Everything will be ok

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Everything will be ok.
Published by thisisamagazine.com 14
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A Sentimental Monologue for a Stupid
Girl. Written and performed by Miltos Manetas at
Jeffrey Deitch Gallery on Sept 16th on an
invitation from Casey from Fischerspooner.
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I realize now that I am not even in love anymore
with this Chinese bitch. So, these mean notes
here are only flash back feelings. I am
embarrassed to tell you all these things but I
promised to Casey to make a speech tonight and
there is nothing else I can think about lately
but what happened to me and this girl. A
relationship between a man and a woman is often
the collision of two icebergs both will melt. If
the wind is positive, they will become one, if
it's the wrong wind they will break into pieces.
So, let's call for the evil wind. I will be bad.
She started it, after all.
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Let's call her 3. That's what she asked for
last December, her lawyer sent me a letter
prohibiting me the use of her name and image for
my Paris exhibition (www.memoirsofthedevil.com).
That was the day after she had brought me around
Paris in her glossy convertible MG car. (she told
me once that in the city where she grew up she
owns a Porsche). She was so tender with me that I
asked her to stay with me forever. Yes, she
said, we are made for each other but what shall I
do with G?. G. was her local boyfriend, she had
described him to me as an older, boring and very
bourgeois man whom she was dating just for the
pleasure of torturing him. Another man of that
type specially, was OK with me. Whatever would
make her happy - During the last summer, she had
called me many times in the middle of the night
to tell me how she had a lot of fun having him
running after her, poverino G. She said that
she was treating him like shit. I didn't believe
her and I suggested that she go visit an analyst
(which she did).
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He should suffer a lot, she said and
smiled. Who cares about him, I said, Let's
think about us instead, so very stupid and blind
I was to her nature! No, no, he Must suffer, my
cruel 3 insisted.
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What follows that night of December, is that we
went to a nice restaurant and we had dinner and
at some point I noticed her going constantly to
the ladies room, busy with her mobile. Soon, a
pretty young French boy arrives and starts to
argue with her. He doesn't notice me until she
succeeds in turning his attention toward me and
he introduces himself. Hi, I am G. Hi. I am
Miltos. I say and I see that the French guy is
shocked. Miltos? he asks, you are Miltos? I
am Miltos. I say and I decided at that moment
that I actually liked the guy. He looked gentle
and even pretty although kind of boring but he
was nicely dressed. I had good intentions
towards G. but he left our table in tears and a
minute later he come back. Keep her, he says,
you are the one she loves anyway, keep her. -
I will, of course I will, I say. I love her.
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G. leaves and 3 is now very happy. He got what
he deserved, she says. She starts calling a
designer friend of hers and arranging the rest of
our night together. Where shall we go to dance? -
I am out of here, I say, realizing late the
fact that she is just using me. I feel very tired
and a bit disgusted at that point even if the 3
looks prettier than she has ever been, wearing a
grey Jurgi Persoons suit, her hair in a bun, her
mouth painted Scarlet Chanel, a lion that has
just finished lunch. She turns to me and says in
Italian Amore, ti sei deluso? - which means,
Honey, are you deluded ?.
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- I am, I said, You are a bitch but never mind
as long as you decide to stay with me, do you?
I ask. - Sono tua amore, lo sono sempre stato,
3 says and she smiles. I am yours - Ive always
been. -Ok then, I say and I call a taxi and go
back to my Hotel because I couldnt stand looking
at her that night. She goes instead to a fancy
cabaret with her designer friend and other
people. At a certain point during that night,
poor drunk G. is constantly calling me and asking
me again and again to take 3 away from him. She
is consuming my life, he says, She will consume
yours also. She told me that she is having an
affair with you only to help her career. Never
mind, I tell him, I love her, let me sleep. I
take some pills and I forget everything. I become
happy now, just dreaming of 3. What clothes
will she choose to have breakfast with me
tomorrow?, I wonder...
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The next morning, my gallery calls to inform me
that her lawyer just sent them a letter where she
is censuring my show. There has never been
anything between me and Miltos Manetas her
letter declares. Soon, another friend calls to
tell me that she has also deposited a complaint
at the Police Station against me. I am stalking
3, according to that complaint, her life is in
danger because of me! When I call her, I
discover that she is not in Paris anymore. She is
in Hong Kong for New Years Eve with her parents.
And G. will follow soon I suppose. She needs him.
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3 was born in Shanghai. At a young age, she was
sent to her parents in Rome, Italy. Her father
was a high ranking official in the Chinese
Embassy and he was also a successful businessman.
