After
work Jimmy and I walk into a student opening in the Lubalin Gallery. The place
is made up like some kind of a southwestern circus with heavy rodeo overtones.
Hay covers the hardwood floor and a fake wooden bull hangs from ropes dropped
through the opening of a circus tent above as warped calliope music floats
throughout the space.
“Well
I see the alcoholics have arrived,” one of the exhibiting artists snidely comments.
“We
prefer to be called drunks,” Jimmy drawls slowly in response. The kegs arrive
and we help ourselves to some Yuengling
Lager.
Four
beers later I stand with Jimmy taking in the oddness of the exhibit.
“Oh
my God…! Have you ever been to
the Bordeaux Region in the spring?” A trust-funder, a necessary evil of an
overpriced art school, almost yells to a group of her uppity friends.
“No!”
Jimmy interrupts the conversation while leaning over a keg nearly tipping it,
“But I been to Delacroix, Louisiana, late August.”
George Dawkins was raised in Virginia, and has been happily
corrupted by NYC decadence after only three years in the city. He graduated
from George Mason University with a degree in creative writing, and has since
worked as a freelance editor and in janitorial management. He now resides in
Staten Island.