The EPs of R.P.: 2001

His social life was now populated with dinners with gallerists and dealers who came upstate for a day or two, he and his wife entertaining them at the one or two nice restaurants around. Dinner conversation was always the standard—who was moving where and when, who jumped galleries, the weather. It was total bullshit and he knew it, but in spite of himself he kind of liked it. It was punishing in just the right way, and he felt like every time he endured one of those sessions he earned another badge toward real adulthood. Most of his days were like that now, in this weird space between choice and obligation, things he could tolerate and things he could tolerate less. Adulthood? Parenthood? It was a good thing he never really learned how to have fun, otherwise he might remember he was missing something.


He hadn’t seen Cindy since they broke up so many years ago. As both of their careers kept on going, they both slowed the pace of going to all the obligatory openings, running into each other less and less. Both traveling more, staying in more often, etc. It did seem true that she never mentioned their final moment together to anyone in their circle, but then again how was he to know? He heard when she got married to an acquaintance of his, Michel, a few years after their affair ended and he thought about sending something over, a present of some sort, but he could never quite get it together. Besides, the last time he had seen her, he was rubbing his unflinching cock all over her doorframe and making her stare at his cum stained khakis, so maybe sending flowers or some bullshit from the gift registry wasn’t the right way to get back in touch. She and Michel eventually got divorced, but he hadn’t really heard any news from her for years since then, until an old gallerist friend from the city came up with his wife for a long weekend upstate.


Richard and his wife took them out to their favorite restaurant (well, the better of the two in town, favorite is a strong word,) and the talk turned to gossipy catching up after about 10 minutes in and the first glass of wine down.


“Rich, did you hear about Cindy’s new beau? Remember when you guys saw each other? God that was years ago.”


“No, I never hear much about Cindy these days.” Richard coolly responded. He had to admit his interest was peaked. If he was honest, he did think about her, maybe more than he wanted to admit. Most often, he thought of her when he was in the studio. Strange, both of their careers had gone so well, what were the odds? He wondered what she was doing, how she populated her days. Often when he was in his studio, flanked by his idiot assistants texting and gossiping about their own little idiot worlds, he secretly fantasized about talking to her the way they did that first day in her studio years ago. Maybe they would laugh about whatever “hot” young artist was all the rage now, or whatever was Jerry’s most recent inane review. He had this fantasy of them as something like the town elders, alone in some weird Pictures castle laughing from on high at all the young things running around like chickens with their heads cut off. She was the real deal, he would think to himself. Funny, because when he was actually with her before, he would freeze up, but now in hindsight, thinking about her from afar, he felt like he realized so much more about her, about himself, seeing himself through her and the work she had made somehow, and then back again. Would she feel the same way about him? Or would she just laugh and sigh “ugh, men!” while seshing with her friends in her loft over wine. He often wondered what it would be like if he ever really got her meet her in real life again, but he would always stop himself. He knew it would never be as good as it was in his mind, that he could never act the way he wanted to around her, the way he did in his mind. Every now and again he would see some article in one of the art rags, about women showing less than men. Often they would use the two of them as examples, with pull quotes like “Pictures Generation artists Cindy Sherman shows only 5 times a year, while Richard Prince shows 30!” or something like that. He wondered if he was supposed to feel badly about it, whether he was part of the problem. But what the fuck did that even mean?


Sometimes when he was in the studio, assistants running around him, he went into his “secret” drawer in the “secret” shed that no one but him had a key to. It was full of objects from his younger days. He would open the drawer and immediately the smell would bring him back, all those days spent in blissful loneliness, wandering New York (back when it was actually cool) with his Walkman, picking up porn magazines and VHS tapes, lurking the streets for hot young girls, winking at the idea of fun. But just as soon as his mind slipped away he would be brought back to his real life. A wife, kids, employees, dealers, houses, bills. Everyone had their fucking two cents for him, and everyone expected him to always decide, to be the man. But what kind of man was he? Slinking into his secret shed to pull out a 20 year old Walkman that didn’t work? His trick was to play the Ramones CD now, but wear the Walkman headphones to bring him back to it all, to the days when he could masturbate 6 times a day and still go out looking for some new pussy to remind him how much he hated himself. How depressing this ritual was was not lost on him. Needless to say, his wife didn’t know about his secret drawer.


His remembrances and fantasies were cut short and he was brought back to dinner in a split second. “Cindy’s dating Steve Martin now!”