A picture she sent me once, shows some black
Mercedes having an accident. My father just had
an accident, reads the subject of the email,
but he is fine. Back in China, 3 was the head
of entertainment at her school. She would learn
how to dance, sing and entertain. Life in Italy
has not been very good to her because she was
kind of ugly as a kid and she was also Asian. But
she worked hard on her image and now she is as
sexy as Brigitte Bardot. Large lips that are
promising kisses to anyone.
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Long legs that can cross the room from the
entrance of a club and bring her straight to the
VIP room where she will introduce herself to
people. Her father obliged her to go to London
and study Management so she went there and bought
a house but also rented - in secret - another
apartment in Paris. She also had two phones, a
London and a Paris number. When her parents would
call her, she was always in London, studying.
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I met 3 in 2001, in Milan, at a cocktail party
that my gallery was giving for my show. She came
straight to me, a yellow Gucci dress that was
leaving too much information uncovered and stayed
until all other guests had left. I wasn't allowed
to sleep with her that night or the night after
I was in love with a very smart and pretty
Japanese who had the best of talents in art and
song-writing. To get rid of 3, to make her
cancel me from her agenda, I opened my laptop and
showed her the picture of my Japanese. Maybe I
had other intentions too for doing that, maybe I
was dreaming a future where we would live happy
together the three of us, but in that moment I
kept that a secret even from myself.
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3 had just decided to become an artist but she
was doing stuff that everybody does photographs
and trash arranged as art objects, what galleries
and museums love but which were not my taste. I
suggested that she forget what she was doing and
try be more Neen. I gave her a catalogue of
people to collaborate with. Two years later, 3
was quite ready. She had done her homework well,
she was now doing pretty websites and flash
animations, that was her art and she was doing
songs which even if they were not exactly at the
level of my Japanese girl, were cute. During
those two years, she had tried again and again to
propose herself to me, I suppose now because she
needed a mentor. I received emails from her with
pictures of body parts from various top-models
and with subjects such as These are my legs.
These are my tits. She was projecting and
expanding.
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In March 2003, my affair with the Japanese was
over and I invited 3 to Los Angeles, to make a
show at the Electronic Orphanage and to follow me
on an adventure in Death Valley. She came and we
had a great time together, myself and 3 running
around naked after having take a lot of strange
drugs that a friend from Caltech University had
provide us, drugs which were not even illegal yet
because they had been discovered a few months
earlier. We had many designer clothes with us and
we would always try them out, taking pictures
constantly and leaving polaroids on the sand
behind us. Marcos, a hypnotist friend of mine and
his pretty girlfriend were with us and they took
good care of us, that's maybe the reason that we
are still alive and not dried out in some canyon
inside our Comme Des Garçons outfits.
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After we came back to NY, the first thing 3 did,
was to start a website called www.meandmanetas.com
where she put together all these compromising
pictures of us. She send the link of this site to
anyone she knew and mostly to my little genius
Japanese. Like an animal, she was defining her
territory. Already from our trip to the desert
she had start bugging me about the Japanese
ex-girlfriend of mine. She would insult her and
try to convince me stop loving her. She
explained to me that it was her that she had the
talents and not the other way round. After she
realized that it was not going to happen, that
when it comes to art I trust my eyes and not the
lower members of my body, she decided to quickly
take something from me and drop me. She started
harassing me to introduce her to a friend
gallerist in NY.
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I did that. I brought her to Jeffrey Deitch and
tried my best to arrange a work appointment but
the gallerist had no time. For a few days, my
mornings with 3 would start like that Amore,
hai scritto a Suzanne?, Honey, have you
written to Suzanne? - Suzanne is the director of
Deitch gallery. I did my best those days in NY,
sending around her DVD, introducing her to some
friends in Paris with whom she did a book of
drawings etc.
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Later, she succeeded in approaching Deitch, this
time by herself and after she finally obtained
his trust She convinced him to let her do a
one-hour performance in one of his exhibitions. I
went there, I thought that I would be full of
hate for her but secretly was hoping that what I
would see would make me proud of her. I had never
ceased believing in her personality and her work
and I was curious about what she could do without
me. Did this girl exist far away from me? Could
she still be any good?
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She started her performance with a pitiful pop
song and continued with another of the same. She
did everything a sexy girl on stage can do she
started crawling around on the floor, she had sex
with a guitar, she Vampire-kissed a few dancers
who in return vampire-kissed her back. One of
them even knocked her with his microphone and she
fell on the stage. Then she stood up and took a
bow. She did a lot and nothing was good. People
were quick to leave the room. My friends were
embarrassed, and so was I. We all told you a
long time ago, one of them told me. This girl
is zero. Well, she is not exactly zero, I
replied. She is just a 3. Miltos Manetas