These Are the Days

I was able to see Nan Goldin's "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" again this weekend at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it is part of the current exhibition "Slideshow." Comprising more than 700 slides set to music, "Ballad" documents Nan's circle of friends in the late seventies through the late eighties and their unhealthy relationships with drugs and each other. The images are brutally honest, sometimes offensive, never pretty, despite many happy times. The slides are loosely arranged into themes of heterosexual and homosexual couples, their intimate moments and their social events (mostly bars and parties), and ends with some very moving photos of couple's tandem gravesite. Despite so many pictures of "togetherness," including many candid shots of couples engaged in sexual acts, all participants seem isolated from themselves and each other, whether spaced out or spiritually hollow. The series is not only a brutally honest look at Nan's relationships, but really our own. How many pictures in our albums document the arguments, the loneliness, the antiromantic postcoitus, the miscommunications and sadness that punctuate the highlights of our lives?

The only thing that sucked about Goldin's piece is now I have Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy" stuck in my head. Otherwise, the weekend was very nice. We went out to Ray Lewis' Full Moon Bar-B-Que in Canton on Saturday evening with some of K's friends—a couple from Frederick and a couple who moved into Canton recently. We had $150 worth of gift certificates from our realtor friend, so dinner was free! I got the catfish and was able to avoid any comments about eating Ray's meat (shudder). We then went down to Flip's in Fells Point for $1 Natty Boh cans. Because I don't drink beer much these days, I've evolved into thining that most beer tastes the same now. Jesus, I've forgotten how bad Boh tastes. The irony, of course, being that the new posh development in Southeast Baltimore (Brewers Hill) is named and marketed after gag-inducing beer. Or maybe not so ironic after all.