_____________
Andreas Slominski Sperm, 2012
‘Andreas Slominski’s “Sperm” comprises the semen of humans and animals splashed on the walls and floors of the NYC gallery Metro Pictures.’

 

______________
Hany Armanious Ejaculate and Dick, 2013
Pigmented polyurethane resin

 

______________
Raymond Pettibon My First Orgasm, 1983
ink on paper

 

______________
Xiao Lu Sperm, 2006
‘Xiao Lu gained instant notoriety in early 1989 when she fired a gun into her artwork at the China/Avant-garde exhibition in Beijing. In 2006, aged 44 and desperate to have a child before it was too late, she asked fellow artists to donate sperm so that she could inseminate herself. This act of self-help was also a carefully planned conceptual artwork, to take place during the Long March Project, an event involving 30 contemporary artists at Yan’an, site of the mountain stronghold of Mao Zedong’s forces. Xiao prepared optimistically, bringing glass jars and a freezer to store semen samples. To her surprise, not one man would agree, and the work documents their refusal. Xiao Lu says, ‘I took the initiative … and all the men were struggling with this.’’

 

_____________
Louise Bourgeois & Tracey Emin I Held your Sperm and Cried, 2009-2010
‘Bourgeois began their open-ended project by producing a series of gouache paintings of male and female torsos, pregnant women’s bellies, and erect phalluses. After months spent ruminating on Bourgeois’s watercolors, Emin added to them with text, as well as further images of fetuses and miniature female figures.’

 

________________
Nour Mobarak Reproductive Logistics, 2020
Apple-wood pellets, kraft paper, watercolor, hair, sperm, acrylic, resin

 

_______________
Keith Haring King Sperm, 1988
sumi ink on paper

 

______________
Stahl Stenslie The Artgasm, 2014
‘Artgasm medically manipulates the male audience/participant to experience the maxi- mum of corporal pleasure, ie orgasm. The orgasms are involuntarily induced through a medical device and under the medical treatment of a doctor and nurse. By neural stimu- lation males will erect and ejaculate within two minutes.

‘Situation: each participant (3+) are put on a surgical table and covered in a white, med- ical cloth. Their penis can be exposed through a hole in the cloth. 10 minutes prior to performance the participant mus take a necessary heart medicine (betablocker) to avoid stress of the heart. Then the procedure of i: stimulus, ii: erection and iii: ejaculation is started. The betablocker is important since a physically induced corporal excitement without a mental stimulation is potentially dangerous. A team of on doctor and two nurs- es in the usual uniforms apply the apparatus until the erection/orgasm/ejaculation cycle is completed. Their behaviour is medical, technical and functional. They are professionals just doing their job of making men achieve ejaculation/orgasm. The sperm is collected in a medical container. This could be used for other purposes/use.’

 

______________
Cary Kwok Arrival (Jazz), 2017
Bronze, wax, chrome, resin, stainless steel and lamp wiring

 

______________
Saeborg Ultra Unreal, 2022
‘The Ultra Unreal exhibition sees the modern world of chaos, COVID and climate change and ups the ante with something even more unreal: latex landscapes of dung beetles devouring faeces (“Pooptopia,” it’s called) and farmers milking frozen sperm. And then there are the videos of alligators created with rice, and burial sites covered by green lasers.’

 

______________
Bjarne Melgaard Untitled (Sperm on the Grave of Paul Gaugin), 1998
Watercolor, mixed media and collage on paper

 

______________
Guillermo Kuitca Last of Sperm, 1995
Painting, 102 x 122 x 5 cm

 

______________
Rego Kim Luxury Orgasm, 2014
Painting, Ink on Canvas

 

______________
Mire Lee Carriers, 2022
‘In Mire Lee’s installations and sculptures, there are low-fi motor-driven pumps, concrete mixers, PVC tubing, and hand-grafted silicon abscesses, which merge into experimental assemblages. Her kinetic installations rely on circulatory systems that mimic the homeostatic process of organs. In an algorithmic world, where questions of pleasure and consumption habits are increasingly quantifiable and aligned into predictive patterns of regulated behavior. Her works leak into their environments; they squirt, drip, or amass with viscous liquids — a process where components of the artwork begin fluctuating between various states of arousal throughout the duration of the work’s display.’

