Artist: September Diencephalon
Exhibition title: Tadpole and Baby Bottles
Venue: Bible, New York, US
Date: December 1 – 31, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Bible, New York
Note: List of works can be found here
To be honest, I’m glad daddy’s dead. I’m glad they’re all dead. Good goddamn riddance if you ask me. You can say that makes me a terrible person but I don’t care. I know my life is better and I’m happier since they boiled themselves. I’ve started painting my memories and that seems to help with the emptiness. At least that’s what I tell myself.
I do think about my sister sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep. My sister bought a roadside memorial for herself in advance of her death with Beloved Sister written on it. She asked me to lay it on the ground of Yellowstone National Park after she dissolved. I was seven when the suicide orgy happened.
My daddy, Baby Bottles, named me Tadpole. We lived in Paducah, Kentucky. I remember searching Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant on Wikipedia before daddy died. He came over and asked me what I was looking at and kissed the computer screen and got lipstick on it. Daddy reapplied his lipstick and put on some clothes and preached to his followers that chaos is terrifying and promising. Daddy’s followers loved that the world was in a period of chaos. He would talk about chaos as a gift with countless possibilities; where everything is offered and everything can be taken away. As I sat on the floor playing with my toys, I thought that chaos is just like the future. All of daddy’s followers were in the Cult of Kek. Daddy would scream praise Kek over and over again during his sermons. My grandfather had Alzheimer’s disease so my aunt tattooed a reminder on his arm that read, “Kek is the deification of the concept of primordial darkness in the Ancient Egyptian Ogdoad cosmogony.”
I never found out which of daddy’s friends was my mommy. I think that might be because she was daddy’s sister. I mean it makes sense that daddy would fuck his sister. Incest sure is popular in America today. You look at the top categories in porn and incest is way up there. There’s mommy porn, daddy porn, sister porn, brother porn, stepmother porn, stepfather porn, stepsister and stepbrother porn. There’s even grandfather and grandmother porn. When daddy was a little boy his mommy told him the first thing to exist was chaos and then showed him her vagina. Can you imagine that sick shit? What kind of human does that? My fucking grandmother that’s who. My family and friends would also make their own porn. They said recording themselves made fucking more exciting.
I remember looking through our trailer window and watching ruby-throated hummingbirds feed outside when daddy said he was taking me to McCracken County Public Library to meet my uncle. I don’t know why, but no one in the self-immolation congregation wanted to fuck him – except me. God, I thought he was so handsome. He went to the gym every day and had really sexy muscles. We met just once before I saw him for the last time at Yellowstone National Park.
We all lived in the same trailer park and made a grocery run once a week to Save-A-Lot. We were poor and the extra savings at Save-A-Lot allowed us to save enough cash for our vacation to Yellowstone National Park. Let me ask you a question. What would be your first choice for a great vacation location? A beautiful beach perhaps? I doubt it would be Yellowstone National Park, but that’s exactly where daddy chose. He announced this special vacation during a Sunday sermon. He said we’re all going to be suicide tourists. As the congregation cheered we could see his penis grow. Aroused by approval, he yelled over the applause that the final vacation would be called “Baby Bottles Racist Gluttony Suicide Orgy at Yellowstone National Park.”
When we arrived at Yellowstone National Park a couple of my cousins said how goddamn good the sun felt on their pale, pimpled asses. The mainstream media called Baby Bottles and our congregation racist white trash. I tried telling everyone, “I ain’t racist,” but nobody believed me. It would be a lie to say I didn’t care what people say about me on social media. I guess maybe the worst thing you can call a white person is racist. I’m an idiot kid, so what the fuck do I know?
Baby Bottles had fantasized about this day for months. When we got to the park, Daddy carved his name on his chest with a knife. Then he stabbed the crucifixion wounds of his Jesus on the cross tattoo. He rubbed the blood over his shaved chest while he performed fellatio on his two closest friends. All three were so hard as they imagined the pain and suffering they would feel while dissolving in the beautiful fiery water. They shot huge hearty loads all over daddy’s face and in his mouth. After he swallowed, his buddies complimented him on the yin and yang earrings he made.
