Bodies Exhibit

The Old West Gun Room in El Cerrito was ten minutes from my place in South Berkeley. The house that was ruining my life. I’d driven past a million times but this was my first time going in. The gun was only for the pictures, I promised myself that while handing my credit card to the cashier. Cashier feels too informal a title for the gravity of the transaction. Salesman? Gunman? Whatever. You get what I mean. 

When he spread the selection of bullets out on the counter, he adjusted them so they lined up perfectly. Full metal jacket, hollow point, soft point. They sounded like oysters. Like he was a server at some hipster seafood restaurant helping me decide between east coast and west coast. He kind of looked the part. As he explained the relative merits of each – something about target shooting, something about self-defense –  my mind glazed over. My eyes fixed on his too-groomed facial hair. The lines of his beard square and severe, carving a second, chiseled face out of his. 

“So? What do you think?” He asked like I’d left him hanging. 

“I think I’m okay for now.”

“Seriously? You’re gonna buy a gun and no bullets?” 

“I’ll come back for them,” I said and meant it, kind of. I’d read that for the majority of people, there was less than an hour between deciding to kill themselves and actually trying to. Putting an extra trip to El Cerrito between me and the option was a good insurance policy against myself.

I’d shot a gun once before when I was twelve and my uncle took me to the rifle range in Livermore. We lay on ratty old mattresses next to each other on our stomachs. He showed me how to breathe deep then hold it as I squeezed the trigger. “If you see stars, you’re doing it right,” he told me, although I doubted it. When we were done and I pulled the sling off, my wrist ached from propping the gun up and I had a headache from holding my breath. My ribs were sore from lying on my stomach, nothing but a couple inches of foam between me and the cold concrete. It seemed karmically right to me though that it would be uncomfortable to shoot a firearm. Even then, I knew it shouldn’t cost me nothing to send a bullet through space at 2,000 miles per hour. It should hurt a little bit. 

When I got my target back, bullet holes riddled the page with no discernible cluster around the bullseye. “Well, we’ve got room for improvement kiddo,” my uncle said. The next time he asked me to go with him, I said no.

This would be much different from a rifle though. A pistol at close range. There was no aim involved in turning it on myself, muzzle in mouth. Nothing skillful about that. And besides, it was just for the pictures. I repeated that part in my head on the drive home, like I myself still needed convincing that this was actually for art and not real life. 

It wasn’t my neighbor that I first noticed watching me. It was his iPhone, propped up against the windowsill outside his room, which looked directly into mine from across a couple feet of lawn. I was changing. Deciding what to wear to my classmate’s art opening. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I should, and I should try to look cute. She was one of the few girls in the art school I could actually see myself becoming friends with, and I was sick of being alone all the time. It had been months since I’d had anywhere I needed to pick a real outfit for and I could hardly remember what I used to wear to go out. A dress, a shirt, bra, no bra. I settled on a sundress and drew back the linen curtains, letting the afternoon light flood in. As I did, an arm reached out his bedroom window, pulling the phone inside. Pervert.

I came back home that night after the show, circling the block twice before I parked. Peered into his house with each lap to make sure he wasn’t still at the window. I ran up the steps and inside my front door, sticking to the interior rooms where I knew he couldn’t see me. I sunk down the wall, feeling sick.

It was impossible to fall asleep that night, knowing he was only steps away. I missed the safety of living with my ex. His warm body next to mine in bed, ready to be jostled awake at a moment’s notice. The easiness of sleep with him there. How small and insular he’d made my world, as I allowed the few friendships I’d actually made at Berkeley to wither and die. Lulled by the false sense that he alone was all I needed.

At three in the morning, still wide awake and scared shitless, I snuck out, locking the car doors faster than I ever had. All I took with me was a sleeping bag, a space heater, and a backpack full of clothes. I drove to campus and set myself up in my studio space. Lying on the concrete floor kept me up all night, but it was better than the feeling of being watched.

I wouldn’t go back to Julia Street for three days. Couldn’t stop thinking about the video he had of me changing. It bugged me, not knowing what his face looked like. I wondered if he thought I looked good in the video. I wanted to watch it. See how I held my face, my body, under the illusion of total privacy. How my posture changed when I stepped in front of the mirror. If I could somehow get ahold of it, I wondered whether I’d delete it right away or send it to myself first.