“Wait, what?” Richard was genuinely shocked. He couldn’t say why really, he always knew she had started crossing over into the celebrity/art worlds so it made sense. Steve was a huge collector, everyone knew that. Richard had met him briefly at a party once, at a New Years bash in Jamaica, of all places. They were introduced by Larry, of course. He seemed nice, quiet and reserved. He seemed, to Richard, like a real man. Respected in his field but not boisterous, he probably had earned his place in adulthood long ago. For some reason, jealousy singed over him. It was like all those secret fantasy conversations he had with her in his mind were voided now, he felt like a fool for thinking about her at all, like he had been tricked by her somehow and he couldn’t explain why.


On the car ride home, he was more quiet than usual, but his wife didn’t notice. She was busy rehashing the gossip from their dinner, chiming in on each re-worked topic, reviewing how their dinner guests were dressed, blah blah talky talky. He barely said a word, inside just stewing over this news about Cindy and Steve. Why did it even bother him so much? He didn’t have any good reason, and the longer he thought about it and realized he had no good reason to be angry, the more annoyed with himself he was for being jealous in the first place. By the time he pulled the BMW into the long, rural driveway, his mind was lost in a web of what ifs. What if he hadn’t acted out all those years ago when he was with her, what if he opened up to her more, and tried harder to get her to open up to him, what if he was a better man? What if he recognized what he could have had with her before he threw it all away on porn, hustlers, and smutty VHS tapes?


He walked in the house and went straight to the bedroom. His wife stopped to check in with the kids, make sure they were doing their homework, that they had eaten, all the things parents are supposed to go. But Richard didn’t care right now. He pushed the button on the intercom in the bedroom to page the intercom in the kitchen.


“Come upstairs” he said through the device.


And soon enough, his wife came through the door. “Shut that,” he coldly remanded.


“Rich, is something up?” His wife was taking off her earrings by the dresser.


“Please let me fuck you.” He was sitting on the bed now, looking down, his hands in his lap.


She looked at him from the reflection of the mirror, her back to him. “Rich, not tonight. The kids have practice early, and I had all that wine at dinner, you know, I feel so bloated, its just a whole thing now. I just don’t feel like it.”


He got up, without a word, and walked the long walk straight to the shed. He put on the CD, put on the Walkman headphones, and pulled out an old favorite magazine, Lords and Dames Play Games, but just sat there for a minute. All he wanted to do was masturbate. All he wanted to do was to get hard, and harshly, almost painfully tug at himself until he came. But nothing was happening. He sat in the shed, now in silence, staring at the wall. He needed to feel like a man, but literally, there was nothing for him anymore.


He put away his treasures and went back inside and into his son’s room. He was still up, working on a paper, some school shit.


“Hey.” Richard came in his room and stood by the door. “Let’s go outside, huh?”


His son, Eric, was 13 now, just starting high school. Every Saturday night, Richard and Eric would watch Saturday Night Live together. It was a ritual started 2 years before, something the two of them did together every week, without his wife or his daughter, Eric’s sister. They laughed together, and sometimes Eric would start to ask Richard stories about when he had lived in the city. Of course, those stories were wildly cut down and curated for Eric’s ears, but moments like those were the only times when Richard didn’t resent all the choices he had made in his life.


“Wait, dad, what? Saturday Night Live is on soon! We gotta watch. What are we gonna do outside anyways?”


“Let’s go chop down a tree.”


Eric laughed, but Richard wasn’t joking.


“Umm..ok? I mean, yeah, sure dad. Let’s do it now and then come back in for SNL?”


“Sure thing, grab your gloves, ok? Its getting cold. Hey, it’ll be an adventure. Something for us guys.”


With that Richard and Eric walked outside and into the dense acreage of the Prince compound. In a heavy flannel and gloves and carrying an axe, Richard was a man on a mission. He scanned each tree with precision and exactitude. He was just a man who couldn’t get erections anymore, out with his son in some rough nature, and he was going to cut down a god damn tree tonight.


Finally they found the one. It wasn’t a huge tree, big enough to satisfy him but small enough that he actually felt like he could do it. He told Eric to stand back, he didn’t want him to get hurt, and Richard picked up the axe. He held it back, one hand higher up than the other, and swung. The axe hit the tree with a dense thud. He yanked the axe out and swung again, hitting nearby his first cut. He kept going, but soon his hands were rough and feeling swollen, even though the gloves. He knew he wasn’t swinging it right; when they first moved in their neighbor, a real rugged upstate kind of man, showed Richard how to chop wood once, properly, but fucked if he could remember how to swing the axe now. He struggled and swung wildly, making cuts here and there on the tree, but getting nowhere. Eric was starting to rustle, it was cold, SNL was about to start, and eventually Richard had no choice but to admit defeat.


