Suddenly it felt like so much was going on, even though nothing was going on. But actually, something was going on.
1. Sabine said I’m closing the gallery.
2. Is that really what she said first? Maybe she said I’m starting a foundation. The Sabine Roth Foundation for the Arts. To support artists in times of trouble. Would you consider joining the board?
3. But she was closing the gallery.
4. She would continue paying me my full salary for two years.
5. She was already talking to potential buyers about my installation. Did we have a title yet?
6. I know I’m getting the order wrong, but sometimes the order is wrong.
7. I’m just going to forget about the order. When you write a list, it doesn’t have to be in order. You can use a highlighter to mark what’s important.
8. The New York Times was doing a profile on Sabine. A retrospective. Also the New Yorker. If we were lucky they would happen in the same week.
9. Sabine wanted to auction off my installation. What did I think? I would receive 10% of the proceeds. After all the press coverage, she was confident the auction would raise at least a million dollars. That meant $100,000 would go to me. Was I interested?
10. I told her I would donate the art.
11. Nonsense, she said, I will pay you 10% of the proceeds. You have to think about your future.
12. Here’s the hardest part.
13. Why was it so hard?
14. She said I’m not going to be around much longer. You know that, right? Let me be direct. Stage IV brain cancer. I don’t have much time. I already look like a ragdoll, but thanks to this pandemic no one has to see me. You are aware of Dr. Kevorkian, correct? You may know that he does not practice in New York. When I speak about Dr. Kevorkian, I’m using him as a metaphor. You understand what I’m saying, correct? There are ways of arranging things. I’m arranging things.
15. Sabine said don’t mourn my loss.
16. When someone tells you not to mourn their loss, what do you do?
17. I bought a car. I walked outside one day and there it was for sale, a white Volvo station wagon like the one my mothers had when I learned to drive. All my friends would pile in, and we would drive to Golden Gardens in the summer, or Dykiki, any of Seattle’s beaches. It was our beach getaway car.
18. This one had tinted windows. It was for sale for $2,000. I paid cash.
19. Of course I didn’t have a driver’s license. When you need to get away, you worry about these things, but at the same time, you don’t worry too much. Because you need to get away.
20. Did I mention the auction made $7.25 million for the foundation. So I made $725,000, just like that. There it was in my account. Even though I’d worked in the art world for twenty-three years, this still didn’t feel real. I kept looking at my account to make sure I wasn’t reading the zeros wrong.
21. It felt like stolen money, like I needed to get rid of it fast.
22. “Fast Car,” by Tracy Chapman, is still one of my favorite songs. Or not one of my favorite songs, but one of the songs that will always make me emotional. Drive drive drive drive away, she says.
23. A Volvo is not a fast car. But it is safe. That’s what they say. I needed a way to get cross-country, and so I decided I was going to buy a bunch of crystal and stay up for as long as it took to get there. That was the safest way.
24. Everyone was dying. I’d survived this long, and I did not want to die of COVID-19.
25. If I had to stop, at least there were tinted windows. I could sleep in the car, but how safe was that.
26. I listened to “Fast Car” with Claire when we were fifteen, crashing from crystal. She was the one that needed to get away. That’s why that song always makes me emotional.
27. I assume Claire never got away, but maybe she did, I mean it’s possible.
28. Jaysun kept calling me with listings. This was before I had the money. She was going to lend it to me. I would pay her back. She even said: If you want to buy a place in New York instead, I could lend you the money for a studio. And I said no way. And she said I was just checking. I just wanted to make sure. I don’t want to be selfish.
29. Sometimes the most selfish people are the most generous.
30. I don’t need to tell you about all the listings, but one day Jaysun called and said I found the one. This wasn’t the first time she said that, but it was the one. It was a gorgeous prewar building, corner unit, stained hardwood floors like the ones I grew up with, a huge walk-in closet, and everything had been updated—new pipes, stainless steel counters, new appliances, two bedrooms, fourth floor facing the back of the building, with only a house directly behind it that was law offices, and a two-story ‘60s building, so there was a view of the Space Needle and the mountains.
31. Jaysun said they could build anywhere, so you can’t count on anything, but for now that view could be yours.
32. The only downside was that to the south it faced another building that was only a few feet away, so you were looking right into someone else’s windows and Jaysun said she did smell fabric softener when she opened the window. She really was thinking about me.
