Hitler Saved My Life by Jim Riswold

Author:Jim Riswold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regan Arts.

XV

LIFE AFTER A HITLER ART OPENING

* * *

The Hitlermobile

Lots of things—good, bad, odd, and otherwise—happen after a Hitler art show.

The Portland Art Museum hangs The Hitlermobile on its walls. This is a good thing.

Women’s Wear Daily runs a small article about Göring’s Lunch. This is an odd thing.

Three Dictators in a Tub ends up in the Bathtub Art Museum. This is another odd thing unless you consider museums dedicated to bathtub art a normal thing.

One reviewer calls me a David Levinthal rip-off without any of David Levinthal’s talent. This is a bad thing. It’s also a mean-spirited thing. David Levinthal tells me he likes my Hitler art and its “perverse whimsy.” This is a good thing. It’s also a kindhearted thing.

Soon after the show closes, I spend some time in the hospital with a collapsed lung. A guy pushing me somewhere in the hospital on a gurney tells me I look familiar, but he doesn’t look familiar to me. Maybe everybody on a gurney looks the same to him. He’s looking at me real hard, trying to figure out my familiarity instead of looking where he’s pushing me, and we bump into a few things. He gets a bingo! look on his face and exclaims, “You’re the Hitler art guy!” I’m not sure what kind of thing this is, because I’m not sure you want to go through life as “the Hitler art guy.” During my stay, a little old lady keeps coming into my room at all hours and muttering at me, often while sitting on my bed. She does not have anything on under her untied hospital gown. This is four bad things in one (1. trespassing; 2. muttering; 3. sitting on my bed while muttering; 4. scantily clad while trespassing and muttering). They move her to another part of the hospital. This is a good thing.

March 21, 2005: Bobby Short dies of leukemia.

Jake and Hallie’s French school asks me to “do something like my Hitler art but without Hitler” to raise money for the school. I do Napoleon art. This is a good thing, unless you are extremely French and think there’s nothing funny about Napoleon.

My doctors think I may be allergic to Gleevec, the medicine that keeps me alive. I need my next Hitler.

Esquire publishes “Hitler Saved My Life” as an essay. This is a good thing. A number of advertisers ask for their money back. This is a bad thing for Esquire. Esquire gets lots of letters; most are not what you would call “friendly.” One asks if leukemia “affects your head.” It is not a letter expressing concern for my head’s well-being. I get lots of friendly letters and e-mails. Russell Davis, a coworker, sends me my favorite: he writes, “It almost made me like you.” Being almost liked by Russell Davis is a good thing.

Druker says I should offer to tell my “Hitler Saved My Life” story and auction Hitler art to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I offer up the idea to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

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