The Brand Ch. 09

It was summer, 1992. Victor was at his prime as a fine artist. He'd been making twelve thousand dollars for each of the paintings and wall hangings he'd finished, and he'd started teaching as an adjunct at a small art college in southern Connecticut.

Though he was always experimenting, it was time to take a leap, and constructing installations and putting social experiments on film was becoming his new vehicle of expression.

Victor was a fan of psychic automatism, and he much admired the installation and performance work done in the seventies. His first endeavor involved a nude model posed on a pedestal, standing behind a table full of empty palettes, cups of water, tubes of body paint and clean brushes ready for use. The public was invited to be the artists, and to paint the model as they chose. In reviewing the film, Victor noticed that individual painters preferred long, broad strokes, which suggested to him a passive eroticism; as opposed to the groups that came in and painted together, sometimes men, sometimes women, sometimes mixed, but all would paint finer lines and use their brushes more provocatively, particularly around the model's most private parts.

Curious, his research led him to make a more thorough investigation of lesser known performance artists and their work, and to read up more on psychology. Ultimately, he discovered the darker side of performance: bloodletting for an audience, blood mold self-portraits, the Chinese artist that photographed grass being surgically implanted on his back, sculptures of feces and the release, just that year, of a music video, Happiness And Slavery, containing the work of an artist that expressed himself through self-injury. Then, he stumbled on two things: the book Obedience to Authority and the performance work of Abramovi.

It was in 1974 that Abramovi submitted herself to her audience's perceptions of pain and pleasure. Victor admired the woman because she had taken such a huge risk and, by doing so, set the scene for the creation of a living, feeling, visceral, vital piece of social art. Now, in 1992, at the peak of his prime, he would take her experiment and roll with it. He would slap on his spin, his color, his design, and make his contribution to the advancement of both art and social science.

The scene was set in an empty warehouse, just outside of Soho. It had been posted all over Manhattan, for all viewers and potential subjects to join Victor at his location, indicating that they could indulge in the experiment at twenty dollars per guest. Victor's best friends Jerimiah and Ceazer were there to help with the installation, take and secure the money and replenish the finger food and wine as needed. The lights went on and the doors were opened at nine o'clock. People, dressed in everything from fine evening attire to shorts and T shirts, flocked into the lobby, paid the fee, and then were allowed into the room proper. Once inside the room, the viewer first fed their eyes upon Victor's background on the far wall: a cloudless blue sky over a golden green meadow; pastoral and serene.

Set like a barricade against the twenty by forty foot mural was a length of six foot tall chain link fence. Before the fence, arranged front and center, stood Victor's blood red painted table. The table, round, six feet in diameter, had arrayed upon it a variety of seventy objects. Organized in a spiral were items that ranged from the entirely benign to the potentially dangerous and included a Japanese folding fan, a long white feather, pumas stones, shards of broken glass, a braided whip, a high school science dissection kit, a mallet for tenderizing meat and Victor's own, licensed, .38 revolver.

Sheila, mother to Vanessa, Veronica, Vance and little Victria, the former Mrs. Charpentier, three years divorced from him at the time, but still his best friend and lover, told Victor he was stupid. Victor agreed, as he always did, but was smart enough to take Sheila's advice and remove the single round he'd put in one of the .38's cylinders and left it at home, in his night stand drawer, along with the other forty-nine rounds he purchased when he'd bought the gun eight years before.

The traffic flowed and ebbed like a cocktail party; half of each wave of guests mingling by the wine and cheese tables at the front of the room while the rest ventured to brush, poke and prod at Victor. From the speakers mounted across the ceiling pumped a pulsing loop of Buddhist chants, Chinese Kabuki morality play recordings, singing Franciscan monks and tribal African drums and songs, all expertly interwoven, sampled; their theme a celebration of spirit, nature and peace.

Sheila wanted to be there, as much as Victor had wanted her there. They'd parted the divorce proceedings smiling, laughing, embraced in each other's arms; all of their friends waiting along either side of the steps that led up to the entrance of the district court, ready to throw buckets of confetti at them and let two white doves loose as they emerged from the building. But, he'd made her pregnant, two times times two; the little family joke for having Vanessa and Veronica, twins, the first time, then Vance and finally Victria, and none were still old enough to watch over each other. So Sheila had to stay home in Connecticut. None the less, she was excited for her ex-husband, lover and Daddy to her babies, even if she still thought he was stupid, selfish and narcissistic.

