The Suiciders (Semiotext(e)), even though I don’t talk about The Suiciders specifically in this book. But The Suiciders came out in 2013, and was written over a ten-year period, so I guess you could say that Bad Writing represents an attempt to articulate what have been enduring concerns for me for quite some time. 

DZ: You open the book by talking about the current state of art criticism, which I think we can both agree is pretty depressing for a variety of reasons. Can criticism be useful, or beyond useful, —a contribution to writing in a broader sense, to literature? 

TJ: I think that criticism can be useful and has a place. As I write in the book, this is more or less my own modest effort at practicing criticism as a literary art form, trying to put criticism on the same level as the poem or the novel. Or painting or sculpture, for that matter. Criticism need not be a strictly utilitarian or, even worse, consumerist venture. I think it’s very much the writer’s responsibility to put forward a model of language usage that goes beyond being merely a vehicle for transmitting information. Criticism can come loaded with both strong ideas and an imaginative or poetic deployment of language. Criticism should be constantly re-inventing itself. 

DZ: What historical precedents are there for critical writing that is itself literature or art, that advances art rather than just decorates it—or sells it? In Bad Writing, you spend time with Gertrude Stein, treating her as one of the central exponents of Bad writing—and of writing on art as art. Still, the current uncritical state of criticism has not always been its state, and despite all of today’s bad, or let’s say uninspired, criticism, there must still be some that’s Bad, as you understand it.

TJ: This was the project of art criticism from its origins. Certainly the work of James Elkins, one of the few art historians I know of who’s researched the history of Western art criticism, reveals this. In the late 18th century, when art criticism as a modern form that we know it as today was first coming into existence in England and France, literary responses to art might take the form of monologues, often written in the voices of imaginary or historical personages (pre-figuring ficto-criticism and object-oriented writing), satirical songs, elaborate dramas, or Voltairean critique. This developed into the Salon criticism of the 19th century in France, a lot of which was written by poets and novelists. Even though the role of the art critic eventually grew to become more professionalized and hence specialized, the poet-art critic role endured well into the 20th century, from the activities of Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein in France all the way up through the New York School poets like John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara and the current great proponent of that tradition, Eileen Myles. 

DZ: That said, to what degree can the current uncritical and unliterary nature of so much art writing be chocked up to the economic conditions of the art world, and of media more generally, where more work, to feed the high-speed glut demanded by the internet, is demanded for less pay from writer-workers in increasingly precarious positions?

TJ: Well, this is certainly a major issue. The art world isn’t really the meritocracy it likes to imagine itself to be—usually it is those who are best at networking and making friends with the powerful who advance to the forefront, and those people aren’t always the brightest, the most talented, or the most original. And precisely because there is so much money in the art world, those who don’t have it are afraid to offend those who do. And, perversely, those who do have it are incentivized to downplay or conceal it; they’re more often than not drawn to the art world because of whatever aura of exclusivity they’ve projected on to it and feel desperate to belong to it, to say all the right things and show up at all the right events so that they won’t get kicked out of the club. Just bring up the topic of money at any art world dinner you get invited to, watch the displays of discomfort all around you. As I say in the book, the art world is more or less run on fear. Though that is also an obvious result of a wider malaise of the Zeitgeist, call it late capitalism or neoliberalism or whatever.

DZ: You, among other recent writers on the historiography of art history as a discipline, a textual discipline, have taken Clement Greenberg, one of Modernism’s most definitive, or at least well-known, critical voices, to task. In the case of Bad Writing, one of your sharpest critiques is of his inability “to throw Descartes in the trash were he belongs.” What is the use of a Bad writer over a writer who is very good in a traditional sense, as we might argue Greenberg was? And, in the face of that, what makes Bad Writing Bad writing?

TJ: I don’t find the Greenbergian project of formalism all that objectionable, in and of itself. Certainly the underlying ambition, trying to understand artworks in purely aesthetic terms, was useful and influential for me at a certain point. I wish more critics and curators today frankly had more of an aesthetic point of view. Instead, so much of the work that is deemed important does so because it checks all the politically correct boxes or fits some consensual agenda that has nothing to do with any perceived or alleged artistic or aesthetic value. Where Greenberg went wrong is when he went off on this ego trip, considering himself to be the chief arbiter of taste. He was also operating during a period where that kind of macho posturing in the art and literary worlds was taken a lot more seriously than it would be today. 

Some of the badness that I put forward here, as a literary or critical trope, is more implicit than explicit; that is, I also play with it in my writing, rather than just dealing with the subject of intentionality—intentional badness—in others’ work. For example, in some of the essays, I use summarization. In school, we’re taught that merely summarizing a literary work or a film is bad criticism. Instead, you’re meant to extrapolate themes and ideas in putting forth a unique assessment, throwing in a quotation here and there from the work to support your argument. (A parallel project to the texts I developed in Bad Writing was the evolution of object-oriented writing, which is essentially a re-creative art form, where you’re re-creating, in your own language, the essence of another work of art. This is quite similar to what you do when you summarize, but not exactly the same.) Through the “bad” process of summarization, I felt I was able to arrive at certain critical assessments from within, rather than coming at it from without, as more formalist approaches attempt to do.

DZ: In Bad Writing you advance a notion of what you call object-oriented writing. You also have your own subject-object neither/nor un-formation, the sobject. It’s hard to think of the phrase “object oriented” today without thinking of Object Oriented Ontology, a loose branch of philosophy in recent vogue. How do these lines of philosophical inquiry fit into your writing? What can being object oriented offer the writer? 

TJ: I deeply admire the work of Graham Harman, but I must admit I came to it rather late, after I had already developed the idea of object-oriented writing. Encountering Harman’s writing, and realizing that he was pursuing a parallel trajectory in the field of philosophy, opened up so many new pathways for my own thinking about what I was doing. I’m crudely paraphrasing here, but Harman even says, somewhere in his writings, that maybe the next step for metaphysics is to evolve towards the field of aesthetics or art-making. 

Object-oriented writing was very much conceived as a sort of metaphysical approach to art writing, and grew out of my frustration with what art criticism has conventionally become. So the idea is to infest inanimate (art) objects with agency, through the vehicle of writing. While at the same time acknowledging the inherent futility, the impossibilities, of such a task. Of, in a sense, reveling and rejoicing in those impossibilities, in that failure. 

