The voice is Ricky’s voice

All identities are only simulated, produced as an optical "effect" by the more profound game of difference and repetition.

i have a hard time with clients in vegas because my father lives there and knows 90% of the city. one of his best friends works for a group that owns one third of the strip so when i have a booking in vegas i have to make sure it doesn’t happen in one of those hotels. he thinks i’m a personal stylist. i’m supposed to travel across the country and advise rich men on how to dress. i hate lying but you get better as you get older. one client once told me that a big lie is the easiest defensive position. i never wanted to do anything like my father but it’s funny, that’s exactly what i’ve ended up doing.

i was born and raised in LA in a house in pasadena. to the zoo with my mom, fed the giraffes, the differences between asian and african elephants. my father was more likely to spend his time in poker rooms all over the country. but we (wut be) (my mom and i) didn’t know he was gambling.

my father was born with a trust fund as big as an art nouveau museum, and he told us he was touring the US to curate art exhibitions featuring the family’s paintings. while he was actually touring the country to get his poker fix. vegas, tunica, foxwoods. it was fargo. you lie until you go so deep that something too big for you happens.

funnily enough, he wasn’t a very good player. you might think good liars are good poker players, but no, good liars are self-destructive. paying debts was easy, he just had to sell paintings from the inheritance. that’s how my mom found out, when paintings started to disappear. one evening she turned the house upside down and found a notebook where all the poker debts were written down, a list of the paintings he sold, the money he burned, the names of the art dealers and auction houses. the sad part is that for years she thought he was having an affair. it killed her, not the lie itself, the waste of time. she died soon after figuring out he was “just” a poker player -- actually a no-limit player who constantly loses. heart attack. 1999. i think she would have divorced him if she hadn’t died.

i stopped talking to my father. he sold the family home, moved to las vegas. i didn’t want any money from him. i got a job at a restaurant, waitress. i finally accepted to see him again, two years ago. clearly it took a lot of effort to swallow my anger. i'm still working on it. he’s one of those people who no matter how stupid and guilty they feel, never apologize. on the plus side they say "sorry." reluctantly but they do. a "sorry" is nothing.

we’re slowly making up. he wasn’t who we thought he was, and i am not what he believes i am. we’re sort of even now.

“two cowboys.”
“american airlines.”

that’s my father’s favorite line. that was the only day he won big at a poker table. his opponent had two kings, he had two aces.

i took the train to york street and walked 3 blocks. on the way i saw cops keeping their guns trained on a trucker and searching his truck behind a screen of sawdust which floated in the air and expelled a smell of sawdust and drug in the street.

it was 2pm when i arrived at the studio, the elevator to the 5th floor, and the rusty, petrol blue dumbo door i pushed. there was a stuffed life size cheetah in the entryway LOL. a guy who was like the double of galliano and also the receptionist of the studio looked at me with a typical new york shitty grin, he was talking on the phone about what he ate for breakfast, and he was in the middle of a long continental list, but he paused and told me where to go. the studio was done with black shiny surfaces and mirrors, very disco, very want nasty pixxx? it looked like it hadn’t been touched since 1977 and the golden years. the photographer was 40 but looked 50. he went like ‘hey cutie!’ and introduced me to his assistant who was vacuuming a fake lawn, becky the hair/make-up girl, and two friends, ingrid and chiquita. they were listening to public enemy.

CHIQUITA: i kinda miss tapes.
PHOTOG: and the middle age, too?…
CHIQUITA: oh yeah, m, p, three. i know that.

becky brushed my hair out, they asked me to try on some black and pink lingerie, the photog briefed me. it’s for richardson, i want you to be like music, intelligible and inexplicable at the same time. totally me. i studied philosophy and read schopenhauer. i read hegel, i read kant, i read bergson. in my sophomore year i took a course on kant’s critique of pure reason. we were invited to focus on the 'transcendental deduction of the categories,' a big issue in kant’s philosophy, a major drag. i read heidegger, kant and the problem of metaphysics, i understood the problem, i bust kant — basically paraphrasing heidegger.

PHOTOG: let the strap fall down a little…

the fake lawn was itching dirty.

PHOTOG: ring the maid, pinch your nipple…

my back was attacked by the green spikes of the fake grass and i didn't complain. i got a d minus and my professor said i was a ‘priggish pedant.’ i quit in the middle of the year. i was in love.

PHOTOG: pretend you’re a bouncer and you say no, no, no… i love that. i love the fingers. imagine you have a log on your back… and you bow your back... so it doesn’t fall…

do you want me to arch my back?…

PHOTOG: yes arch your back… get your butt a little higher… a tad… like if it was saying "fuck me now damn it!"

even when not smiling i was photographed. angling my knees, bandy. know the doggy style positions naked with my c-shaped tongue out of my mouth, he bought a new camera and tried it on various close up shots, a body without organs.

PHOTOG: you’re perfect... you’re karma-esque!

thanks.

12 rolls later i'm getting dressed.

CHIQUITA: i think you don’t know what pissing while getting fucked means.

INGRID: yes i know. it costs $1,500 extra.

CHIQUITA: last time i’m doing water sports with a boyfriend.

while the photographer is getting mad at his assistant, "yeah waste all the fucking gel so i can’t use it tomorrow…" starts to dance with little trips singing i always feel like somebody’s watching me, and drops his iphone on the floor, and breaks the screen.

PHOTOG: Ohmahgah!… this is not happening… fuck!… fuck!... to the apple store, right now…

CHIQUITA: i make a face like that when my steak falls into the pool.

we all left the studio so quickly. ingrid and chiquita took my phone number, we kissed goodbye and chiquita yelled "vida mundana!"

PHOTOG: i have 2 words for steve jobs and it’s not happy birthday.

on NY1 they said the cops found 80 pounds of ecstasy in powder in a truck in dumbo.

i asked aloha, how to wake up and feel the morning is over. she said there's diana ross, touch me in the morning. i said it might turn me on, and i'm not going to ask kim to do any work. then she sent me a remarkable how to have vertigo and puke pic. piss your maniac hairdresser off. i have nothing to say about the jesus and mary chain album, hair are on the loose, the locks of hair before the wall, it's a disorder unfolding in its own void, it will never end and you get a sense of that 'never' -- id est, infinity in a moment.