It was Victor's kind face and marvelous talent that made Sheila keep coming back. Maybe he didn't think he was great, but she knew it and she'd told him every chance she got. So what if he was watching other artist's work going for twenty grand a pop. Their work was shit. You can't down grade your work just to increase your value. Victor agreed. Victor disagreed. Victor drank and worked, and sobered up and worked. Sheila also admired his consistency. If only she could have gone though. If only she could have been there to be one of the women that had taken the pair of scissors and clipped the clothes from his body.

If only she was there, she would have seen herself on the video as she, instead of that exquisitely beautiful model with the butterfly wings sown to the back of her dress, sucked his dick in front of all those people and made it hard. Who knows? She might have been the one, rather than those two gay guys, that kept the erection going with the butterfly queen as they played his naked body with the feather. But, it wasn't she that had drawn his pre-seminal fluid out onto the shining head of his erection and painted his shaft with her tongue as another trio of men tied him to the chain link fence.

Jerimiah and Ceazer interrupted and asked if he was okay with being tied that way. After all, it was only getting later and you hadn't accounted for the moon being full. No, he hadn't accounted for the moon being full and no, Victor didn't want to be untied. He was fit to be tied. I'll be fine. Can't you see I'm getting head here?

The next Victor's friends knew, at around midnight or so, other people, viewers, participants or subjects, were tieing others to the fence. It all seemed consensual, but Jerimiah and Ceazer weren't entirely sure. One had asked the other: Should we call the cops? No; said the other, Victor said not to, no matter what. Should we call Sheila? Oh Hell no, absolutely not! At that point, Victor was in a kind of ecstatic euphoria as a long drip of semen swung from his shrinking penis and slash marks across his chest ran down his sweat gleaming belly in rivulets.

Butterfly queen was nowhere to be seen. She had left with her girlfriends or had been engulfed by the swelling, drunken crowd. Another man, a young man, close cropped black hair, gaunt faced and bespectacled had been lingering by the front wall, nibbling at cheese and crackers while he observed the gradually increasing debauchery.

Eventually, full of brie and whole grain crisps, he made his way closer to the wide red table. He walked its circumference and eyed the table's contents between his scrutiny of those bound to the fence: Victor; being interviewed by some star eyed young reporter, a woman to their left; middle aged, naked and red with the marks of her companion's use of the braided whip and to the other side, where another man was getting something written with glass shards across his belly.

Round and round he went, getting sweatier and sweatier, pushing his glasses back up onto the sweaty bridge of his nose, no one even once looking at him. He, Mr. Zero, at least that's how Victor's friends had identified him later because he was wearing a black shirt with the word "Zero" on it, stopped to pick up the .38. Victor came to realize the young man's approach. The artist saw the gun, the look on his face betraying neither horror nor pleasure. He was in the midst of asking the young reporter for a small art magazine to, if she didn't mind, untie him from the fence. And that, she was about to do, just until the young, bespectacled man raised the revolver to Victor's forehead; and fired.

Click, click, click; click. Zero drew the weapon back. The reporter was too stunned to move. The young man opened the cylinder; empty. He regarded Victor; wide eyed, flushed. The reporter drew in a great breath, and then began to laugh. Victor, in that way that Sheila loved, smirked at the young man. Still wide eyed, still red faced, Mr. Zero tossed the gun to the ground.

It was a quarter after three when Sheila's cell vibrated the first time that morning. The second time was at four twelve and the third was at five. She, peeking through her thick mane of blue hair, squinted at her vibrating phone. Exhausted, having dealt with four toddlers the night before, Sheila groped and fumbled for her phone. It was a New York cop, and he'd told her enough as much as he'd told her nothing at all. Sheila wanted the devil, the details, but the cop only said that he was really very sad to have to tell her, but Mr. Charpentier was stabbed to death.

After Jerimiah and Ceazer watched the video tapes with the cops, they were confiscated, and never returned. Sheila had no physical record of the event, nothing but the money that Jerimiah had smuggled to his car, hiding it in the bottom of a crumpled up Jet Burger bag. Sheila stared numbly as Ceazer counted it out, spreading the money on the coffee table, like a drug dealer dividing the cuts after some going out of business sale.

