All of the art in my apartment was either found in the trash, created by me (badly), or bought from the Steve Keene store. (When my friend AJ first saw my Steve Keene paintings, he exclaimed "What were you talking about? Your art isn't retarded at all! It's good!" and I had to explain that that was real art, my shitty art was in the other room.)
So I was really happy last week when my friends Amanda and Eric and I were coming out of a bar and saw the above painting propped up against the trash. I ran over and plucked it up and it instantly became one of my prized possessions. On the ride home, I stared at it, trying to think of a name, and then I noticed the guy is holding a knife. Disconcerting. I speculated that maybe I didn't "find" this painting at all, maybe the guy left it out to be found and this was his way of being an exhibitionist (an idea Eric named "the trash flash.") I decided to name the guy "Ira the Ripper" and to keep the painting somewhere other than the bedroom to ward off nightmares and monkey's-paw curses.
When I got home to my Chinatown apartment, I got my mail and read it as I stumbled up the stairs. When I reached my landing, my Chinese next door neighbors were having dinner with the door open. The only neighbor I'd ever seen there was the very sweet elderly Chinese woman who speaks no English, but sometimes knocks on my door with a present of sticky rice in a banana leaf. I assumed these were her grandkids, since they were my age. I smiled and started putting my key in the lock as the three of them sat there staring at me in a curious but not unfriendly way.
I couldn't get the key in and the girl got up to help. "Oh, no, I'll get it, it's just because I'm nervous" I said. I then looked up at the door and realized I was on the fourth floor, not the fifth, and that these were my downstairs neighbors. "Oh my god" I said, blushing. They didn't seem to speak English so all I could do was make the universal gesture for "too much to drink" and skitter over to the stairs. It wasn't until I got to my real landing that I realized that I was clutching a painting of a middle aged man with a large penis and a knife, and that it had been facing them the whole time I was trying to basically break in to their neighbor's apartment.
There was nothing left to do but make the biggest production that has ever been made of a key successfully opening a lock, throw Ira face-first in a corner of the kitchen, and call my best friend.
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