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| Chung King Road |
Last night, Eleanor and
Chauncey headed south for Chinatown to the opening of Coagula Curatorial, their friend Mat’s new art gallery. The featured
artist, Tim Youd, was known to Eleanor and Chauncey as the guy who drew vaginas
but called them “cunts.”
Chauncey was well prepared for the opening. He had read Mat’s
articles about the art he was presenting, watched a video of the artist talking
about his work while sitting on the toilet (the artist not Chauncey) and
engaged in several email conversations with artist friends about Tim Youd’s
focus on female genitalia. Eleanor
concentrated on what she was going to wear.
When Eleanor and Chauncey
arrived at the gallery on Chung King Road, there was already a crowd of about
100 people. By the end of the evening, there was likely to be 1,000. Chauncey
was happy to have arrived early and gotten a parking space.
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| Tim Youd's Coney Island of the Mind |
Inside, people were quietly
looking at large and small drawings of vaginas with lots of pubic hair and
orange colored labia. There were also wooden structures in box shapes with
humorous drawings of Henry Miller on them and words scrawled in black ink.
Chauncey clarified for Eleanor that Tim Youd had been inspired by Henry
Miller’s book Tropic of Capricorn. Eleanor realized she should have done some more
research before seeing the exhibit.
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| Getting a handle on it |
Handles were attached to some
of the shorter box structures so that the boxes could be rotated by hand.
Eleanor saw a girl of about 8 take hold of a handle to turn the box. It was
something she could do to distract herself from the clearly adults-only art on
the walls. The handles were Eleanor’s favorite part of the show. There was also
root beer in tubs which, according to Chauncey, was the best root beer he had
ever tasted. From a previous meeting with the artist, Chauncey knew that in
addition to drawing “cunts”, Tim Youd made and bottled his own root beer,
Margot’s Bark.
After viewing the show,
Eleanor and Chauncey emerged from Coagula to have some champagne and cake with
other guests in the alley. The cake, called “Super Cunt” with chocolate
shavings serving as you know what, was cut by the artist. Eleanor noticed the
strawberries were still frozen. Chauncey’s response was, “You start to think
everything’s intentional.”
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| Cutting the cake |
As they wandered away from
Chung King Road in search of food, Chauncey and Eleanor heard a man say, “Now,
I actually want to read Tropic of Capricorn.” Eleanor thought to herself, “I bet you do.”
