beulahbondo's Diaryland Diary
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dashing thru the Ho
Bizzy, bizzy. Didn't sleep well last night; head swimming with movie and book titles from the Bradley collection...Encyclopedia Brown meets Foxy Brown meets the porn version of Speed Racer meets everything by Beckett, about Beckett, by John Ford, about John Ford. "Yes, I need that copy of Communion!" Authorial inscriptions fake and real. So my poor brainpan was stuffed, and I wanted to get up early today (Saturday) and get to the Mad Dash at the Gallery at Green Street.
The Mad Dash is a fundraiser for the gallery. A hundred and fifty artists donate their work, it sells for $150 each, and you have about ten minutes after the doors open to grab the ticket of the piece you desire. In theory you also have a week to look at all the work and decide what you want and plan your entry path, but I was too busy all last week to preview.
So I got to the gallery at 10:30 a.m. with my coffee and some bribe candy for James and Donna, the owners, hoping they'd let me in before doors opened at noon. About fifty people were already lined up, sitting in lawn chairs with blankets, under the dumping rain, cold gray sky. Through the glass door, I saw Donna sticking labels on tags and looking wan and tired. I pointed to the candy and smiled, pointed back at me, and to the interior of the gallery. She shook her head. I pointed to the tags and pointed to me. She waved me in. Turns out the door was open anyway and my cheery mime was unnecessary, but I was in! I finished the tags, made coffee, wheeled it out in the red wagon to the growing crowd, which now included a lady with small binoculars who was trying to examine the photo she wanted more closely through the window. Come on! It's $150 and it's a fundraiser!
Other gallery regulars showed up to help. J, a painter, one of the hottest and nicest men on the planet, wet as a dog. Sculptor M, who at one point yelled excitedly, "There are so many parties tonight I could vomit!"
Every year for the past three years I've nabbed something good at the Dash. A plaster-cast parasol. A painting made of pieces of white fur. But today I was on the inside, and I let the folks outside get wild and antsy and grabby. I knew I could just reach out and grab the ticket I wanted at 12:01.
When the doors opened, the first guy in rounded the corner, tripped, splayed out on the floor, and still got his ticket. The binoculars lady presumably got her photo. The two excited little girls and their mother got the small intricate wire sculpture. By 12:10, about 135 of the 150 pieces were taken, and in the crowd I saw the head of a guy I dated for about four days in 1998. Let's call him the Big Jerk. I always see him at the gallery and I can always avoid him, because there are two connecting rooms and many ways to disappear. Plus he's tall so I can spot him right away. So we avoided each other for about 20 minutes, until another woman and I were admiring this little ink drawing and discussing in a noncompetitive way how we were both thinking of getting it, and he reaches between us and plucks the ticket. "You lucky bastid," I sneered. (Nothing of the kind, of course, but this is a fictive environment. Those of you who know Beulah can imagine what she really did and said.)
Doesn't that take the cake? Doesn't that sour your sauce?
However, even before this Rude Jerk did his Big Rude Jerk thing, I did get the painting I wanted. Here's a little thumbnail of another painting by the same artist, Spencer James (who is also a musician but not the British one):
My painting is big, about 28 inches wide by 36 inches tall, oil on black rubber, and it's called "Floppy." I'll try to get a picture of it up soon.
Tonight there are so many parties one could vomit, but I wanted to stay home and weave a little rag rug for my friend Coco, whose birthday is tomorrow. Sgt. Donna Puma invited me to a Pimps and Ho's party - I know, so tired a theme, but Donna Puma is going as Ho Ho Ho in a red satin Santa outfit. I could have gone as Don Ho, or as a Ho-Ho. Mr. Ron Coe invited me to a party at the home of some neighbors of his crazed party animal friend. There's a party for our friends Big J and Dimitri from Calcutta, who are getting married soon. But you know, I'm just happy to be home tonight. It's still pouring. I drove a LOT today: Cambridge to JP to Brighton to Cambridge, and if you don't know Boston, believe me pally, that's a lot of complicated driving.
Tonight I watched an unsettling double feature from the Bradley collection: "Nothing Sacred" and "Dead Ringers." (My combo, not Al's.)
And now I bid you all a good night, all of you except for the Big Jerk.
10:04 p.m. - 2002-10-26
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------