Dead Europe (23 page)

—So where's the fucking party, Jew-boy?

Syd scratched at his front teeth, put the cigar back in his mouth and pointed to the ceiling.

Sal Mineo groaned.

—It's too cold for a roof party, Syd.

—Shut up, you wop bastard, laughed the older man, his flab shaking. It's a decent night, or what passes for a decent night in this fucked place. Come up, I want to show your friend the view.

The young man handed us our drinks and quickly disappeared.

—Who's that?

—He's new. You like him?

—He's pretty. Sal Mineo's tone was disparaging. Syd laughed, again his whole body trembled.

—He's a Croat. He has an enormous schlong.

He turned to me and winked.

—I have a friend in Paris, she's a doctor, works with venereal disease. Been doing it for years. She reckons of all the races, of all the ethnic groups, Croatians have the biggest dicks. Do you think she's right?

I thought back to high school. Grigor and Mattias in the showers after P.E.

—She may be right.

—Then who's got the smallest dicks? Sal Mineo's grin was broad and malignant. I bet it's you Jew boys.

—No, Syd retorted, the Arabs have the smallest cocks in the world. Then it's us fucking Jews.

We went up the staircase behind Syd, his enormous weight obscuring our view till we climbed out onto an open-air patio with a small glassed observatory along one side. Through the panes we could see half a dozen people sipping drinks.

Syd opened the glass door and introduced us to the guests.

An American couple wearing matching Ralph Lauren polo shirts—one yellow, one red—and sporting matching tans and goatees. I immediately forgot their names. Red was already drunk and Yellow ignored me. A tall, bearded man called Yves who worked for the French embassy. A Czech man with luminous pale skin who was called, incongruously, Jake. Later in the evening he would tell me that he was hoping to be a model in Los Angeles and would ask me to comment on his biceps and triceps. There was a much older man in a suit, whose name I didn't quite catch, with a thick boxer's neck and a gold watch chain on his lapel. And there was Maria. She was smoking long thin black cigarettes and wore a tight red strapless dress that revealed bony porcelain shoulders and an ample bosom. Under the layer of thick make-up there was a ravaged face. Her eyes were sharp, her nose was long and ancient and she was clutching a long-stemmed champagne flute with elegant red-tipped fingers. When we were first introduced she was arguing with Yves. She turned, kissed Sal Mineo quickly on the lips, shook my hand, and returned to the argument. Everyone was sitting on two settees at opposite ends of a round glass table covered with bottles, a loaded ashtray and a platter of antipasto. Syd sank down next to Maria and the settee rocked wildly: champagne splashed from Maria's glass onto Syd's thigh. He brushed it into the fabric of his pants, took a vial from his shirt pocket and spread a thin square of white powder on the glass tabletop.

—Careful, warned Maria, her Russian accent making the English word hard and sensual, there is the wind.

—Don't worry, countered Sal Mineo. Syd's bulk works as a buttress. There were titters from Red and Yellow, and Syd slapped Sal Mineo playfully across his chest.

Maria snorted quickly and turned back to Yves.

—It is bread, darling, she continued, all revolutions start with bread. You should know this, being a Frenchman. Supply bread and you will have all the democracy you want. Without the bread, fuck your democracy.

Yves shook his head. He had a small diamond stud in his ear.

—Maria, I don't agree. First you must have the foundations of a liberal legal system, you must have open markets and a free media. Yours is the traditional socialist mistake. First supply the free market and the liberal media and then you will see the bread follow.

I was offered a line. I knelt beside Maria's legs.

—And is this your job, Yves, to supply us with democracy?

Syd leaned towards me.

—Yves is currently a spy for the government in Yemen.

Yves turned to me. I cleared my nose.

—That is not the case. I am working on social security policy for the government of Yemen. I'm part of a consultative committee for the EU. I am no spy.

Yves proceeded to lecture us on the important work he had to accomplish in the Arabian peninsula. I interrupted.

—What's your interest in the Middle East?

Syd laughed loudly.

—Arab ass is his interest.

Yves scowled.