 

______________
Tracey Emin Rat Black Sperm, 2009
Polymer gravure on 27 gsm Japanese Tonosawa paper

 

______________
Gilbert & George Various, 1982
Photographs, gelatin silver print on paper with dye on paper mounted onto board

Sperm Eaters

Hunger

Thirst

 

_______________
Jonty Hurwitz How enough sperm can make a strange human without a uterus, 2010
Digital Photography

 

_______________
Kiki Smith Sperms, 1991
cast glass

 

_______________
David McGee Sperm Rush, 1994
Oil and enamel on newsprint on canvas

 

______________
Eung Ho Park Sperm Spoons, 1995
found objects; metal; mixed media; spoons

 

_______________
Terence Koh God (Cumming), 2012
photograph, sculpture, collage

 

______________
Alexander Zuleta A billion sperm and you were the first one, 2022
‘One millilitre of semen can contain more than 200 million sperm. What a coincidence! 21st century, year 2022, a time when we all seek singularity, the ability to be unique and differentiate ourselves from the rest. Zuleta makes us reflect on how the singular event from which a single sperm comes is nothing more than the consequence of a coincidence of mother nature where we are all part of a whole and where a trillionth part of a unit finds its singularity as a consequence of the collective effort of all.’

 

______________
Laek1yo Untitled, 2020
‘I’m planning to exhibit a jar of my own semen at an extremely high-end contemporary art gallery in Singapore. But it looks like I need to push the deadline back again. 300 wanks later and it’s not even half full!’

 

______________
Andy Warhol Cum Paintings, 1978
Semen and gesso on canvas, four panels

 

______________
Jonty Hurwitz Untitled, 2015
‘London-based artist Jonty Hurwitz has created the smallest known, human-shaped sculptures in the world that’s completely invisible to the human eye. The nano sculptures span about the same scale as a sperm, and can only be perceived on the screen of powerful scanning electron microscope.’

 

____________
Andres Serrano Semen and Blood I, II, III, 1990
Cibachrome prints

 

_____________
‘Canadian jeweler Amanda Booth went viral after posting her homemade jewelry made out of dehydrated cum. Booth has always created trinkets, but after a suggestion, her team couldn’t let her pass up an opportunity to make “jizzy jewelry.” From there, she decided to ask her husband for a “sample,” of his semen and got to work. Clearly, the formula not only works but she’s begun perfecting it. She sells each piece of jewellery for between $110 and $300 Canadian dollars and often offloads more than 40 items a week.’

 

_____________
Gregor Schneider Sperm, 1997
Glass, water, silicone

 

_____________
Rirkrit Tiravanija Untitled 2020 (a hurricane in a drop of cum), 1965
Hand tufted rug

 

_____________
Takashi Murakami My Lonesome Cowboy, 1998
‘The value of Takashi Murakami’s artwork hit new heights in 2008 when his life-sized fibreglass sculpture ‘My Lonesome Cowboy’ – a wacky anime-inspired figure of a boy whose semen stream forms a gigantic lasso around his head – sold for an astonishing $15.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York.’

 

_____________
Marcel Duchamp Faulty Landscape, 1946
‘Paysage fautif or Faulty Landscape was made in 1946 and dedicated to Maria Martins. Martins was a Brazilian sculptor whom Duchamp met in 1942 and became her lover. This is considered such an original and provocative piece because of the material he used to create it – his own sperm (although it was not discovered until 1989 that Duchamp’s seminal liquid was used).’

 

_____________
Tala Madani Cum Shot #3, 2019
Oil on linen

 

_____________
Juan Antonio Olivares Untitled (Cum), 2022
Graphite powder and acrylic on aluminum panel

 

_____________
Gelitin Arc de Triomphe, 2017
‘A male figure depicted by Gelitin, “tall as an elephant”, creates a round-headed arch with an erect penis from which “cum” squirts harmoniously like a fountain, forming a loop and ending up in the figure’s mouth.’

 

_____________
Richie Culver Roses Are Red, 2020
‘Culver’s work comes off as a wicked mix of Rodney Dangerfield’s self-deprecating humor, the adolescent distress of Mike Kelley and the copyright busting antics of Richard Prince. An artist whipping open his trench coat to reveal it all (to an extent perhaps he shouldn’t).’

