Table Of ContentPerfect Wave
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
DAVE HICKEY
Perfect Wave
More Essays on Art and Democracy
The UniversiTy of ChiCago Press
Chicago and London
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2017 by Dave Hickey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in
the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more
information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th
St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 33313- 7 (cloth)
ISBN-1 3: 978- 0- 336- 33314- 4 (paper)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 51515- 1 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226515151.001.0001
LCCN: 2017023338
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
Contents
Baby Breakers 1
Cool on Cool: William Claxton’s World 10
“Goodbye to Love” 22
Wonderful Shoes 33
A World like Santa Barbara 40
It’s Morning in Nevada: On the Campaign
Trail in Post- Bush America 47
My Silk Road 68
The Last Mouseketeer 81
After the Prom 95
Firecrackers: Terry Castle Celebrates Her Independence 107
¡Una Lesbiana Enamorada! Susan Sontag 117
His Mickey Mouse Ways 127
Mitchum Gets Out of Jail 135
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
The Real Michelangelo 144
Reading Ruskin Writing 151
Palladio’s Song 161
Morris Lapidus: Life as We Know It 174
Art Fairies 184
Little Victories 203
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
Baby Breakers
I went to first grade in Fort Worth with Lee Harvey Oswald. I
went to second grade in Shreveport, where my Dad had a gig in some
Dixie Greaser Lounge, but we were moving up. In third grade, we
lived in nifty North Dallas. Every Thursday, in social studies class, we
drew the name of a country out of a hat and wrote a report about it.
We made our own folders for each report. Then we would vote for the
best cover. First shot, I drew Italy—a nd how can you fuck up Italy? I
had grapes, columns, and a version of Trajan’s Market that foreshad-
owed the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. My grapes foreshadowed
late Sam Francis. They were especially praised, and I won. I got the
Hershey bar that was the prize. Next time I reached in and drew Boliv-
ia. Right, Bolivia. I cut out a brown mountain and stuck it on a blue
sky. My friend Cecily drew Egypt and she killed it. Perspectival pyr-
amids with scaled triangles of ocher in different shades. These were
major pyramids but I won again.
I thought this was outrageous. Either North Dallas third graders
had developed a prescient taste for minimalism, or I won because I
had won last time and now I was the guy who won. The insult fes-
tered and I gave my Hershey bar to Cecily because I am a critic and
not an artist. I don’t care about winning. I care about being right.
Meanwhile, at home, my mom and dad screamed at one another.
They threw clocks and vases. My mother was late for an appointment
one morning. She backed out of the garage in a hurry, spinning her
wheels, and ran over my Jack Russell terrier, Milton. She reminded
me that it was my damn dog—t hat she was in a hurry— and rushed
off, gone before she was gone, leaving me to bury Milton in the back-
yard. I took the little brass plate off Milton’s collar, nailed it to the
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
Dave Hickey
side of the garage, and buried Milton under it. No one ever spoke of
Milton again. On Saturdays, my parents were in the house together
all day, so I would set off on my bike at 10 a.m. and ride down to the
Inwood Theater on Lovers Lane and then over to the Village Center
on Preston Road to watch movies all day long. Unlike other movie-
fugitives I have known, I came to hate movies. Also, eventually, some-
body stole my bike.
| 2 | Then one morning I woke up to silence. There was no yelling or
crashing. My dad was gone. He just drove off. We didn’t know where
he had gone and mom didn’t say. Like Milton, he was just gone. So I
worked on my social studies covers, played baseball, and read books.
One Saturday, my friend Harvey Richman took me to Hebrew school,
which was very cool. I wanted to learn English the way Harvey was
learning Hebrew, and eventually I did. So we, the Hickey children,
cracked and crumbled under mom’s thumb, although I was not much
concerned with my siblings’ distress. Mostly Mom sublimated her
distaste for Dad onto me because I bore his name, and anything I
loved she hated. Then, in late June, my dad walked in the front door
and said, “Start packing. We’re moving to California.” More scream-
ing, explosions, and slamming doors, but we started packing. I went
out to say goodbye to Milton, whom I had named Milton because
Jack Russells are notoriously rambunctious animals and I thought a
scholarly name would calm him down. It didn’t. So bye- bye, Milton,
you scamp.
In three weeks we had moved into this great house between the
Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica Beach. There were wisteria,
hydrangeas, a willow, three black plum trees, and a giant bougain-
villea. It was Heaven in other words, and I knew the names of the
flora because my grandmother ran a flower shop and also because,
generally, I know the names of things. I walked through the side door
of our new house, out the front door, and ran for the water. I learned
the taste of salt- snot up my nose and started bodysurfing right off. I
tried a boogie board but it seemed dorky.
As we settled into California, I was enrolled in Santa Monica Ele-
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
BaBy Breakers
mentary, which was multicultural, to say the least. I liked it because
I had never known any black people or Latinos who were my age. It
was cool, but I was like a mouse who fell to earth. They didn’t know
what to do with me, so I gravitated toward the beach. There was an
actor named John Agar who lived two houses up from us on the
strip between the beach and the highway. (If you drove straight off
Wilshire Boulevard, then off the palisades, you would land on our
house if you cleared the Pacific Coast Highway.) I got a job shoveling | 3 |
and sweeping sand off John and Gloria’s driveway. (I always had to
have a job because working felt like freedom.) Anyway, I was often in
the Agars’ garage, where a beautiful red Billabong longboard hung
on a rack and I sort of worshiped it. I just stood there for twenty or
thirty minutes at a time, staring and dreaming.
Meanwhile, back at school, my attendance became an issue. They
sent me to a counselor, and luckily she had been a surfer in her youth.
We talked about whether the ninth wave was the best wave in a set.
I argued that the best wave conformed to some irregularity in the
bottom of the ocean and the direction of the wave. She looked at me
funny, as if I had actually told her something. Then I started taking
tests. I took this test and that test and one test with three people.
One asked you questions, one watched, and one listened. I took tests
where they stuck things on your head, eye tests and ear tests, brain
scans, and strangely I never considered the idea that they might be a
little bit afraid of me. Finally, my counselor told me I was counterpho-
bic (whatever that might mean). She promoted me from the third to
the sixth grade and told me not to worry much about attendance, so
I didn’t. Sixth grade in Santa Monica Elementary was sort of a finish-
ing school for gangbangers, anyway— and however awful California
schools might be, their testing was top level, which says something
about California, I guess. Also, when I learned what “counterphobic”
meant, that was me. I walked out of that office absolutely sure I would
never attend a school where my kind of smart was worth shit. This
would prove to be true.
I wasn’t a sissy but logic prevailed. It is less punishing to be
HICKEY / PERFECT WAVE / FINAL LASERS / 8/10/17
