Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman

Author:Sarah Schulman [Schulman, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-eight

(In which Killer introduces Troy Ruby who then describes how she became an American artist)

“The dynamics of gravity,” was all Troy said when I told her what had happened. Only I withheld the part about her and my family in case it didn’t work out that way. I didn’t want to have to be embarrassed. That was about six months ago when I still wasn’t sure.

Troy was born in Cincinnati, Pennsylvania, in 1958 when Dwight David Eisenhower was president, and remains unresolved, just like the fifties. America jumped from World War II right into Vietnam and never made peace with those twenty years of betrayal. Our own Cultural Revolution. You look at the names of those who squealed on their friends—they became America’s favorite heroes. The squealed-upon rode off into nowhere and died in oblivion, never having been publicly redeemed. No punishment for the evil. No honor for the defiled. A model for the new age.

Her father, Joe-Jack Ruby, was night manager of the Queen of the Nile Café in downtown Cincinnati, PA. Her mother was the resident songstress, Princessa De Barge. They picked her up at the age of two, grabbed all the cash in the till, and came up to New York City on December 12, 1960—five weeks before the inauguration of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The whole family watched his coronation from a tavern in Queens before settling into a small apartment in Greenwich Village sometime soon after.

Can’t you see why I’m so taken by her?

Her story is so full of what was once considered romantic. And she told it to me the first time we fell in love.

“Robert Frost, crusty old codger,” she said, leaning up naked against the dusty brick wall. “He stood hatless in front of friendly television cameras that freezing afternoon and read his poetry, outside, to the nation. Then, in public schools from coast to coast, boys and girls like you and me, Killer, we had to memorize his words. For Frost, though an artist, was a classy one. A classy American. Not some homo like Allen Ginsberg chanting Sunflower Sutra with little faggie pinkie cymbals.”

At this point she assumed an imitative pose, stared off into the eye of an imaginary television camera, and began recreating the gestures of Robert Frost fumbling with his scarf and notes at the 1960 presidential inauguration.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.