BOB'S YOUR UNCLE
After a week home the post-trip depression is starting to wane and I'm beginning to move from the couch. The illusion of accomplishment that you get from driving 500 miles a day is a bit harder to achieve surfing 250 plus channels. You sit on your ass either way. I know I have to go back to work and dread the prospect. A friend called yesterday to inform me- "You're in the Whitney." I asked in what respect? Seems some collective hung an old poster of a welcome home party for Chuckles the Clown when he was sprung from a Mexican prison after doing six months on a peyote charge. I was one of the MCs. My name is on a piece of paper in the Whitney Museum would be more accurate. I get no satisfaction from the information. Maybe that depression hasn't quite gone away.
My grandfather's youngest brother Bob was an artist. He was also gay. No one in the early Christmo family could be considered an intellectual but divorce and homosexuality was a start. Bob was a friend of Helena Rubinstein- the makeup queen and worked in Provincetown, Cape Cod- a traditionally gay bastion. My father said he never wore socks or underwear. I met him once and can't remember much about him except the dirty tennis shoes and lack of socks. He painted Pennsylvania Dutch designs on furniture for Peter Hunt. I guess you could call that art.
In the last few years of his life the Docs carved up Gramp pretty good. He had a colostomy that gurgled and stunk and caused him much discomfort and embarrassment. I can still remember that smell masked by cherry pipe tobacco. He'd fall asleep in his chair and i'd do my homework at the dining room table. I was too young and oblivious to realize just how sick he was. When he took to his bed I stopped going over to his house. He didn't want me to see him so helpless. When he died I didn't go to the funeral. It was about this time i started to draw and began to think about being an artist. I took off my socks and underwear in order to get in the mood.
My parents were very encouraging of my artistic attempts. They knew with Gramp gone i needed something to occupy my time. I was shy and insecure. The praise I recieved for copying Mad magazine cartoons and travel brochures was much sought after. I wasn't athletic and too young for girls. When I wasn't drawing I spent hours in the fields behind my parent's house or walked the Wallkill river banks daydreaming. We lived on the edge of what today is suburbia. To the left were new houses to the right was farm land and holsteins. I gravitated to the right.
If you do the math I've been an artist for 40 years. Eventually i put my socks and underwear back on and by the time I was 14 or 15, girls began to fascinate me as much as racing that '49 Chevy through the corn fields. The only problem was i was so painfully shy I would never have the balls to talk to one. If Sweets hadn't talked to me first history would have taken a much different turn. And man that girl could talk. In no time love was in the air.
My grandfather's youngest brother Bob was an artist. He was also gay. No one in the early Christmo family could be considered an intellectual but divorce and homosexuality was a start. Bob was a friend of Helena Rubinstein- the makeup queen and worked in Provincetown, Cape Cod- a traditionally gay bastion. My father said he never wore socks or underwear. I met him once and can't remember much about him except the dirty tennis shoes and lack of socks. He painted Pennsylvania Dutch designs on furniture for Peter Hunt. I guess you could call that art.
In the last few years of his life the Docs carved up Gramp pretty good. He had a colostomy that gurgled and stunk and caused him much discomfort and embarrassment. I can still remember that smell masked by cherry pipe tobacco. He'd fall asleep in his chair and i'd do my homework at the dining room table. I was too young and oblivious to realize just how sick he was. When he took to his bed I stopped going over to his house. He didn't want me to see him so helpless. When he died I didn't go to the funeral. It was about this time i started to draw and began to think about being an artist. I took off my socks and underwear in order to get in the mood.
My parents were very encouraging of my artistic attempts. They knew with Gramp gone i needed something to occupy my time. I was shy and insecure. The praise I recieved for copying Mad magazine cartoons and travel brochures was much sought after. I wasn't athletic and too young for girls. When I wasn't drawing I spent hours in the fields behind my parent's house or walked the Wallkill river banks daydreaming. We lived on the edge of what today is suburbia. To the left were new houses to the right was farm land and holsteins. I gravitated to the right.
If you do the math I've been an artist for 40 years. Eventually i put my socks and underwear back on and by the time I was 14 or 15, girls began to fascinate me as much as racing that '49 Chevy through the corn fields. The only problem was i was so painfully shy I would never have the balls to talk to one. If Sweets hadn't talked to me first history would have taken a much different turn. And man that girl could talk. In no time love was in the air.
posted by mike osterhout at 9:15 AM
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