 

_____________
Sean Landers Monk in Orgasm, 1991
terracotta, wood, steel

 

_____________
Aura Rosenberg Head Shots: Mike Kelley, 1993
‘Rosenberg had noted that in pornography, women’s pleasure was most often captured via their facial expressions—while for men, the proof was in the irrefutable “money shot.” And so began a prolonged project that would result in a series, and an accompanying book of 61 images, known as “Head Shots.” These closely cropped portraits see her male peers, friends, and friends-of-friends all caught in the moment of sexual release. Her subjects include more than a few boldface names, including the late Mike Kelley and John Baldessari. The experience, Kelley noted in a 1995 fax to Rosenberg, was “definitely the most pleasant photo shoot I have ever done. Now the so-called ‘little death’ is frozen into an eternal one—my longest orgasm to date.”‘

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks, yeah, things are better nowadays. I have to really be careful not to get too excited about the Cannes thing. Our film is very good, I must say, but it’s a very, very competitive situation, and our film is definitely an oddball. It would take a lot of luck. I think love will be glad he read that particular book. Just a hunch. Love realising his neighborhood is at the very center of where all the big Olympics activities and celebrations will be happening and thinking, Uh oh, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I still haven’t started ‘The Shards’. I really have to do that before it becomes an antique. Yeah, PT sounded supersonic. So, are you continually buying/getting tracks for your show, or do you have a vast library/collection that constitutes a kind of endless supply? ** Misanthrope, Thanks again for the pix. Thumbs up! ‘Dune 2’ is definitely the live activity equivalent of the most Intagramable possible photo op of the day. Have fun, iow. Last I heard, Sammy Case went into a deep Tina hole for a quite a while, cleaned up, and I think was working at a zoo in Florida? ** Jack Skelley, Suave countdown, unimitateable. Yes, Wally Cox’s big D is supposedly no small reason why he was the great love of Marlon Brando’s life. So strange. You know they’re buried side by side. I’ll check the FOKA review. Enjoy the grok. One of these days you’ll be a post-New Years Rose Parade float like the rest of us, ha ha. We finished the sound mix/design yesterday! Now just VFX work to go, and we’ll be done! Lurve, Joey Heatherton. ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. Yeah, we finished it yesterday. Crazy. Thanks for the Zambreno book fill-in link. I haven’t seen that Terayama. Ooh. ** Guy, Well, thank you, sir. I’m good, yes, I think so, yes. Well, thank goodness for therapy then. And trumpets at the ready re: your summer of … love? Maybe not. Wait, your slave made you apply? Not very slavelike there. Watch out. Our slaves are prepping for the 31st. My mind is a little pooped from the film work, but only physically. It stills works okay, I think. Your big mind sounds perky. ** Justin, No, I like blog post requests. I sometimes feel like I’m completely out of ideas, especially with all my busyness and distraction at the current time. I clicked over to your Tumblr, and it looks suave as hell at first glance. I’ll pore over it in a bit. The haircut outcome does sound nice. I remember when I went from hippie to punk rocker in one fell swoop. It’s true, my head went totally viral for a few weeks. ** Mark, Hi. Oh, no, no Paris? That’s totally sad. But practical and understandable. Damn. After8 has been at every Paris Ass I’ve been to, so I’m pretty sure they’ll do it this year. Yeah, hit them up. I’ll pop in there and add my thumbs up to the idea. Or, yeah, surely you know folks over here who’d want to man such a table. It’s a pretty fun, ultra-social deal to be part of. I do remember the young Madonna carrying herself like she was a billion dollars, yeah. ** Charalampos, Hi. Uh, yeah, no Tsiknopempti for me, Jesus. I slept on a water bed a few times back in the day. They were miserable. No surprise they had a Pet Rock-like lifespan. Although I suppose someone must still sell them. A post? Hm, I don’t know. I will think about it. Oh, yeah, let me look back at the Kunstverein post and see if it’s worth salvaging. Thanks, buddy. Hi from pretty much never boring Paris. ** Darbyyy🤔🤨😑in thoughts, Nice. Oh, I do posts about musicians sometimes. I guess mostly the gig posts. I did a great post about the Mellotron, my favorite musical instrument. But not the moog yet, I don’t think. Have you seen the documentary ‘Sisters with Transistors’ about the early female electronic music pioneers? It’s great, you should check it out. Interesting sounding book there. And you sound jazzed about it, cool. I’ve not been reading much because of the film stuff eating me. I did recently reread Dambudzo Marechera’s incredible early 60s novel ‘Black Sunlight’. It’s amazing. My eyes are kind of fucked, but I didn’t see any grammar weirdness. But I love grammar weirdness, so I’m not the best judge. ** Uday, Hi. I was in the scouts, first Cub then Boy until I was kicked out for refusing to cut my long hair. Anyway, it wasn’t very exciting. I’m not a big fan of camping. Oh, for infinite time, yes, please. Zoom interviews can be pretty fun, believe it or not. Sometimes. Good morning. ** Okay. Well, the post’s title tells you everything you need to know. See you tomorrow.