DZ: While Bad Writing has more plainly experimental works, like the later pieces of ficto-criticism, some of the essays that at least superficially “traditional” often launch into rather unusual, unpredictable elements alongside more expected descriptive, historical, and analytical methodologies. I think of in particular the essay “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” which at first seems, if rather poetic, a straightforward analysis of the paintings of Christian Schoeler, but where suddenly we realize that you, or your words, have come to inhabit the image. The frame you are working around is “imploded” not by its irruption but in a way, by your entering it or revising its frame-ness. Your subject (that is, the object of your interest) and your own subjectivity are melded into the para-subjectivity of that thing you’re gazing at, writing on. What boundaries and boundarylessness are you invested in? And how does the particular art you’re looking at change how you write, change the way language can work with and through it?

TJ: I’m glad you asked that, because I think what art I’m looking at definitely has an influence on the way I write about it. I guess it comes down to temperament—there’s work that I’m able to “enter into” more readily than others. “The Anatomy of Melancholy” is a piece about Christian Schoeler’s work, and there’s certainly a clear sensuality to those paintings on the surface, but that sensuality is composed of a fluidity, not just in the brushstrokes, but by Schoeler’s overall approach to painting: both as a physical act and in the philosophy behind it. Certainly one sees that unity that I try elsewhere to describe as the body-mind machine, the vehicle, at play here, which makes it easy for me to “illustrate” that through the writing, not by doing the conventional thing and describing it from a detached scientific “outside” view, but by entering into the thing, by trying to become fluid like the paint; and also showing the similarities between writing and painting.

So to answer your question, I would say I’m ultimately invested in a sort of weaponized writing, that is: the deployment of writing as a means for dissolving boundaries, rather than respecting them. 

DZ: Many of the artists you feature are not only prolific, but feel invested in repetition, almost as compulsion, as fixation. Repetition, and listing, and accumulation, also become, at times, another set of Bad writerly habits you deploy.

TJ: I’ve always been a lover of repetition, down to the micro- and meta-levels; I love consonance and assonance, etc. Maybe because I was trained as a musician from the age of six, part of my perceiving or understanding has been molded by repetition, which is of course a key element of music. 

DZ: But, for all this strangeness, the book possesses a certain clarity. Or at least in the beginning portion, where the pieces take the form of more traditional art writing, before entering the frame, moving along with the art, and then departing non-fiction “truth” for ficto-criticism, which itself starts narratively and arguably becomes increasingly obscure, somehow both more fluid and fragmentary in its prose. Why this descent?

TJ: It can certainly be viewed as a descent, if you’d like. But I tend to view it as more of an ascent—where the language “rises” beyond the mere need to make sense, in a conventional way, reaching this higher plateau, where it is gradually released from the stringency of this requirement, finally graduating into “the space of no-writing.” It’s a bit like dying, if you’re wont to view dying as a beautiful thing rather than a horrible, disgusting, tragic experience. 

DZ: While the text may be difficult, in the more conceptual sense, it is a quite readable book in a physical sense: standard size sans-serif font, everything organized how one expects a book to be organized. However, throughout there are the scribbly, stylized titles and the semi-asemic strokes that are hard to read, or resist reading, at least in a traditional sense. You also make similar marks that you post on Instagram. I’d love to hear more about this drawing-writing, about reading and/as seeing.

TJ: I started doing this kind of “bad writing,” using calligraphic pens and markers, but also traditional Chinese ink and paper, many years ago. It sort of evolved organically out of my daily writing practice. I’ve always been a notebook keeper, I’ve always had to write out my first drafts by hand. Some of the pages of my notebooks would be filled with these illegible scribbles, asemic writing is what some artist/writers have taken to calling it. Once I showed a close friend some of these pages from a notebook, and she suggested that I try doing this on a bigger, more painterly scale. I followed her suggestion, and so that’s one pathway my work has taken. I’ve had a few solo exhibitions of this work, and while some may argue that it is technically drawing or painting, to me all of it belongs to the category of “writing”; it’s really an extension, of sorts, of my writing practice. 

We don’t really have this calligraphic tradition in the West. For this reason, I feel like a lot of people just don’t get what I’m doing at all. I’ve always loved the preciousness of writing by hand, and when I first began traveling to China and Taiwan in 2011, I fell in love with Chinese calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting—this great tradition that was never burdened with this Western division between “word” and “image.” In a sense, I’ve been looking for ways to re-create that scriptoral divisionlessness in my own language or tradition. So this is why I called my first big exhibition of this work (and the limited-edition monograph that accompanied it) “New Writing”: the title can have multiple meanings. 

DZ: With literary writing, Bad writing, illegible writing, image-writing, all these multifarious ways of making and crafting from and beyond language, what does the work of the writer become? Or, to put it more simply, remedially, even: what is writing?

TJ: I would define writing as play of the most serious sort. I’ve come to view language as just another material—the same way painters deploy oil paint or sculptors use clay. I’m interested in these moments, where you get to a point where one can detach a word from its meaning—and then what are you left with? Pure sound. Building blocks of those sounds, which look like sentences, but are markedly a-signifying… Though are they? For isn’t this just another way of creating meaning, of making new meanings arise from these detached signifiers?

It was that very hot summer in Amsterdam, in 1978 (?)

I had seen notices in the Dutch papers that James Baldwin would be signing books at the Athenaeum book store on the Spui.

Not wanting to miss a chance to see an idol, I noted the day and time.

I biked over on a Saturday mid afternoon, very hot and very humid, crowds and a long line, all of which Amsterdammers do not handle well.

A table had been set up under the red and white awning by the wide open entrance, near the racks of magazines and newspapers.

There was a pile of books; I wasn’t even sure which book he was there to sign and I was not going to purchase one anyway, since it would have been a Dutch translation and prohibitively expensive.

The line snaked and slowly pushed forward; soon I could see him in his chair, head bent over, signing and chatting a bit. His forehead was wet and he appeared somewhat uncomfortable, tired, and slightly distracted.

Finally I got to the table, nervous and in flustered awe, trying to collect my words and knowing I would have to rattle them off very quickly.

He gave me a slight smile that broadened a bit when he heard my NYC accent.

