Talk
There was talk of poverty. There was talk of racism. There was talk about how the white appropriate the black. There was talk of bubbles, of whether there were too little or too many in the sparkling water that evening. There was talk of pregnancies, with large groups of women discussing the names of their future babies. There was talk, too, of abortions, spoken in much smaller circles, whispers in the corners of rooms, perhaps wanting to be discovered, perhaps wanting for a drama to be validated. There was talk of adultery between the men of the party, about the inner liquids of women. There was talk of the architecture of rooms, about what made a room perfect, about oblongs and rectangles, squares and pentagons, about shapes, about the physical space agreeing with the mental space of the mind. There was talk of music, of whether it was appropriate or not at an event such as this. There was talk of the war, about how it was right to do this, or how it was right to do that. There was talk of suicide, such as so and so’s friend, found hanged in a hotel room, about how it was inevitable and thank god it’s all over for him now. There was talk about the city, about Eric Orr’s Lumière light sculpture throwing light two miles into the sky from Long Beach, California, about the notions of tangible/intangible forms. There was talk of shoes, about high heels and the ankles of certain women, about the female calf versus the male calf, about back muscles in dresses, about pectorals in tuxedos, about genitalia, about the size of them, big and small, about the joy a set of genitalia can bring and, ultimately, the disappointment it brings too. There was talk about the rectilinear architecture of New York, about how restricting it was, but somebody else said no, it’s not restricting at all, depends on you, to which everybody nodded, not really knowing what was being spoken about. There was talk of life, naturally, life in the purest sense, about living, of dinners, exhibitions, sexual performance, limits, boundaries, boundaries being broken down, urinating on lovers, inserting objects into bodies, bodily transformations, laughing, smiling, enjoying the sea move. There was talk of death, of course, since ‘one doesn’t talk about life without death’ somebody else said in a limiting way, about the ways we’d like to ‘go’, maybe defenestration, maybe with a gun to the head, not to the head said a large woman, you put the gun here she said, her forefingers hooked under her top teeth and touching her palate, put the gun here and the bullet will blow your brains out of your crown, maybe being buried alive, just to try it, maybe walking into the sea hand in hand with my lover another said. There was talk of so much, but none about the main event, about why they were really here, about who they were here for and, when each person locked eyes, there was an ambiguous lubrication in each eye, maybe crying, maybe laughing, maybe the air in the room, but each person was sure that every other person didn’t know why they were there either.