 

‘I have known Lucia Berlin’s work for more than thirty years—ever since I acquired the slim, beige 1981 Turtle Island paperback called Angels Laundromat. By the time of her third collection, I had come to know her personally, from a distance, though I can’t remember how. There on the flyleaf of the beautiful Safe & Sound, her 1988 novel, is an inscription. We never did meet face to face.

‘Berlin, who was born in 1936, in Juneau, Alaska, and died in 2004, on her sixty-eighth birthday, based many of her stories on events in her own life. One of her sons said, after her death, “Ma wrote true stories, not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes.” Although people talk, as though it were a new thing, about the form of fiction known in France as auto-fiction (“self-fiction”)—the narration of one’s own life, lifted almost unchanged from the reality, selected, and judiciously, artfully told—Lucia Berlin had been doing this, or a version of this, as far as I can see, from the beginning, back in the nineteen-sixties. Of course, for the sake of balance, or color, she changed whatever she had to in shaping her stories—details of events and descriptions, chronology. One of her sons said, “Our family stories and memories have been slowly reshaped, embellished and edited to the extent that I’m not sure what really happened all the time. Lucia said this didn’t matter: the story is the thing.”

‘Berlin’s life was rich and full of incident, and the material she took from it for her stories was colorful, dramatic, and wide-ranging. The places she and her family lived in her childhood and youth were determined by her father—where he worked in her early years, then his going off to serve in the Second World War, and then his job when he returned from the war. Thus, she was born in Alaska and grew up first in mining camps in the west of the U.S.; then lived with her mother’s family in El Paso, while her father was gone; then was transplanted south into a very different life in Chile, one of wealth and privilege, which is portrayed in her stories about a teenage girl in Santiago, about Catholic school there, about political turbulence, yacht clubs, dressmakers, slums, revolution. As an adult she continued to lead a restless life, geographically, living in Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, New York City; one of her sons remembers moving about every nine months as a child. Later in her life she taught in Boulder, Colorado, and at the very end of it she moved closer to her sons, to Los Angeles.

‘She writes about her sons—she had four—and the jobs she worked to support them, often on her own. Or, we should say, she writes about a woman with four sons, jobs like her jobs—cleaning woman, E.R. nurse, hospital-ward clerk, hospital-switchboard operator, teacher.

‘She lived in so many places, experienced so much—it was enough to fill several lives. We have, most of us, known at least some part of what she went through: children in trouble, or early molestation, or a rapturous love affair, struggles with addiction, a difficult illness or disability, an unexpected bond with a sibling, or a tedious job, difficult fellow workers, a demanding boss, or a deceitful friend, not to speak of awe in the presence of the natural world—Hereford cattle knee-deep in Indian paintbrush, a field of bluebonnets, a pink rocket flower growing in the alley behind a hospital. Because we have known some part of it, or something like it, we are right there with her as she takes us through it.

‘Things actually happen in the stories—a whole mouthful of teeth gets pulled at once; a little girl gets expelled from school for striking a nun; an old man dies in a mountaintop cabin, his goats and his dog in bed with him; the history teacher with her mildewed sweater is dismissed for being a Communist—“That’s all it took. Three words to my father. She was fired sometime that weekend and we never saw her again.”

‘Is this why it is almost impossible to stop reading a story of Lucia Berlin’s once you begin? Is it because things keep happening? Is it also the narrating voice, so engaging, so companionable? Along with the economy, the pacing, the imagery, the clarity? These stories make you forget what you were doing, where you are, even who you are.

‘“Wait,” begins one story. “Let me explain . . .” It is a voice close to Lucia’s own, though never identical. Her wit and her irony flow through the stories and overflow in her letters, too: “She is taking her medication,” she told me once, in 2002, about a friend, “which makes a big difference! What did people do before Prozac? Beat up horses I guess.”

Beat up horses. Where did that come from? The past was maybe as alive in her mind as were other cultures, other languages, politics, human foibles; the range of her reference so rich and even exotic that switchboard operators lean into their boards like milkmaids leaning into their cows; or a friend comes to the door, “Her black hair . . . up in tin rollers, like a kabuki headdress.”

