SMUT STAND REPORT: Oct. 8, 2014 (New Orleans)
WHEN: 4 hours (8pm-midnight), Oct 8, 2014. WHERE: mural fence next to the Art Market, Frenchmen Street, New Orleans. OUTPUT: one custom work, a hardcore doin’-it-standing-while-no-one’s watching piece in a nightclub. (I wonder how often that particular scene actually unfolds. Some clubs get really crowded.)
This was one of those nights that I knew would happen, even here, when the crowd was just not buying smut. Few people stopped, even fewer had legit questions about the process. The only commission I got was two hours after I started, and while her interview and response to the piece was gratifying—her husband’s birthday is on Sunday, and he “always wants to fuck!”—it was not enough to carry my mood past midnight. I actually rejected one piece soon after that, because it was two members of a stag party wanting something for their soon-to-be-married friends. That goes against both policy and good practice. I only do consensual smut.
On nights like this, I never know how much of it is really the crowd, and how much is the new location—I decided to just stay set up in front of the mural fence, across from Michael’s Bicycle—and how much is my mood. Because I hadn’t drunk nearly as much coffee as usual right before setting out the stand (normally I’m getting a large coffee in the hour beforehand), and it was SO FUCKING MUGGY that I could not stop sweating, and I was sitting with some personal shit that was really distracting, and it was the gushiest day of my period so I was anxious about that, and it’s possible that all of those things were just messing with the vibe that I put out.
Never mind. Today I make a sign for the fence behind me, something to hang over my head, red lettering on white background, with lots of red lights: SMUT WHILE U WAIT. And I get another red bike light for the other corner of my typewriter table. And I drink lots of coffee, and I bring enough water, and I do it all again.