me as a bit creepy. But I couldn’t help myself: I went directly to her channel. She’d only joined a month ago, which is when she posted that Satie dance. Five channel views. Two subscribers (GoFreeVassals and that pesky quothballetcarper). There was a short string of channel comments, all from the carper, all in the last few days: “Hi. Two assignments. Learn Harvest Moon. Make a dance in ur bathtub. We dont have alot of time. Practice! Bye.” Then, “Back from my vacation at Moms. Aside from my racquet, Ive been using an axe and a chain saw a great deal recently, so when I say that I will hound you until you have produced, you must understand the real threat. I cn be brutal. Dont mistake the mild demeanor.” And finally, “Not joking about ur tub. Or the axe. Hurry up, no exuses. And remember, ‘Never say sorry its a sign of weekness.’ ”
The tone of these posts gave me pause. Obviously, he was probably joking – but the persistent axe jokes made me uneasy. I realized the degree of my interest in these private exchanges was inappropriate. It was unlikely that the carper was going to act on his threats. And yet stranger things had happened – like the case of that German Internet cannibal.
Somewhat guiltily, I clicked on the carper’s moniker and was transported to his page. He, too, had only signed up a short while ago, and in fact, he only had one channel view – mine being, presumably, the second. He did, however, have a video, evidently just posted. My heart registered with a thunk the identity of the slight, poised figure standing in the tub, eyes downcast, dressed in virginal white: it was the rebel moth! The neck of a miniature guitar, secured by a large, pale hand, was visible in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The bathroom’s fluorescent light cast a dreamlike glow on the frosted glass of the shower enclosure.
The title of the video was “bathtub dance (harvest moon).” I clicked play.
Another plunky little chord progression started up – not Satie, but the old Tin Pan Alley tune, “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” on the uke. After four stumbling little bars of an intro, a scratchy, crooning voice came in:
The night was mighty dark so you could hardly see,
For the moon refused to shine…
Couple sittin’ underneath a willow tree,
For love they pined.
The little maid was kinda ’fraid of darkness
So she said, “I guess I’ll go…”
Boy began to sigh, looked up at the sky,
And told the moon his little tale of woe…
The “boy” squawked his mild complaint, as the “little maid” tiptoed her way around her tub en demi-pointes. At one point she executed a demure little bump and grind. The song and the dance were ridiculous, melancholy, amateurish, luminous, lewd, indecent, and foreboding, all at the same time. With the last chord, the scene faded to white, and the ambient echo of the bathroom seemed to hang for a moment in the air.
I sat there staring at the screen, trying to sort out my feelings. I recognized that inexplicable proprietary impulse. What was the moth doing on the carper’s YouTube page? Did she want to be there? And was that him commandeering the uke? She never looked him in the eye. Then again, she never looked up in that Satie dance, either. Was she being shy, or furtive, or a little hostile? Was she teasing him with that bump and grind?
His musical performance was equally perplexing. It was something between a lullaby and a howl. Was he serious about this “boy” and “his gal” business? In the pixelated, low-def video, it wasn’t easy to discern the moth’s age, but, to use that term I recently invoked in reference to myself, she seemed “mature.” The carper, or what you could glean of him, looked older still. There was a moment when he leaned slightly in to the video frame, and a small tuft of silvery hair became visible, along with the edge of a pair of reading glasses.
I watched this video three more times, even though I found it somewhat disconcerting. On the surface, it was just another oddball home video, but I couldn’t shake that sense of menace. Then I felt embarrassed and told myself I should get back to moving those commas around in my manuscript. I closed the browser. I moved the commas. I stared into space for a while and thought about writing fiction.
That night Sven texted me: “got u a present.”
He attached a photo of what appeared to be a cheesy reproduction of Degas’s painting, La classe de danse, with the figure of the ballet master replaced by a bounding, open-mouthed, alabaster-skinned Michael Jackson. The ballerinas looked on in boredom – one staring at the ceiling, one sucking on her fingers, another examining her slippers – this, in keeping with the original. It doesn’t seem like a very likely scenario, really. If MJ were to have shown up in some dance studio like that, I’m pretty sure the ballerinas would have snapped to attention. But the implications were interesting. The painting appeared to be an acknowledgement of his stature as a master of movement.
I thought I knew where this piece came from. Sven works at the Östasiatiska Museet in Stockholm. While the museum mostly houses Asian antiquities and the occasional contemporary art star, there’s generally a middle-aged Chinese guy who goes by the name of Andy outside the museum selling his own low-brow oil paintings. These are mostly reproductions of European masterpieces, a few with these oddball substitutions. You can also commission him to feature your face on, say, John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X. He usually charges around 750 kronor for a painting, which is roughly a hundred bucks. But since Sven knows him, he probably got a break. Naturally I was very touched that he’d gotten me this present. I’d mentioned to him my preoccupation with MJ ever since receiving his text.
You may get the impression from this gift that Sven has a camp sensibility. On the contrary. He’s actually extremely sensitive. That’s why I didn’t send him that YouTube link of Natalia Makarova. I thought it might make him cry. I’m also not sure how much of a sense of humor Andy has about his paintings. While he gives the impression of being a very happy person, Andy also seems pretty sincere about the things he loves. I’m not really sure about my own degree of irony. I think it’s medium.
Sven said he’d put the painting in a tube and sent it by DHL. It would probably arrive in under a week.
It was a little hot in the apartment that evening. I don’t really like air conditioning. I thought I’d go down to the garden and sit near the fountain for a while. There’s a homely little fountain they sometimes turn on. I took that queer theory book down with me. It was almost dusk, so I knew I wouldn’t get much reading done. I’m not sure exactly how I thought I might incorporate this book into my manuscript revisions anyway. It seemed relevant, but if I started addressing more theoretical material, I was pretty sure I’d end up expanding rather than contracting the citations, which were already embarrassingly bloated. I had spoken briefly with an editor from Routledge at PSi, and he asked me about the potential market for my book. I made the mistake of saying something about its “citationality” being of potential interest. I could see from the look on his face that I was badly misconstruing the meaning of market.
I sat on a bench in the middle of the garden and opened the book up again to that passage from Silvan Tomkins.
If you like to be supported and I like to hold you in my arms, we can enjoy such an embrace. If you like to be kissed and I like to kiss you, we may enjoy each other. If you like to be sucked or bitten and I like to suck or bite you, we may enjoy each other. If you like to have your
