Ugly in Art

This was posted in the mail area of an apartment building in Greenpoint.

An Open Letter to New York State Senators Aubertine, Addabbo, Diaz, Huntley, Kruger, Monserrate, Onorato, and Sachowski

Dear State Senators,

The votes that each of you cast yesterday should fill you with shame. When you returned to your homes in the evening, to your spouses and children and beside tables, did you feel a sense of accomplishment? Did you think that you had honored your commitment to democracy and government? Or did you wake choking in the middle of the night, grasping desperately for a glass of water, your body caught in the twisted sheets, knowing that the choice you made was the resentful, hateful, bigoted choice of a coward?

I am afraid that you slept soundly. I am afraid that you think that this is just how some things go in Albany, that votes don't mean what they really mean. I am afraid that you cannot see what you have done. I am afraid that because of your ignorance you do not understand that your votes are not simply votes to deny the rights of thousands of loving, hopeful, trusting, giving, caring and tax-paying people--many of whom voted for you--the right to happiness, and equal protection. Your votes are expressions of pure, unequivocal hate. You have said: It's okay to hate gay people.

Do you understand that heterosexual marriages are actually made less sacred by the choices that you have made? Do you understand that if the love between two women who wish to marry is a threatening advance on the stability of your marriage, then your marriage has no stability at all?

Though you may not see it, this is not simply a vote against gay people who want to share a life together. This is a vote against every gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning child that gets bullied, beaten, assaulted and abused--on the playground, in classrooms, and in the very communities that you represent. Your vote is a vote against their future.

Of all the reasons to have the institution of marriage open to every one of this country's citizens, perhaps the most important is this: So that our gay and lesbian children feel valid. So they can grow up to be productive, loving, active members of the American idea in action. Your vote has said to them, loud and clear, that your neighborhood and your government thinks that you are worthless. That worthlessness, which is the worthlessness that you have incited, encouraged and have now perpetuated, will cause some of those children to attempt suicide. Some of those who try to kill themselves will succeed. They will shoot themselves with guns, or hang themselves in closets, or slice open their fragile young wrists.

I hope that when this happens--and sadly, terribly, regretfully, it will happen--that you are visited by their ghosts in the night. I hope that the dark room you are sleeping in turns suddenly cold. I hope your body feels icy, frozen with the knowledge of what you've done. I hope that you wake shaking, and screaming in fear.

Sincerely,

Lee Houck

Open Letters, Vol. 9

Dear Dude on the Subway,

Get some new pants.

Sincerely,
Lee

Open Letters, Vol. 8

Dear Modernity,

Oh, Modernity, you bitter mistress, you taught me so much over the weekend.

Actually, you didn't teach me anything concrete, nothing I could say for sure--which, in itself is its own kind of modernity--you just brought up a whole new set of questions. Socrates would say that is teaching, but you know, whatevs.

First, on my Twitter feed, I watched as Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore began complaining about their neighbors. Then I watched as very slowly, the story got picked up by various "news" outlets and broadcast all abouts the interweb. It was the first time I was able to see one of those celebrity stories from beginning to end. What started as something rather vacant and light suddenly became a news story, and people were quoting the Tweets and talking about how Ash and Demi were feeling. Who really knows how they were feeling? The machine took something and chewed it into bits.

And second, me and some other gay boys (plus a real live lady) sat around on Saturday night drinking beer and watching dumb videos on YouTube. We watched the one where the guy pukes on the morning news show, the one where the Swedish lady pukes on that morning show, the one where the lady falls and really hurts herself while trying to stomp grapes, the one where the lady falls on the Segway, the farting aerobics instructor, the farting newscaster, Sue Simmons and her important question, the gay/blind hiker, the weather man with diarrhea, and many, many others. How did we miss this typo?

Kip suggested that this was the current version of sitting around the campfire telling stories. It was pretty remarkable, in a way, all of us sitting in a circle, passing around the laptop, calling up one crazy narrative from YouTube, and turning the computer around so everyone could watch together. It didn't feel vacant, which you might presume.

I'm not the kind of person who bemoans how technology and modernity are keeping us apart from one another, but I'm not foolish enough to believe that things like YouTube and social networking websites are actually bringing people closer together--perhaps in an organizing sense, in a mobilizing sense, but never making quality interaction among people, surely. Right? Maybe? Instead, I think it's some unknown mixture of the two. Our language is becoming these videos, truncated for cultural ease--like that joke about the prisoners telling jokes in prison*. Our consciousness is becoming the translation of Twitter feeds.

