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SACRED JOHN

2012

After Action Report by Mr. Thursday

 

This activity occasioned between myself and Rebecca Weeks and Tif Robinette in a bathroom above a night-club. The bathroom (it wasn't sex specific, but it was probably the men's because of the urinal) serviced a bunch of disused studio spaces (now packed with landscape and ab-X nudy painters) that was temporarily converted into an exhibition-performance space called Exclamations by two very cool folks, Amanda Agricola and Mateo Marquez. I'd decided early that I wanted to use the confined, tile covered bathroom space. Both because I thought it forced a certain physical competition to access the space and because of the shit that literally went down there. I was dealing with, someone explained to me at the time, the idea of the "rake." So I brought in a bunch of books (nine) I'd been reading that had been fucking with me at the time, and for the most part still are (I can get a list of them to you if you want). Someone, I forget who, brought in a bunch of tarot cards and put one on each of the books, which I'd distributed around the room, evenly, on the floor. The cards had been used in a reading that Tif Robinette gave Rebecca Weeks right before the performance. So anyway they (or one of them) fucking came in and added the tarot cards from that reading, nine of them (one for each book)... really without my permission, but whatever. I stole two walkie talkie's from my job earlier in the day (along with a mop and bucket for cleaning up). I was really used to shit, literal shit, at that time. There was beer in there, dice (d4's to d20's) a travel bag, M(r)s. Adamaris Rickets, a sheet of paper on which I wrote TURNBULL in Peach flavored Expo Marker, and probably some other objects I had every intention of forcing into this action somehow. Rebecca and I had planned to work together but really hadn't solidified much, even though we'd been rehearsing for about eight, drink fueled hours before hand; the drinking happened in lieu of arguing with the Artists at Exclamations or helping them adjust their lighting or anything. I set up Rickets, laying her on his side, under the single toilette stall with the TURNBULL page underneath her. I was really ready to abuse the fuck out of him when Rebecca came in and pulled the fucking rip cord on the whole activity. I was on the floor getting my thoughts together and she just waltzed in and started prancing around in her fishnets, black mini, and polar-bear fur coat. She took my dice and threw them down her blouse and started shaking her tits like a coked up go-go veteran, menstruating the dice between her legs and onto the floor. I shoved one of the talkies into her purse, we clasped hands and she left. I used the other walkie to communicate with Rebecca while she roamed around downtown, dressed like she was, a whore, asking people about psychogeography (not in those terms cause everyone in this town is an asshole and hates psychogeography and the entire SI, but in a clever enough way they thought she was just British). So I started casting the slut-sweaty dice and somehow, through some convention of Flux-inspired chance and an RPG inherited system, cross referenced them to the texts and picked out passages. I wrote the phrases in Expo Marker on the tile. I read it over the walkie talkie to Rebecca. I ululate transliterations to Adamaris. And finally Turned her, TURNBULL paper and all, a full 180. That was my process. Oh yeah, I had cigarettes in there too. At some point Tif came in and said "I'm your inspiration." She looked like a Rococoquette, bludgeoned by arabesques and smoldering in powdered lace and gossamer. She fished through my bag and began reading a Penthouse I'd stowed in case the activity lost steam. After that these fucks began coming into the room at different times to piss, sit on the pot, make fun of us, and find all the sex scenes in the books to read them aloud. Brad Chriss came in and drew a self portrait (its the background image for my blog actually). Wilheim Katastrof came in and yelled at Ricketts for good measure. Krista Faist hurled encouraging insults at us and offered us strawberries on a silver plater she'd stolen from the opening. At some point Tif left to go bone herself in her space. People were yelling and talking the whole time and slipping in and out, but when Rebecca returned they finally shut the fuck up. She held aloft an apple and we mouth-fucked it back and forth humming sweet somethings into the pulp. Rebecca began writing urban critiques on the wall from the tags on her legs and head-butting mirrors. I danced. Tif returned in a huff, draped in saran wrap, chewed cow-thighs clattering in her web. Eight hours worth of ritualized movement, sharing, fondling, ingestions, and glancing commenced. Meanwhile art was happening somewhere.

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