Craig's Response to Wexner

The Apartment in the City

After Mark Bradford’s

Black Venus

I was abruptly dismissed from Alex’s small and dingy apartment. The apartment and I were high and had a view of the Jersey docks. The filthy river separated us in numerous ways. I knew it couldn’t last.

I was injected into the salacious city streets that were shrieking and screaming the secrets of a thousand kinetic lives. I was looking to make a quick buck to satiate my hunger and calm my nausea. Although, nobody was cruising for me.

I turned down Houston. This city was built with hundreds of juxtaposing grids, like Rome in a massive layer of darkness. Tunnels of memories and bones colliding into the Pope’s white castle.

I wandered sidewalks of missing pavements searching for Lou who I didn’t realize was sitting in the Tombs. Hot air rushed up from the underground through the grates as I surveyed the streets. The subway trains are cancer spreading in the veins of the city. I took the C uptown.

I saw Ricky near St. Luke’s aiming to score. He looked cloaked in sickness. I ignored him and continued moving through the city exploring decayed, hidden dwellings long forgotten of their purpose.

Their was a little blacken building on the corner of some dirty alley on a street that lost its sign. It had a falling facade, and cracked, filthy windows. No lights, no sign of life in this empty edifice. I had talked to Chico about it before when we bought beer at the bodega around the corner. He had the same ideas about hollow buildings. The crazy old man who hung around the neighborhood warned it was occupied by the devil. He said he saw him taking out trash bags at night. The old man had a grave look on his face when he told me, as if he really saw the Prince of Darkness.

I broke into the black palace that night using a rusted hammer to break a decayed padlock. It had a tall, narrow stairway in the back that led to the upper floor. There were eight small rooms. They were probably sleazy offices of some sort at one time. Dingy silver spray paint betrayed the rantings of teenagers gone by. I gazed out the dusty window at the gloomy street below. It was a hot night. I decided to stay.

The next day Chico and I stoled some long deceased furniture from an abandoned queer bar down the street. He said he knew of a mattress the hustlers use near the river that he could cop for me. It was my new home among dark leftovers lost amid the hundreds of choked grids and ancient garbage of my city. This city is on my side like a geometric tattoo.