Post Titled: Comment is now post...
I posted such a long comment on Mithridates recent post "god bless you you are a good man" post that I thought I might just go ahead and re-post it here... the story is actually much longer and stranger, but I cannot remember many of the details- namely the things she would say, alas:
At an art opening several years ago I met a woman who was very lively and entertaining, from a distance she looked like a teenager, but up close one could see a few grey hairs and very tired eyes, even though her body was still petite and quite juvenile. Everyone had been drinking wine and all was well, very enjoyable chit-chat-chit-chat. Later a few of us went to her studio. There were dozens of tiny images all over the walls, most of them of a young man and woman riding bikes. "That is Jessica Simpson and her Boyfriend Nick there, they were in my photography class, I took fotos of them all the time, nice- I mean, they were ok, kind of nice people." "Oh, reallly-?" we all played along with what we thought was a joke. A few days later I bumped into her on the street- actually she was squatting down in th middle of a crosswalk, she saw me and just said "Hey James, I found your ID!" she handed me someone's old bank ATM card which looked like it had been runover by a week's worth of traffic- "oh,... thanks..." ok, so my name isn't James, maybe she just forgot, we were a bit drunk.
I went with her to visit her studio again since it was half a block away and one floor above mine. The had been very busy painting all the walls in many many muddled layers of neon so it was a sprt of deep purple mush with bits of flourescent orange and pink and green peeking through- then, using that as a background, she had painted full-body portraits of very disturbing prostitutes doing some extremely provocative things with their very graphic girly parts- also with the help of little hairy cartoon men who looked like grimy little gangsters in soiled wifebeaters. This is a bit disturbing... in the middle of the room there is a cast-iron daybed, piled on top are MOUNDS of clothes an women's accessories, hairdryers, curling irons, etc.-
She points out Jessica Simpson again. "Oh,great-" I manage. She explains that she has been moving a lot. "They wanted my information in Colorado when I tried to get an apartment. They wanted my signature and ID and stuff. So I left."
"Oh. Ok..."
"They want all that stuff here, too . My signature and ID- they want that stuff still! They are collecting it, just like they did in Colorado an Kentucky! They'll collect it all-"
Three weeks later there was a eviction notice on the door, and after that the place was emptied of her things- all of which were dumped in the filthy back alley. Amongst her things was the photo album her parents had made during her mother's pregnancy with her. That was really hard to see just sitting there in the mud, practically in a puddle- so I brought it into my own studio and out it on the floor. A year later I donated it along with a bunch of other things to the Salvation Army.
Never saw her again.