After the trial was over, the Swedish video artist obtained a transcript of her exchange with her ex-husband’s lawyer. She made copies of the exchange and distributed these to a handful of female artists she respected: a choreographer, a librettist, a playwright. There were others: a filmmaker, possibly also a poet, possibly also a rhythmic gymnast. She asked them to choose performers they themselves respected. And then she filmed the performances.
At the museum, at the far end of the room in which the screens had been mounted, above one closed door, wall text, the letters large, black, press-on, the font a sans serif: “The Story of the Children.” I tried the knob of the door and found it would not turn. Presumably this was a metaphor.
“It seems,” my friend said, “like cheating. They do all the work, and she gets the show.”
“It was her idea.”
“If she were a man, you’d call this exploitative.”
“But she’s not. Historical context. It matters.”
“The point of feminism,” my friend said, “isn’t to replicate existing power structures, only with women in control. Or it shouldn’t be.”
“How did you get here?”
“I called a car. You know public transportation here is—”
“And presumably you know that saying the words existing power structures doesn’t mean you’re not part of the problem?”
“How was I supposed to get here, then?”
I twirled one finger in imitation of a game-show wheel. “And the winner is…biking! One of very few ethical modes of transportation—provided of course that the bike was, when you purchased it, used. You should have biked.” Do my words sound cold, even cruel? Perhaps it helps to know that as I said this, I was smiling.
“And get my clothes all sweaty? No thank you.”
“Your choice.”
“How did you get here?”
“My car’s electric.”
“Your car’s a hybrid. Excuse me, your husband’s car is a hybrid.”
“Same difference.” I would not call us, my friend and I, liars. Nor would I call us, in general, honest.
“Patently false.” Instead I would say that one of the premises of our friendship, a friendship that I have, in the years since our visit to the museum, let lapse, was that we were honest if with no one else then at least with each other. And that to force this honesty, we were compelled also to be cold, also to be cruel, to each other.
“Are you saying,” I asked, “that you’d rather I wasn’t here?” Also that this cruelty was, for us, a way to commune. A source, even, of joy.
“No,” my friend said. “Are you saying you’d rather I wasn’t here?”
Isn’t that the test of love? The test of intimacy? The willingness to be cruel and the belief that, the moment of cruelty passed, the love, the intimacy, remains, undamaged?
“No.” Yes, it is.
“Good.”
Or at least I have at times believed this to be the case.
“Good. Now. Do you want to tell me about your breakup.”
My words were phrased as, but in fact were not, a question. My friend rolled her eyes. Rather: she made the head motion—from left to right and then up a tick, her skull sketching the shape of an uppercase L—that I associated with her eye rolls, which were frequent. I could not see her eyes because she was still wearing sunglasses. “Well. What do you think happened.”
“He found out you were cheating on him.”
“Correct.”
Another of the premises of our friendship was that we loathed emotional intimacy even as we understood its necessity. Speaking with casual nonchalance about subjects that caused us great pain was our preferred workaround.
“If you were a man, I’d call you a cad.”
“Sure, if this were the nineteen fifties.”
“I’d be ethically obligated to take the wronged woman’s side.”
“If I were a gay man? Or a lesbian, for that matter. Or a straight man, but trans. Say I were nonbinary, or my partner was.”
“I’m just saying. The point of feminism isn’t to replicate existing power structures only with women in control.”
“You don’t say.”
“The fact that you’re a woman cheating on a man doesn’t make the cheating itself any less morally reprehensible.”
“Precisely what Paul told me this morning.”
“Really?”
“No. He said, Now I know why you never wanted to wear the ring.”
* * *
—
In another room, a number of enormous photographs, perhaps six feet across, twelve high, were displayed. A series of portraits of the Swedish video artist. There she was, wearing a mustache, a uniform, individual hairs glued to the swatch of flesh between the first and second knuckles of each finger. There she was, stooped, in a polo shirt, pale blue, on her head a gray cap, gripping a cane, tan slacks cinched tight above a prosthetic paunch, tendrils of white hair emerging from beneath her cap. And there she was, in a flannel shirt and jeans, bringing an axe down on a log, her hair short and dark and stiff with Brylcreem. Not Brylcreem. Brylcreem is British. Its Swedish equivalent. Next to each portrait, a smaller picture, also framed: snapshots of a man in the poses the Swedish video artist was replicating. Her father, the wall text revealed.
“Daddy issues,” my friend said.
“You or her?”
“That’s the name of this exhibit.”
“Funny.”
“Barely.”
Facing the photographs, along the opposite wall, a full, functional bar: bottles, tender, the whole nine. My friend and I approached.
“Eleven-thirty,” I said, checking my watch.
“A mimosa?”
“Two mimosas,” I said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” This was the bartender. “At the artist’s request, we have stocked a full bar but are only serving one drink: George Dickel, on the rocks. That’s a whiskey, ma’am. A particular favorite of the artist’s father.”
“I know Dickel’s a whiskey. And don’t call me ma’am.” To my friend: “Too early?”
“Never.”
“Two, please.”