My 1980s and Other Essays by Wayne Koestenbaum

Author:Wayne Koestenbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

(2005)

Brigitte Bardot Shopping in Shorts

inspired by a Karen Kilimnik drawing

BB: Thanks for drawing me in 1974.

KK: A pleasure.

BB: Being harassed by the press is no picnic.

KK: It proves you’re wanted.

BB: You’d feel differently if you’d shown your breasts internationally at a too-young age.

KK: Did striptease taste like cough syrup?

BB: It felt like a sticky substance dripping down my legs.

KK: You’re expert at fording your own embarrassment, and turning it into art.

BB: Wait. I’m not the most important star in your oeuvre. You’ve paid attention to Elizabeth Hurley—and to Lisa Steinberg, the murdered girl. Victims attract you.

KK: I like their availability to the casual gaze, to slander.

BB: The press’s easy appropriation of my body was a form of trespass, but I’m too busy to sue.

KK: Busy with what?

BB: Animal rights. Reactionary causes.

KK: Had I predicted your descent into things reactionary, I’d not have drawn you shopping in shorts, a great photo from 1974 that I dreamily turned into art.

BB: Why didn’t you apply color?

KK: I was feeling elemental. I wanted to capture your aggressive furtiveness, your likeness to a hunted doe.

BB: Pundits disparage me.

KK: I have detractors, too.

BB: Can we band together and find shelter from slanderers?

KK: That’s impossible. We’re permanently exposed.

BB: Did you picture me in shorts, rather than long pants, to signify vulnerability?

KK: I had no metaphorical intentions. I’m a literalist.

BB: You’re crying now.

KK: Junk scattered in the periphery moves me to tears.

BB: Why did you invite me here?

KK: Admiration. Curiosity. Boredom. Your literalness diverts me.

BB: The longer I stay here, the more allegorical I become.

KK: I don’t consider you merely a media figment.

BB: Have you seen my films?

KK: Viva Maria! Contempt. You’re no longer famous in the U.S. You’re an outsider.

BB: A pale copy of a famous person?

KK: You’re almost a washout.

BB: My washout status is itself a warm enclosure, a place I find restful and rehabilitating.

KK: I was attracted to you because you were equally a washout and a star.

BB: In your drawing, I’m fleeing a crime scene.

KK: The crime of your splendor. The crime of your visibility.

BB: The crime of my readability.

KK: Readability?

BB: Must I explain? My body is so legible, there’s nothing left for words to expose.

KK: You’re as readable as the Ten Commandments, permanent tablets we can interpret as we choose.

BB: I’m not flexible. Unlike a law, I’m single-minded.

KK: We say monologic.

BB: Who’s we?

KK: The culture industry.

BB: You’re trying to borrow my estimableness to create your own self-portrait.

KK: We know, as viewers, how you move, and how you kiss, and how you despise, but we don’t know much about your pet dog.

BB: Can we talk about gossip?

KK: It travels, it’s unreliable, it’s devalued, it hurts people, it’s fatty.

BB: It clogs consciousness?

KK: It doesn’t nourish us, BB, but we grow to love that lack of nourishment. The depiction of nonnourishing substances is itself a meager though sustaining diet.

BB: My image nourished you.

KK: I could suck on it, like a Popsicle.

BB: That’s phallic.

KK: Not really. Popsicles disappear.

BB: People treat the phallus as if it were a fixture.

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