As a toddler, a portrait my mom did of me all in pencil. She had me pose pointing my finger. When she finished with me, she put a sparrow on that finger. I thought it was super cool. When we moved, she made me leave it on the wall. Somebody bought the farm just for the land, and the house was demolished.
We moved a lot after that. I didn’t adorn my walls much. When I was sixteen my parents split. Single mom and three kids, we moved into an ugly, drafty little box house. I had a project going nobody knew about. The stack grew until I was sure I had enough.
I was into cool full page magazine photography. You know, the stuff which accompanies stories or long articles, also ads for perfume and the like. Mostly it was Cosmopolitan. They had some great photographers back then. I had a few posters, and a few filler pictures I liked, including a couple of cuddles from Playgirl. I shut myself in my room for an entire weekend with Peter Frampton, Boston, and Queen blaring. I wouldn’t answer my door, and it had a slide lock. I ate only when everyone else was asleep.
I had discovered that I could use glue stick on the wallpaper, and it would stay stuck, but peel right off if I wanted to, without leaving any marks. During that weekend I hung over four hundred fifty pictures and posters on the walls and ceiling. I collaged the entire room. I hung poptab chains from asymmetrical points on the ceiling, of various lengths. My black light made them look like purple stars in a night sky. When I emerged, my mom looked like she was a little surprised to see I was still alive.
One of very few compliments she ever gave me was that she thought what I had done was really cool.
One day, mom told me grandma was going to visit, and wanted to see this spectacle she’d heard about. I went through the Sears catalogue and found men in the same poses as the ones I put up from Playgirl. I cut around the clothes and like paper dolls, glued them over the top of my nekkid fellers. They were easily removed later.
When we moved out I left it all. I thought when the landlord showed the house people might ask him if the mental patient died there.