Rapidly, I blurted that I was living in Amsterdam and was a Dewitt Clinton High School graduate. I had been art editor of the literary magazine, The Magpie. I knew, of course, that he had been literary editor (with Richard Avedon) as art editor) before he graduated in 1942.

As if inflated with some magic oxygen, he perked up and straightened and suddenly that wonderful broad smile spread across his face. He looked directly at me with those iconic eyes, extending his hand and saying “how nice to hear that.” Then he asked about Marcella Whalen, the faculty advisor, who was instrumental in encouraging his literary aspirations.

Hearing that distinct and totally recognizable voice and being so close to him physically, felt almost magical, a sort of suspended animation.

However, the spell was quickly broken when the four people directly behind me, seeing I wasn’t buying a book, started grumbling. They raised their voices louder, peppered with some choice, caustic Amsterdam expressions, and unceremoniously shoved me out of the line and into the crowded square.

The KGB Bar and Reading Room was my home away from home in college—you could even say I grew up there. Which is why, years later, this opportunity to guest edit the journal is all the more special to me.

In some ways, the theme of the issue felt a bit like cheating. The dilemma lay in trying to produce something that involved writers I’ve read and long admired along with what I believe is the role of any good journal: to give platform to new voices. So, to ask the writers I admire, who are established in the craft, to share with us the works of new voices that they have been mesmerized by, whom they feel the world should know, felt like the most logical thing in the world. It also left little work to do on my part.

I was somewhat surprised to see the diversity of writers in Voice, because it wasn’t something I was conscious about when making the selections. Living in New York, I’ve always been fortunate enough to be able to forget where I come from, what my gender is. I still believe, in my utopia, that should be the case. My aim here was to showcase hidden jewels, irrespective of everything else. As luck would have it, when you look for something different and special, you, by default, look everywhere—under every pillow.

I am humbled and taken aback by the work we have published here. Putting this issue together reminded me of how much talent and incredible work there is out there, outside our radar. Beauty never ceases.

So here is an issue that brings you voices you have possibly never heard of but should know about—beautiful, melancholic, brutal and strong.

There’s this Instagram account called Mothers Before. I started following it because I liked the concept: Snapshots of women before crossing that threshold. But now, each photo I come across—warm faded images of young smiling faces—makes me feel sad. It’s like looking at an obituary. The person in the photo no longer exists.

My mother has always said that she didn’t want children. Not until she met my father. And when she did want them, she didn’t want girls.

When my brother and I were young, Mom dressed us up in primary colors. I remember being in Nordstrom, in the children’s shoe department, staring up at a pair of sparkly pink Mary Janes.

When I was older, she told me I scared her then. She was scared I would be a girly girl and she wouldn’t know what to do with me. I was in middle school, into sports, and wearing my brother’s clothes. I thought I understood. I hated girls too.

Growing up, my father was the parent at home and the usual driver to school and sports. On Sundays, when there were no swim meets or soccer games, early meetings in the East Bay, Mom and I would go downtown or to Corte Madera to shop. 

One Sunday afternoon during my sophomore year in high school, Mom and I had a date to go downtown. She was in the car with the engine running when I came out of the creaking wooden gate. Behind the wheel, she was painting her nails.

“Can you not do that in here?” I asked annoyed. “I fucking hate the smell.” 

Here I must have said something else but we both can’t remember. Something about my brother maybe, or worse, her relationship with my father. 

“You’re PMSing, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t say that!’ I screamed at her. When my mother had her period, she bled and that was it. For me, the bleeding was the easy part, the relief after two weeks of bloating, boobs aching, and the feeling that the world was going to crash in on me.

“Well,” she only ever said it once, “you’re being a bitch.”

One break from college, my period was late and I thought I was pregnant (I always thought I was pregnant.). I told my mother and said that I would get an abortion if the decision had to be made. We were in the living room, alone in the house with all the doors open on a summer afternoon. She was curled up on the big red cushioned chair.

“No, you will not,” she told me.

“Yes, I will.” I wasn’t use to my mother telling me what to do. She was my shopping partner and my brother’s smoking buddy.

“I won’t let you,” she was standing now. “I won’t.”

“Don’t pull that Catholic bullshit,” I said. Mom was raised Irish Catholic and went to an all-girls Catholic high school in the city.

I could tell by the way she looked at me, still and jaw clenched, that I went too far. Like the time I was ten and called her a pig.

Her voice low and eyes locked on mine, she told me, “You don’t know me.”  

My mother was married before she married my father. It was a giant secret my father told me while driving across Nebraska in an ice storm when I was twenty-three. Not his secret to tell.

I sometimes imagine meeting this first husband. I looked him up on Linkedin once. Says he lives in New Jersey. Maybe he could tell me who my mother was. They were married for eight years.

“Am I talking too loud?” Winona laughs and rests her chin against her forearm, which she lays atop the plastic folding table that Jonathan told her he’d replace once Kyle was born. When Winona’s nose gets this close to the surface of the table, she is usually repulsed by the scent of Clorox wipes and pizza bites, but she is now on her third glass of wine and is unbothered. “I always forget how far my voice carries when I’ve had a little too much.” She motions her hand toward the bottle in front of her, which she has gotten for eight dollars at Trader Joe’s that morning. “I got this for eight dollars at Trader Joe’s this morning. Isn’t that incredible?”

“You said that already, Winona.” Jonathan gets up to drop his plate in the sink. Annie gets up to put her plate away and when she notices Jonathan’s dirty dish, she turns on the tap.

“No, no.” Jonathan waves Annie away from the sink. “I’ll get to that later. You just relax. You’ve had a long day.” Annie smiles and sits back down, moving from the dining table to the couch.

“Annie, have you ever noticed that when Jonathan says, ‘I’ll get to that later,’ what he really means is, ‘someone else will get to that later and I’ll forget about it in an hour?’” Winona laughs. It is a sweet laugh, almost childlike. Her cheeks are red, but neither Jonathan nor Annie is able to tell if this is from the alcohol or the humor. Neither Jonathan nor Annie laughs.

It is now 9 o’clock, which means Annie has been at Jonathan and Winona’s house for just about 12 hours. Annie’s parents always tell her that she should ask for compensation on nights when she is asked to have dinner with Jonathan and Winona, but Annie generally enjoys their company. She thinks Winona is funny when she’s drunk — she is what her mother would call a “loose cannon” — and Winona is always drunk on evenings like these.

