Church goes into the bedroom!

Wife… praying.

            I apologize if this rubs you the wrong way… oh heck, let me start over. This Fellowship Church thing—“every married church member has to makee-the-whoopee for 7 days in a row”—this Sermon on the Mattress, (see my post directly below) has triggered something in me. Actually, just the picture of ol’ 47-year-old Rev. Ed sittin’ there on a Department Store bed, using his hands as he preaches, up on the place where a Baptist preacher’s Pulpit usually goes, brought back a favorite, but long dormant, memory.

            A memory from back in the day, a couple of years after Graduate School (!). I had moved back to the small Texas town (it was then!) where I had gone to college in the first go-round. It had been a difficult decision. I knew when I was making it that it would determine the course of the rest of my life. Don’t you just hate those times?

            Well, anyway, I sat in my grey Rambler with the push-button transmission at the end of the driveway of our (actually Steve’s) rented 1860 white Victorian house with the curving stairway up to the Widow’s Walk (or Watch, I can never remember) on top and the classic red barn out back with all my paintings in it, in Battleground, Indiana and I thought and thought.

            “If I turn left, I’m going back to Texas. There’s probably nothing going on for me there, but at least I’ll be warm.”

            “If I turn right, I’m heading to New York City, where I’ll either starve to death, or become a successful and maybe even ‘known-and-shown’ Painter in the Fabulous Art World.”

            This is how I thought when I was 27. I had been to Manhattan once and met some gallery people. I know—kind of embarrassing. Hopefully, 20-somethings are a lot more sophisticated nowadays. (Hint: you’ll starve, but don’t let me stop you.)

             I sat there, alone, for about half-an-hour. Eventually, I turned left and never looked back, not even for my paintings. The paintings were quite large and every U-Haul trailer in that part of Indiana had already been rented (sorry kids!) The University served over 30 thousand students back then (over 65,000 now) and there was never enough anything for anybody in town. I recall that some students during their 1^st semester were “being put up” at the County Jail because there was just no place else to live—just a folksy reminder that would be denied nowadays, I’m sure.

            This was one reason I had lived with my photography professor-filmmaking mentor and his wife seven miles from campus in the picturesque community of Battleground (see photo), where Wm. Henry Harrison (Ol’ Tippecanoe & Tyler, too) and his troops had once defeated the Indians (natives) on the Wabash River and opened up the entire Midwest (as it was later called) to the invasion, uh, settlement of the White Man & Woman and all their tiny, snotty kids whose offspring would become my Art Students at the Big University. 

Battleground, IN (our house is behind the white picket fence, at the right)           

            During my sojourn in the realms of Serious Art, me being me, I also had become interested in, then studied, and then practiced Other Arts (he WHAT?) such as documentary filmmaking and performance art, later just known as “the Doc” and “Performance”. I won’t burden you with those stories just now (I have slides and films!).

            So I’m back in northern Texas, small college town, working as a photographer, when a Creative Friend of mine (picture a younger, less-lesbian Gertrude Stein) invited me “to Show” with a group of local artists and art radicals. I replied that all my recent paintings were in a barn in Indiana, and that I didn’t have anything “art worthy” other than some photos—a series from Indiana called “My Body as Public Sculpture”.

            She said, as she was wont to do (recall my above reference), “Oh, we don’t want anything CORNY like paintings, or anything, man, we want a SHOW that will make these art flakes around here have 1 glass of wine and GO HOME, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,…” She was always happy and infectious that way and LOVED to stir up trouble. She was also as high as a raccoon most of the time, if only on espresso that would put hair where you didn’t have any. Always optimistic! “Dig it, we’ve put some money together (did I mention that most of her dear friends were gay men?) and we’ve rented a storefront near the square where we’re gonna have fashion shows with runways and happenings and lots of cool stuff, but it’s not ready yet, so we’ve taken over this 2-story house on Oak Street so we’re gonna have it there Saturday night and blow everybody’s MINDS, so come up with something COOL, OK, ‘cause I know you can do it! Don’t even tell me about it, just get over there and pick a room, ‘cause all my cool artist friends will have their own room, GO man, what are you waiting for?”

            I went over to the address she had given me. I walked in and around. There were a couple of guys I sort of knew crawling around the living room floor making something big and messy. They were clucking like chickens to each other. I didn’t ask. I picked a vacant upstairs bedroom. (See the link, now, to the Rev. Ed? You will.)

            I felt confident. My performance piece (‘Floor Piece’) had been the hit of my Graduate Show and ended up involving most Professors and Art Types (and their teenagers) in the immediate area who attended My Show. It involved a hand-made hardwood floor, an axe and video, but as I said, that’s another story.

            So, I decided that since I had a bedroom, I would do ‘Bed Piece’. N-a-a-h, nothing stagey and political like John & Yoko had done in Amsterdam— something quieter, more philosophical, more ‘out there’. Plus, I was divorced, with no full-time girlfriend anyway. I knew The Show would be well-attended because of my Creative Friend’s grapevine, her power of public relations, free booze and other delicacies available, and all those gay guys who had at least a dozen close friends each. So, here’s what I did.

            The room had a ‘naked bed’, an old dressing table, and a phone. So I dressed the bed with linens, bedcover, pillows, pillowcases, worked on a bit of special spotlighting, put a candle by the phone on the dressing table with the mirror. It was good. At least as good as I could afford with my tiny budget. Then I lettered, or typed, I can’t recall, a note and put it in the spotlight in the center of the bed, so you had to get on the bed to read it. The Note stated: “While you are on this bed, think of all the things you might do in a bed. In your entire life. My suggestions, to get you started: Be Born, Get Sick, Stay Sick, Sleep, Dream, Wake Up Scared, Toss and Turn, Have an Argument, Have Sex, Break Up, Have Breakfast, Talk on a Phone, Seduce Someone, Die”… and so on and so on. About 25 things, I think. And then the note said. “Once you can’t think of any more things you might do on a bed, go over to the dressing table.”

            At the dressing table, they would find the phone (plugged in, with dial tone) with a phone number affixed, area code 312. The candle lit up a 5X7 close-up photo in a frame of a mature, but youngish woman with a pixie haircut and large eyes, looking directly at the camera. Her name was attached… Sheila S______. I had met her through some connections I had at the time. Next to the photo was a small audio tape player with a speaker, loaded with a cassette. They could push and play it if they wanted. It was a recording of a radio talk-show with a well-known Chicago radio guy interviewing Sheila.         

            Sheila was telling the story of her life. Her life that had begun on the planet Venus, where she had lived until coming to our planet Earth. Honest to Pete, and I kid you not. The phone number was her real home number in Chicago. I had talked with her. I had her permission to call her. Anyone could talk to her while standing in front of the dressing table mirror with the candle, after they had walked over from the bed. —-“Bed Piece”, circa 1976.

Chicago, Illinois

            So, see how this story was triggered by ol’ Pastor Ed preaching from the Bed on the Pulpit? The Rev. Ed who wants everyone to “make love” for a week?

UPDATE: You go, Rev. Ed. MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR! —as a bunch of us kids said back in the day, when the times were much different and tempers were hot. Ed would have been about 16 back then. Just maybe, he saw The Show on Oak Street. I doubt it, but who knows? It was kinda dark. But, I wish I’d had his idea, back then (except not so exclusionary). It would have tied in with Venus, the goddess of Love, so-o-o well!

And as John Lennon said in his song about their marriage and “Bed-In” in the Amsterdam Hilton, “Christ, you know it ain’t easy, you know how hard it can be…”

For that story, see: http://honeymoons.about.com/cs/canadiangetaways/a/johnyoko.htm