On day three of my on-campus sojourn, I woke up to a scream. It took me a second to remember where I was and why a tatted up dude might be hovering over me with a bucket and a mop. Right. The night shift janitor. “You can’t be here,” he said, and blushed like he’d walked in on me on the toilet. He seemed embarrassed that I’d heard his voice go up an octave. I felt bad. He probably worked nights so he never had to deal with students like me. I ran my tongue across my teeth and fingers through my hair, still half asleep and not ready for human interaction. “I know, I’m sorry,” I said, and stuffed my sleeping bag into its sack, avoiding his eyes as I squeezed past him through the narrow studio door. It was four am by the time I got back to Julia Street, my heart pounding as I pulled into the driveway.

My phone battery had been dead since I left my place, my charger still in the wall where I’d left it. I prayed for the dopamine rush of a bunch of missed messages. Evidence that I existed in the world and I wasn’t just a character in my own sleep deprived paranoid delusion. I flicked on my bedside lamp to plug in my phone for the night. 

As if he’d been waiting at the window since the moment I left, the light in his room turned on, right on cue. He hadn’t been sleeping. I imagined him restless, waiting to jump out of bed at the sound of my car. I turned off my light hoping the darkness might protect me. My phone glowed to life as its battery ticked from 0 to 1%. No texts, no missed calls. It didn’t matter that I’d dropped off the map, my radio silence was finally being returned. There was only so long you could go ignoring people until they got a clue and gave up on you. In the mirror, I brought my hands to my face. Skin on skin, to prove I wasn’t just a hallucination.

The next morning, I lingered in the living room before stepping out the door for class. Voices outside his front door. Sweet feminine voices. A woman and a young girl, maybe eight or nine years old. His wife and daughter. The girl with her pink backpack, matching pink scooter. Mom in her geometric glasses, her flowy linen pants. A professor type. She wasn’t especially good looking, but was pulled together in the way that said she had better things to care about. Immediate relief – he was normal enough for a family – followed by a swell of disgust. 

I wondered if she knew what he was up to. Maybe she had no idea and he called himself a feminist in front of her friends while they nodded and commented on what a good guy she’d found. Or maybe she was in on it. She was a partner to her husband, not a sex object. He had to get his kicks where he could, she might’ve conceded long ago. Maybe it was their fetish, watching the videos together. Videos of me. Of Molly, the red headed folk musician girl I’d taken the apartment over from. Molly hadn’t mentioned the neighbor when I’d toured the place but then again, she wouldn’t have. She must’ve been desperate to get out of there. 

I considered stepping outside then and telling his wife what was going on, but my stomach flipped at the thought. If she didn’t already know, it could end their marriage. It could traumatize the little girl. It could take her daddy away.

I googled his address, and all the details of his life popped up right away. White. Male. 49 years old. His previous address, and the one before that. Confirmed. That was his wife, that was his child. I searched his full name and his website came up. A photographer. About Eric, Shattuck Gallery, Work. I clicked on About Eric and his picture popped up in black and white. A full beard, wire glasses, faded 49ers cap. He looked like off-brand Michael Moore. The picture might’ve been a few years out of date, but it matched the shadow I’d seen lurking in his window. 

I clicked the button Work, and there I was. My naked body silhouetted against the linen curtains hanging in my room. I moved across the top four frames, evaluating myself in the mirror, then bending over, then hands outstretched overhead, pulling on my shirt. For once, I didn’t hate the way I looked, the way I usually did in pictures. My ex always wanted to take sexy pics of me, and he’d get mad when I’d tell him they were all ugly. He’d insist they were hot, which made it even worse. Like he was telling me no, babe, this is as good as it’s gonna get. He took photos of me the way he saw me. All unflattering angles and ungenerous light. 

These were hot. I wanted to download them and text them to my ex. I wanted Eric to hang them up in Shattuck Gallery. Watch the look on my ex’s face as he walked by and recognized my body, more beautiful than how he’d left it.

I scrolled through his work. Pages and pages of creep shots. A baby nursing at a woman’s breast from a bench across the park. A teenage punk couple making out on the corner of what looked to be 16th and Valencia, his hand on her ass, her tongue in his mouth. Molly from Craigslist, scrolling on her laptop in bed through what was now my window, her ass fully out in a pink lace thong, a matching bralette.  

I checked his website constantly, refreshing the page several times each day. I felt him watching me even then, through the internet. Him recognizing my IP address, pinging his site. When he did post something, it almost felt as if he were posting just for me. Me getting out of my car, me blurry through the living room window, wrapped in a towel, my hair slick dripping down my back. 