Jonathan notices Annie looking at the clock. “Don’t feel pressure to stay, Annie. I know it’s getting a little late. I’m sure you have plans with friends tonight.”

“I don’t, actually. My parents came back from Sicily last night, so I’m supposed to go over and see them early tomorrow morning.” As silly as he knows it sounds, Jonathan always forgets that Annie has parents. Neither he nor Winona has ever met them. After 8 months of her watching Kyle, Jonathan likes to think that he and Winona have successfully integrated Annie into the family. Sometimes Jonathan thinks of Annie as an older daughter. Other times, he thinks of Annie as a younger mother to Kyle.

“How was the trip?” Jonathan sits across from Annie on an orange loveseat. It is the kind of loveseat that should really be marketed as a chair because it is so small. Winona sits beside him. Jonathan looks uncomfortable and crosses his legs.

“It’s Sicily, Jonathan,” Winona says. “Obviously it was spectacular.

“They did have a great time.” When Annie smiles she shows off her gums, which she has been told by Jonathan is her best feature. “Although they found it difficult to get used to the jet lag. Not that the time difference is even that significant — I guess they’re just getting old.”

“How old are they?” Winona asks.

“They’re 55.” Winona says nothing, although she is struck by how young they are, only 15 years older than she. Winona’s friends always warned her about having Kyle so late because of “geriatric complications.” Winona knew plenty of people who had had children at 40; she thought her friends just didn’t want her to feel bad about looking old at Kyle’s gymboree class. Which she does feel bad about, now that she thinks of it.

“Did you miss them, while they were away?” Annie begins to nod, quite emphatically, when she is interrupted by a soft thud in the direction of Kyle’s bedroom.

“Should I go check on him?”

“I’m sure he’s fine. He probably just dropped one of his toys.” Winona thinks Annie’s ears must be supersonic because of how easily she is able to pick up on every noise Kyle makes. It is impressive, if not slightly annoying. “My parents always wanted to go to Sicily.” Winona rests her hand on Jonathan’s knee. She tucks her fingers underneath her fist. They are still swollen even though it has been months since she had Kyle. She thinks they look like burnt sausages, which is her least favorite breakfast meat.

“My parents have compiled a pretty extensive photo album from the trip, which I’m sure they’ll subject me to tomorrow.”

“That’s sweet. They want to impress you.” Annie nods and fiddles with her hair. Winona watches her from the loveseat. She is petite, only just over five feet, but her short blonde hair makes her neck look long and elegant. Winona doesn’t understand how someone with breasts small enough to be unaffected by gravity can whisper nauseatingly sweet nothings into the ear of an infant so instinctively. Winona always tells Jonathan that Annie would make a perfect girl-next-door typecast, and Jonathan agrees.

“A trip to Sicily must have been expensive.” Winona takes a sip of her Trader Joe’s wine.

“It was. My father is an oncologist, but we also inherited quite a bit from his parents, who died before I was born. So we’re very lucky.”

“Were they good parents?”

“They were, actually. I mean, it’s not like my mom made home cooked meals every night or anything” –Winona glances at the microwaveable pot sticker resting on a napkin in her lap– “but I always knew they really enjoyed being parents. Which I think is kind of a rare quality to be conscious of all of the time.”

Jonathan nods and looks suddenly very serious. “That’s really beautiful, Annie, honestly.”

“I am very confident Kyle feels the same way about you both. Or he will, when he gets a little older and can make sense of his thoughts!” Annie laughs. “You both actually really make me want to be a parent. I know I’m still young”– Annie is 22 but looks all of 16– “but I just really want to love someone like a parent loves a child. I have no idea what that feels like — to have love for someone who weighs less than 15 pounds consume every fiber of your being.”

Jonathan is quiet for a moment. Winona guesses he is gathering his thoughts.

“I don’t mean to sound cheesy or anything, but love for a child really does fill you up. It’s almost an obsession. You don’t realize how weighty love is until you hold your kid and realize how that feeling has taken up so much physical room in your body.”

“I don’t know if Kyle filled us up in quite the same way.” Winona gestures to her stomach.

Sometimes when Winona rides the subway she wears especially tight tank tops to see if she will still pass as pregnant and someone will offer her a seat. She is usually successful.

“I didn’t mean Kyle the person– I meant the idea of Kyle. And the notion of human creation, and human creation of the tangible and intangible, and how frightening and wonderful it is that we not only have breathed life into a little boy, but also into ourselves and into this house.” Jonathan looks pleased by his intellect. “Sorry. I get carried away.” Annie looks moved, and cups her hand beneath her chin, looking at the couple with admiration.

“Does anyone want more?” Winona has begun pouring herself another glass of wine, her teeth having long since turned a muted purple.

“One of the perks of ending breastfeeding so early,” Jonathan laughs. Annie does too. When Jonathan decided to hire a nanny, Winona’s friends told her that they wished their husbands were as attentive as her own. Jonathan noticed that Winona was perpetually tired. Jonathan noticed that Winona could use help around the house. Winona isn’t quite sure if she appreciates how much Jonathan notices. “I can’t get away with anything now!” Winona always jokes to Annie and Jonathan when she feels them watching her with Kyle or watching her make dinner or watching her watch TV while she should be watching her son or the stove.

“I didn’t end it so early. It was six months. And everyone says that there’s really no difference between formula and breastmilk babies anymore anyway.” Annie nods. “Besides,” Winona continues, “my tits fucking hurt. I kept trying to get Jonathan to wear clothespins around his nipples so he would know what it felt like when Kyle’s teeth got in the mix.”

“That sounds awful!”

“For Jonathan or me?”

“Well, you. But I suppose also Jonathan, if he had been subjected to the clothespins.”

“Thank God I got out of that one!” Jonathan says.

“I guess there will be more opportunities to give him a frame of reference whenever you guys have another.” Jonathan and Winona are both quiet. Annie is embarrassed. “Oh, shit, sorry! I didn’t mean to presume there would be another, I was just–”

“Don’t apologize! It’s not presumptuous– I’m sure there will be another one at some point. We just haven’t talked about it yet.” Winona removes her fingers from Jonathan’s lap.

