Every Touch

        Out of the dirtred roses grow and reach their brambly rambling arms        up and around

the downspout and trellis on the west side of our front porch.        They make a scrimof green serrated leaves and red velvet blossoms, a tapestry

        of shade, light,and perfume when the wind blows right on this May morning.        I sit on the blue

wood-slat swing, suspended by chains from the porch’s ceiling,        and waste anotherhour. Nothing better to do, I count 189 roses, lose track,

        start again. I thinkof conceptual artist Jim Hodge’s “flower curtains.” He bought silk flowers,        peeled the petals

and leaves from their wire and plastic stems, ironed them flat.        His assistantsat the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia

        glued paper towelsto form a sheet, 14 by 16 feet. To it Hodges pinned        his silk petals and leaves

like butterfly specimens. Where their edges touched, the assistants        sewed them togetherwith bar tack stitches on sewing machines. Then they pulled away

        the paper-towel backingand were left with lacework of silk pansies, violets, tulips,        peonies, geraniums, poppies,

chrysanthemums, zinnias, daisies, roses, day lilies, all        interspersed with green leaves.Every Touch, Hodges called it. He said, “I felt that if the flowers

        were deconstructed … flattenedout and brought back to ‘fabricness,’ they would suggest a cycle—        a life cycle … that maintained

or maintains every touch of its existence.” The curators say        he was thinkingof his assistants’ fingers gently guiding the petals under

        the piston-like needlesof their sewing machines and—go further—of workers’ hands        cutting blossoms from bolts

of dyed silk in some sweatshop. No, I say it was his lover’s        hand unbuttoninghis shirt, touching his nipples until they hardened to the stems

        of honeysuckle takenbetween teeth. So that his lover might sip nectar there.        It was all his other

lovers and their lovers stitched to one another        by touch,each one a blue iris, calla lily, or bird of paradise

        unrivaled in the unravelingskein of years. The nectar went viral. Felix Gonzalez-Torres,        artist who had helped

to get Jim the residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum,        finally diedfrom “aids complications” in 1996. Famously, Felix

        had heaped up175 lbs. of hard candy, his dead lover Ross Laycock’s “ideal weight,”in a gallery’s corner

and let each viewer pick a brightly-wrapped piece and eat it, partake        of Ross’s sweet flesh,ingest his death and be complicit in it, the pile

        decreasingjust as Ross’s body had wasted away. He’d found the unforgettable        metaphor for what

aids did—guilt slash ecstasy slash grief. On 24 billboards        throughout New York Cityhe put a blown-up black-and-white photo of an unmade

        queen-size bedwith two pillows. The rumpled sheets and dented pillows seemed        to hold and darkly halo

the two invisible bodies. He merged public and private. When asked,        “Who is your public?”Felix replied, “I say honestly, without skipping a beat, ‘Ross.’”

        When asked, “So are youin love now?” Felix shot back, “I never stopped loving Ross.        Just because he’s dead

doesn’t mean I stopped loving him … Every lesion he got        I loved him more.”The day Felix died, almost five years after Ross, Jim Hodges

        drew flowersin black, red, and blue ink on 24 paper napkins of different sizes        and pinned them

to a white wall. His final flower curtain was all black.        He called it The endfrom where you are. Look closely. You’ll see a few yellow

        and blue petals showingthrough the black. The living stitch themselves to the dying.        Felix told Ross,

“I want to be there until your last breath.” Ross asked him        for pills to commitsuicide. Felix couldn’t give the pills to him and said, “Honey,

        you have fought hardenough. You can go now. You can leave. Die.” They were at home.        “I was there to his last breath.”

Touch the black flower curtain, and a tremor will rip,        ripple the fabric.Through it, see...