We want you home. I don’t know what sort of crowd you’ve fallen in with down in that pseudo-Caribbean voodoo-infested hellhole, but it’s obvious to me that you’re on drugs. Those emails are hateful and vindictive. You were never brought up that way!
Talk to your mother!
Dad
I STILL HAVEN’T
told Sorenson about the package. I keep it in the walk-in closet, on the top shelf. It contains a letter, a small notebook, and thirty-six high-contrast black-and-white photographs.
The letter is from a woman called Melanie Clement.
Dear Lena,
Your ex-boyfriend—also, now, my ex-boyfriend—is a twisted, evil, manipulative psychopath: a serial menace to women who belongs in jail. He’s wasted, stolen, and extorted a good chunk of my money. He’s more (or less) than just an utterly worthless leech, or a talentless, self-obsessed delusional bore, he’s also a con artist and a thief. If you have any lingering doubts about that fact, the contents of this package should convince you otherwise.
Don’t take him back if you have any basic intelligence and/or a shred of self-respect. You and I both know he’ll try.
I’m sorry that he left you for me. Sorry for me, delighted for you.
Best,
Melanie Clement
PS The pictures and the negatives are for you—do what you want with them.
The photographs all show Sorenson, naked, in three different poses: front, back, and left-side profile. There are twelve sets of those three prints, all taken in the same spot, under an identical lighting set-up. What they show is her in different stages of transition, from a slim, petite woman to an obese bloater, in the space of a year. Underneath each print is the month, starting at March, and a number, the pounds Lena weighed, going from 129 to 226.
The most arresting and scary transition is not in Lena’s ballooning body, but in the expression on her face. In the first series of pictures, though she’s obviously been instructed to keep a neutral gaze, there’s a phantom grin, like some sort of collusive, sexy game is being played out with a partner. This expression dominates from months 1–3. Then, in month 4, an overwhelming look of embarrassment insinuates itself, followed by the onset of anger, then frustration and despair (months 5–8), before the light goes out in her eyes and she’s beaten (month 9 onward). Lena, thanks to this Melanie, now has all of this creep’s work on his “project.” Or, rather, I do.
I decide to read some entries from the notebook.
THE LENA SORENSON PROJECT
by Jerry C. Whittendean
I first met Lena at the Art Institute. She was just starting out in her freshman year, while I was about to graduate at the end of that year. It was the traditional “fuck a fresher” week, where the would-be studs scoured the parties and events for fresh prospects.
Lena wasn’t the type of girl I normally went for. Pretty enough, but chronically shy, with one eye occasionally peeking out from behind those long, black bangs. Those functioned as her shield, but then, when she did look at you, it could be with a steady, challenging ferocity.
We always think that we can change people, mold them. Sometimes I think she was always my project, even back then, as I walked toward her, while she stood trembling like a mouse at the edge of the kitchen. But maybe that’s a little too fanciful.
I knew who she was. I was attracted to her work; other students and professors talked about it, I had to check it out. I would go into her classrooms during breaks and contemplate it. For such a timid girl, she was so fucking ballsy in her art: huge canvases, radiant colors, and stark, apocalyptic landscapes. Then I was attracted to her, the mystery of her talent, her fearless, unquestioning, swaggering brio. Seducing her was a means to try and solve this puzzle. But nothing she said or did could answer the question that burned in me: why her? Why did this tiny, dark-haired girl from some Midwest, God-fearing hick shithole, have the talent and drive to gain such unprecedented recognition?
The conversations I had with Lena interested me at first. Then they grew samey, and I sensed we were getting into a rut. I quickly started to resent her, those silly, hayseed affectations, which had, at first, a certain novelty. Eventually, the plethora of “gotchas” and “allrightys” and the “whole heap” of “gosh,” “darned,” and “hey you’s” started to nauseate. She was an airhead, a square suburban housewife, without a bohemian bone in her body but blessed with the talent, drive, and belief of a Warhol.
