Everything will be ok.

Published by thisisamagazine.com #14

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.

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.

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).

“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.

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”.

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 ?”.

- ”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 - I’ve always been”.-”Ok then”, I say and I call a taxi and go back to my Hotel because I couldn’t 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...

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.

#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.

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.

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.

#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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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