Gotta watch out for little dudes, Bronca remembers her ex saying once. By then they were still married, but had fully swapped teams; he was daddying half of Chelsea, and she’d cautiously joined Pink Crawfish, a lesbian dating service for women over fifty. Still friends, after weathering AIM lawsuits and AIDS die-ins and child-rearing together. Chris had always loved sharing all that earned wisdom with his friends. Such as: Little dudes are like those tiny dogs that everybody thinks are so cute. But they never stop barking and they’re crazy as fuck because their balls are too big for their brains.
A true elder and warrior, Chris Siwanoy. She missed him. He might’ve had some idea what to do about this fucking shit.
She turns to Strawberry Manbun, who’s watching her with an overly polite, fuck-you smile on his lips. He knows full well what she’s thinking. He’s waiting for her to say it out loud and violate the unspoken contract that covers white people who are doing everything short of tossing around the n-word in public. And hell, some even want that to be deniable.
“Yeah, okay,” she says, half in reply to this thought. “Are you fucking with us?”
Yijing groans and covers her face. Jess, though, folds her arms, which is her version of taking her earrings off. This isn’t going to be that kind of fight—Bronca hopes—but Bronca can see by the cold look on Jess’s face that she’s ready for anything. Little mean-ass Jewish chicks don’t play this shit any more than old mean-ass Lenape chicks do.
Strawberry Manbun looks artfully stunned. He’s a shitty actor, though his résumé says he’s an understudy for a couple of Broadway plays. Bronca figures that’s a lie. These kinds of people always lie, and attack others, to cover their mediocrity.
That’s what’s extra offensive about the art, see. It’s racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, homophobic, probably some other shit she isn’t catching at first glance. But it’s also terrible. Not that she really thinks it’s possible to make good art when you hate so many people—art requires empathy—but the Center has a good reputation, and Bronca’s used to having her professional time respected. Normally, people don’t bring her crap.
This is crap. A collage of lynching photos, zoomed in on dead or agonized Black faces, the whole thing surrounded by stick figures drawn pointing and grinning in white greasepaint. A triptych of charcoal line art daubed with watercolor: in the first, a dark-skinned woman with comically exaggerated lips, nipples, and vulva lies tied in that Japanese rope-art thing that Bronca can’t recall the name of. Her expression is somewhere between bored and soulless. In the second, a male figure is drawn on top of her, bare ass blurred to suggest thrusting movements. He’s wearing a shtreimel and sidelocks; Bronca’s amazed they haven’t tattooed the Star of David on his ass just to make sure viewers get it. In the third, the man is now a long-haired jumble of Plains-nation stereotypes, including a damn war bonnet. (His shoddily rendered breechcloth and leggings are in the way, so there’s a crude X-ray view through his body of the woman’s oversized vulva pushed wide open. So that the viewer doesn’t assume they’re frotting, Bronca guesses? Who the fuck knows.) A line of men with cocks in hand—or knives, at random—wait their turn beside her. And in all three images, while the men take their turns, the emotionless woman spews quotes from well-known feminists of color.
There’s more, most of it just tedious rather than rage inducing; bad art makes everyone tired. The worst of these is a sculpture of a man bent at the waist to bare an enormous anal gape. It’s clearly been shaped to fit a human fist. But the triptych is the one they seem proudest of.
Bronca points at the sculpture. “So, did 4chan put you up to this, or did you come up with it on your own?” She flicks a look at Veneza, who flashes her a quick nervous smile. Veneza’s the one who taught Bronca about “chan culture.” Bronca’s proud of herself for remembering the name.
One of the people with Strawberry Manbun is a stoop-shouldered, pallid thing who looks like he’s got consumption or some other Victorian-named disease. Doc Holliday, she decides. “I don’t expect you to understand what I’m trying to do with this piece,” he snaps. “It’s irony, if you haven’t figured it out. MoMA’s got twenty-two abstract paintings of clitorises, so.”
Bronca feels herself getting heated. Not good. She needs to keep her head. “And you think a kinky shock meme is the logical response to a clitoris? What’s the gang rape supposed to be, in conversation with women’s reproductive health?”
“It’s a commentary on female genital mutilation,” says this kid who looks fifteen. He can’t keep the grin off his face. Can’t even shovel his bullshit right. “See? She’s Black. I mean, African Black.”
Bronca takes a deep, steadying breath, and puts on her fakest smile. “Okay. I appreciate the time you gentlemen have put into today’s meeting, so I’ll keep this brief. The Bronx Art Center was incorporated in 1973, and it’s funded by the city as well as private donors. Our mandate is simple: to showcase the cultural complexity of this magnificent borough, through art. We—”
“Are you giving us the spiel?” asks Strawberry Manbun, sounding disgusted even as he laughs. “Is this some kind of, I don’t know, commercial brush-off?”
Bronca’s got a flow going now. “—embrace and celebrate the diversity of the Bronx through all of its races, ethnicities, genders, abilities, sexual orientations, national origins, and minority religions, as well as—”
“We live in the Bronx,” says Fifteen, who’s gone from giddily grinning to red-faced fury with a speed that speaks of a tantrummy childhood. “I grew up right here. I have a right to show my art here!”
Riverdale, Bronca guesses. Land of lawns and Tudor estates and NIMBY as a way of life. “That’s not how it works,” she tells the boy. “We exist to broaden the New York art scene beyond Manhattan, but we’re still part of that scene, and we have to showcase good art if we want to make our bones. There’s a million-five people in this borough, and a lot of them are artists. We can afford to be choosy.”
“And even if we couldn’t,” Jess blurts, as she obviously thinks Bronca’s getting off-track, “we don’t do bigotry. No stereotypes. No rape-as-fetish. No homophobic gotchas…” She’s turning blotchy herself; with one hand she flails at Bronca, obviously wanting her to take the thread back.
“So do you have any questions?” Bronca asks, in a tone that makes it clear she wants no questions.
“We haven’t shown you the centerpiece yet, though,” says Strawberry Manbun. When Bronca stares at him, affronted by his cheek, he favors her with a smile that sets off all her warning bells at once. There’s a high glaze to his gaze, which might actually be high given the vape sticking out of his pocket, and which does nothing to conceal how pissed off Mr. Manbun is right now. He’s up to something. “If you see our best work and still say no, we’ll go. No hassle. Just take a look. That’s all we ask.” He spreads his hands, the picture of pissed-off innocence.
“Why would I want to see more of this?” Bronca gestures at the triptych. It looks like shit. She wants her rods and cones scrubbed.