When you resent somebody you are in such close proximity to, they very soon start to reciprocate. Being Lena, hers was nice, understated resentment, shrouded in an all-too-apparent guilt. But she started to take over. I’ve learned in life that people flock to charisma in the short-term, but on a deeper level, they always love and admire talent. Friends began to whisper that I was holding her back. That cut me to fucking pieces. I believe in myself as an artist. Without self-belief any artist is nothing. Without me Lena would never have promoted herself, never got the most out of her talent.
Miami was my idea. Lena would have suffered the Midwest winters forever, with her stoical, nauseating, folksy Minnesotan cheer. But it wasn’t just me wanting light for my photography. I wanted Lena away from Chicago. She was doing too well. Every time I walked into a Logan Square or Pilsen bar, the cognoscenti would call as one: “Where’s Lena?” I grew to almost puke at that question. We hate it when our friends become successful, observed Wilde, Vidal, and Morrissey; but our lovers, by God, how we utterly loathe that!
Nobody knew how humiliating it was to be constantly in her shadow. Lena fucking shone, and I hated both her and myself for it. The only way I could get rid of that feeling was to get the upper hand. I’d render her fat, repulsive. I’d encourage her to overeat: Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Gyros. “Let’s stop off at Starbucks for a latte and muffin. You worked hard in the gym. Burned off about 150 calories. You deserve a 600-calorie treat,” all that sort of shit. I was pushing at an open door: her mother had done her duty.
And so I photographed her. I had her weigh herself the first Friday morning of every week. She didn’t realize that she was a project:
The Transformation of Lena Sorenson
. Short of killing her and leaving a camera on her corpse, watching the maggots devour it (and I had considered this, before coming to the conclusion that murder is a loser’s pastime), this was the best thing I could do. I took pictures of her naked, from the front, back, and side, turning to the left. I did this once every month for a year, each one yielding three high-definition black-and-white exposures in identical lighting. A completed project of thirty-six prints: with the date and her weight written on attached cards.
The issue is Lena’s consent. No gallery will stage the exhibition unless she gives me written permission to use the images. So while she lies bloating in a darkened corner of the house in Miami, I stew in New York, thinking of how I can get her to just sign that fucking contract.
In the meantime, I try to convince Melanie about the exhibition potential of the downtown Chicago homeless. Women of talent, women of wealth, what can I do to make
Now this is one seriously damaged fucking creep. You can tell by the conniving content of the emails he’s sending her to get her to sign this fucking contract. These emails also tell me that he seems to have worked out that Sorenson might have been the recipient of his missing photographs. It shows how weak, pathetic, and fundamentally incapable Sorenson is, if she let a loser like that manipulate and dominate her. That bitch is fucking blessed to have come into my orbit. I will empower that flabby ass! But, like the team of surgeons with the Arkansas girls, you gotta rip out a lot of shit as you do the renovation, and if the patient dies on the table, well, at least you gave it your best fucking shot.
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: 85 Degrees This Winter
I’m sending you a joint email, as my previous ones have apparently got you two talking to each other. (No need to thank me.) I’m also copying you both into any emails I send the other, so you’re not able to play the stupid, manipulative, and self-deceiving games you’ve both become so adroit at.
First Dad:
Thanks for the first email from you in, like, FOUR YEARS and THREE MONTHS. Glad to know you still care.
1. Sorry Mom’s upset, but surely you must be able to see that she is morbidly obese. Anybody as fat and isolated as she is obviously has mental health/depression and extreme denial issues. You and I are partly to blame; we’ve enabled that depression. In my case it was through collusion. In your case it’s been emotional neglect. Well, I’m done. So how about you manning the fuck up and giving the woman you profess to love a little attention? Even—whisper it—a little affection?
2. Yes, speaking the truth does make me feel good, though it’s a topic of discussion for us alone, and NOT anyone else, including my so-called “worldly artsy friends” who exist solely in your imagination. I should be so lucky. If I had the sort of social network you imagine, I wouldn’t have spent most of my life so utterly fucking miserable.
3. I’m not on drugs—they’ve never been my thing, either when growing up in Potters Prairie or as an art student in Chicago. If you want to find evidence of drug abuse, check out your own medicine cabinet: Mom has been seriously abusing prescription drugs for years.