The life style was over. Later, when she could get a proper sitter for the kids, Sheila went to accompany her lover's body back to the New Haven funeral home. His face, no less handsome than ever, was pallid, and she finally began to cry when she saw the expression of concern, darkening around his eyes and mouth, mournful that he had to be buried looking that way. The look; to see: the first rule in art, art imitating life, what you see is what you get.

Their lives as Bohemians, their kind of Bohemia, was over. No more staring at rich people and their pet artists, egos stroking egos, life imitating art. The city's critics and their rich audience finally caught on, and Victor's work was selling at auction houses in New York, Los Angeles and the UK. Somehow, likely through some creep working in the NYPD's evidence room, someone had cropped a still from the video, made a hundred prints of it, and then sold it underground. Jerimiah knew about it, but he'd never told Sheila of its existence nor had he told her that it depicted Victor's disemboweled body hanging limp on the fence while the Butterfly queen beat Zero's head in with the spiked tenderizing mallet.

Maybe he was better off dead; having given his life for the sake of art, dying in flash in the pan notoriety rather than dying in obscurity. Whether someone would do a documentary of Victor's life remained to be seen. At least the family was better off, after they'd gotten over it, if they ever got over it. Sheila never knew with Victria. There had been that time, after she'd turned thirteen. When they'd had yet another vicious spat, Victria had stolen away during the night. It was the worst thing she could have done, especially after the brutal incident with those girls. Sheila just numbed out again on her antidepressants while Jerimiah drove her around the city until it occurred to him exactly where Victria would be. They'd picked up her trail in the microfiche room at the New York Public Library, and then followed her to the old warehouse outside of Soho.

But, he'd been wrong. There was no sign of Victor's youngest daughter, no sign of any breaking into the warehouse and, when you looked through the high windows, absolutely no sign, the walls and floor painted in some industrial beige, that the artist's culminating work ever happened. Jerimiah was afraid then. He turned back around to see Sheila, slumped in the passenger seat of his car. He yelled to her: I'm going to check in the back, because he didn't know what else to do.

So he'd sprinted down the block, the back street quiet, and a gentle breeze blowing scraps of paper across the sidewalk. Rounding the corner of the building, Jerimiah stopped. Nothing; nothing but a vacant lot, fenced in, strewn with heaps of trash, broken cinder blocks, a myriad of car parts, tires and the sound of two girls laughing coming from somewhere within. Jerimiah climbed the fence, leapt from the top and nearly cut his face open on a crag of cement. Getting to his feet, he ran the obstacle course of dead yellow mattresses and mounds of rusted scrap metal. Ultimately he came to what was essentially a clearing; shorter piles of rubbish, pbc and steel pipes, tall green grass thriving incongruously around them.

He saw her then, framed by more heaps of rubbish, just off center from another, centered, figure. Jerimiah stepped deeper into the scene, toward the tall chain link fence at the far end of the lot, an absurd bright blue sky behind it. It was the naked woman who saw him first,, her wrists bound to the fence and thin streaks of blood dripping down her chest. Her beautiful face hadn't reddened, but it had soured, the smile she had for Victria gone. Victria, with camera in hand, turned around, her face expressionless, but warmed slightly upon recognizing Jerimiah.

"Oh hey Jerry." She said as she stepped backwards from the raven-haired woman, extending a hand to indicate her, "This is Zoritza. Zoritza; this is my Uncle Jerry."

Zoritza gave him a brief nod. Jerimiah met her doubtful, menacing gaze and blinked.

"Zoritza is a-" Victria continued; tossing her camera from palm to palm, "Well, she's this; working girl I sort of stumbled upon when I was looking for movie make-up stuff in 42nd."

"I was hungry," said Zoritza in a thick accent that Jerimiah was unfamiliar with, "And the girl bought me food. Now, she tell me we make art, and she say she give me more money. I don't do sex with children. I just want money."

"Right; thank you Zoritza." Said Victria; rolling her eyes for Jerimiah's sake, "Anyway, right: I needed a model, so the universe sent me one; because I realized Jerry, once I'd taken a look at what the newspapers and art mags said back then: the worst Dad would have had to deal with was some jail time if he'd hired a model instead."