If he left the house at all, it was while I was out. He’d either become a total recluse since his days as a street photographer in San Francisco, or he was monitoring my comings and goings, making sure we never came face to face, hauling groceries from the car or otherwise forced to make neighborly small talk as if he hadn’t already seen all of me. We both preferred to keep the relationship – whatever it was – behind glass.

It went on like this for three weeks, each of us getting bolder. My heart no longer pounded from fear knowing he was there, but from excitement. Eric didn’t bother pulling his phone off the ledge anymore when he caught me looking. I crossed the street to avoid his wife and daughter, no longer entertaining the thought of telling on him. I’d become complicit, and wasn’t gonna tattle on myself. I texted Molly to see if she’d ever met the neighbors but the number she gave me was no longer in service. She’d said something about touring in Europe but hadn’t given me any way of getting in touch. I turned on Amy Winehouse and danced naked around my room and downloaded the pictures he posted of me an hour later. It didn’t matter what I did anymore. He was the only one watching. 

I tested him. I needed to know how far I could go. 

By the time I got home from the Old West Gun Room, it was already dark. I pulled back the blackout curtains I’d bought and kept the linen ones drawn, turning on the lights in my room so I’d glow, backlit, the outline of me clear. I held the gun to my temple and paced my bedroom, giving a show of contemplation. The muzzle was cold against my head. The tension between my usually knitted eyebrows lifted. A somatic relief, as if my body knew that some kind of end was near. I waited until I was sure Eric had gotten his shot.

When I felt he had, I lowered the gun, half anticipating the cops to rush my front door. Nothing though. Just the lazy whir of the space heater in the corner of my room. When I stuck the barrel in my mouth, I was surprised at how awkwardly large it felt, like a fumbling and unsexy blowjob. Nobody ever told you that, how wide you had to open your jaw to accommodate a pistol. Again, I let Eric take his shots and set it down. Satisfied that he’d gotten what he needed. Pleased that he knew that I had a gun. Surprised to learn how far I could go without him intervening. Zero boundary between life and death and art.

***

For the final project of our semester, we were each supposed to hang a show in the studio space we’d been granted by the university. It was kind of a thing, among artsier circles in Berkeley, to come see the student shows. To hop from one studio to the next, nibbling cheese cubes and sipping two buck chuck. I’d hardly been back to my studio space since I’d gotten kicked out for sleeping there. Half out of shame, and half because my project hinged on me being home on Julia Street. 

For my show, I downloaded all the pictures of me on Eric’s site and took them to Copy World on University Avenue, blowing each of them up several times their original size. They needed to look grainy, like low quality surveillance footage. I wanted not to recognize myself. The way I always looked unfamiliar and vaguely criminal on CCTV footage, even though I wasn’t.

I could hardly make eye contact with the cashier as he passed me my poster tubes over the counter. He didn’t look at me, either. He didn’t need to. He’d already seen everything. The inside of my room. The inside of my car. My naked body. The way my eyes bulged slightly with a gun between my front teeth. 

I hung my entire show the same afternoon it was due. The Bodies Exhibit, I titled it, after the show my mom had dragged me to for my thirteenth birthday in Vegas. “The Bodies Exhibit!” My professor exclaimed as she walked through the door. “I remember that. Fun!” Her breath smelled like cheese cubes. I watched as she eyed my nudes. She studied my pixelated body in various states of undress. Me, fully clothed, walking down the sidewalk, glancing paranoid at  Eric’s house. The gun pointed at my brain, my lips wrapped around the gun. 

As classmates and professors milled about the studio, I played the art critic John Berger’s voiceover on a loop off a Bluetooth speaker. His placid monologue on repeat. “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” 

When I got home that night, buzzed off red wine, I collapsed onto my bed. I reached under my bedside table where I’d left the gun. I wanted to feel the cold metal of the Beretta in my hand again. It wasn’t there. I ripped my room apart, in search of the pistol. It had to be there. I  hadn’t taken it out of the house. I tore through the entire place, throwing open kitchen cabinets, digging through piles of old makeup in bathroom drawers. I lifted all the pillows and the couch cushions, but nothing. It was nowhere. I ran back to the front door and double checked that I’d locked it. Back in my room, I pulled the curtains apart an inch to look across the way. There was Eric, in his room. His silhouette in the window, as it often was. I lifted my phone and hit record. Watched him through my little screen as he picked up the gun, and waited to see where he’d point it.