RELEASE THE JUNK!

THe year was 1997. I was on a 6 month contract in Atlanta only going home every 2 or 3 weeks for a weekend and spending way too much time in the office. Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar was the big hit with those misspending their youth so I of course had long black hair down to my shoulders and a couple labret piercings as was warranted by the anti-conformist conformity I found myself reveling in. I enjoyed just driving around different parts of this new city when bored on the weekends and not spending ridiculous amounts of time at Tower Records trying to find something, anything to waste time and money on.

My usually under control diet of Perrier and yogurt had waste laid upon it by all the greasy, fatty, wonderfully awful but good foods available in the south that a daily per diem budget could acquire. I was provided with a company car I nicknamed “the tank” since it was a ‘96 Mercury Sable station wagon that I had taken over a median or two making left hand turns at night in the rain, unable to see them as I tried to shoot into a drive through. It was like going over a small speed bump since the ride of the car was so smooth. 

I had tried picking up art supplies - canvases and acrylic paints, brushes and textures but unfortunately could find no muse in this landlocked city. I started listening to Ani DiFranco and reading Poppy Z. Brite and somehow the combination of the two in the heat and humidity that this southern city gave off fit well together. Living in Clip and Drawing Blood became an almost nightly ritual as I consumed the pages of homoerotic horror and could feel my isolation in the south expanding. I was only on a contract, no need to try and seek out friends or acquaintances because I’d be out of there once the job was done.

All of this fed into an angst over spending so much time in the area and my ever growing feeling of “Fuck The World.” 

There were many immigrants who had settled in the area from West African nations. Hard working men who drove taxis, stocked shelves and bagged groceries in the giant suburban grocery stores. My sweet tooth had developed quite the taste for red velvet cake, something I had discovered living there and the Saturday of Easter weekend found me making my usual grocery run to stock up on all the bad food I’d eat at “home.” 

Just after checking out, a very nice African man who had bagged my groceries on many trips decided to single me out of the line to ask, probably being that I looked so different than all the white bread suburban ladies doing there shopping to ask me what was up with all the colored eggs that everyone was buying. 

Emboldened by my sense of disgust with the suburban hell I was living in, I told him the most grotesque thing I could think of, quietly and to the side: The Easter Bunny goes out on Easter morning and rapes all the chickens. They lay colored eggs that he collects and then hides for the children to find. That’s what these people are celebrating. 

He glanced back in horror at all the white ladies with their children, the carts filled with eggs, coloring kits, jelly beans and baskets and then turned back to me and in a weak and stuttering voice asked, “really?!?” To which I replied, “yes, sick isn’t it!?!” He shook his head in disbelief and you could see he was feeling sick to his stomach.

I walked off with my bags to my car. My work there was done.