“I mean, it is a bit presumptuous though, isn’t it?” Winona turns to look at Jonathan. “Not that it’s Annie’s fault. But it’s a bit presumptuous of you to have such confidence in a two-child household.”

Jonathan licks his lower lip aggressively and his mouth curls into a half smile that either means

I’ve really dug my grave now or I do wish she would shut the fuck up.

“I didn’t realize that we had such different visions for our family trajectories.” “And what might your trajectory look like?”

Jonathan looks at Annie, who looks at the floor. She notices a spare pacifier that has rolled underneath the couch and reaches for it.

“Don’t get that, Annie. You’re off duty.” Jonathan touches her forearm as a gentle signal for her to sit back. Winona watches him touch her and moves her eyes to the pacifier, which is covered with a layer of dust that she planned on cleaning this morning. “We can have this conversation another time.” Jonathan moves from the loveseat onto the couch and sits beside Annie, who has begun toying with her short blonde hair again.

“I’m sorry. I feel like I made things uncomfortable” Annie says. Winona turns her eyes back to Annie. Sometimes Annie can feel Winona watching her, but she never says anything. She assumes it’s a maternally motivated thing, as if maybe Winona hopes that if she has a daughter she’ll wind up like Annie. “Should I go check on Kyle now?”

“I can do it.” Jonathan gets up from the couch, leaving Winona and Annie alone. It is silent for a few moments, aside from the labored breath of Winona, whose nasal passages always get blocked after her fourth glass of wine.

“Do you want to feel something weird?” Winona asks suddenly. “What is it?”

“Here. Come here.” Winona beckons Annie over. Annie moves to the loveseat, and Winona directs her to sit beside her. Winona can smell Annie’s lotion– it’s Jergens Cherry Almond. Winona uses Jergens Ultra Healing for Extra Dry Skin. Annie’s skin is never dry.

“What is it, Winona?”

“I wish that someone had shown me this when I started thinking about having kids.” Winona lifts up her shirt and reveals her stomach to Annie. Annie sits back, although there are no extra inches with which she can distance herself from Winona on the loveseat. She looks at Winona’s belly. It is pear shaped, and the lower half of her torso puckers out along the lines of her jeans. They are a size 27, even though Winona knows that she is now much closer to a 30. Her skin is wrinkled around her belly button, which looks sunken into her midsection. “Touch it, Annie.”

“No, thank you.”

“Come on, Annie. Please.” Annie watches Winona grab a fistful of flesh.

 “Don’t you want to know what motherhood feels like?” Winona nods toward her midsection. “This is it. This is what you’ll feel every time you put on a pair of jeans or run your hands over your body with soapy fingers in the shower. This is what your husband will feel every time he’s fucking you.” Annie thinks it must be painful to squeeze one’s skin so tightly and wonders if she should tell Winona to ease up so as not to cause any bruising.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Winona, honestly. You look great.”

“So feel it, Annie. Feel it and tell me I look great.” Winona shakes her head.  “I wish someone had offered me the opportunity to hold maternity between my fingers when I was your age.”

“Really, Winona, I’d rather not.” Winona’s gaze, which was not unthreatening to begin with, has turned into eye contact so imploring that Annie realizes she must either look away or reach a hand below the folded line of Winona’s shirt. She decides to go for the belly. As she lightly touches Winona’s flesh, Jonathan emerges from the bedroom. Though Jonathan has often wondered other things about Annie, he has never wondered what she might look like touching his naked wife.

“Winona, what the fuck?”

“What, Jonathan? It was normal for people to do this when I was pregnant, wasn’t it?” Winona turns to Annie.

“Winona, put your shirt down.” Jonathan looks at Annie apologetically. Jonathan had noticed Winona examining her body in their mirror earlier that morning but had decided not to bring anything up because he didn’t want to start a thing. Winona was an expert at making things out of everything.

Jonathan often felt like he was responsible for un-thinging Winona’s things. When they were first going out, Jonathan described this as Winona’s flair for dramatics.

Jonathan yawns. “I am exhausted,” he says. Annie yawns, too. “Me, too.” She says. Winona rolls her eyes.

“You know what’s worse than sleep deprivation? The fact that I literally don’t own my body anymore because it belongs to a creature who can’t even feed himself. That’s exhaustion.”

Annie feels sorry for Winona. There are some people who just don’t want to be happy, and end up reveling in their unhappiness, but Annie knows that Winona isn’t one of those. Annie thinks Winona is just unhappy. “I could always spend a night here if you want to take a night off. You guys could stay at my place, if you wanted. I have a spare room for when my parents come to visit.” Annie is so nice it sometimes makes Winona want to vomit. “I think I’m going to vomit.” Winona leaves the living room and sounds of retching can be heard from the living room, where Jonathan and Annie now stand with their arms at their sides.

“I should probably go.” Annie gets up. This is not the first time she’s felt tension between Winona and Jonathan, but it is the first time she’s seen Winona’s stomach. She’ll never say anything, but it does gross her out a little bit, seeing the way Winona’s stretch marks form a sort of ghoulish face against the brown of her skin.

“I mean, of course. It’s tough for every new mother. All of the hormones and everything… it’s a lot.” Annie has no idea what hormones are or aren’t released after pregnancy, but she likes to sound smart in front of Jonathan. Annie often finds herself trying to sound smart in front of men she finds attractive, but if she thinks about this too hard she feels rather unfeminist. She reaches for a strand of her short blonde hair and pushes it behind her ear. Winona emerges from the bathroom.

“Sorry about that.” She wipes her mouth, suddenly incredibly self-conscious. “At least I don’t have to worry about anyone suspecting I’m bulimic anymore.” She laughs her sweet, tinkling laugh and smiles hard enough to make her cheeks block her eyes. “Are you headed out?” She watches Jonathan retrieve Annie’s coat and help her put it on.

“I think so. I’m getting pretty tired.” Annie gives Winona a hug. She wonders if Annie will give Jonathan a hug goodbye, too. Annie does. Jonathan returns to the living room.

“Are we going to talk about that?” “About what?”

“That episode?” Winona ignores Jonathan. She is good at selectively hearing him. Jonathan is quiet for a while, but Winona cannot tell if this is because he is angry or hurt or humiliated.

