My name's Joe. I live in downtown Manhattan. I'm an artist.
After 9/11, which I witnessed firsthand, I did a lot of drawings & paintings of the wreckage (it was only a couple blocks away). I remember when I would show them to people, how many would say, "These pictures make me want to kill the m-fers all the more." That was the first sign to me that there was going to be a big problem, not 9/11, but the country's response.
I put some of the art in a show & a TV station did interviews with some of the artists. Everyone said how terrible it was, & how nice everyone was to each other, working together like never before etc. When it was my turn to speak, I said I was worried about what the country was going to do with its' anger, that I was afraid we would do something that would cause us to lose the support & respect of the world. I remember the interviewers face going pale. This wasn't what she wanted to hear for sure. When the piece aired, my part was the only one cut out.
Well, this isn't really what this diary is about. It's about what happened later between me & one of my oldest friends.
The art scene I've sort of been in for years has been centered around a place we call the "Clubhouse"
It's a basement on Macdougal St where my friend Bob is the super. Bob's a singer/songwriter & has a band that's been playing around town since the seventies. So we hang out there, play music, have art shows, nobody was ever very political. "Never vote, except on a boat", Bob would say.
The problem goes back to when the war first started (the Iraq part) We were all down in the clubhouse, Bob was there, me , a few others. I was pretty emotional I suppose, I was angry about the civilian casualties (I'd seen some pics on the net that were blacked out of the news) I went on about how illegal it was, not to mention stupid.
Well, Bob totally flipped out. He started screaming at me. He called me a "Commie," a "Nazi," & "Anti-Semetic," pretty much in the same sentence. Now, I'm no communist, I believe in private property, I hate Nazis, & I like Jews.
Then he really got going. "We're not killing enough of 'em," he said, "We should drop atomic bombs on Mecca & all the other cities over there & teach 'em a lesson they'll never forget. They're just a bunch of Sandniggers & they're multiplyin' like rabbits. We should just kill millions of 'em."
Now I'd heard hate like this before, just never from someone i'd considered a friend for years.
Voices got raised, tempers flared up. At one point he said he didn't think we could be friends anymore. Oh yeah...I was being a "self- righteous Prick."
Then he started singing that song, "Perfidia." It sort of eased the tension a bit & we all started playing it on the guitars, piano & singing. It's one of those songs about a false lover, a truly great song. I thought Bob was saying, hey, we both think the other one is un-true, who knows? But really it was what he thought about me. To him, I was a traitor, nothing less.
Then came the exhibition. I'd never done anything political before, & I did the "Deck of Cards." "Crusader Cards" or "Neocon Cards" I called them. I just did them up on the computer & printed them on notecards. The show was called, "Behind the Green Door," & i put them on the green door & it looked like a card table. Bob's from FLA & he has some characters from down there come up for these shows. I got into it with a couple of them. The Nazi stuff was repeated more than once. Once Bob hugged me & told me he loved me, but I was still a Nazi.
Actually there were a few shows. Once when I thought it was clear things were falling apart I made the cards into sculpture like a house of cards falling down. Another time I put the "Headhunters' painting from Ravelstein in. After the election I put a the new flags with the stars cut out of the old one.
That's the show where Linda (Bob's wife told everyone she voted for George Bush. Now when she said this, people just sort of turned & walked away. Well, she noticed, & changed her vote to Nader.
OK, finally up to the present. New show going up. I took 2 ptgs up there, one of Jeff Gannon as the "Conservative Guy" & another one of Wolfowitz with the Allan Bloom book on the table & a globe. It was around 7:00 last Sunday night. Linda was there with Denise, a great girl who hangs the shows.
I guess all this had been building up inside me for a long time. When Linda said she liked my painting, I said, "No you dont." (She doesn't) Then I said, "You told everyone you voted for George Bush, then when you saw how they reacted, you said you voted for Nader. Now you can vote for whoever you want but I think you should have the guts not to lie about it."
Well, the color drained from her face & she said, "No I didn't!" I said, "Linda, you were standing right here & I heard you with my own ears, so either you were lying then or you're lying now." She said (correctly), "Joe, you're being rude, I'm gonna go get Bob."
Now, you probably think I was being an asshole, & you'd be right. Anytime you call someone a liar in thier own home, you can be sure that person is an asshole.
So Bob comes down & he's mad of course. I told him if he wanted to try & kick a liberals' ass, I was ready. I think my exact words were, "If you want to have a duel, go get your bowling ball & pellet gun (he uses on rats) & I'll give you the first shots." Then I said my thing about the commie & nazi stuff. Then it was, "Take your paintings & get out!"
I told him his dad was right about Vietnam & if he was alive today he'd set him straight on this one fast enough. When Bob wanted to join the army his dad took him out in the middle of the bay & put him on a buoy & left him there 'til he changed his mind. I told him if he really wanted to support this war to go ahead & sign up, he was too old & out of shape but they'd probly take him anyway.
Then it was him who took down the paintings I'd given him through the years, one of him & his guru George Rubin, & another one of Cowboy George. I never intended to take them. He started tearing the mural down (I'd painted a mural about 8' high by 20' long on one of the walls) & I got to use a line from my old friend Fred Schulz, a hunched- back painter who killed himself years ago, "Get your greasy hands off my painting!"
So I rolled the mural up with him watching. While I was doing it I told him he could, "Take your Shining Armor shit & shove 'em up your ass, helmet, lance, shield and all!" That was from all the King Arthur war movie crap he kept shoving down our kids' throats when they were little. After I'd finished rolling it up, there was a magig marker lying there, & I took it & wrote on the wall where the painting had been, "SANDNIGGERS, BOB?"
My last words to him as i schlepped everything out the door were, "You're just a punk Bob, a pathetic punk."
So that was the big blow-up at the clubhouse. Like I said, it was coming for a long time. A friend asked (sarcastically) if I "felt better now." Not really. I feel really sad. I thought Bob was a good friend but I had no idea who he really was. I'm sad, but I can't be friends with someone who thinks killing millions of innocent people is...
Now Bob used to be a terrific songwriter. So many great songs. Everything he's written (not much) the last few years has been crap. He wrote a christmas song last year called, "Sand in My Christmas" He wanted to sell it to Sean Hannity & get his big right wing payday. It was the worst song he's ever written. It might have been the worst song anyone's ever written. But I didn't tell him that. That would have been cruel. When he sang it for me the first time, I did tell him, "Well Bob, you managed to combine Christmas & hate in the same song, I didn't think that was possible."
One of the lines is:
It's Jesus's birthday, but he got no friends,
Here in Eye-rack, with these Mo-Hammedans.
Muslims hate to be called mohammedans. It's a huge insult. That's why people do it.
Anyway, the muse left the building for Bob. It must be hard to write a song when your head's full of shit.
Now, I'm not proud of my behavior in any of this. Everything I did was unforgivable, I know that. And it was all pretty childish. I am pretty childish, so how else can i act? But this is what happened when some down-low artists in New York with minimal social or political skills excersised the 'Nuclear Option" on each other.
DON'T try this at home. Or if you do, for God's sake, do it better.