A Retrospective

Mike Dressel

 

I arrived at the gallery opening on a humid summer night for the retrospective of D— H—’s work. The first major show of its kind, and posthumous. A gallery I was wholly unaware you worked in. I would have avoided the scene, but I’d already pushed through the small pack of smokers out front and blithely in through the thick glass door.

Fielding questions from behind the lacquered white desk, you stood to greet another visitor, noticed me, a chain reaction of surprise and acceptance followed by something inscrutable running across your face.

Not too uncanny a coincidence. He was both our favorite artist, a shared aesthetic investment passed between us like the tattered, annotated monograph of his I first lent you, and you later left behind for me, with a note, when we could no longer manage to share the same space without recrimination.

A nod from you while I rearranged my shock into what I hoped was at least a half-smile. You bobbed up and down, too tall and frenetic as always to be hemmed in behind a utilitarian piece of furniture, your attention blessedly diverted to some task by a co-worker, more plastic cups, more one-sheets, something urgently needed replenishing.

“Oh, it’s you,” I thought to myself for the second time in my life. The first came as a realization, here’s the one I thought I’d been looking for, and now in this context—a difference of intention and delivery.

I clocked the changes since seeing you last, your face fuller, hair shorter but no more stylish (you managed to wear so many bad haircuts). Then the polished band on your ring finger, a simple circle of white gold, catching the light when you gestured.

If you were also taking stock then you’d know I had quit smoking, my teeth were whiter; ten pounds lost and gained back in the intervening time. Ta-dah. Alone still, just this side of broke still, so still very “on brand.”

I misspoke about being wholly unaware. Making my way across 10th Avenue I grew steadily queasy, as if my body figured it out ahead of time. A biological early warning system, an instinct toward self-preservation telegraphing the reunion. A feeling as if whatever tether or psychic thread once stitched between us still held, was stretched taut, plucked.

Circling clockwise through the massive show gripping my plastic cup of cheap Chardonnay too tight, not wanting to relitigate the past in my head. (Were you watching me?) I tried to study the work, here, in front of me. It was as if our own failings and impasses were mounted on the walls, superimposed. A retrospective of its own, a pentimento of the mind:

Flirtation. Gelatin silver print. Out after midnight on a worknight post-drinks, devouring plates of greasy food on Avenue A, your hand squeezing my waist under the grungy booth, then slipping beneath the waistband of my underwear. The boyfriend you’d soon break up with waiting at home.

Observance. Charcoal on paper. Searching for you at my birthday party to find you coiled on a banquette suspiciously close to M, your mouth to his ear, his thigh pressed to yours. He’d have slept with you that night, he told me later, had he not gone home with someone else.

Sleepover. Ink on paper. Late morning perched on a red stool in the kitchen peeling potatoes as you assembled a full breakfast. You could always eat. You always ate. Late night burgers, subs from the deli, pierogis at Veselka at 3 a.m. to soak up the alcohol.

Glamping. Mixed-media assemblage/collage. The camping trip planned via text that never materialized; postponed then finally canceled. Distractions and evasions and “work,” the excuses I never fully believed.

Bowery Ballroom (December). Looping single-channel video installation, color, sound, 3:58 minutes. A reconciliation of sorts, your hand pressed against my lower back as we stayed well past the band’s encore, ringed by discarded plastic cups, confetti stippling the floor.

There, The Boys Visit Cherry Grove. Mixed-media installation (sand, wire, blue silk, LIRR Ticket stub, crushed American Spirits cigarette pack, papier-mâché Maraschino red high heels). The fight at the beach under storm clouds and the sullen ride back on the ferry. A cruel and taunting mood directed at me as you insinuated yourself into a group of men. Yelling “Go fuck yourself” to your back on the train platform as you hustled toward a different car, scowling and sunburnt.

These pieces, and the rest. To assemble them in one place, to assess, ponder the technique. Overwhelming, our hang-ups hung up to view. The small ways we used each other over and over, my wanting what you couldn’t provide and you taking steadily more, as much as you were able, before leaving. Always on the boundary and unable to transmute our feelings into something practical, lasting.

Not quite our retrospective, then. Too many reminiscences still crated, warehoused, uncatalogued. Too soon, even now, for a proper reappraisal.

I retraced the pattern of the show again, then walked back through the crowd, out the glass doors, west towards the highway, on toward the river. The ring gleaming under the gallery light as you reach out your hand to wave goodbye, or stop me, whichever you intended. It’s all open to interpretation.

 
 

Mike Dressel is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Warm Brothers, Your Impossible Voice, Chelsea Station, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, among others