1994

Dream as Hunter Reynolds


Artefact: Colour photograph of  ‘Love Dress (Hamburg, Germany)’, 1994. Additional notes on artwork: Fabric, ink, motor and stage. 84 x 84 x 84 inches. 
Sidewalks
Riding trains
Fast food joints
Hunter dreams of the past
Nights in a mailroom
Things that flash
Not taffeta, not volume
Not silk gloves pulled up the forearm
Not utopias
But dry masculine things
Administration tasks
And disappointments

This dream
Hunter is stuck in a looped conversation
With Martin K
Talking of love
Which they are both looking for
Hunting the wide Berlin streets all winter
Iciness whipping up between grey concrete
The two are sitting side by side
Up on tall stools
Behind a velvet curtain
In a hot little smoke-filled box
Martin has brown hair, brown eyes
A dull sort of soul, thinks Hunter
Can’t see the sparkle yet
Somewhere in his thirties
Money-maker
They’re skimming the surface, somehow
Martin is a polite stranger
Not keen to go deep
Guarded
He’s interested in
Muscular
Chubby guys
Blond hair
Blue eyes
Hunter raises a brow, waits
I am turned on by all the handsome guys I met in your beautiful country
Martin explains
Slurps the straw of pink sweetness
Stirs the lime
It’s too late for beer now
Time for stronger, sweeter drinks
(Like love itself)
Does the drink act like a magnet
Summoning desire in these short hours
Spilling over
Down towards the dawn?
Or
Does it just turn the eyes bleary
Speech slowed
Magnetism merely the pull to go home with the warm form here next to you?
Hunter tries again
Aware the dream is turning back on itself and resetting
Is it a transaction, Martin?
That’s what he wants to ask
This lucky one that you’re talking about
The one you didn’t find yet
The lucky-to-be
Nineteen to twenty-six
How lucky are they
Will they be
Really?
When they turn their life into a deal
Receive a small amount of money for their own use
Honest, affectionate
Safer sex, AIDS-aware
Taking care of your apartment
While you go out to be the man
Earn the ego salary
Move around in the world
Take the U-Bahn
Sliding into position
Power passing
Is that love?
Martin doesn’t respond
Looking to catch the eye of the barman
Whose shoulders are squarely set
Leaning away from the pair of them
Ass tensed in clone jeans   
Hunter again
What if the transaction is
I will die for you?
Or, thinks a moment
Sleep with me and die?
This is what he wants to say
Is saying
Isn’t sure in this revolving anti-fantasy
If the words are coming out
Or only humming in his skull
Sensing that if he can pull Martin to some kind of bold truth
A breakthrough of authenticity
That perhaps he can shock himself out of this limbo
This perpetual weekend
The same groove of small-talk
Wake up
At least slide down off his stool
Push open the heavy door into the biting black air
Breathe, breathe
On the deserted street
Which is silent
Empty of expectations
Hunter would like to run down it
In a huge skirt
Billowing
Ice blue
The air and the satin freezing into each other in a blur
But he can’t
Of course, because this is a dream of his
And dull, and dense
So he sits on a night-bus
Orbiting the city, slowly
The same sights
Drunk souls
Passing the glass