Post by Regan Voorhees on Apr 2, 2021 22:21:55 GMT -5
The camera twists and turns through the darkened recesses of the Reno-based Voorhees Gallery. Guttural red ambient lighting lines the halls, broken by flashes of white light over the paintings and sculptures, all commissioned reimaginings of classical and contemporary pieces, fit to suit Regan’s own sensibilities. Her own sensibilities often cast herself as the subject, in place of Saturn devouring his son, multiple Regans flaying Marsyas, even an oil painted Regan replacing the infamous Screamer of Edvard Munch’s best known work. The camera eventually stops on Regan Voorhees sitting in a high-backed vegan leather chair, the crimson of the seat contrasting her pristine white suit and alabaster complexion. Atop the marble table beside her sits a bouquet of red camellias in an ornate white and pink vase, the etching depicts minor goddess Circe on the shores of Aeaea. A trio of pigs, former sailors cursed by the goddess, stand fearfully behind her, unwilling to test her wrath a second time. Circe stares into the Adriatic Sea, awaiting her next visitors and victims. Beside the vase sits a martini glass full of purple liquor, a sheen of smoke dancing across the top, along with a blackberry and strawberry impaled across a toothpick. Regan takes the glass daintily and enjoys a sip. Golden calligraphy etches its way across the screen.
Regan swirls the glass in her hand, the smoke wafting ethereally up. Her blood red fingernails grip the toothpick, and she nibbles the fruit off, before setting the glass back onto the table. Fingers interlocking delicately across her lap, she regards the camera with an inquisitive head tilt.
“The label of ‘witch’ has been applied to a number of women across history. We can thank the fragile egos of weak men, desperate to make some sense of how a woman might hold power over them. That unwillingness to acknowledge feminine strength, cunning, power. So often the term was an asterisk to set beside a check in a woman’s win-column. However could our greatest heroes fall before - GASP - a GIRL? Obviously, she cheated. Magic, feminine wiles, sexuality. Heavens, she must have thrown an antediluvian tampon, hexed with menstrual blood, to sap him of all his masculine strength.”
Her eyes roll.
“Fortunately, Kalinda and I don’t have to worry about such melodrama from our Inferno opponents. These days we have Twitter, where a woman can lure a man to his doom with thirst-trap bikini pics in place of a siren’s song. Misses Emmerson and Corvin, I’m sure you understand my position. Witchcraft has long since lost its aura of myth and menace and become the stuff of sitcoms and cosplay. Modern practitioners focus more on Hogwarts Houses and Aleister Crowley eating feces than they do on corpse powders and grinding baby bones in a mortar and pestle. I do hope the two of you are at least prudent enough to use all parts of the baby. And if you’re offering me to partake in a flying ointment, well, I’m open minded.”
A beam of light shines down beside Regan’s chair, illuminating an easel covered in a crimson curtain.
“I myself have been described with any number of unflattering adjectives. Creepy, eerie, ominous, sinister, macabre. Direful, even. My birth into fabulous wealth is enough to make me inhuman to a great many. And admittedly, my general disinterest in human connection doesn’t help. But women with my inclinations aren’t a recent occurrence. Specifically, I’ve always felt a kinship with the goddess Circe, best known for her role in Homer’s Odyssey. That particular tale paints her as another obstacle for Odysseus to triumph over, and because she’s a woman, eventually fuck. Modern interpretations paint her as a more nuanced figure, damaged and unjustly scorned. When gods and men and monsters deny her a place in the world, she overcomes her traumas to create one for herself. An inspiring tale. For a better understanding of this fascinating figure, your recommended reading is Madeline Miller’s Circe. Pour yourself a cocktail and enjoy.”
“Which brings me to my piece for this evening. Whether your own jinxes are fact or fiction, I trust you’re familiar with Circe’s modus operandi: Ply sailors with cursed food and drink, until they undergo a porcine metamorphosis. Pigs are synonymous with Circe, but in truth she held dominion over all beasts, domesticated and otherwise. I can relate. May I present, Regan Offering the Cup.”
She pulls the curtain from the easel, revealing a picture atop the wooden frame. The reimagined painting is a takeoff of John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses. Regan replaces the titular goddess, dresses in a flowing cyan gown, sitting on a stone throne engraved with eerily Kalinda-esque armrests. With Regan’s right hand, she holds a croquet mallet above her head. In the left, she holds a goblet overflowing with red liquid that she offers to the viewer. Her pig Atticus lays lazily at her feet, eyes betraying no ominous intent in his mother’s gesture. The mirror behind Regan shows no one else, leaving a mystery as to just who the cup is offered to.
“Consider it a gesture of goodwill, Misses Corvin and Emmerson. An attempt, if not at camaraderie, then at least acknowledgement of our mutual vexations.”
A smirk plays across her blood red lips.
“But it couldn’t be that simple, could it? Even with our shared toils, why would I be so gracious now, when we’re in competition with one another? Is this nectar or venom? A ruse or an olive branch? Truth or a trick?”
Regan takes her cocktail, still smoking, from the table. Again, she swirls it, allowing the smoke to waft above her. Her smirk vanishing, she sips, savoring the taste before holding the martini glass toward the camera.
“Ladies, sisters, adversaries, let us indulge. Drink with me.”
The smoke billows past the camera, before fading out.