“I think that you should be happier than you are.” Winona does not know what to say to this except, “I am happy.”

Sometimes Jonathan worries that Winona might leave him. Jonathan doesn’t love every part of Winona. Jonathan is the type of person who hates the scene in When Harry Met Sally where Harry lists all of Sally’s horrifically annoying habits as reasons why he actually loves her. Jonathan dislikes a lot of

things about Winona, and has no trouble admitting it. But Jonathan is sure Winona dislikes a lot of things about him, too, which is why he likes her. She’s no bullshit. She’d never pull a Harry.

“I bet Annie looks just like her parents.”

Jonathan doesn’t know how to respond to this, so he doesn’t. Winona walks to the fridge and fingers a wallet sized photo of Kyle at gymboree. “He looks nothing like me.”

“What are you talking about? He doesn’t look like anyone. He barely has a face. He’s not even a year old.”

“He doesn’t look like me, Jonathan. He spent nine months in me. He ruined my body. And he doesn’t even look like me. He’s so…”

“He’s so what, Winona?”

“No one thinks I’m his mother. He ruined my body and he looks nothing like me and now all the proof I have of producing him is my disgusting stomach and my swollen fingers. Motherhood is supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. If this is the greatest thing I can expect from life, then–”

“Then what?” Jonathan hopes Winona doesn’t try to kill herself before Kyle is out of the house.

Winona gets up from the loveseat.

I’m going to bed.” Winona goes to her bedroom and undresses. Winona’s throat feels like she is near crying, but Winona doesn’t want to cry, so she shuts her eyes instead and slips under the covers.

When Jonathan comes to bed about 20 minutes later, Winona opens her eyes and turns to him. They have sex, but it is nothing spectacular. It hasn’t been in what feels like a long time, but Jonathan will never say anything to Winona and Winona wishes so badly she didn’t notice that she doesn’t say anything to Jonathan. While Jonathan is on top of Winona, he makes sure not to graze the soft flesh around her navel with his hand. He thinks that if he does not touch her, she will forget that Kyle has ruined her body and he does not look like her and she is tired from living for him alone and she can never go back. Winona sees that Jonathan’s hands do not leave the pillow from behind her head. She wonders if, behind the faint fluttering of his eyelids, he is imagining she is Annie. If he tries hard enough, can he picture Annie’s short blonde hair grazing the nape of Winona’s neck?

________________ 

The sun has not yet risen but Winona is awake. She has found herself in Kyle’s room, which she often does at 3:30 in the morning. It is dark, but she can just make out the outline of Kyle’s chest moving as he sleeps. She has the urge to rest a hand atop his silky belly and feel his sweet warm breath tickle her fingers, but she does not touch him. Winona watches him instead, because she’s always thought that beauty is best left undisturbed, and boy, is he beautiful.

An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. – Henry Miller 

Ella is sitting on her couch with her iPhone, researching venues for her show before finishing more than one painting for it. There’s no excuse why she can’t do more. Work has been light at the boutique media agency in Soho where she acts as Head of Sales. She’s in her living room taking up space, “working” from home. The blank canvases are right over there, leaning against the modern glass coffee table with an abstractly shaped oak base. There were lines of coke on it last night, which could’ve been used to fuel her creativity. Instead she opted for the routine paranoia trip: staring through the peephole in the front door every ten minutes to check if someone was outside—cops or some sort of sexual predator. With sweat-soaked straight black hair and bulging eyes, she sustained her manic watch till the wee hours of the a.m., which resulted in zero home invaders, per usual.

This has been going on for months, dare one say years. The Boyfriend learned long ago to refrain from protesting his girlfriend’s temporary schizophrenic actions, let alone trying to comfort her physically. Like he did on countless other weekend nights, he simply sat on the couch thumbing through Instagram (and, occasionally, secretly sexting a coworker, having once been too loyal to act on it in person) till daybreak when the coke was gone and Ella had no other choice but to come down and eventually fall asleep beside him.

Ella, now in her late thirties, realizes she can no longer blame anyone but herself for her bad habits and creative block. When she was in her twenties, she covered the familial inspiration in her raw, visceral paintings. The uncomfortably personal themes of her shows (with decent reviews and nonexistent sales) came from stories about her alcoholic dad who’d been imprisoned for murdering her mom and her older brother who’d been killed attempting to break up a drunken brawl, as well as the escorting years, an endless string of bad relationships and an assortment of mostly self-inflicted abuses. Nothing in her present life is inspiring her, but she still feels compelled to paint… something, anything.

During weeknights after work and every weekend, she can only focus her tired and/or hungover body on the couch, what’s new on the good ol’ Fire TV Stick and which Grubhub meal to complement it. Or when the next cycling class is scheduled at Flywheel, offsetting the overeating and keeping her body lean and toned. Or whether she has enough funds left to buy yet another pair of shoes from Vetements or Off-White (her favorite designers) after paying her quarterly dues to Soho House and the monthly fee for an all-access membership to Equinox, among other bills and whistles. And cocaine. She loves cocaine more than she cares to admit to herself and others.

FRIDAY

The Boyfriend already left for work, and Ella is waking up again from another micro-nap. Moseying into the kitchen, she pours herself a hot cup of coffee—he makes six cups: four to fill his to-go mug and two for her—cooling it with a healthy splash of almond milk. Holding the cup in her left hand, she sips the lukewarm drink while perusing Instagram on her phone with her right. She fingers the profiles of gorgeous male models William McLarnon and Matthew Noszka and influencers into extreme sports such as Dylan Efron and Jay Alvarrez, wondering if she’d be happier with a man like one of them: otherworldly sexy, superhero strong and Insta-famous. I’m still beautiful, she tells herself in the mirror, checking to see whether the Botox that’s been hiding the wrinkles in her forehead is wearing off (not yet, thankfully). If I were in some sort of social setting with these guys, I’m sure I’d catch their eye. She considers the fantasy for a few more seconds, an even mix of the familiar guilt for superficial, adulterous thinking, an always-on ache for what she can’t have and the growing unsurety of her love for The Boyfriend (very good-looking, much younger than she and great in bed when she’s in the mood) overwhelming her physically like the freezing Peconic River on Shelter Island in early June—their first vacation nearly three years ago (they stayed at the very chic Sunset Beach Hotel).

