***
Candy Darling on her Deathbed, 1973, 375 × 375 mm, Gelatin silver print, Peter Hujar
*
Hospital linen contrasts with hospital lighting. Candy, lounged on her gurney, seen hanging midair, an artist descending the trapeze after a slip into the sawdust, a woman between places, on the precipice of something—or, with less artistry, dying in a full face of makeup, aware her time is limited, capturing herself while she is inside herself. Dying is such a bore, she’ll drawl, but she makes it look good.
Her eyes find the black again, like the black of the house during her press conference: Candy Darling in Tennessee Williams Play. Tennessee is slurring, old, and rambling, his sincerity slopping. Candy looks to the darkness as reprieve and the darkness looks back snidely. Oh, but Tennessee wrote a part for me. Peter’s clicks are almost warm, memories of Andy and that lot, she’s had an unsurprising lack of bedside visits from a flock of vultures. It’s one of Peter’s best- known outside of the shots molested by Hanya Yanagihara’s drivel. Every major museum owns a gelatin of it, yet, none have it on view, my face for the world to see. The pillow creases and the bed creeks with every minor adjustment—did you know I couldn’t last? I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again.
Candy left her body like a fur in coat-check. Between you and Candy is something deeper than the sterility of love or mortality—a complicity. Her kohled eyes are drachmas and Peter has his fee. The pillowcase has almost imperceptible stripes woven in, at close proximity they’re like a lover’s work shirt she’s cozying into. Peter’s camera can’t capture it, but beside her in bed is the tenderness of body heat and sleep sweat, sweetness from sweetness. At her funeral not one mention is made of her dead name, Julie Newmar reads the eulogy, and crowds gather to send off the superstar, age twenty-nine, from Queens, NY. Yeah, I think I’ve got it, Candy, I’ll go get these developed and come back. The door is not a soft close; it shuts loudly. With Peter gone the room is again left to flowers succumbing and hospital noise. Candy lays on her back, staring at the white. Human Love. That’s a good title for a picture.
***
Greer Lankton Surrounded by her Sculptures, 1984, 495 x 393 mm, C-print, Eric Kroll
*
Tumescent flesh softens the room’s light. Powdered forms ogle Greer in her porcelain basin, seven sets of eyes fixed on her hungrily, their meal too svelte for satisfaction. Grinning, she stares into the lens, bubbles blanketing nudity. Heaven’s gates opened and Greer was an angel, my angel, Paul says. She’s as skinny as a champion Greyhound, Paul also says. Soft blonde hair tickles her shoulders, clavicle protruded, skeletal system on display. It’s all about ME, not you.
The bath’s water is cooling and the novelty of the scenario wanes with it. Looking ahead she meets the face of a giantess, pink rouge blended into severe crimson eyeliner, her name is Aunt Ruth. Karen Carpenter lounges on the ledge. I’ve been Anorexic since 19 and plan to continue and you know what I say FUCK Recovery. Candy Darling - dead. Peter’s photo tacked to her wall growing up. Candy says, I’ve come to hate my body and all that it requires. Her dolls surround her. I don’t want to become a caricature of myself. Everyone says the dolls are her self portrait, they ignore the names she gives them. The water is just cold now, not even room temperature, but Eric snaps away, and she’s a real model so she knows how to bear it and grin, and she’s certainly grinning. The useless sex of the crazed doll behind her nudges her shoulder and she leans back. Do you want to take a break? No, let’s finish this. Once Nick Zedd had her design and wear a fat-suit for a film he hoped would tank the presidential election. The film was only 11 minutes and the election went off without a hitch.
Hundreds of photo booth prints litter the floor, Eric is gone and she towels off slowly thinking of where she’ll place the dolls. The miniature portrait strips try to navigate it all— being unloved is a kind of invisibility, you don’t notice that I have a body. If she loses everything, the dolls remain. If she misplaces the dolls, she finds—
The wedding is fabulous, Paul’s hair acid green and the air heavy with cigarette smoke. It adds the perfect beauty filter for all the photographs. Nan shoots it merrily. How many years of happiness proceed? Pulling the drain from the tub makes monstrous gurgling sounds, a voice for the dolls. Karen Carpenter falls in and circles the drain before sinking from the weight of the absorbed water. The best ones never last, but she’ll be an audience until the end.
She looks in the mirror again caught between a smile and a snarl.
I swear to become my body.
I swear to become my body.
I swear to become my body.
Mathuson Anthony’s work has appeared in Expat Press, Do Not Submit, Some Words, and World Hunger. He co-runs The Can reading series. Part III of this work can be read at Do Not Submit, and parts IV and V can be read at Expat Press.