‘The past—I read this passage from “So Long” a few times, with relish, with wonder, before I realized what she was doing:

One night it was bitterly cold, Ben and Keith were sleeping with me, in snowsuits. The shutters banged in the wind, shutters as old as Herman Melville. It was Sunday so there were no cars. Below in the streets the sailmaker passed, in a horse-drawn cart. Clop clop. Sleet hissed cold against the windows and Max called. Hello, he said. I’m right around the corner in a phone booth.

He came with roses, a bottle of brandy and four tickets to Acapulco. I woke up the boys and we left.

‘They were living in lower Manhattan, at a time when the heat would be turned off at the end of the working day if you lived in a loft. Maybe the shutters really were as old as Herman Melville, since in some parts of Manhattan buildings did date from the 1860s, back then, more of them than now, though now, too. Though it could be that she is exaggerating again—a beautiful exaggeration, if so, a beautiful flourish. She goes on: “It was Sunday so there were no cars.” That sounded realistic, so, then, I was fooled by the sailmaker and the horse-drawn cart, which came next—I believed it and accepted it, and only realized after another reading that she must have jumped back effortlessly into Melville’s time again. The “Clop clop,” too, is something she likes to do—waste no words, add a detail in note form. The “sleet hissing” took me in there, within those walls, and then the action accelerated and we were suddenly on our way to Acapulco.

‘This is exhilarating writing.

‘Another story begins with a typically straightforward and informative statement that I can easily believe is drawn directly from Berlin’s own life: “I’ve worked in hospitals for years now and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that the sicker the patients are the less noise they make. That’s why I ignore the patient intercom.”

‘Reading that, I’m reminded of the stories of William Carlos Williams when he wrote as the family doctor he was—his directness, his frank and knowledgeable details of medical conditions and treatment, his objective reporting. Even more than Williams, Berlin also saw Chekhov (another doctor) as a model and teacher. In fact, she says in a letter to Stephen Emerson that what gives life to their work is their physician’s detachment, combined with compassion. She goes on to mention their use of specific detail and their economy—“No words are written that aren’t necessary.” Detachment, compassion, specific detail, and economy—and we are well on the way to identifying some of the most important things in good writing. But there is always a little more to say.’ — Lydia Davis

(cont.)

 

____
Further

Lucia Berlin Website
‘Smoking with Lucia’
‘A Roundtable on Lucia Berlin, the Greatest American Writer You’ve Never Heard Of’
Tom Raworth’s Lucia Berlin Tribute Page
‘Short Story Master Rediscovered’
‘THE RISKY BRILLIANCE OF LUCIA BERLIN’
‘Friends’, a story by Lucia Berlin
‘Stars and Saints’, a story by Lucia Berlin
‘Angels Laundromat’, a story by Lucia Berlin
’11 Years After Her Death, Lucia Berlin Is Finally a Bestselling Author’
‘Lucia Berlin’s Roving, Rowdy Life Is Reflected in a Book of Her Stories’
‘Best Kept Secrets: The Fiction of Lucia Berlin’
‘Lucia Berlin: Literary genius who transformed my life’
‘LUCIA BERLIN AND A TALE OF TWO BOOK COVERS’
Audio: Lucia Berlin Writing Workshop
‘Out of the Dark: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin’
Lucia Berlin @ Citizen Film
Buy ‘A Manual for Cleaning Women’

 

____
Extras

Lucia Berlin: Pen Pals

Lucia Berlin: Mama

Lucia Berlin: Unmanageable

Lucia Berlin: My Jockey

Lucia Berlin: Angels Laundromat

 

_______
Handwriting

 

_______
Interview
from Literary Hub

 

Kellie Paluck: Okay, here’s the first, general question. What are your poetics?

Lucia Berlin: I have no idea.

Adrian Zupp: That’s good! [Laughter]

Lucia Berlin: Hmm… what’d you say?

AZ: I said that’s good, that’s interesting. So for you, poetics… I guess was something that you thought about once you ended up in academia, but…

Lucia Berlin: I still don’t think about it.

AZ: No? Why not?

Lucia Berlin: I guess I just object to putting whatever I do into a word called poetics.

KP: So would you object to someone writing a thesis about your poetics?

Lucia Berlin: No, people do it all the time and I’m always amazed. I’m amazed at how much poetics I have!