33. She said but it’s not like you’re not used to looking into other people’s windows.
34. Jaysun arranged everything—the painters who only used no-VOC paint, blackout curtains and shades, new laundry machines, hypoallergenic organic mattresses and simple platform bed frames, pine wood treated only with linseed oil, from a place called Soaring Heart, even the movers from New York, she had all these connections because she worked for the Evil Empire. She could do everything fast.
35. I decided on red curtains. Jaysun said are you sure?
36. Yes, I said, red curtains.
37. But not red walls, right, she said. Don’t get carried away.
38. No, not red walls, let’s keep the same colors as the Sherbet Factory, do you remember those colors?
39. Yes, Jaysun said, but I’ll need pictures to match them.
40. Actually let’s change it up a bit, I said. Orange in the living room. Mint green in the kitchen. Lavender in the bathroom. Bubblegum pink in my bedroom, whatever looks good in the other bedroom.
41. You can’t say whatever looks good, Jaysun said.
42. Okay, I said, how about pale yellow.
43. And we’ll keep all the trim white, Jaysun said. It wasn’t a question, so I figured she was right.
44. Why do I always feel like there should be a second r in sherbet?
45. I want to say something about the New York Times article, but there’s too much. Let me just tell you the sentence that shocked me the most. “Everything I’ve accomplished over the last two decades has only been possible thanks to the extraordinary creative inspiration of Terry Dactyl, my muse and co-conspirator, everything, the gallery would have closed long ago if it wasn’t for her perspicacity.”
46. She called me her muse. Did she really feel this way, or was this for the auction?
47. I called Dominic for crystal. He was the only one I could rely on, but his number had been disconnected. I wondered if he’d gotten out of the business, or if the business had gotten him.
48. Is it strange to say that I was worried about Dominic, even though we hadn’t talked in fifteen years?
49. I called the Club Kid Diaspora Helpline. Now it had expanded to the four of us, for special occasions—Cleo, in Paris; Mielle, in Santa Fe; Jaysun, in Seattle; and me, still in New York. Jaysun always arranged the calls. There were a lot of time zones to get right.
50. Jaysun wanted to switch this call to Zoom, but I said no way. No way was I ever going on Zoom.
51. Who’s zooming who, she said.
52. When crystal started hitting New York, people acted like it was some kind of delicacy, but it was cut with something—in high school, I would do one tiny bump and I’d be racing for hours, but this crystal you could snort like coke and it just made you feel dead. Also it was more expensive than coke, talk about a reversal. Then one time I asked Dominic for crystal, just to see how good it could get, and when I did that first line it was like all the lights were on in my head and I was so wired it was scary. I was up for four days. That’s the crystal I needed to drive cross-country.
53. I can’t tell you why Cleo moved to Paris. Officially it was because of a job offer.
54. Okay, Cleo moved to Paris because of legal issues. The neon factory burned to the ground. It turned out she wasn’t actually the legal owner, the deed had never been transferred, so everything was in limbo. She decided to leave the country in case they decided she was liable.
55. No one died in the fire, but there was a lot of damage. Millions of dollars. Cleo sold her condo and took the job offer at Dior.
56. Cleo gave me Sid’s red velvet sofa before she left. She said she thought it should stay in the family.
57. So we were family again.
58. I’m just filling you in on a few details. Remember what I said about the highlighter, you can always use a highlighter.
59. The Club Kid Diaspora Helpline was divided about my crystal meth escape plan. Jaysun said: Catch me now I’m falling. Mielle said: It could damage your chakras. Cleo said: Don’t you think this could make driving more dangerous.
60. Cleo was right.
61. Also, when Jaysun said aren’t you already so wired you can’t sleep? Just put that energy to good use.
62. Maybe I just wanted to do drugs. It had been fifteen years.
63. When I realized I wanted to do drugs, that’s when I knew I couldn’t do drugs.
64. I don’t know what else to tell you.
65. It’s not like I can’t tell you later.
66. I got in the car.
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From Terry Dactyl by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Used with permission of the publisher, Coffee House Press. Copyright © 2025 by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore.
