Some Writing by Ishmael Houston-Jones

THE END OF EVERYTHING

The airport had been closed for almost two weeks; there was
a ban on exit visas; Matt sleeps and dreams of Iguanas
calling him from a vacant lot; of strawberries the size of
babies' red fists; of women in damp blouses, denim skirts and
pink plastic sandals. He dreams of sucking on ice cubes. And
the busboy's eyelashes.

1. He wakes up, a wrestler defeated by his own sweaty sheet.

2. He wakes up, reassured by the sounds of lizards on his screens
and parrots in the trees.

3. He wakes up, takes a piss in a green, plastic bucket, takes a
short look at two unhealing sores, spits out some red foamy
toothpaste, rinses his mouth with rum, takes a painful,
watery rotten-eggy shit, checks for blood, sprinkles some
pine oil into the bucket...

4. Matt heads for the cafe.
He never liked this cafe.
It's in the bourgie quarter across from the Palace Hotel
It's the only one that's still open.

5. He steps over a few new bodies.

6. The heat is bearable, but just.

7. His toes curl up under, inside his boots.

8. There are more bodies than yesterday.

9. And a few left over from the day before.

10. The squads are getting sloppy.
Or overworked.

11.He gets to the Palace.

12.The same woman and little girl are begging on the corner.

13. The woman is dead.

14. The girl holds a cup. Stares straight ahead.

15. A sign in her language is taped to her T-shirt.

16. It reads -- "Blessed Mother, protect my precious one."

17. He drops some sweat-crumpled bills into the cup.

18. About 25 1/2 cents U.S.

19. The girl doesn't say thank you, not even automatically.

20. He thinks, this is unusual, he thinks.

21. He thinks -- she'll probably be dead by nightfall.

22. At the cafe, his favorite waitress tells him a nephew died last
evening.

23. That's four people in her family this month.

24. He expresses his sorrow and orders a rum.

25. He orders a rum.

26. There's an attractive university student reading Franz Fanon
at the next table.

27. There are listless parrots in huge cages.

28. There's the busboy he always overtips.

29. He orders a rum.

30. He orders a rum.
This one with a bottle of Coke.
With the cap still on please.
And he adds needlessly --
Of course without ice.

31. He strains to see the headlines on the cute student's
newspaper.

32. Death toll, as always, in the upper right corner.
And assurances that scientific help is coming from the
outside.
A message from the First Lady.
Something about the World Futbol Cup.

33. And a factory nearby that manufactures binary chemical
weapons has been taken over by ...

34. But the attractive student's nose has begun to bleed.

35. Badly.

36. And people are running down the street past the Palace
Hotel.
Ripping up shrubbery.
Throwing paving stones.

37. It's a lot like TV.

38. The waitress gives the attractive student a kitchen rag and
tilts his head back.

39. More people are running screaming in the streets.

40. The parrots wake up to beat their wings against the bars of
their cages.

41. He hears what could be firecrackers or gunshots or mortar
fire and he thinks he really should learn the difference.

42. He thinks out loud --"What I should do si get my black ass
back to New York and fast.

43. Paving stones are being thrown at the cafe.
Tables overturned.

44. The busboy says, Follow me, you'll be safe," and leads him
into the walk-in box.

45. All he can hear is the sound of the motor.
All he can feel is cool air.

S P E C I M E N 1, 2, and 3

VERBATIM POST and ANSWERS:

Feeling jealous of my visual artists friends who could hire figure models for inspiration, I posted the following on AOL:

Gay writer / 40's, seeks men - ALL TYPES - to pose and to be interviewed. Nudity. But minimal physical contact. Not necessarily erotic. Am not looking for a "sexual" encounter. Just perverse research. Downtown Manhattan. +/- 2 hour sessions. Can be worth both our whiles. Contact: Chuck@etc.

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Hello Chuck:
Read your note and am very interested in helping you with your project. Could you please tell me what it entails. I am 5'11" 161# 33" waist, medium build, beard and mustache. I am well developed in the right places. I am available any Mon - Thurs evenings except on Oct 25 and 26. Let me know what date is convenient for you and lets try to set something up. I prefer doing this at about 7PM because then I can park anywhere in Manhattan for free.
If interested in my helping you with your project, please contact me. Looking forward to working with you.
Rickie

Hi:
I read your note and feel that I could be of help to you with your project. It sounds interesting. What info do you need from me as far as my participating in your project? I am available any weekday evening.


You've piqued my curiosity. Sounds pretty interesting. If you're still looking for guys, give me a call @ (212) 864-####.
Ron

What kind of poses? What kind of interview? What's your research about? Do I have to have a great body? I am interested in being "interviewed". Please give me some more information on your research. I think I would love to be a part of your work.....!!!