After they fucked and sucked throughout the first National Park in the United States, the racist gluttony suicide orgy made their way to the Norris Geyser Basin stuffing their faces with food. The racist shitposter Baby Bottles and his racist shitposter throng of family and friends did their fucking research. The Norris Geyser Basin was the hottest thermal region in Yellowstone National Park, making it a perfect doorway to eternal pain. Daddy told everyone to go skinny dipping and the hot springs would be their portal to Hell. Most of the congregation couldn’t wait to be together in perdition and burn for eternity. Their bodies dissolved so fast in the burning acidic water. A few of daddy’s friends tried to avoid going swimming. I mean who could fucking blame them? When you looked into their eyes you could see how terrified they were. Daddy convinced them it was just a moment of weakness. They too, made their way from land to water like frogs, becoming liquefied into the earth just like everyone else.
During the goddamn gluttonous chaos orgy, some of daddy’s friends sang Trump’s name as they melted into the water. They sang “this water gonna cook my rump, this water gonna cook my rump, we love you, we love you, Donald Trump,” as they jumped into the water like amphibians. Daddy also spoke about Meme Magick. The racist gluttony suicide orgy believed they used Meme Magick to make Donald Trump President of the United States. When Trump posted the Trump Pepe on his Twitter account one of daddy’s friends got the image tattooed on her pregnant belly.
Sometimes I wish I died that day with the congregation. At least they loved me. I wish I could find someone to love me now. It’s hard being alone. Baby Bottles always told us to think about our lonely lives. My job was to record the video testimonials on my iPod Touch. I recorded four fucking mosquitoes land on Baby Bottles arm that day. Most days he would just murder those “little bitches,” but I guess he decided to let the mosquitoes feed and be gluttonous too. You could tell by the way we looked at each other we were all thinking the same thought. We watched the water and contemplated. Why do we feel so alone when we’re all here together? I don’t know if they ever found the answer. I know I didn’t. I don’t even know if their ultimate destination exists. But they believed it did. That’s for damn sure.
I was reading the back of a DVD case at McCracken County Public Library when my uncle entered. He was wearing super short denim shorts. He counted to fifteen out loud and then walked out. Each time he counted he pulled the door handle. When he came back inside he finished counting to thirty and pulled the handle closed. I still to this day do something similar where I’ll pull the door closed and lock it at my trailer and turn the doorknob four times checking to make sure it’s locked. I’ll count to myself so people can’t hear me.
My uncle put his headphones on and started jogging around the library saying “keep your pants up Danny Danny keep your pants up.” I still don’t know who Danny was. My daddy didn’t know either. When he stopped jogging, he showed me a piece of embroidered polyester that he carried around with him all the time. It had all these stains on it. I later found out he would masturbate and ejaculate on that embroidered piece of polyester. I started calling him Uncle Keep Your Pants Up Danny Danny Keep Your Pants Up. When I saw him again at Yellowstone National Park, I used Instagram to record him on video waving goodbye standing next to his cum-stained embroidery. I posted it after adding Moon filter. In my opinion, Moon filter made the video much more beautiful. I watched this video multiple times in miniature on my iPod Touch. I felt bad about posting the video and decided to remove it from Instagram. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to upload it to YouTube. When I view the Moon filtered video, I can see that my uncle finally seemed happy.
I don’t know if anyone will read this. I hope so. It was sad to see my uncle take all of those 80 mg OxyContin before killing himself. As he swallowed the last one, Uncle Keep Your Pants Up Danny Danny Keep Your Pants Up, told me he loved me. The sagebrush lizards and I watched him disappear and dissolve in the water. It was breeding season and a male sagebrush lizard started doing push-ups on an elevated perch. It was a blatant exhibition of his bright blue side patches to warn off other males.
Sincerely,
Tadpole Bottles
September Diencephalon (b. 1980 Paducah, Kentucky) received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art. Recent solo exhibitions include BIRTHDAYS at Goldie’s Gallery, Queens, NY (2016) and Will you listen to the problems of a stranger? at PayFauxn, Brooklyn, NY (2017).