KP: But you don’t disagree with them?

Lucia Berlin: No, no. I just don’t write with that in mind. I don’t have a credo about writing, or about the suffering of the poor, single women, or the American underbelly, or something.

KP: Well, I know you don’t have a political agenda.

Lucia Berlin: No. I just write what seems to me to feel true. To feel emotionally true. When there’s emotional truth, there follows a rhythm, and I think a beauty of image, because you’re seeing clearly. Because of the simplicity of what you see.

KP: So it sounds like you don’t have a specific audience in mind either when you’re writing?

Lucia Berlin: No.

KP: Who buys your books?

Lucia Berlin: Not many people! [Laughter] No, but… the people who respond to my books are people who respond on a very emotional, very intuitive level.

KP: Do you think more women buy your books than men?

Lucia Berlin: Definitely.

KP: And do they just come across your books in a bookstore? Or do they hear about you from someone?

Lucia Berlin: Usually they’ve heard about me from someone, or read a story in a magazine and then gotten my books. Actually, I think I have as many male readers.

AZ: Really? That’s interesting.

Lucia Berlin: Men like the cleanness of my writing, I think. And it’s not sentimental and it’s not super-feminist. I think I have about an equal number of men. Older women and younger males, I think.

AZ: You’ve probably answered this in other interviews, but I tend to think that with people who don’t write with an audience in mind—that they also don’t write with publication in mind, so much… What was your initial impetus for writing? Was it for catharsis, or is it just a joy to do it?

Lucia Berlin: It’s a joy to do it. It’s a place to go. It definitely is a place where I am…where I feel my honest self is. When I first started to write, I was alone. My first husband had left me, I was homesick, my parents had disowned me because I had married so young and divorced. I just wrote to—to go home. It was like a place to be where I felt I was safe. And so I write to fix a reality.

AZ: So if you’d never been published, would your personal bibliography be much the same?

Lucia Berlin: I think so.

AZ: That’s interesting.

Lucia Berlin: In fact, I have many stories that I can’t publish at all because they would hurt people’s feelings or embarrass my sons. I just write to fix a time or an event in my own head. As I said in the class it isn’t for therapy, but more for clarity, emotional clarity. To let me see what I really feel about something, to make it sort of acceptable in my head.

KP: How do you think you’d feel if you hadn’t gotten published or maybe just published in a few small journals, but nothing major? Would it still be okay that you’d spent all this time writing?

Lucia Berlin: Oh, well… there’s something else to that. No, when you write you want someone to hear it. You do. I mean I don’t write thinking, “Oh Adrian and Kellie are going to love this.” But it’s just that the act of writing comes from a feeling, for me, of connectedness, usually. Or figuring why do I feel at one with this place or with these people or in this job or in this situation. And so just the act of writing is a connection, a giving out. It’s like in telling a joke, you want somebody to laugh.

KP: Then you’re lucky because you sound like you haven’t had that struggle to get published.

Lucia Berlin: No, but also I never tried that hard. I never learned how to work at it properly, so I never got good publishing habits, like sending off my work. And since I have a publisher, I’m not as ambitious as I should be about getting work done and sent off. Because I never have done it for money and I’ve found that the times that I did have a contract, I just got all mixed up. Because, for instance, they wanted me to change things. I couldn’t do it. So I never count on it for income.

KP: You started to talk about how you write to have a place to go, on account of your past, and your family, and moving around. I’m curious: What if you’d had the perfect upbringing in Iowa, with two loving parents, and then the perfect marriage? What would you write about?

Lucia Berlin: Well, I don’t think I’d need to write! [Much laughter] I think Proust is quite right saying that only neurotic people write. [Laughter] You know?

 

___
Book

Lucia Berlin A Manual for Cleaning Women
FSG

‘A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the wit of Lorrie Moore, the grit of Raymond Carver, and a blend of humor and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.

‘Lovers of the short story will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they’d ever overlooked her in the first place.’ — FSG

 

_____
Excerpt
from Flavorwire

Carpe Diem

Most of the time I feel all right about getting old. Some things give me a pang, like skaters. How free they seem, long legs gliding, hair streaming back. Other things throw me into a panic, like BART doors. A long wait before the doors open, after the train comes to a stop. Not very long, but it’s too long. There’s no time.

And laundromats. But they were a problem even when I was young. Just too long, even the Speed Queens. Your entire life has time to flash before your eyes while you sit there, a drowner. Of course if I had a car I could go to the hardware store or the post of€ office and then come back and put things into the dryer.