On the kitchen counter lie a bunch of bananas spooning each other inside a clear plastic bag with the Chiquita logo. Dressed in perishable goods, Miss Chiquita smiles festively, ready to perform the calypso dance leap. Once vibrant yellow, the fruits’ skin is now dull and freckled, foretelling their rot. But The Boyfriend’s ask via text remains unfulfilled: Would you do me a big favor and peel the bananas I left on the counter and put them in the freezer? That way they’ll keep for his weekday (and semi-weekend) smoothies. The making of which are an ongoing, unwelcome wakeup call for Ella prior to one of Amazon Echo’s more appealing alarm sounds. That unnerving jackhammer noise of a “Magic” Bullet Blender pureeing assorted fruit, ice and almond milk is anything but enchanting to her ears.

They live together in Williamsburg in a two-floor loft with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The luxury building includes amenities such as a state-of-the-art gym with indoor rock climbing, simulated golf rooms (plus a mini-golf course on the roof), a bowling alley, two pools, three hot tubs and much more unlisted here. Some of their neighbors have children and dogs, both of which The Boyfriend wants too. Ella doesn’t think of herself as motherly and has never been a big fan of animals. This isn’t to say she’s a bad person, just selfish, and at least she knows it.

But lately she’s been struggling with her somewhat lavish, arguably heretical lifestyle, thinking she should be spending her money and time with The Boyfriend in healthier ways. Perhaps it’s biological; her birthday is around the corner, as is her body’s inability to make babies. Despite The Boyfriend’s smoothies and other behaviors that only annoy her because she’s irritable from the coke comedowns, he’s kind and understanding of her idiosyncratic, addictive and neurotic personality. Lovers of the past provided an obsession and coinciding rush similar to the drugs (a TV actor, a banker, and a lawyer, all of whom were a year or two older and a zero or two richer than she), while never showing her love, which is what she thought she wanted for oh so many years. But when The Boyfriend came into her life unexpectedly and gave her just that (after hitting her with his bike as she ran into the bike lane rushing to the office one sultry afternoon), she accepted it begrudgingly and has been battling herself from rejecting him ever since.

She finds herself more preoccupied with the fear of his imminent departure now that she’s hungover again, nearing old age and getting crazier by the nanosecond. Moreover, her name is the one and only on the lease and other legal agreements tying her to this time and place financially. He could just get up and go anytime. A slice of her, the demon inside, craves this, as it’ll allow her to fully revert to the life of the manic art slut: hard-working by day; partying with a different “date” every night; painting her lonely paintings during tear-soaked, suicidal in-betweens. But the rest of her is well familiar with how that old song and dance eventually ends. Peeling and slicing The Boyfriend’s bananas, she prays un-denominationally that she can sustain her current commitment to him. She stores the mushy fruit in a plastic container and tosses it in the freezer.

SATURDAY

The Boyfriend keeps three tabs of acid in an empty dental floss case on the bottom shelf of his gunmetal nightstand. Each piece is the size of Ella’s pinky nail and advertised by the dealer as extra strength. Flashbacks of her goth-girl-teens arise whenever The Boyfriend tries convincing her to trip with him; while hallucinating, she’d learned her life’s vocation is to paint, accepted the deaths of her immediate family, fallen in love for the first time and realized her best friend was anything but (swiftly thereafter ending their toxic relationship). Consequently, she’s fearful of an LSD-laced epiphany that their relationship isn’t for the long haul. But her intensifying self-reflection is prompting her to finally discover the truth her own way.

She rises early on this sun-drenched Saturday morning, slipping out of bed softly to avoid rousing her recovering lover. He spent last night drinking with old college friends till the wee hours of the a.m. anyway, so it’s unlikely he’ll wake easily. These circumstances are usually flipped: traditionally she’s the one sleeping off a night of indiscretions while he’s already up and at ‘em, starting the day right with a smoothie and two-mile run to the waterfront and back, then gently nudging her conscious at about 3:00 p.m. with three Advils, a tall glass of ice water and no questions asked (her last time out was less than two weeks ago). But lately he’s been gradually assuming her behavior. Seems the end may have begun, and she needs to act now to ensure their best possible future, whether that’s together or not.

Once soft, the bananas are hardened when she pulls them from their cryo-slumber along with a bag of generic-brand frozen berries and two handfuls of ice, placing them on the crowded, coffee-stained kitchen counter. A collection of half-eaten takeout and countless empty beer bottles dominate its marble surface. Shaking a near-empty gallon of refrigerated almond milk, she’s pleased there’s enough left for two smoothies. She tosses everything into an oversized blender cup and switches on the “Magic” Bullet Blender with its familiar, unnerving jackhammer noise that’s anything but enchanting to her ears.

As she pours the mixture in two glasses and tops off each with one-and-a half tabs of acid, she hears sheets rustling, a snorty mumbling and the creaking bedframe. The door to the bedroom slowly opens, The Boyfriend emerging naked with a yawn (he overheats at night, no matter how high the AC), his average body exposed and dirty blond hair disheveled. Hey hon, he greets her in a throaty voice. Whoa, you made us breakfast?! Thanks, sexy. Just what I needed. He gives her an alcohol-and-rotten-fish-smelling kiss on the cheek. She stirs each glass with a bent spoon (they’re in dire need of new silverware), allowing the secret ingredient to fully envelop their healthy meal. Yeah, well, I didn’t break up the fruit enough in the blender, she white lies, handing over one of the glasses. Drink up! It’ll help with the hangover. Take these Advils too. He chucks the pills down his throat and chugs the smoothie. A burp, then he’s off to the bathroom for a shit.

Quickly slurping down her serving with a stainless-steel straw (plastic ones are hard to come by nowadays, and the cardboard kind on her lips gives her the chills), she uses her pointer finger to pull out the soggy tabs stuck on the side of the glass. Sucks them off and swallows. The only thing left to do is wait, so she flops down on the couch and ignites the good ol’ Fire TV Stick and the latest episode of Euphoria.

