SLAVE OF LOVE

 Like the ripening of fruit or the wear on a truck tire the dissolution of bliss transpires over time. But when that dissolution becomes complete it arrives with the abrupt clap of a thunder storm.

My good friend Currado Malaspina was the last to see what we all saw for years. His marriage to the wonderful writer Nanine Coléreux had been a train wreck and a sham. Uxorious to the point of cloying madness, Malaspina invested every lyric of his soul to the curation of what he thought was the perfect romance.

Though he is known to the world at large as a notorious roué, in truth he is as loyal as a cadet. His work, which is raw and raunchy and replete with puerility is merely a sad expression of a broken heart.

That he has enacted his bitterness on the conspicuous stage of the international art scene only adds to the gloomy emasculation of his despair.

In truth, he worshiped his bride. He was loving and protective to a fault. What was obvious to his friends but was as obscure as a cuneiform to Currado was that the object of his devotion was a false and unworthy idol.

He was troubled that as a gifted author she never received her real due. To the critics she was an anomaly. A smart and difficult writer wrapped in the body of a supermodel. Every mention and every review written by a man made constant reference to her looks. 

It drove Currado crazy.

He would rail at every insensitivity and cry foul at every patronizing sexist bon mot. Headlines like Short Skirted and Shortlisted: The Babe Bestseller Vies for a Goncourt or Red-Lipped and Lovely Coléreux Pleasures with her Luscious Prose would have Malaspina dilating with rage. 

But unfortunately my naïve friend had it all backwards.

All the while that he felt that his wife was being publicly groped in the press, it turns out that it was he, Malaspina who was the offending party in Coléreux's mind.

All his soft caresses and professions of love were read by his wife as nothing but belligerent expressions of ownership. The tender post-its that he surreptitiously left on the bathroom mirror, these cute haiku-like affirmations of timeless unconditional devotion were read by Nanine as vulgar claims of his alleged droit de seigneur.

His short text-messages that were meant to punctuate his lover's day with periodic bouquets of unsolicited affection were read by his wife as if they were the randy rantings of a starstruck stalker.

His small surprise gifts meant to endorse a decades long relationship with the frisson of youth were taken by Coléreux as oppressive innuendos that reduced her to the condition of chattel.

Once the envy of all of Paris, his love went stale  and he was the last slob in the city to find out. 

But if his new work is to be taken as a window on his current recuperative condition, I believe my dear friend Currado is convalescing just fine.

 
 

IN SEARCH OF SANDIER PASTURES

Even sex among the great unwashed is a noiseless evasion. The sublime tantric truths of slow time - those subtle skills elongated by the music of the muscles and paced by the calm atavistic winds of antiquity - are lost arts to our hyper-interconnected slaves of efficiency and speed.

My good friend Currado Malaspina has his own private cross to bear. His work is seen by some as the bumbling fantasies of an impotent imposter. His crude canticles to the pleasures of the flesh seem more like idle boasts than bonnes idées.

Currado Malaspina 2014

As is well known, Currado's mid-career has been a chaste chase after feral sex and puppy love. His various misadventures have all been duly chronicled both in the tabloids and in his work. His disappointments, though far from catastrophic, have etched their aftermaths into the creases of his damaged dharma.

My impression is that at this point Currado would even settle for the American form of transactional lovemaking though he has spent a lifetime inveighing against it.

So while he juggles his concupiscence with his ponderous self-pity an aching heart weighs heavily upon his will and on his work. 

He may be happier here in southern California where the sun shows no mercy and the sea is an ocean of possibility.

IN PRAISE OF THE ORDINARY

"I find great comfort in crowds," crowed my good friend Currado Malaspina as we watched the throngs of tourists winding their way towards Beijing's Forbidden City.

"An uncritical mass is nothing but a messy consensus of inoffensive organ meat".

"... and it's a beautiful thing to behold."

One never knows when Currado is being completely serious. There was indeed a mystic beauty in the ordered chaos of Tiananmen Square. As we watched the brass chorus of brightly colored synthetics dolefully saunter along the roped paths I wondered aloud if Mao would be spinning in his crypt.

"His favorite color was grey," barked one of the locals, ignoring the western convention of minding one's own freakin' business. After assuring our new found friend that we were interested in neither a foot massage nor a lottery ticket we followed the flock toward the Yellow Crane Pavilion.  

"Thank God for ordinary people," sighed Currado and I think this time he was being sincere. 

"Without them, where would we be, but us, if we suddenly disappeared it would scarcely stir a bedbug."

Currado Malaspin, 2014

And reflecting on my good friend's latest work I'm afraid this time the rabble would be right.