The laundries with no attendants are even worse. Then it seems I’m always the only person there at all. But all of the washers and dryers are going . . . everybody is at the hardware store.

So many laundromat attendants I have known, the hovering Charons, making change or who never have change. Now it is fat Ophelia who pronounces No Sweat as No Thwet. Her top plate broke on beef jerky. Her breasts are so huge she has to turn sideways and then kitty- corner to get through doors, like moving a kitchen table. When she comes down the aisle with a mop everybody moves and moves the baskets too. She is a channel hopper. Just when we’ve settled in to watch The Newlywed Game she’ll flick it to Ryan’s Hope.

Once, to be polite, I told her I got hot  ashes too, so that’s what she associates me with . . . The Change. “How ya coming with the change?” she says, loud, instead of hello. Which only makes it worse, sitting there, re ecting, aging. My sons have all grown now, so I’m down from € ve washers to one, but one takes just as long.

I moved last week, maybe for the two hundredth time. I took in all my sheets and curtains and towels, my shopping cart piled high. The laundromat was very crowded; there weren’t any washers together. I put all my things into three machines, went to get change from Ophelia. I came back, put the money and the soap in, and started them. Only I had started up three wrong washers. Three that had just €finished this man’s clothes.

I was backed into the machines. Ophelia and the man loomed before me. I’m a tall woman, wear Big Mama panty- hose now, but they were both huge people. Ophelia had a prewash spray bottle in her hand. The man wore cutoffs, his massive thighs were matted with red hair. His thick beard wasn’t like hair at all but a red padded bumper. He wore a baseball hat with a gorilla on it. The hat wasn’t too small but his hair was so bushy it shoved the hat high up on his head making him about seven feet tall. He was slapping a heavy €fist into his other red palm. “Goddamn. I’ll be goddamned!” Ophelia wasn’t menacing; she was protecting me, ready to come between him and me, or him and the machines. She’s always saying there’s nothing at the laundry she can’t handle.

“Mister, you may’s well sit down and relax. No way to stop them machines once they’ve started. Watch a little TV, have yourself a Pepsi.”

I put quarters in the right machines and started them. Then I remembered that I was broke, no more soap and those quarters had been for dryers. I began to cry.

“What the fuck is she crying about? What do you think this does to my Saturday, you dumb slob? Jesus wept.”

I offered to put his clothes into the dryers for him, in case he wanted to go somewhere.

“I wouldn’t let you near my clothes. Like stay away from my clothes, you dig?” There was no place for him to sit except next to me. We looked at the machines. I wished he would go outside, but he just sat there, next to me. His big right leg vibrated like a spinning washer. Six little red lights glowed at us.

“You always fuck things up?” he asked.

“Look, I’m sorry. I was tired. I was in a hurry.” I began to giggle, nervously.

“Believe it or not, I am in a hurry. I drive a tow. Six days a week. Twelve hours a day. This is it. My day off.”

“What were you in a hurry for?” I meant this nicely, but he thought I was being sarcastic.

“You stupid broad. If you were a dude I’d wash you. Put your empty head in the dryer and turn it to cook.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Damn right you’re sorry. You’re one big sorry excuse for a chick. I had you spotted for a loser before you did that to my clothes. I don’t believe this. She’s crying again. Jesus wept.”

Ophelia stood above him.

“Don’t you be bothering her, you hear? I happens to know she’s going through a hard time.”

How did she know that? I was amazed. She knows everything, this giant black Sybil, this Sphinx. Oh, she must mean The Change.

“I’ll fold your clothes if you’d like,” I said to him.

“Hush, girl,” Ophelia said. “Point is, what’s the big deal? In a hunnert years from now just who is gonna care?”

“A hunnert years,” he whispered. “A hunnert years.”

And I was thinking that too. A hundred years. Our machines were shimmying away, and all the little red spin lights were on.

“At least yours are clean. I used up all my soap.”

“I’ll buy you some soap for crissake.”

“It’s too late. Thanks anyway.”

“She didn’t ruin my day. She’s ruined my whole fuckin’ week. No soap.”

Ophelia came back, stooped down to whisper to me.

“I been spottin’ some. Doctor says it don’t quit I’ll need a D and C. You been spottin’?”

I shook my head.

“You will. Women’s troubles just go on and on. A whole lifetime of troubles. I’m bloated. You bloated?”