Help us, I want to scream. But, to whom? And from what?

Sincerely,
Lee

*Let me know if you want to hear that joke.

Open Letters, Vol. 7

Dear Commerce Bank,

What person, or most likely what committee, at what advertising firm, decided that the new Commerce Bank "push pin" campaign was a good one? Okay, everywhere there is a bank branch, there is a giant push pin on a map--great, got that part.

But then a GIANT, Claes Oldenburg-stylin' push pin comes flying down from the sky like a missile, pierces the hood of a taxi cab and drives the metal point through the engine? Are you serious? In another spot, a push pin lands in the concrete, cracking the sidewalk and bursting a water main.

Will this push-pin assault make me want to give you my hard-earned money? Is terror-from-above really what you're going for?

Sincerely,

Lee

Open Letters, Vol. 6

Dear Everyone Who Knows Me,

Facebook?

No.

Sincerely,
Lee


Ed: I have since joined Facebook. Oh well.

Open Letters, Vol. 5 - Celebrity Edition

Dear Ben Gibbard,

There is a song that I need you to write. It's perfect for you--it's about inanimate material objects, seemingly inconsequential, that I have to look at occasionally, and that randomly strike me as entirely poetic and rich with metaphor.

I work in one of those buildings in Manhattan where there are a bunch of offices and one or two bathrooms on each floor. Each office has their own set of "men" and "women" keys. In fact, all day long I see people in the hallway with their random, oversize plastic (or other) things which the keys are attached to--a giant ladle, a coat hanger, a chunk of wood--in an attempt to make it impossible to accidentally leave behind.

Here's where I think you will really get interested.

Our keys are simple, banged-up bronze ones, attached to binder clips. The clips have old masking tape on them which "Guys" or "Gals," depending. Every time someone goes to the bathroom, they sit the keys, on their binder clips, back onto this electrical box where the lights switch is. But the keys themselves, they sort of flop over into all these different, but still similar positions. The keys are always having some kind of relationship to each other. And it reminds me, sometimes, of love-making.

Sometimes "Guys" is really excited, and points right at "Gals," in a totally perverted way. "Gals" might be absolutely not pointing back at "Guys" with the same fervor, but looking more coy. Sometimes "Gals" is completely ready for whatever "Guys" wants to give her, but "Guys" is flopped over to one side, completely in ignorance. And sometimes they're pointing right at each other. Their metal teeth touching ever so slightly. Whenever I have to take "Guys" with me to the bathroom, I try to bring him back to "Gals" as quickly as possible.

I took this picture with my cell phone. It's not very good, but you get the idea.


Let me know what you think. I like your records.

Thanks-
Lee

Open Letters, Vol. 4

Dear Gays, or anyone else otherwise uninclined to talk sports,

It's actually very easy to talk sports. For example, with strangers at the bodega, or your doorman, or whomever might engage you in such boring conversation. Here are some tips for how to get through it without embarrasing errors.

1) Ask a lot of rhetorical questions. If someone says to you, "Did you see the game last night?" you can just say something like "Man, can you believe that?" or "What was he thinking?"

2) Make sweeping, general statements about the future of sports: "Bah, I give up on the whole thing!"

3) Appear nostalgic for the past: "Nobody's playing like they used to."

Yours truly,

Lee

Open Letters, Vol. 3

Dear People Who Sign Mailing Lists,

1) Have better handwriting.

2) Include your zipcode.

3) Use the standard address format: Name, address, apartment, city, state, zip. Please do not go all weird and throw your apartment number just wherever.

4) If your name is something like Riznia DiSpiczewicz, you already know how hard it is to spell your name, and therefore you should print accordingly.


Sincerely,

People Who Work with Mailing Lists

Open Letters, Vol. 2

Dear American Express,

In response to your message found on the piece of cardboard printed with your logo, which was wrapped around my cup of peppermint tea that reads "Careful, the beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot," please let me say: Boy, you weren't kidding.

Regards,
Lee

Open Letters, Vol. 1

Dear Employees of Banana Republic,

Enthusiasm does not equal sincerity.

Regards,
Lee