"Victor wasn't the kind of guy who would risk someone else for the sake of achieving an artistic end." Jerimiah said.

"That's because he wasn't hard enough." Victria shot back.

"He wouldn't have been the Victor we loved if he was hard like that."

"That was his mistake. He should have been alive. He should have been the one who killed the guy with the glasses."

"Let's go home now Victria. Your mom's in the car."

"Fuck you and her Jerry! We'll go when I'm finished."

Jerimiah flushed with impotent rage and regret as he looked into the young girl's crazed eyes. She's not Victor, he thought as he stepped slowly back. And she sure as Hell isn't Sheila either. She was, at thirteen, a skinny, knobby kneed, bright eyed, very intelligent and intuitive, miserable bitch of a little girl; friendless, offensive, insolent, reactionary to authority. No sugar, no spice, not anything nice, not since the day after Victor had died and she'd found a newspaper from somewhere, took it to Sheila and pointed to Victor's name, stabbing it over and over with her finger, her right hand fisted against her hip; screaming at her mother: Why isn't this a good review? Huh Mom; why isn't this a good review?

"We'll be in the car." Jerimiah called over his shoulder, trudging back through the piles and heaps of refuse.

"You have a funeral to go to today?"

"Hmm?" uttered Victria; propping her aching head up at the kitchen table, her eyes half closed, watching her fork pushing scrambled eggs into her catsup: yellow, orange and red, red, orange and yellow.

"Yes, I have another funeral to go to today."

Melody, kneeling at her domme's side, dressed in the terrycloth robe she was allowed the comfort of, spooned her breakfast into her mouth from her little red dog bowl. She chewed, swallowed and said:

"I'll head up after I finish breakfast and get your clothes ready."

"Hmm." Victria answered.

"After that," Melody continued, "I'm starting a protest."

Victria had just taken a mouthful of catsup sopped egg when she'd heard the words without processing them enough. Wait; did she say she was ho testing? Victria chewed briefly, swallowed, and then regarded her slave.

"You're what?"

"I want a revision to our contract."

"You expect me to revise my contract."

"It's our contract, between you and me, Mistress. I am calling for its revision."

"Really. And which aspects of it do you wish to revise?" said Victria with a sigh of annoyance.

Melody set her bowl down and looked squarely into her domme's eyes.

"I would like all the alcohol removed from this house." She said; her hands folded on her lap, "I would like to be able to wear clothing more often. Goodness knows one's boobs could use more than the occasional support. And; I want to be able to go on long bike rides, by myself."

"You're know you're free to go any time you choose."

"I know. You keep saying that, but I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"Because I believe you want me to stay."

"And why should that make a difference to you?"

"Because you need someone, and I want to find out whether I'm the one you ultimately need."

"I don't understand." Grumbled Victria.

"Really?" Melody intoned, "Fate? Chance; things happening for the reasons they happen for?"

"I'm sorry girl. I'm not following."

"True love Ma'am; star crossed, unconditional, totally selfless, I would die for you love; Ma'am."

Staring in disbelief, Victria swallowed the last bite she would take of her breakfast and let her fork clang to her half full dish.

"What's wrong Mistress?"

Victria rose slowly from her seat, took up her empty mug and went to the coffee pot.

"Other than people who are too lazy to make a decent living," Victria patiently explained, "There's nothing more that makes me angrier than love."

"I wasn't talking about love exactly."

Victria sighed heavily as she poured herself fresh coffee.

"Oh, no; you weren't talking about love." She said, "You didn't tell me you loved me before dawn this morning, did you?"

Melody looked down at her folded hands.

"Melody, I don't need to be threatened with love!"

"Threatened?"

Victria nodded as she spooned sugar into her coffee.

"I've worked very hard to create an image, to perfect the brand that is Victria Charpentier!"

"Okay, okay that's fine." Melody conceded, "But what are you going to do when you're too old to care about breaking anyone down anymore?"

Victria slammed her mug down onto the counter, sending hot coffee onto her hand and all over the counter.

"You're threatening me again slave!" she shouted, "It sounds like you need some behavior habituation!"