So what are you looking for? In a model that is.

$$$

S P E C I M E N 1

FACE:
The nose is crooked. Discoloration at the tip. Lips curve up. He closes his eyes.
Single earring, loop? hoop? whatever. Perfectly formed ears. What do you call that grouping of stray hairs under the center of the lower lip?
Pock marked temple. Fingers touch. Eyebrows almost taper at the ends. They scrunch together in the center of his forehead.
***
Beginnings of some kind of mustache. His feet are moving in dirty, wet socks.
***
Stud earring in the other ear.
Hair. Mostly dark brown. Looks greasy.
Crinkles brow as he looks around the room.
***
Face red. There's a smirk. Weak chin. The feminine inside of him intrigues me.
Bored. He looks bored.s
His eyes are tearing. No nose hair. Lips part.
Swallow.
Keep writing, Dude.
Crumpled face. Really ugly folds under the eyelids when he closes them tightly. Slight smile. Remembering? What? Egg shaped brow. Nervous flutter of eyelid. White teeth- surprising since he smokes so much.
Mouthing the words of the Pet Shop Boys song on the CD player.
"Love comes quickly, whatever you do/ you can't stop falling, ooh-ooh, ooh"
***
SHIRT OFF:
Redder from the neck up than the chest.
Nipples: oval -- like oval quarters -- that's not quite it. "Dusty Rose," darker than the chest skin -- Not pink
Blue/green veins under the skin in the pits. About 20 hairs under each arm. Protrusion of ribs.
***
Back to the nose. I can't quite get it.
Nervous swallow.

***
Breathing in the belly. Weirdly small belly button. Faint hairs start in the valley of the ribs.
Mole, off to the right, mid-chest.
Moles around belly-button. Random hairs. The navel itself looks like it wasn't created by a knot. It's almost non-existent. A mere indentation. Slightly brown and then a slit. Some dark hairs- a few long ones growing from the center. Looks like an ass hole.
His pits are almost scentless. No deodorant. No soap. No sweat. Strange.
***
BACK:
Dent marks from clothes

NOTES ON THE POLITICS OF DANCING:

I first used the form the Politics of Dancing in 1986 as a rehearsal
tool while working on Adolfo und Maria, a piece with a large
multiethnic cast, which dealt with the complicity of artist in the
racism and fascism of their governments. I needed to get 14 people
to really look at and work with one another. Earlier that year I had
had a conversation with the choreographr Liz Lerman about art/political work she was
doing in Washington, D.C. She described a performance there, and
now I can't remember if it was an actual event or just a proposal, at
which audience members were given 3 cards. They would receive
either black or white cards depending upon responses to questions
placing them inside or outside American dominant culture. The 3
categories were sex, race and sexual orientation. Since the
classification for this performance assumed male Caucasian
heterosexuals to be the dominants in our society, straight white men
would receive 3 white cards while black lesbians would receive 3
black ones. Those who had some dominant traits but not all would
get 2 of one color and 1 of the other. My memory of what Liz
described was that the audience was then seated in 4 sections of the
hall based upon how many white cards they had -- 3, 2, 1 or none.
With Liz's description of this performance vivid in my memory, I
began rehearsals.

I wanted something more multifaceted that would address the
more elusive ways in which people perceive others and make
assumptions about what those perceptions might mean. I wanted to
explore some of the subtle and not so subtle ways people act upon
those perceptions and assumptions. I also wanted people to feel
what it was like to be in a minority facing a much larger group. I
was interested to know which groupings caused people discomfort
and which ways they liked to be grouped; when they would lie or
resist the categorizing. I wanted to break down knee jerk responses
and for people to look beyond the superficial things they were seeing
and find the origins of the responses they were having.

THE FORM AS IT FIRST EXISTED:

The fantasy of Adolfo und Maria was that there was a troupe of
minstrels performing in the cabarets of pre-WW II Germany. The
entire cast was in black face and as in the tradition of both minstrel
shows and cabaret they performed skits of topical political satire.
The main show was a burlesque about the German choreographer
Mary Wigman and her dubious connection to Hitler, which
culminated in her choreographing the opening ceremony of the 1936
Olympics for him.

I gathered the cast in a large clump, standing very near one
another. I explained that we were on a railroad track and a train
was approaching. I instructed that if you were a "MAN" you should
go to one wall and form a group with the other men. If you were
"NOT A MAN" you should go to the opposite wall and group with the
others who were not men. What was key at this moment, and as it
turned out to be most difficult, was that I wanted the two groups
(the "MEN" and the "NOT MEN") to look at the members of their own
group first and not back at the "others." I asked them to look for
similarities and differences, to check themselves for expectations,
assumptions, and surprises regarding the others with whom by this
one factor alone they had been grouped. Since this was the first
division, I allowed this inward looking at one's own group to take a
longish amount of time. At a certain point I instructed the two
groups to turn outward as a unit and to face and see the other group
across the room. To see them as a mass and as individuals. To look
for the same

LINKS

Web page for Ishmael Houston-Jones
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