“Her head is bloated,” the man said. “Look, I’m
going out to the car, get a beer. I want you to promise not to go near my machines. Yours are thirty- four, thirty- nine, forty- three. Got that?”

“Yeah. Thirty- two, forty, forty- two.” He didn’t think it was funny.

The clothes were in the €final spin. I’d have to hang mine up to dry on the fence. When I got paid I’d come back with soap.

“Jackie Onassis changes her sheets every single day,” Ophelia said. “Now that is sick, you ask me.”

“Sick,” I agreed.

I let the man put his clothes in a basket and go to the dryers before I took mine out. Some people were grinning but I just ignored them. I filled my cart with soggy sheets and towels. It was almost too heavy to push and, wet, not everything € fit. I slung the hot- pink curtains over my shoulder. Across the room the man started to say something, then looked away.

It took a long time to get home. Even longer to hang everything, although I did find a rope. Fog was rolling in.

I poured some coffee and sat on the back steps. I was happy. I felt calm, unhurried. Next time I am on BART, I won’t even think about getting off until the train stops. When it does, I’ll make it out just in time.

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Fly, awesome. I’m going to start using that superlative again. Just watch me. We didn’t get to do the watch-through because there was still too much work to do on the haunted house part, but we will this morning. Today’s our last sound mix day and there’s a ton to do. It’s going to be a lonnnng one. Yes, the French producer is going to show the film to French distributors in the next days, and he’s going to submit the film to Cannes on Friday. Very long shot, but he thinks the film has a chance, so he wants to try. Love’s Paris magic trick made me imagine bouncy castle metro trains, which for some reason hits the spot. Love letting us finish the sound mix/design today to the point where we’re satisfied and not disappointed that time ran out too early for perfection, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, That Deller piece was in France, but in a far-off region that I never managed to train to in time. I think I agree that the new Play Therapy is the best yet, or least probably my favorite. Nonstop bliss, fantastic flow. We took our lunch break yesterday to get sandwiches to bring back to the studio, and I mentioned PT, and the sound mixer was curious, so I got to hear the episode through his amazing sound system, and we were all sufficiently enthralled that our lunch break ran way long, which we ended up paying for, but it was worth it. I think my favorite part was the stretch of kind of moody but perky tracks starting about half hour in and ending just before the Spin track. Anyway, big kudos, and thank you, man. ** Jack Skelley, Jack… off???? Wally Cox, Rudolf Nureyev, … hm. Dennn… hiss! ** Mark, Madonna finally hit LA, eh? She seems to be holding up well. I used to see Madonna hanging out in the East Village in the early 80s a fair amount. But that didn’t make special. Everyone in the East Village did. She was just a scenester with a couple of hits under her belt back then. Envy that you saw Jack’s shebang. I’m waiting for the video. ‘Jubilee’ is fun, for sure. I’m good, swamped, finishing the film still. Glad your Paris voyage is almost cemented. ** Bill, Hey. I’ve never been in a bouncy castle weirdly enough. I’ve jumped on my fair share of trampolines. (I grew up with one in my backyard.) I didnt know Kate has a book on Guibert. How curious. I’ll obviously look for it. ** Steve, Artists always digest their influences. It’s a waste of time when artists worry about being overly influenced, I think. Hope the new day disappears your migraine. Shit. I sort of liked that he didn’t write much about Kim. But I can be kind of old fashioned maybe about personal privacy, I don’t know. ** Justin, Hi. Of course the bouncy Paris bridge ended up being a pipe dream. Sigh. Yeah, I haven’t concentrated on my own work on the blog in a long time. It’s not a natural inclination, but maybe I should, or least find some posts from back when I did do that more and restore them. Okay, I’ll figure it out. Thanks for wanting, my friend. Week being okay to you? ** Uday, Hey, hey. I think our mind meld is a sign that your friend should rent that castle. Of course they would have to think so too. Oh, I published ‘Godlike’ through my old imprint Little House on the Bowery. Maybe it’s been republished, I don’t know. I definitely like weird, off-kilter questions in interviews, and they’re sadly rare. So we should interview each other someday. Have an off-kilter contest. Pinky promise is better than scout’s honor, thank you, although that little thing scouts do with their fingers when they make the ‘honor’ promise is kind of endearing. ** Right. Do you know the stories of Lucia Berlin? If not, I swear they’re very good. See you tomorrow.