Private Portraits
The imposter is constructing a lie to sleep in for the night. She composes a journal of public identities for the
collective gaze. Her expression is one of angst. It is a search for identity rather than a
declaration, and it is based on identifying with others, with all women who have been held
up to the effacing stereotypes of a girl-crazy culture. From under her bed, she pulls a
pile of personae and looks through the accumulation of hundreds of images. The self she presents, however, is exclusively
a public enemy.
Eradicating the boundaries between the public and private, she poses in front of the
mirror, as the perfect metaphor, as the physical equivalent of a scream. In the darkness,
she strokes the memories that smell like
gasoline, perceiving her own spiritual death of America.
Unmasking the metaphysics of her private
life, she tries to capture the glimmering idealistic sheen of the public spectacle within
herself. It does not work. The mere mirror speaks charms and wishes into her thoughts. A
dialogue between the viewer and the image emerges, like wild animals coupling in the
darkness. They drink a hallucinogenic liquid
drug from an Indian ceremonial bowl, and this spawns the couple's passionate
canine-style lovemaking in the jungle.
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was the song that she made, with her smile and her
disguises.
"I am not pretending to be a
star. I just don’t give a fuck."
JonBenet Barbie decides one day that she wants to grow up to be a porn star. Her first
lover is Dougie, the freakshow human dildo boy, with the cock that was the same size as
his head. It was about then that the evil midgets emerged from the closet and began
tearing at the script with their sharp teeth and claws. One afternoon, while she was attending a tea-party
with Amber in the dollhouse, JonBenet Barbie rubbed her tiny pretend breasts against her
friend, as she combed her woman-child silky hair. Fingertips sway carelessly over the
suspicious sexuality of the moment. She is cold on the inside and warmer on the outside.
Her chest heaves with aroused convulsions, witness to her passionate thoughts. Head
spinning, she lies down for a moment in the grass.
"They do not pay me enough to work on this side of Hollywood. Anything for the
stage, but this is ridiculous! I don’t remember saying that I would allow my image to
be raped, murdered and burned in this way!"
The nightmare is always darker than the
one that preceded it. Sitting in the waiting room and playing with her toys, JonBenet
Barbie makes herself at home wherever she is. Showing her shaved mouse to the audience of
one, she gives him a smile from behind the glass panel.
"I remember how you pretended to touch me."
