The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

Lydia Hearst is an artist.

“I sit down and I write what I’m thinking and what I feel—it happens all at once, I never stop writing. Probably when I go home tonight, I’m going to open my computer and just start typing… I always envision myself being a Hemingway type—sitting in a dark corner with my glass of, I guess it would be, my glass of tequila and lime juice– that’s how I do it.”

Recently, she’s been hanging out with a group of young people who call themselves “the 2.0.” They include a giddy gaggle of creative aspirants such as photographer Nadav Benjamin and musician and nude Internet dude Cisco Adler, whom she has dated.

“I would say my closest friends are probably the 2.0,” she said. “It’s not about a clique, it’s just about a group of people coming together and it’s a lifestyle—it’s a bond. … So many young people are wrapped up in the party scene. The great thing about everyone in this group is, we all have real jobs, we get up in the morning. We work and that’s what brought us together…We are hardly ever apart. It’s all artists—everyone in that group is successful in their own right, whether it is music, fashion, art, photography, business. We don’t want to compare ourselves to the Factory, because you can’t have the Factory without Andy Warhol, but essentially it is like a new wave and it’s a new style of living, and we are all just riding the wave, we are all being inspirational to each other and we are helping each other out and we are always there for each other, and we are hardly ever separated for more than a day—each one of us has the same mentality, which is breaking free of the mold that is the stereotype of society and the way that we are expected to be.”

Last month, the 2.0 gang went out and all got tattoos of a skeleton key; Lydia’s is on her inner right forearm. “The symbolism behind the skeleton key is that it opens every door and it’s bonded us together,” she said.

Today I am going writing out in Earlysville with my friend Selvi. Together we form an artistic movement called Future Warehouse. Yesterday we got matching tattoos on the back of our writing hands - the Chinese character that means “We’re better than you, so there.” We have a lot of ground to cover today, not only with our short stories but also with our mission statement and our indie theme song. My mom knows about the Future Warehouse movement, currently based in her pool house, and hopefully this afternoon she will bring us some tea and more money to fund our creative operations.

Tonight I had my fiction class at UVA. It was great, as usual, but I was drinking a forty of Hurricane during workshop and consequently had to take frequent trips to the restroom. It was actually a twenty of Diet Doctor Pepper. I was alone in the restroom when I heard a very loud pair of shoes barge in and loiter in front of my stall door, where I was actively urinating. The hinges on the door allowed for a lot of peeping space, and I nervously ducked down because the intruder was obviously checking me out through the cracks. Then the person went into the stall next to mine. I saw white tennis shoes and socks facing the toilet under the division. I heard a male voice murmuring to the bowl, but no liquid or flush, and then suddenly the person stomped out without washing his hands. The whole incident took less than half a minute. I tried to finish up quickly so I could catch the culprit, but DDP creates a long stream. A female classmate entered the bathroom as I was exiting the stall, feeling very violated.

“Did you see someone leaving?” I said. “I think a man was just in here.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I think it was___(another classmate). He was in here last week too.”

I furiously washed my hands and returned to the classroom, where __’s complacent white tennis shoes confirmed my suspicions. Not wanting to embarrass the guy, but also really wanting to embarrass him, I said, “Hey __. Were you just in the women’s bathroom?”

“Oh, was I?” he said, unapologetically. “Yeah maybe. I get them mixed up all the time.” Evidently the little skirt on the bathroom door says nothing to this guy except “Lift me up.”

Those protesters are still at it in front of the Planned Parenthood building on Hydraulic Road. I think their numbers are growing. They remind me of the chimpanzee militia in last night’s episode of Planet Earth. The chimps decided they wanted to expand their territory so they raided a fig tree where some other chimps were hanging out and they killed and devoured a young female from the other clan. I know the protesters aren’t eating babies, but they’re still annoying. At the same time I think it’s kinda sweet that they care so much about the youth. Those fetus-happy ladies have to stand on the sidewalk for long shifts, waving signage, shaking their rosary beads, trying to look beatific every time a car honks at them or a passerby gives them the thumbs-up. That must get exhausting.
When the refrigerator repairman came over the other day, we started talking about the Sacagawea protest while he was deep in the freezer. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Who cares about a statue? Now those abortion protesters - at least they’re concerned with life and death.” I didn’t argue with him because all our frozen pizzas were thawing out and I was worried we wouldn’t have anything for dinner. It’s important to stand by your beliefs.

I get it, you’re gay.

Tonight Darren and I were driving to his sister’s house for dinner, when we both spotted an old man walking down the sidewalk. In front of him, at shin-height, he held a metal walker. It seemed to me that trying to walk while carrying a walker was just creating more work for the man, even though a walker is meant to make life easier for those with bad legs and hips. He was struggling not to kick the metal while he navigated the pavement, and honestly, the thing looked heavy. I am 26, and do push-ups, but I probably couldn’t carry a walker for more than a block. So what was this old man’s story? Was he trying to get downtown quickly, where he would ground his walker and begin limping behind it like a cripple, begging for spare change? Was the sidewalk too bumpy for the walker’s wheels, so he was forced to carry it? Was it a walker he found beside someone’s trash can, salvaged with the expectation that he would need it someday? Watching him struggle, I kept thinking of someone with a wheelchair perched on his head like a bucket, jogging along with the upside-down wheels turning in the breeze. Or someone strapping a bicycle to his back and sweating on his walk along a bike path. If I ever break my ankle, I am going to buy crutches, and instead of using them to take the weight off my foot, I am going to make stilts out of them and start training for the circus.

Dinner was really good. We had vegetables from Jennifer’s garden. Big props to Jennifer in case she is reading this. I apologize for the word props. The best part of dinner was when Harper stopped in the middle of her ramikin of homemade chocolate chip ice cream to tell her mother, “I like to lick you sometimes.”