Exquisite Mariposa by Fiona Alison Duncan

Author:Fiona Alison Duncan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781593765798
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2018-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

La Mariposa was broke. A few of us were poor, with families who were lower class or refused to support us. In America, this is dangerous. Not having money makes you a target. You’re mailed high-interest credit card offers weekly. If you get sick or hurt and end up in the hospital, you’re liable to leave with tens of thousands in debt or more. Quality fresh foods are vital, but they’re harder to find in lower-income neighborhoods than high-fructose corn syrup is, which poisons the treats we crave to make ourselves feel better; candy abounds in our corner of LA. Then there’s the illnesses of stress: how fear, scarcity, and shame, imagined failure, infect the body. The dark side of the Dream.

We were also cute and smart, though—what my father, who hates American power games, calls “the other 1 percent.” Attractive, intelligent, and savvy enough to scale class brackets, we could probably, if we really wanted to, achieve: fame and/or money, illusions of safety, US success! Capitalizing on our blessings—like our curiosity to learn, our interest in cultivating our talents, and our juicy youth—could spoil them though. Easy come, easy go. Our youth would soon. Beauty is fickle. And God leaves the room when you sell out; it just happens, sorry.

Sometimes we wished we didn’t know better. We wished we could just do it. Package our work and selves into market-ready forms, join in, and win. But something inside us refuses to reinforce a system that demands that we appeal to it, while it demonstrates little to no awareness or interest in who we really are and will probably fuck us over. But there’s got to be another way.

The way most of our peers sought success was through music, fashion, cool, youth, branding. Another way was through “art.” The art world has money. “It’s money games for plastic faces,” my friend Tracy, an artist I met after an opening and whose paintings sell for $15K, says.

We knew art kids who had mansions. Usually, these kids were the sons of preexisting wealth who knew how to work the system, but we knew how to watch them. There are enough stories of under- and middle-class “artists” “making it” for people to believe and pursue the Dream. The problem with the Dream is it’s not so dreamy in reality. It’s more like Monopoly or Risk than the fantasies I want to make Real.

“Make more red paintings!” Tracy’s first Los Angeles gallerist demanded. “And never put words in. Words don’t sell.”

My first boyfriend used game theory to win $300K playing online poker in 2008. Excited by the prospect of making money, I tried to learn, but found theory irksome. Assuming your opponent is working for his own best interest as a rationally intelligent decision-maker in a made-up system? And having to behave the same? Apparently, modern economics and politics are founded in the same theory.

I always hated games like Monopoly and Risk. I remember more than once throwing these boards across a yard, delighted to see their miniature war machines and buildings disappear into flowers and grass.

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