What I guess I’m trying to say is: FUCK YOU.
Now Mom:
You want to know where you went wrong?
1. Stuffing me full of junk food, making me as fat, depressed, and unhealthy as you are. I was heading for type 2 diabetes, and I’m assuming that you are well into that zone and experiencing the associated health issues. You can still fix it: CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF!
2. Disapproving of every single friend I had growing up. Even the squeaky-clean “friends” you handpicked for me from the church groups eventually weren’t good enough. Way to make a girl feel as bad as you, bitch!
3. Trying to stop me doing what I was put here to do. Every expert, from that teacher at elementary school to the Art Institute, told you I was a prodigious talent and excelled at art. What was so wrong about letting me paint and draw? Are you fucking kidding me?
4. Trying to stop me leaving PP, MN. It might be your place, but it was never mine. GROW THE FUCK UP AND RESPECT THAT.
5. Trying to guilt-trip me with God. I don’t know if there is a God. I actually hope that for your sake there ISN’T, as He’s going to be really pissed at you come Judgment Day for BUGGING HIM ABOUT EVERY FUCKING TRIVIAL THING IN YOUR LIFE and putting words in His mouth. I’m delighted you have faith—now fuck off and enjoy it (quietly) and don’t use it as an excuse to control/manipulate/feel superior to/bug the living shit out of everybody else.
Miami Beach is lovely and warm at 85 degrees. How the fuck is Otter County?
L x
SITTING IN A
Miami high-rise, lying in my own shit. Feeling my nose and cheekbone throb in pain as I sit naked in this bear pool, washing almost every possible bodily fluid from my face. Movements perfunctory. Oddly not nauseated. Blowing my sore nose softly on a paper towel: still some feces, vomit, and dried blood mixed in with my mucus. The colors, texture, and mess of what I see in these towels creating a pulse of morbid excitement. Strangely wallowing in this ludicrous predicament: the wild, mixed-up, oscillating feelings it produces. Wanting to cry and squeal in pain, and then just laughing at it all. Looking at the contents of my face drip into the pool’s shit-brown lukewarm water. The TV, which I couldn’t bring myself to wreck, playing soundlessly in the corner. My sole stimulus, my only company.
And as an artist, you have to face up to unflattering things about yourself. The shit. At first Barry King’s death shattered me, but all the time there was a phantom exhilaration to it. It put me at the center of a compelling drama.
I’m like an exhibition. A show. A human exhibit: future human, past human. Past Lena, future Lena. The one emerging relentlessly in that glass reflection in the window. But that’s one thing I could always do: I knew how to put on a show.
Like back in Chicago. I got in with the supposedly cool crowd, mainly through Jerry. Olivia and Alex were his acolytes (a very Jerry word), though I brought Amanda and Kim into the scene. We partied a lot but were always on time for our classes, largely at my instigation, even if we often took it to the wire. We would charge through the Art Institute, past the medieval artifacts and exhibits of armor, pushing aside members of the public, to get to our workshops and lectures at the rear of the building.
Then Jerry. Where to begin?
I was at a party in Wicker Park, clutching a bottle of cheap Chilean red in the kitchen, trying to decide whether or not to get drunk. Hoping it would give me the confidence to interact with the normal people there. Now I see how foolish I was to think in that way. It’s more likely that we’re all aliens—at least those worth bothering about are. And each of us is making the mistake of trying to disguise ourselves as human beings.
Of course I’d noticed him earlier, but I was far from alone there. Jerry was in his final year and elevated by many freshmen, as well as the most popular tutors. All those reverential mutterings that whistled through the college grapevine: “Is Jerry coming tonight?” “What’s Jerry working on?” “Does Jerry have any decent shit?” It all seems so ludicrous now.
And then he was staring at me, really staring, as if I were an exotic object of curiosity. Framed in the doorway. Handsome: a strong, lithe figure with a shock of black, bushy hair. His eyes dark pools; I couldn’t look at them. I could feel his bristling confidence and power radiate from across the island counter and I felt myself wilting inside when he came over to me.