June 10, 1989
Saturday, 9:35 am

Wednesday night I caught the first hour of readings for Erotophobia at Simon's. Eileen Myles read a wonderful piece about a woman named Robin; someone named Darius read Penthouse letters; and I left halfway through a Richard Prince video. Sarah Shulman was sitting behind Tim and kept asking "Is this suppose to be funny"? Prince is an acquired taste, I suppose, and totally unknown outside a small artworld. He's the kind of artist you have to "get" and in order to do that you have to understand the on-going Prince joke. The joke is, of course, that the joke isn't funny or if there is humor it is exhausted through repetition. Everything by Prince is mean-spirited and meant as a taunt. I don't mind that -- in fact it causes me to reposition myself as a form of protection.

There was another meeting of ART+, which is the reason I had to leave the reading early. We decided to send out letters to Mark Kostabi's dealer Ronald Feldman and to Vanity Fair. I volunteered to do a draft for the latter. Ken Goodman was there and he seemed very nice and willing to get involved. I remembered his wall works from the same Whitney Biennial Mike Glier was in, the first one I remember going to. The room we met in, a small one off the main meeting room on the first floor of the Lesbian and Gay Center, had Glier's drawings on the wall as part of an art exhibit throughout the building.

Jim Fouratt was also there. He seems to pop in and out of things and try to take them over. What does he do now that Danceteria is long closed? I've never seen him at demos and he's just started coming to meetings as far as I know. But I could be wrong.

Sending letters to Feldman and Vanity Fair may sound sort of wimpy -- Aldo Hernandez wanted to do a postering -- but I think it's a good idea to establish a firm ground to work from before we go public. Otherwise we play into Kostabi's manipulations.

Thursday I worked on new paintings and started putting text on both Fountain and Map.

Patricia Towers, the executive editor at 7 DAYS whom I met up at Saratoga, would be a good person to contact about Kostabi. The magazine had a small bit on him on their back page, the kind of thing we want to block. Once we've cut off his free publicity we can deal with him face to face. I wrote a draft letter to her outlining what we were doing.

David Sedaris read a pseudo-cyber-punky story about a man and a mental institution that was very good at the second reading that night. Voice Music (or something like that) did pieces using three women's voices talking; Peter Schjeldahl read a long prose poem about love, sex and HTLV3; Gary Indiana read a dull piece from his book "Scar Tissue" called "Pillow Talk" that he made interesting because he so obviously admires his own writing. Tim was there again and seemed to enjoy being out on his own without John. I went home to bed when it was over.

Friday I finished the letter to Patricia Towers and mailed it off. Simon gave me a check for "Pound/Flow" that I had to get back from Chicago. He said he wants it but that may be a lie and told me he'd have more money for me Monday. It will all go for bills.

Almost finished with "Fountain", only have to put words on the surface. I've decided on "P L E A S U R E" because it refers to sex, pleasure fields (it's an image of a park) and the pleasure of the text and its disruption. Best I can do for now. Brilliance will come.

Rained all day today. Dinner with Merv who's going to Seattle Sunday to see Montana Ray -- a former student -- and try to get him away from his fiance for sex. We watched an Advocate Men tape with mostly solo jerk off scenes but also a piece about a nude male beauty pageant in Rio. There's something very sexy about naked men walking.

Facial hair is out according to a magazine I read while sitting in Simon's so I'm secure in my unfashionableness. Bill Dobbs stopped in but walked out because there wasn't a check list for Erotophobia yet. Like that's my job?

I decided not to take David's studio because it's part of their apartment, too far away and too expensive.