Trash is always on my mind. I’m writing a novel based on trash - the language of the Internet - and yet, I realize that some sort of transmutation has to take place. It can’t just be disposable. In New York, I saw some of Keith Haring’s chalk drawings from the subways that have been captured and saved, and now hang, behind glass, in galleries. But hanging them in a gallery seems to counter their purpose? They were meant to vanish; to be cleaned up and thrown out. Haring himself wanted the process of creation to be so automatic it was more about the performance than the finished object. Why keep the totems of his work when the magic was him?
I, of course, stand on the side of trash: I prefer bad taste to good taste, because bad taste isn’t dead. But even talking about trash changes it. And eventually, if you get too worked up about keeping trash as trash, you can end up doing something as silly as the people who put Haring’s work behind glass. You can think you have captured trash, when what you’ve really done is captured your own preconceptions and values.
I’ve been finding it difficult to listen to albums lately. Not that there aren’t good ones out there. I’ve been enjoying Something and Put Your Back N 2 It. I don’t know if it’s the endless hangover of winter in Toronto - the feel of winter, even if it’s not the actual weather - but I’ve recently wanted only art that is flamboyantly gay and, ahem, energetic. So, while I come back to “Hood” - and wish it were two minutes longer - I can’t really listen to the rest of the album before switching to, I don’t know, “Don’t Stop Me Now.” (Your arguments that it is not gay are all wrong.)
I also wonder what it will be like for gay kids in 100 years? Will there be so much top flight gay art they won’t even have to pay attention to straight art? (That is if we aren’t all living in brain vats for the benefit of our robot overloads.) If there is some gay utopia in the future where a parallel gay world never has to intersect with the straight, I guess we might not have the need to devote ourselves to “gay icons”: girls who put on drag to be our heroes. We’ll have gay dudes who can fill those roles for us.
Except for Kylie, of course. There will always be room for Kylie.
On Monday, the partner of a good friend of mine, Gord, died. He had leukemia. He was pretty young. Forty-one is too young to die, isn’t it? Any age is too young, but fighting cancer for five years is a special form of shittiness.
I didn’t know Gord that well. He was quiet, and although I have been friends with his partner Nicole for close to a decade, I didn’t see Nicole much while they dated and lived together. I chatted with Nicole through email every day. We kept up with each other’s life through quick jokes and complaints. And we’d see each other off and on. But nothing like the drunken epic nights we’d wasted together in our early bookstore days.
I also suspected that Gord didn’t like me. He was quiet, and he was a music nerd and he took the things he liked very seriously. He even said it, over and over, “Seriously?” He worked in the audio department of the CBC, and I guessed he thought my dance-y, disco taste in music was terrible. He seemed to laugh dismissively at everything he thought was dumb or tired, and he liked punk and hardcore. I did the math.
But one day, when I was crossing the street outside the CBC, taking photos for a blog, he saw me crossing and this huge smile leapt across his face. His leukemia had recently gone into remission and he was back at work and he said, “Hey Matthew, how’s it going!” I was so shocked by this unexpected friendliness from someone I suspected quasi-disliked me that I nearly stepped into a car’s path. Safe on the sidewalk, we had a friendly conversation. It was sweeter for adding to the day’s sunshine. And maybe sweetened more because Gord was in the commuting rush of perfectly normal people heading home.
Nicole and Gord had a child. They named her Frances, or Frankie. Last summer, our friend Andrew decided to bring over East Indian roti to their house to visit the little family. I hadn’t seen her yet, so I took it as my chance. Just a fact: when other parents say their child is cute, they are wrong. Frankie is adorable. Frankie sat in my lap, her little blue eyes looking exactly like her father’s, staring up at me and with her grip, tested my finger.
Later, we went into the living room and Gord began playing us records. Nicole told me how happy she was with Frankie. Gord played Congotronics and the Dirtbombs “Good Life.” He had been quiet during the meal, but he was excited by the music, showing us his box sets, the vinyl covers. “The Dirtbombs did a cover of their favorite Detroit house and techno songs,” he said as I flipped through the album’s photos. He smiled as if the world had played him an expertly played joke. “I think this one is really good.”
We discussed the situation. Gord’s cancer had come back; he was planning on getting a bone marrow transplant in the fall. But everyone was optimistic, or maybe I was just hoping they were. “They’ve actually found two matches,” Nicole said. When I was leaving, Gord seemed so energized by the visit that he was up and pacing the floor. I was too.
Gord and Nicole waved from their second floor deck while their downstairs neighbour angrily cleaned his barbecue. I got on my bike, smiling to myself that I could be a small part of their life. It was reassuring to have places like this where I am welcome to hold a baby; welcome to hear some good music.
