five points: fake blood in the drinks. yum.
on saturday, i went to the adrian piper exhibit at the new museum on broadway and houston. i love adrian piper, how strongly she talks about racism and race and being mixed race (like me). "i am ... the obscenity of miscegenation" still resonates inside me years after i read her writing of it. it's difficult to make sense of her work, especially today when racism manifests more frequently, at least in the expensive, liberal world that i live, as subtle ignorances, race-based sex fetishes, and soft-eyed, well-meant questions. but i remember how much she meant to me when i discovered her, and my devotion holds.
another thing i like about her work are when she talks about relationships. one essay talks about her best female friends growing up, and how virtually all of them abandoned her at one time or another to focus on a guy's attentions.
walked up to the 2nd floor, where i forgot how gay the pierre et gilles' exhibit was. for a brief, paralyzing moment, the last years of college hit me back—back when i really disliked being a gay man of color. there was something so polarized and disruptive about going from the first exhibit, attended by nerdy soho art watchers, to the throng of handsome, muscular gay men looking at shellacked, handsome, muscular gay men enframed. what do i think when i see a beautiful, hulking, probably filipino guy looking at the photos with a white guy (boyfriend?)? he's wearing a maroon polo shirt that struggles to hold his beefy chest and arms, and in my head i think panic, betrayal, fucking hoarse-voiced desire, and then i-gotta-get-outta-here.