The Keeper

A show about to close at the New Museum drew me downtown on fall's gorgeous first Sunday.

 

The museum's Sky Room offers expansive views of Manhattan and traces of its steampunk past.

The museum's jagged facade looks like it could hook you.

The Keeper certainly did.  It exhibits the work of obsessive artists who collect unexpected things, deliberately or conceptually.  Low expectations made it one of my most enjoyable local museum visits in years.   The "wow" factor was off the charts.

 

It started to resonate as soon as I saw a display case filled with polished stone.  I had a small collection as a kid.

I also could imagine collecting model-like structures, even dirty quilts if I had the room.

An artist's creative preservation of his scrapbooks made sense, too.

But disgusting street trash, captured in the cellophane bottoms of cigarette packs or stacks of paper--crazy, no?

 

Henrik Olesen, a Danish artist, stopped me in my tracks with "Some Gay-Lesbian Artists and/or Artists relevant to Homo-Social Culture Born between c.1300-1870."  What looked like a really bad science fair project offered an idiosyncratic, same-sex perspective on art history.  Olsesen displayed the kind of post card reproductions you purchase in a museum with typewritten commentary on a series of themed black boards.  Plus a photo of Freddie Mercury thrown in for good measure.

I'd heard about the teddy bears, but couldn't imagine being very interested.  Then I stepped into a split-level room lined with 3,000 framed teddy bear images that Ydessa Hendeles gathered from family albums.

Not all of them were G-rated, either.

Who knew?

"The Keeper" gave me plenty to think about en route to Chinatown.  I picked up a gallon jug of Superior Soy.  New York sure does know how to tickle your senses.

 

Edward Albee (1928-2016)

“I find most people spend too much time living as if they’re never going to die.”

It's not everyday that I have a personal anecdote about one of my passing heroes.  From Homosaic, my unpublished memoir:

Not everyone thought my escape [to Australia] from New York would solve much.  One sunny afternoon in early October, a handsome, older man with a mustache and longish hair approached me in the same spot where I met David. He wore a blue work shirt and black Levis with aviator sunglasses over his head.  Something about him looked familiar.  As soon as I realized he was Edward Albee, I imagined living happily ever after in Montauk with a couple of Irish wolfhounds.

But I also recalled the mistake I had made with Brian De Palma when he handed over his credit card to pay for a tie at Bloomingdale’s. 

“You directed my favorite movie of all time,” I gushed, truthfully. I identified strongly with Carrie, the ugly duckling turned avenging angel.

De Palma couldn’t have cared less what a sales clerk thought.  He barely acknowledged my comment before walking away with his neckwear.

I played it cooler with Albee.  Had he been a stranger, I probably would have tried to lure him into a more private area where we quickly could get our rocks off.  Instead, I closed my thick book, Winter’s Tale, and got up as if to leave.

When he shyly said hello, I sat down again.  “Who does Mark Helprin remind you of?” he asked.  “He’s a talented writer but very derivative.”

I failed the spot quiz.  Helprin didn’t remind me of anybody.  Albee kept firing the kind of academic literary questions that made me feel dumb.  And dumber.

“Are you a playwright?” I finally asked to prove I wasn’t a complete nincompoop.

“Yes.  It’s a silly profession.  You work very hard writing something and then nobody comes to see it because the critics tell them not to.” Pause. “Oh god, you don’t think I’m Lanford Wilson do you?”

“Actually, I thought you were Harvey Fierstein,” I teased. 

Sputtering, he responded with a lengthy put down, concluding, “He just wants to make the heteros feel safe.”   There went happily ever after in Montauk.  I enjoyed Torch Song Trilogy more than any of Albee’s plays.

“Whose work do you admire?”

“Beckett,” he said.  Waiting for Godot and Happy Days had put me to sleep but I kept my mouth shut.  Time to change the subject.

“I’m leaving for Australia soon,” I said explaining my reasons but not mentioning my father.  It played better if people thought I was going alone.  How many gay men go to distant lands with homophobic fathers?

“Your relationship [with David] only lasted four years?” Albee asked.  “None of mine have been that short.”

“How many have you had?”

“Four.  The first died and I’ve been with the present one for 13 years.  It works.”

“Do you believe in monogamy?”

“Only in theory.  Nobody, but nobody can practice it.”

Albee expressed doubt when I told him I might even try jumpstart my life by emigrating to the country if I liked it.

“You have to learn how to fit inside your own skin before you can be happy anywhere,” he said, checking his watch.  No doubt my conventionality bored him.

“I’ve got to get to an art opening,” he said.  “Don’t take any wooden Australians,” he advised.  

As soon as Albee left, I wished I could share the story with my mother, omitting the sexual subtext, of course.  In 1964, when I was ten, she made me a deal: if I agreed to stay in our London hotel alone while she and my father went to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on the West End, they would take me to a matinee of The Sound of Music.  Thanks to Albee, I got to see my first musical on stage.

Ten minutes later I spotted one of America’s most esteemed playwrights cruising a sleazy area.   Horniness is the great leveler, I thought, not for the first time.

#FireIsland2016