—I have studied Middle Eastern politics for a long time, he insisted. I have been invited by the government there to assist in their country's liberalisation.

Sal Mineo let out a loud snort.

—By fucking Yemenite boys?

—No, retorted Yves, by aiding in creating a market
economy. And ensuring that we develop initiative and competition, not terrorism and poverty.

—Tell the boys your theory on the family, insisted Maria. She touched my shoulder. Yves was just preaching to us on the limitations of the collective family.

—Not the collective family, Maria, the extended family. That is the correct English word. Your vocabulary betrays your socialist past. The extended family, Yves continued to lecture, inhibits the economy; resources are shared and therefore consumption is limited. It is a patriarchal traditional economic mode. We seek to replace it with a modern individualistic ethos. Demand increases, industry increases, wealth is generated, women are liberated.

He smiled at us and snorted some cocaine.

Red had raised his eyes to the heavens. I saw him mouth the word
boring
to Yellow.

Maria's foot was tapping impatiently on the balcony's stone floor.

—And pray tell, what industry will you encourage in Yemen?

—That is not my role.

—Give them fucking bread.

—That is a servile attitude to the economy. You expect the state to supply you with everything.

—And your markets supply us with nothing.

Yves shook his head, as if Maria was nothing more than an obstinate child. There was a patronising sneer across his top lip.

—
Toutes les choses, Madame. Pour tout le monde.

With a lunge across the table, Maria grabbed a handful of Yves' hair and forced his face towards hers.

—Careful, hissed Red, the cocaine!

—And what about the boys in the streets below? What about the boys you're going to fuck tonight? What does the market give
them
?

Yves pulled back from her. He straightened his shirt collar.

—
L'argent, Madame. L'argent, les opportunités.
More than just fucking bread.

Maria darted up from her seat, a snake's sudden move, and slapped Yves once, twice across the face. Her dress scattered the cocaine to the wind.

—Fuck, shrieked Red. Look what you've done, you stupid Russian bitch. His accent, New Englander and pompous the moment before, had transformed into a shrill mid-western twang.

Syd was holding onto Maria. She was still glaring at Yves, who was calmly rubbing his cheeks. He grinned like the victor.

—It's okay, Syd said to Red, his hand still tight around Maria's arm, there's plenty more. Maria, he whispered, his voice surprisingly tender, would you like some more cocaine?

Maria suddenly laughed, a long ringing laugh, full of mourning. She sat down next to Syd, kissing his face, his hand, his fingers. Yes, yes, she laughed. More cocaine. Fuck democracy, more cocaine.

She's crazy, I heard Yellow whisper to Red.

Red nodded in agreement.

Maria nestled her head into Syd's girth. More cocaine, please, she whispered, more cocaine.

 

Fuck democracy. My father had said this to me all his life. Colin said it to me when we first met. Confident of the value of my college education, trying to form a coherent faith out of the remnants of my father's politics, my mother's cynicism, my youthful idealism and the demands of my prick, I had chosen for my second-year assignment to photograph unionists. My second-year lecturer was a wiry Jew with Streisand curls and a melodic voice we all had to strain to hear. In private she was shy, nervous and flighty, and until she knew you well, seemingly unable to look you straight in the
eye. But once she stepped up to the lectern she became passionate and stirring. Her skill was her knowledge, her craft her preparation, her passion the drive to convince her students of the humanitarian basis of art. She even managed to convince Sal Mineo that, if art should not have a purpose, then at least there was beauty to be found in art and work inspired by ethics. She saw liberty in Mapplethorpe's composition of a thick black cock emerging triumphantly out of an unzipped business suit. She insisted that it was fraternity that was being celebrated in Dupain's young bathers, and yes, even in Larry Clarke's skinny teens shooting up heroin. And everywhere, in Dorothea Lange, in Ansel Adams, Caryl Jerrems, Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, she saw the impulse towards equality. For her, art could only be democratic.

What about horror? we'd counter.