The faint sound of a toilet paper roll rattling around the holder means he’s finishing his business. Materializing again, he lets out a deep sigh, dragging his body next to where she lies, bringing with him a waft of Febreze and the stench of a hangover shit. He burps again and chuckles. There was this homeless dude inside the bar begging everyone for money, so weird, he shares randomly. Oh, I’ve been thinking we should go to Portugal…

SUNDAY

An impressive Sunday sunrise. Life has already moved on from yesterday’s trip, but Ella’s certain she never will (not completely, anyway). Via the bedroom window blinds (she desperately needs to buy blackout curtains), the 6:00 a.m. daylight bleeds into her eyes like a vampire’s worst nightmare. Sleep is always brief for her the night after taking LSD; the overwhelming visual effects she experiences while high never disappear when it’s time for shut-eye. Instead they’re more intense. For an hour or two before dozing off half-conscious till the a.m., she’s stuck watching a cartoon of Dante’s Inferno on her eyelids, starring characters from The Simpsons.

She rises unconcerned with the sound of sheets rustling and the creaking bedframe. The reason to keep quiet has been eliminated with her relationship; The Boyfriend left her yesterday. He didn’t take too kindly to her dosing him. At first, he found it arousing, achieving perhaps the biggest erection she’d ever seen him have. He was giggling uncontrollably at the second episode of Euphoria, during which Nate (played by the gorg Jacob Elordi) beats a guy to a pulp and rapes him. As the visuals kicked in, so did her libido and the realization of how much she loved this man, how passionately generous and unconditionally accepting he’d been with her for years. All her bad habits and emotional baggage, the bold selfishness, ignored. While he looked the other way on countless occasions, she was searching for fulfillment in every direction but his. How insanely mistaken you were! she scolded herself. Rushing to her knees, she yanked down his sweatpants and devoured him. The howls he made as she orally coaxed him to completion were magnificent.

Holy shit, hon, oh my god. That was so wild. What’s going on, everything is vibrating. Barely pulling on his sweatpants, he darted for the bathroom and knelt over the toilet puking. She walked to the sink beside him and rinsed her mouth. Checked herself in the mirror. Watched as the wrinkles in her forehead became white worms, slithered off her face and flew away. Feeling beautiful and perfect, she finally divulged she’d dosed him.

We’re on the acid, hon! I put it in our smoothies. I’ve just been so horrible lately, pushing you away. You know I’ve been scared to take it because of the revelations I have on it. But it was worth the risk! I now know I love you so much and I’m so sorry. I’m going to be better to you, to us. He looked into her with incredulous eyes. You did fucking what?! Are you kidding me, Ella! My parents are coming to the city today for my dad’s birthday. What the fuck is wrong with you?! 

And that… was that. A few more harsh sentences (one of which was We’re done for good, you crazy bitch!), a packed bag, his snubbing her pleas not to go out in public high or leave her there alone and on drugs, an exit with a slammed front door. Sobbing and hallucinating, she texted him nonstop for hours (but never called for some reason). Eventually the blue iMessages turned green, which meant he’d blocked her or shut off his new iPhone (he’d just gotten the 11).

Ella enters the living room overcome with sadness and regret. She glances at the blank canvases leaning against the modern glass coffee table with an abstractly shaped oak base, then texts her coke dealer.

THE END

These remarks were written for a memorial service for Kevin Killian, which took place on August 19, 2019, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. — Robert Glück

I suppose I have known Kevin longer than anyone here except for his siblings.  But 40 years turns out not to be such a long time.  I am older than Kevin by five years, and it was fully my plan for Kevin to speak at my memorial, rather than my speaking at his, which still is shocking and unreal to me.  Like most of us, I have been rereading Kevin’s work in the light of his death, amazed that a consciousness of such splendor and exuberance has been stilled.  The death of a loved one strips us of the notion that our present life is a dress rehearsal rather than the one and only performance, though I think Kevin was always aware of the shape of his own life in his grand gestures and also in his scrupulousness, like his attention to archives.  

I spent the most time with Kevin during the era of my workshops at Small Press Traffic, where he met Dodie.  He says he joined them in 1982.  Of course he must be right, though it seems a little late to me.  In his vast generosity, he proposed other projects through the years.  He offered to edit my collected essays for example, and he offered to work on my archives.  He did come to help me with it just three weeks before he died.  We went to Office Max.  I had to say Enough, he would have worked on them forever.  Another time he said Bob, I have an idea—let’s write a story together, both of us completely naked in a room.  The most pressing of the insecurities that proposition called forth was the awareness of how slowly I write.  It seemed like a very long time to be without any clothes.  

Through the years, Kevin would sometimes say with a wave of his hand, “Bob taught me everything I know about writing!”  It created in me—as it does in this moment—the feeling of anxious hilarity.  “God bless you for your enormous, skilled, intuitive intervention into my life.”

Did I ever teach him anything?  Or, more to the point, what did he mean?  In the workshops, I would make a few comments and suggestions about some brilliant poem or story.  (For Kevin, pleasure and safety were opposites, and his work turned on the moment when our hero sees the broader perspective of someone who wants to damage him.  Then he gains, not value, but lack of value.  Sexual invasion and danger are accepted and the little that remains is ready to be entertained by death or romance.)  The next week, Kevin would exclaim, Bob I followed your advice exactly, but the improved piece, equally brilliant, would be totally different from the one he’d read a week before, unrecognizable.  Was this sincerity, ridicule?  Where is Kevin coming from?—I often asked myself.  In fact, I used to say Kevin was the only person I ever knew who possibly could have come from a different planet—an enigma who possessed superhuman knowledge, baffling productivity, and later, super-human kindness.  He seemed to possess the secret of happiness—maybe that’s the meaning of his work: that meaning is not in short supply—there’s meaning everywhere, everything is somehow connected to everything else, and you must surrender without restraint to the matter at hand.  Even that is too prescriptive—because Kevin delighted in possibility and the penetration of all kinds of barriers, including the body itself, the mind itself, and our culture itself.  

A few sentences from “Santa,” my favorite story.  “I’m content enough, like a bubble envelope.  I lie down on my back and my hands are taped with black stickum gum, “relax now.”  I tell them where I live and how I used to watch Santa Barbara every day.  On the ceiling there’s some famous stars or windows of the far night.  I’m breathing in, not breathing out.  The air’s a faint blue, the color of speed and peace.  I did not write this, this was my life, or vice versa.”