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Kathy was the first of my friends
to marry, she was seventeen in years. She died from a drug overdose at age 19.
Her husband came from well-to-do, a family whose teeth are tightly beaded along the line of social convention. They eschewed any charity for the kind of a daughter-in-law like Kathy whose own father died in prison when she was still a little girl. After the marriage ceremony, the couple took an apartment with windows that looked out on the red brick buildings of a felt factory where they both worked the night shift, raking cotton fiber into giant shredders. He was dutiful at first, but it was a marriage closeted with embroidered mismatches of his and hers expectations. Always there lurked a suspicion that he was just trying on a life style the way bored rich kids do when they are set loose to shop the world. From this morganatic coupling came a baby of sorts. It wasn't too long before a pinocchio of heroin appeared in the wedding bed, crying stupid and nosing for a longer hypo of milk. Like any baby, theirs was a spank of reality that refuted the dream of its conception. Kathy and her husband bought the lies of dope believing it would help their marriage. I miss Kathy. I remember what she was like before sex differentiation came to make her lonely and half of what she once was. |
| 6/24/98 | oil on linen | 50"w X 46"h |