“Fuck this. Let’s go inside.” Looking at the mangled, bruised tree, he and Eric turned and headed back to the house, playfully starting to talk about SNL and their favorite moments, speculating together what might be on tonight. Inside, he was still thinking about the tree, but he tried his best to focus on this, a moment of real happiness.


They settled into their respective chairs in the den, the two Princes together. The opening credits rolled and the guest host came out.


He couldn’t believe it. He was speechless. The guest host was Steve Martin. Of all the fucking days for this to happen.


He wanted to get up and walk out, but he didn’t. Instead, he kept quiet, feigning excitement for Eric’s sake. The episode seemed to last forever. All he wanted was for it to be over, but then what? He felt like a prisoner in his own life. Where would he go? To his bedroom to a bloated wife who wouldn’t fuck him, out to the shed to a broken Walkman, or maybe back outside to look at the tree, to stare at his failure? What a joke.


After yet another round of commercials, the show popped back on and rolled into a new skit. Eric was starting to doze off, they were getting towards the end. He thought about turning it off, Eric wouldn’t notice now, but he had a feeling that he should keep watching. The scene opened to a woman in a silk nightgown, lying on a bed. Steve came in, standing in the doorway, looking at her. The woman cooed to him and tried to initiate something, but he just watched. The audience was silent, there were some awkward laughs here and there, but this was getting to the end of the show, when the more “experimental” material comes out. Richard watched as it panned out. The couple on screen went through a little ritual, the woman ever trying to coax her husband to bed, him silent by the door, then, all of a sudden, rubbing himself on the door frame. The woman screamed at him, going on a long tirade, but he kept moving. Steve Martin kept moving, up and down, grinding into the door frame. The audience laughed here and there, not knowing what to make of it. Richard went into a daze. Did he really just see that?? Before he knew it the skit was over and the show credits rolled across the screen. Was he hallucinating???? Did he imagine what he just saw?? He felt like a tornado had rampaged through his whole body. He was simultaneously exhausted, like he was in a waking coma, trapped in his chair, and full of motion, a raging mess that could torpedo without a destination. What the fuck just happened?


In a flurry he got up and turned the TV off. He put on his coat and gloves and walked back outside. He walked farther and farther onto his property, until he found the tree, the un-chopped down tree, and he just sat in front of it. He couldn’t think of anyplace else to go, and somehow, stomping out to access his failure seemed to punish him in the way that he was used to, a mean familiarity that somehow comforted him. Time seemed to stop, and he sat in silence until the sun came up, his mind all a blank.


Once it was morning, he went back inside to a bustling house. His wife and kids were up, rushing out the door to some such thing, they barely noticed him on their way out. Then, he was alone.


Now by himself in his huge house, he knew what he needed to do. He looked up the number for the gallery where Cindy had been showing. One of the dealers there was an old friend of his. He sat at the kitchen counter in silence until noon on the dot and picked up the phone.


The receptionist answered and Richard asked to talk to his old friend, but the front desk assistant—who was surely some young, hot girl, recently graduated from some bullshit liberal arts school with a bullshit degree in Art History or creative writing, all fresh to New York and dressed up in just the right clothes and teetering heels (Richard paused on this thought for a long minute)—said he was out, but could she take a message?


“Yes. I have a message.”


“Ok, and what should I let him know?”


“Let him know I need to get Cindy a message. I want her to know that I know that she told Steve.”


“Ok, so...just to make sure I have this right, you want me to give him a message, for him to give to Cindy, that you know that she told Steve? I’m sorry...is that correct?”


“Yes.”


“Ok, I’m assuming he will know what this is about, is there anything more specific you need me to add?”


“Just tell him to tell Cindy that I know that she told Steve I masturbated into the doorframe.”


“Uh huh...ok, sorry, so...ok, the message I have now is, Please tell Cindy that Richard knows that she told Steve that he masturbated in the door?”


“The doorframe. Into the doorframe.”


“Ok, in the...in the doorframe. Um, yes, ok, I’ve got it. Do you... should I leave a number for someone to call you back, Mr. Prince?”


“No, I don’t need anyone to call me back. I just need her to know that I know.” He hung up the phone and looked down, pleased to find himself hard once more.