Close to the Knives (31 page)

The transparent image of Dakota has placed coins onto the eyes of my father. He bends close to my mother and whispers something into her ear. I give my parents humanity, in deference to their victimization at the hands of their parents. Heads of Family; Heads of State. Whereas, I can step back from the forms of violence, psychic and physical, that I may have experienced as a child at the hands of Family—I step forward with the shield and sword to confront the State. Crimes against humanity have an unforgivable weight when compared to crime against an individual. If thirsty people demand the presence of the death penalty, let it be reserved solely for politicians who commit crimes against humanity. This goes for those politicians who wear religious drag and who kill us with their fake moral codes. The billion or more fragments of my living and my life lift up around me in a windswell, and through that swirling wall of snow-like images I reach way back and lay Dakota's face at the base of the interior shrine. I also lay to rest his waiting dogs, his idling pickup truck, his ideas and desires. Smell the flowers while you can.

Three horses, two of them white, the one in the middle black, tied together in a wooden brace, are led into the ring by two men, one on each side of the outer horses. The stock holding the horses in place, riding their necks, also has a contraption attached to it through which the men thread the rope which now binds the legs of the dead bull. Every task is performed in utter and complete silence. I feel I am watching a silent movie, a film silenced by the descending weight of death. The band is playing somberly as the horses suddenly bolt in unison, dragging the bull behind them through the dirt. A little man in a uniform, with a crudely built wheelbarrow, comes out into the ring and wheels up to the spot where the bull previously lay. He takes a small shovel out of the barrow and scoops up the blood-drenched earth and shit and tosses it into the barrow. The band stops playing just as the bull is pulled into the darkness of the tunnel's shadows. The little man with the wheelbarrow filled with evidence is left pushing his cargo through waves of soundless heat. My body gives a gentle burp and stomach acids well up into my throat. Smell the flowers while you can.

In the tiny room of the hotel he removes his pants and folds them, placing them neatly on the chair next to the bed. He unbuttons his shirt and climbs onto the bed sitting on the pillows with his back to the wall, his legs spread wide and slightly bent at the knees. The biceps of his arm is rolling softly beneath the tanned skin, mirroring the motions of his hand as it slowly pulls up and down on the length of his dick. He is smiling and has the same look in his eye as the bull did when it first charged into the ring. He places the bent disk of a rubber on the head of his dick and with the same jerking motion he unrolls it down the length of his desire. From where I stand at the foot of the bed, I think it's lovely the way he pulls on his dick and then lets go of it momentarily so that when it throbs it lifts straight up into the air, affording me a view of his tight balls. And that relentless smile. There is a clear joy in his eyes as I lean forward and slowly crawl over the surface of the cool sheets with my destination firmly in mind. Smell the flowers while you can.

We stay for two more fights and then stand up in the dizzying heat and head towards the concrete archways of the exit. We leave behind us the confirmed and imminent deaths of five more bulls. Moving through the cool silence of the shadowed passageways, we eventually step out into the sunlit grounds of the field surrounding the arena. To our left we notice a line of forty or more people waiting patiently for their turn at a makeshift counter that comprises, along with a metal-poled structure, a spontaneous meat market. Huge dripping sections of dead bulls are impaled on hooks or draped over the table. So little has been quartered that I could almost recognize which animal was which. The people waiting on line have the clothes and postures of exhausted poverty. As we stop to witness, the bulls disappear piece by piece. Behind us, far over the walls of the arena, the vague notes of the band begin again and float like thin banners across the hot sky. Meat. Blood. Memory. War. We rise to greet the State, to confront the State. Smell the flowers while you can.

PERSONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to …

THE LIVING
: Tom Rauffenbart, Patrick McDonnel, Nan Goldin, Siobhan, John Zinsser, David Coles and Peter Weiss of Center for Constitutional Rights, Paul Marcus, Susan Pyzow, Dr. Bob Friedman, Marion Scemama, Carlo McCormack, John Olsoff, Kathryn Barrett, Jonathan Gutoff, Anita Vitale, ACT-UP, Phil Zwickler, John Carlin, Elizabeth Hess, C. Carr, Lucy Lippard, David Hirsh, Bill Rice, Larry Mitchell, Karen Finley, Willy from the West Street days, Norman Frisch, Dennis Cooper, Old Reliable, Richard Kern, Amy Scholder, Ira Silverberg, Lydia Lunch, Ben Neill, Angela Davis, Judy Glantzman, Carmela Perri, Tommy and Amy Turner, Bill Burroughs, Philip Zimmerman, Jean Foos, Doug Bressler, Brian Butterick, Mary Hayslip, Phillip Yenawine, Cee Brown, Fran Lebowitz, Lynn Davis, Barry Blinderman, Christina Nordholm, Laurie Dahlberg, Peter Spooner, Kiki Smith, Syd Stoldt, Sophie Breer, Kathy Acker, Tanya, DeFazio, Ishmael and his dark sexy work, 42nd Street Movie Houses, Ann Northrop, the drag queens along the Hudson River and their truly revolutionary states, and all the guys and girls future and past who give chaos reason and delight.

THE DEAD
: Peter Hujar, Keith Davis, Iolo, Montanna, Dean Savard, Arthur Bressan, Jr., Paul Proveaux, Cookie Mueller, Paul Thek, Luis Frangella, Ethyl Eichelberger, and Vito Russo for their beautiful brush fires in the social landscape.

And special thanks to my editor, Karen Rinaldi, and her muse, Lenny Dykstra.

About the Author

David Wojnarowicz was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1954, and first gained notice in New York's East Village art scene in the 1970s. He rose to fame for his exceptional range, intelligence, and passion, and by the 1980s had become one of the most provocative artists of his generation. In the years before his death in 1992 from AIDS-related complications, he worked tirelessly as an AIDS activist and anticensorship advocate.

In 1985, Wojnarowicz brought his fight for freedom of expression to the case of David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association, in which Donald E. Wildmon claimed that Wojnarowicz's work was pornographic and undermined family values. Wojnarowicz won and was awarded a symbolic dollar. He was thrust back into the spotlight in 2010, at the center of a censorship battle over the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition
Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
. In 2012, Cynthia Carr published the critically acclaimed biography
Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Keiko Bonk for permission to reprint and excerpt from the lyrics of “67 Eyes” by Keiko Bonk. Copyright © 1989 by Keiko Bonk. Zen Jam (BMI).

Portions of this work originially appeared, in somewhat different form, in the following journals: Between C and D Magazine, CUZ, City Lights Review, East Village Eye, Red Tape, Diana's Almanac, Journal of Contemporary Art, Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, and Tongues of Flame.

Copyright © 1991 by David Wojnarowicz

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

Cover image by Dirk Rowntree

ISBN: 978-1-4804-8961-5

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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