She would flash images of Dachau and Vietnam on the overhead projector. Horror without compassion was exploitation, she argued. A hand would rise: what belongs to journalism, what belongs to art? Another hand would rise. Yes, she was confusing the secular vocation of the artist with the spiritual commitment of the philosopher or monk. She made our classroom democratic. We argued and fought and got drunk together and even Sal Mineo, even Sal Mineo overcame his resistance to her bourgeois demeanour and shyness and took part in the debates. And even if he, and some others—if not for the same reasons—remained unconvinced by her argument, they celebrated her teaching. I myself was convinced. I approached her with my idea to photograph unionised workers. She arranged for me to meet a friend of hers who worked for the building and construction union. He made it possible for me to gain access to worksites and introduced me to an organiser of the nurses' union who got me access to her members working nightshift in a large inner-city hospital. And my mum talked to her
manager, who shrugged his shoulders and allowed me to wander the textile factory where she worked.

 

Fuck democracy!

It was smoko. I was standing on a large thick beam seventeen stories above ground level, explaining to thirteen suspicious building workers the purpose of my photography assignment. My voice squeaked as I explained my desire to make art reflective of democracy and labour in both its content and its accessibility. I wanted these men to collaborate in what I was doing.

—Shut up, Colin, interjected a stocky Maltese man who was the eldest of the group. He smiled at me. Go on, son, speak, continue.

—Fuck democracy, Colin yelled again. We'll end up on some yuppie gallery wall, people will comment on how worthy it all is, and then they'll forget it all and still complain next time they have some work done on their place of how fucking tradies and builders get paid too much and have too good conditions. Fuck your photography. Fuck your democracy.

He turned his back to me. Of course, it made me want to photograph him.

I spent ten days on the site. The men never quite lost their suspicion of me, but they tolerated my presence; and by the third day I was simply ignored: they stopped making faces or showing me their arses every time I pointed the camera. I'd sit on the edge of the bench at lunchtime, munching on sandwiches, watching the city streets below criss-crossed by the metallic lines of gables and beams. I didn't join in the conversations and I wondered sometimes how much of what they said was intended to insult and bait me.

They should shoot fucking boat people, shoot any cunt illegally trying to get into this country
.
Too easy. We've made it too easy for them.

I'd go straight to college from the building site, develop the negatives I had shot that day and emerge stinking of sweat and chemicals.

My son reckons he can't get into his course because they've got to take a percentage of fucking Aboriginals. I should paint my fucking face black. If you're an Abo they give you everything.

I'd take the developed proofs out onto the roof of the college and under the night sky I would examine my images of strong-armed, strong-willed men.

Hey, Isaac? You got a girlfriend?

Bet he takes it up the arse.

You take it up the arse, Isaac? Watch it boys, he's got fucking AIDS.

Colin sat down next to me. His red curls were plastered tight and close across his sweaty brow. He was eating a salad roll and his arm was warm where it touched my own.

—There's your democracy, mate. He pointed to his workmates. Inspiring, aren't they? God bless the people. His hand touched my thigh. I didn't dare believe it was anything more than an accident.

I photographed the nurses and the seamstresses. They too had their suspicions of me. But from time to time, a quiet moment late in the morning in the ward, they would share food and conversation with me. I printed my photographs of the women on large white canvases and I chose photographs that made the women strong but also beautiful.

When it came to the photographs of the men I fitted them into slim frames, under which were simple captions in thin black sans serif lettering. Beneath a photograph of Yianni showing me his muscles I had the sharp obscene phrase,
Asians Out
. Underneath Steve and Mick jackhammering,
That One Deserves To Get Raped
. Slavko and Greg, smoking while sitting above the city on a beam:
Six Million Was Not Enough
. My lecturer was appalled. She argued that if I
exhibited the photographs as I intended to, her friends in the labour movement would never support her work or her students again. I would have to remove the captions. I was disappointed and hurt by her but I did as she asked and participated in the final group show with the photographs minus the captions. But I organised with a friend of Dad's who ran a gambling den off Smith Street to let me exhibit on the walls for just one afternoon. I invited all the subjects of the photographs but only my classmates, my mum and her friends and a couple of nurses turned up. And Colin. He came in an uncomfortable suit and a polyester black shiny tie.