Excerpt:
Image: pbs.com
“Diego, this is quite the fiesta.” Carlos said. “Hard to believe I’m rubbing elbows with Picasso and Siqueiros. Imagine what that old nun who posed as an art teacher in Guernica would say if she could see me now. I wonder if she survived the bombing.”
“Yes, she did. In fact, she quit the nun-racket and got married. But, let's forget about the nun, Amigo. We have more important things to discuss.” I stared long and hard into his eyes. “I take it during all those years in your ivy halls of learning they’ve propagandized you with all sorts of drivel about the French Revolution?”
“The nun got married?” Eyebrows raised and head cocked to one side, Carlos looked at me with a slight smirk. “And how would you know this?”
Heretic, I thought.
I’d postponed our conversation to the night after the opening of my exhibit. Frida and I were hosting a private reception at Casa Azul, the house we nicknamed for its cobalt blue walls. The party doubled as a fundraiser for a group of struggling, but emerging artists called ‘Los Fridos’. They were Frida’s students from La Esmeralda, the one-room school where she taught painting.
Our fiesta was branded Mexico’s ultimate hot ticket social event, with prospective guests incited to fight for their right to party. Rumours of a provocative art installation on colonization by Picasso and Siquieros, riotous performances by contemporary artists involving fireworks, and a mariachi band inspired exuberant pleas from all classes of Mexico, from peasants to clambering socialites, and phony imitators from Mexico’s art, design, and fashion world.
Frida was draped in one of her richest, most colourful, and unusual Tehuantepec dresses. She swept the floor with her starched lace frills and reflected the candlelight with her lavishly strange jewelry. Her hair and eyes blazed like polished ebony, evoking her Spanish-Indian blood, but the way she interwove her signature braids with exotic flowers brought to mind an Aztec goddess. To complete the picture, Frida wrapped her pet monkey around her hips as a symbol of her lust.
I remember it was hot enough to fry her monkey's ass that night, though I admit my memories are all tainted by the scent of Frida's perfume. Caliente was designed for her by a voodoo princess who ran a perfumerie in New Orleans. Whether inside or out, I couldn't escape those notes of red vanilla orchid, honeysuckle nectar, amber and musk together with the sweat on Frida's skin. It unleashed her spirited fire.
All around her, women flocked in similar dresses. Some had even let their eyebrows grow out in honour of Frida’s unibrow. But not a woman in the place could stack up with Frida’s erotic flare.
I was pissing around the topic of the French Revolution in an attempt to entice Carlos into one of our mental sparring sessions, but so far he wasn’t taking the bait.
“So the way I see it,” I started again, “depending on how you look at history and women, during her heaviest days on the rag—” I looked around the room for inspiration and spotted Frida. “Paris, like Frida, my "delicate" dove of a wife, became either a sexy woman in heat, or a turbulent and vile soul. What we can both agree on is that the Reign of Terror defiled our collective history, especially French history, with a bloody stain.”
“You slept with Señora Aucoin, didn't you?” Carlos asked, pausing by a sexually- charged buffet table designed, or installed, by Anais Nin and Georgia O’Keefe. Ignorant of the art-world faux pas, Carlos heaped caviar onto his plate. “You actually fucked a nun.”
Frida saved me from that one.
I'd been making things a little more interesting for myself by picking a fight with Frida since before everyone arrived. The second after Carlos asked about Bella, Frida threw her champagne flute at me.
YouTube of Frida & Diego
“Yes, she did. In fact, she quit the nun-racket and got married. But, let's forget about the nun, Amigo. We have more important things to discuss.” I stared long and hard into his eyes. “I take it during all those years in your ivy halls of learning they’ve propagandized you with all sorts of drivel about the French Revolution?”
“The nun got married?” Eyebrows raised and head cocked to one side, Carlos looked at me with a slight smirk. “And how would you know this?”
Heretic, I thought.
I’d postponed our conversation to the night after the opening of my exhibit. Frida and I were hosting a private reception at Casa Azul, the house we nicknamed for its cobalt blue walls. The party doubled as a fundraiser for a group of struggling, but emerging artists called ‘Los Fridos’. They were Frida’s students from La Esmeralda, the one-room school where she taught painting.
Our fiesta was branded Mexico’s ultimate hot ticket social event, with prospective guests incited to fight for their right to party. Rumours of a provocative art installation on colonization by Picasso and Siquieros, riotous performances by contemporary artists involving fireworks, and a mariachi band inspired exuberant pleas from all classes of Mexico, from peasants to clambering socialites, and phony imitators from Mexico’s art, design, and fashion world.
Frida was draped in one of her richest, most colourful, and unusual Tehuantepec dresses. She swept the floor with her starched lace frills and reflected the candlelight with her lavishly strange jewelry. Her hair and eyes blazed like polished ebony, evoking her Spanish-Indian blood, but the way she interwove her signature braids with exotic flowers brought to mind an Aztec goddess. To complete the picture, Frida wrapped her pet monkey around her hips as a symbol of her lust.
I remember it was hot enough to fry her monkey's ass that night, though I admit my memories are all tainted by the scent of Frida's perfume. Caliente was designed for her by a voodoo princess who ran a perfumerie in New Orleans. Whether inside or out, I couldn't escape those notes of red vanilla orchid, honeysuckle nectar, amber and musk together with the sweat on Frida's skin. It unleashed her spirited fire.
All around her, women flocked in similar dresses. Some had even let their eyebrows grow out in honour of Frida’s unibrow. But not a woman in the place could stack up with Frida’s erotic flare.
I was pissing around the topic of the French Revolution in an attempt to entice Carlos into one of our mental sparring sessions, but so far he wasn’t taking the bait.
“So the way I see it,” I started again, “depending on how you look at history and women, during her heaviest days on the rag—” I looked around the room for inspiration and spotted Frida. “Paris, like Frida, my "delicate" dove of a wife, became either a sexy woman in heat, or a turbulent and vile soul. What we can both agree on is that the Reign of Terror defiled our collective history, especially French history, with a bloody stain.”
“You slept with Señora Aucoin, didn't you?” Carlos asked, pausing by a sexually- charged buffet table designed, or installed, by Anais Nin and Georgia O’Keefe. Ignorant of the art-world faux pas, Carlos heaped caviar onto his plate. “You actually fucked a nun.”
Frida saved me from that one.
I'd been making things a little more interesting for myself by picking a fight with Frida since before everyone arrived. The second after Carlos asked about Bella, Frida threw her champagne flute at me.
YouTube of Frida & Diego