Raychel.
I invoke the name and drink three shots of tequila in remembrance.
That was her drink. A shot of Cuervo Gold with two dashes of
Tabasco sauce. I don't share her passion for it, but sometimes
when I think of her I can't help reaching for a bottle.
I miss
her. It's been 164 days since I heard she was murdered.
Guess I could have said it's been over five months, but measuring in
days seems to dull the length of time. Maybe if I can somehow
make time slow down I can turn it backward, too. And then she
never died.
Laura is right about me. Sometimes I can be
truly pathetic. So I toss back another shot and try to regroup my
thoughts.
I'm not what
most people would call a people person. I guess that's part of why
I became an artist. Some deep seeded need to feed the anti-social
baby screaming to get out. I don't make excuses for it.
That's my job. So it came as a great shock to find myself in late
1996 as the paternal face of a loosely structured artistic support group
called The Bleeders. It came
about in a surprisingly inconspicuous way.
I love to wander the streets at night when
I have no real ideas floating in my head. I use it to
re-energize. I dress in black (I'm sure that comes to no one's
great surprise) and lurk about my area. We have a
particularly harsh strip of beer-and-a-shot bars which I like to lurk. It's a no-shit neighborhood.
Everyone walks head down,
hands in pockets, and eyes on pavement. The hotel (in the middle
of the action) is notorious for two things: hourly rates and trick
rolls. Yes, believe it or not, prostitutes infest the area as well
(and I'll take this opportunity to soil my own character to say that I
have at times required their services). This strip of the city is
what I feel is most real about the world in general, and it's not
nice.
It was here
that I found Safehaven, a new bar on the block (revamped, really).
I fell for the name, particularly in that
location. The image of a Titanic life preserver floating among the
dead floated through my head. I liked it. I went inside,
and found myself almost alone. There was me and the owner.
That was how
I met Laura Douglass.
In a world
obsessed with snap judgments and labels, Laura is easy to peg. Laura is
rich. Everyone who knows her knows it. Except Laura.
To her, Laura is not rich. Laura is a painter. While many
people who have seen her paintings would disagree, in a way she is
correct. Laura sees things as a painter would. Not that she
has an eye for art (she doesn't). Instead, Laura's focus in life
is not the pursuit of money; therefore, she is not rich. Her
pursuit is anything that will get her paintings more exposure. So
after a series of failed attempts to use her family's influence to
receive showings at any of the numerous galleries to which her parents
had donated, Laura decided to go the underground route.
|
"Laura told me about
her dream for Safehaven. She wanted to build an artistic
support community centered at the bar. . . She already had a
name for it: The Bleeders." |
In a
combination of two personal pastimes, she convinced her parents to
let her purchase the bar, which she renamed and rebuilt into
Safehaven. She neglected to inform her parents of its location or
the fact that the previous owner had died in a dispute over a bar
tab. Ordinarily this would have given her pause before purchasing
the bar; however, she dismissed it quickly as she had no intention of
accosting customers about their bar tabs. Instead she intended to
accost customers with her paintings.
I sat as
politely as possible through an extended retrospective of her
paintings. Having prepared for lurking that evening, I was felt
surprisingly comfortable talking to her. Apparently I
was the only one, as no other customers stayed for longer than five
minutes.
Around the end of the evening and the bottom of the
bottle, Laura told me about her dream for Safehaven. She wanted to
build an artistic support community centered at the bar. There
would be weekly open shows for painters, poets, writers, musical acts,
or anyone who felt like they had something to contribute to the
public. She already had a name for it: The Bleeders.
The name came from her belief that truth and artistic abilities came
from a similar place deep inside the artist. Therefore, an artist
who is committed to his or her art could symbolically bleed the truth
through his or her work.
I found it immediately sentimental, naive,
and beautiful. I joined her artistic community of one
on the spot.
It was an
ideal arrangement. She owned the bar and I
recruited artists. For a person who prides himself as a loner and
a lurker, I have extensive connections among
artists. I had great fortune in convincing many of my friends to
swing by on Saturday for the first real meeting of The Bleeders. I
would have been proud of myself, but inviting artists to a bar with an
open forum where they will have an opportunity to be stars for a few
minutes is really nothing to be proud of.
To no great surprise,
The Bleeders became Laura's dream community in a matter of weeks.
And I was near the center. For months, The Bleeders
percolated, building up steam. No one in the group went on to any
success due to The Bleeders. We were happy. So what if no one else
thought we were talented?
But in August of 1997 I met Raychel
Vanderhoff and everything changed.
