Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

You may have heard about the off-duty security guard at the Seattle Art Museum who took it upon herself to perform an “excavation” of Yoko Ono‘s Painting to Hammer a Nail, removing notes and business cards other people had tacked onto it. If we look at the work in terms of power, as allowing museum-goers to share the artist’s power to create (if only to a limited degree), then what Amanda Mae (the guard in question) did was to claim all that power for herself.

Taken as a commentary on the role of the curator, this is an intriguing act which makes a fair point. Even the problematic framing of Mae as the savior of the work with a “higher calling” fits this interpretation.

On the other hand, her act is also a real use of power—as real (if trivial) as when some asshole tears down all the fliers on a utility pole because they think ads for indie bands or lost cats don’t belong there.

Whether we look at this as a statement or as a real act, that Ms. Mae apparently referred to public interaction with the work as a “gang rape” shows a total lack of empathy for people who have survived that sort of violation. It also seems to suggest a failure to understand the piece. (As this comment was made in an email to an artist friend rather than publicly, I am disinclined to class it as a poor attempt at commentary on the understanding of curators).

ETA: Jon Hendricks, curator for Yoko Ono Exhibitions, sent a response to Ms. Mae that reads in part:

I think you have to consider art in a much deeper, more profound sense than you do. And also, to have greater respect for the artist, and not presume that you know what she intends. If the artist had instructed the work to be returned to its “austere” beginnings, that would have been her prerogative. But as she did not, you didn’t have the right to dictate what the artist’s intention was, and to rob those many people who had interacted with the work before you of their contribution to this process.

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A man broke into, and generally trashed, a South Seattle church while high on PCP. A church being vandalized is pretty much guaranteed to make the news. This case, however, provided the local media with a special opportunity for sensationalization, as the man turned out to HIV-positive (he also has hepatitis, but that isn’t what made the headlines). Over the weekend, local TV news reports referred to the site as a “biohazard” and referred constantly to the dangers posed by blood containing the virus.

One problem though: spattered blood dries fairly quickly and, according to the CDC,

 

To obtain data on the survival of HIV, laboratory studies have required the use of artificially high concentrations of laboratory-grown virus . . . CDC studies have shown that drying of even these high concentrations of HIV reduces the amount of infectious virus by 90 to 99 percent within several hours. Since the HIV concentrations used in laboratory studies are much higher than those actually found in blood or other specimens, drying of HIV-infected human blood or other body fluids reduces the theoretical risk of environmental transmission to that which has been observed – essentially zero. Incorrect interpretations of conclusions drawn from laboratory studies have in some instances caused unnecessary alarm.

Results from laboratory studies should not be used to assess specific personal risk of infection because (1) the amount of virus studied is not found in human specimens or elsewhere in nature, and (2) no one has been identified as infected with HIV due to contact with an environmental surface. Additionally, HIV is unable to reproduce outside its living host (unlike many bacteria or fungi, which may do so under suitable conditions), except under laboratory conditions; therefore, it does not spread or maintain infectiousness outside its host.

In other words, the chances of infection are, barring a miracle, nil. Now there may well be a more legitimate reason for treating the scene as hazardous, but the media is failing to report it. Not only is this inaccurate reporting, it’s also highly irresponsible and dangerous. In the early days of the HIV epidemic, people came to fear those with the disease in part because of rampant misinformation about how it spread; the stigma has never been thoroughly erased, and stories like this can only serve to make it worse.

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Last night I went to the cheap wine and poetry event at Hugo House. I came away feeling that it had, overall, been mediocre, but the truth is that by the time the reading began I was in no mood to be open to poetry. It began when I wanted to get a glass of the $1 wine and was carded but had not brought my ID. If someone would like to explain to me how we can call this a free country when a 29-year old can’t even get a drink without showing ID, I would be quite grateful.

But that’s a relatively minor complaint. What truly put me in a foul mood was the introduction to the event, in which the audience was admonished to drink responsibly lest the organizers have to carry you outside “and let the homeless have their way with you”. It’s funny because if you drink too much you get raped! And by gross homeless men! And it’s like totally transgressive to talk about homeless people as a criminal element!

The really funny thing is that I can almost guarantee you that there was a rapist in the audience laughing at the joke. Laughing because it reconfirmed him as not in the class of people usually considered rapists—as too clean, too economically secure, and not lurking in the bushes. Laughing because it reconfirmed the victim as responsible for avoiding the situation in which she is raped, as if rape just happens. Laughing, like everyone else in the room, not because it was funny but because applauding such sentiments means you can be criticized.

Laughter invokes the “just a joke” defense. All I could do at the time was mutter in disdain because if I had made noise about it, I would have been deemed hysterical.

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This morning could have been worse. And worse I may be yet: the worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’ I’ve been substituting at an ELL school on Capitol Hill this week; I have to transfer buses downtown, and I usually arrive about twenty five minutes before class (plenty of time to get coffee and prepare myself for the day).

Unfortunately, my first bus got stuck at a red light—for about fifteen minutes. I looked up from my book after about five and ascertained that there was neither accident nor emergency vehicle to be seen; traffic was flowing in the other direction. I guess the timer was broken. Unfortunately, it was while waiting at this light that the coffee I had consumed at home began to express an urgent need to escape my body. I had to pee: and I was still about twenty minutes from downtown.

When I finally reached my transfer point, I was in agony and had to bite my lip to try to distract myself from the pressure. The bus stop where I got off is beneath a mall, but the mall’s third floor, where the public bathrooms are located, was still closed. I finally found a bathroom in a building with food court, but I needed to buy  a cup of coffee to get the code for the door.

At least I had the money to manage that. At least, once I had established myself as a customer, no one questioned my right to use the women’s room, thanks to my cis-gender privilege. The statement that free access to safe bathrooms is a human right is never more obvious than when you’re desperate to pee.

Anyway, after I was finally able to relieve myself, I dashed to my stop and just caught the 43 up the hill. I made it to school with ten minutes to spare. Unfortunately, while on the 43, I managed to spill coffee all over myself.

In the the teachers’ room, I mentioned that at the rate my morning had gone, I was expecting an earthquake any moment. Later, another teacher commented that we were having earthquake weather. Fortunately, the tectonic plates of the Pacific Northwest have not as yet succumbed to this temptation.

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