Easter is an absolute abomination of a holiday. Irritating enough that every Twitter comedian thinks calling it some iteration of Zombie Jesus Day is the height of hilarity, but the associated practices are a cavalcade of the grotesque. The most vile of which is coating baby chicks and bunnies in paint and awarding them to ghoulish children utterly unprepared to care for an animal. Even as a child, I found the traditions appalling. Yet still, my ambitious nature won out in the matter of hunting Easter eggs. Voorhees Farms hosted a massive hunt each year, over a hundred eggs, all to be sought by me and my awful cousins and the equally awful children of family friends. For three consecutive years I dominated the contest through sheer fortitude, cunning and deductive reasoning. But on the third year, when I was a girl of nine, my Uncle Waylon became emboldened by Easter wine and saw fit to challenge my achievement.
“You’re like that goddamn Omen kid,” he slurred, attempting to infuse his insult with some semblance of pop-culture power.
My Easter basket overflowed with eggs in all colors and patterns. Neons, pastels, glitters, stripes, polka dots, even rainbows. As was my ritual, they would be given a proper burial after I claimed my victory and the Amazon gift card that came with it. The card would pay for extra feed and treats for the eggs’ distraught mothers. A minor reprieve from their fowl grief. I stared back at my uncle, his bloodshot eyes attempting to intimidate me. I would not look away. “I’m not sure what you mean, Uncle,” I explained. “My success in this gastly egg hunt is well deserved, I assure you. Perhaps you should lie down.”
He staggered before me, propping himself upon the white painted fence beside us. Our English longhorn Virgil snorted from within. Like all little girls, I went through a Dante Alighieri’s Inferno phase, which was the origin of his namesake. The bull had a fondness for me, as I would often feed him pears and play my clarinet for him. There was no smacking of my hands when I would butcher Frere Jacques. Only two souls bonding over a mutual love of music. Uncle Waylon, blissfully unaware of his peril, continued his tirade. “You cheated,” he said, thoughtfully adding, “You little shit.”
I denied the accusation, shaking my head. Only one of my pigtails remained, as I undid the other so that I could bandage the ankle of a limping goat with the ribbon. Mother would be aghast at the sullying of my pristine Easter attire, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice. “I used the tools available to me,” I said, unaware that my arms were now hugging the basket and its hard won contents. My claim was the truth. While the other participants enjoyed success of their own in finding eggs, I seized their spoils through the power of argument. At the sight of a heavy basket, I would ask the holder how their own mother might feel if they were torn from her loving arms, never to be returned. If they were then piled together with other abductees, boiled alive and garishly painted afterwards by untalented and uncaring hands. And if, as a final affront to their memory, they were frivolously strewn about under bushes, next to rocks, on windowsills and low-hanging branches as part of some ghoulish contest. Even if they were found, they would be discarded like trash. The best fate they could hope for was to be overlooked and eaten by a dog some months later. Tears would inevitably follow and as they flowed, I would take their plunder as my own.
Uncle Waylon, for whatever reason, took exception to this strategy. Unable to undo my success with words, he lunged for the basket, sliding in the mud as I deftly sidestepped him. Virgil snorted again, dismayed at my uncle’s lack of sportsmanship and charged to my rescue. The fence exploded in a rain of splinters and Uncle Waylon was waylaid by Virgil’s two-thousand pound frame. That day, all three of us learned that with the proper angle, a bull’s horn could enter a man through his anus and emerge out his urethra. Fascinating, anatomically speaking. While it was a triumph for Virgil and myself, a spray of Uncle Waylon’s blood covered the front of my Easter dress, a seafoam piece I was particularly fond of. A dire price.
As Uncle Waylon’s loosed testicle rolled in front of me, I considered collecting it, painting it, and placing it in some devilishly clever hiding spot. Satisfying as that may have been, I doubt it would compare to the sound it made when squelched beneath the heel of my Mary Jane.
Circe(Best paired with Louis Amanti’s rendition of “Witchcraft” and a Witch’s Heart Cocktail)
Regan swirls the glass in her hand, the smoke wafting ethereally up. Her blood red fingernails grip the toothpick, and she nibbles the fruit off, before setting the glass back onto the table. Fingers interlocking delicately across her lap, she regards the camera with an inquisitive head tilt.
“The label of ‘witch’ has been applied to a number of women across history. We can thank the fragile egos of weak men, desperate to make some sense of how a woman might hold power over them. That unwillingness to acknowledge feminine strength, cunning, power. So often the term was an asterisk to set beside a check in a woman’s win-column. However could our greatest heroes fall before - GASP - a GIRL? Obviously, she cheated. Magic, feminine wiles, sexuality. Heavens, she must have thrown an antediluvian tampon, hexed with menstrual blood, to sap him of all his masculine strength.”
Her eyes roll.
“Fortunately, Kalinda and I don’t have to worry about such melodrama from our Inferno opponents. These days we have Twitter, where a woman can lure a man to his doom with thirst-trap bikini pics in place of a siren’s song. Misses Emmerson and Corvin, I’m sure you understand my position. Witchcraft has long since lost its aura of myth and menace and become the stuff of sitcoms and cosplay. Modern practitioners focus more on Hogwarts Houses and Aleister Crowley eating feces than they do on corpse powders and grinding baby bones in a mortar and pestle. I do hope the two of you are at least prudent enough to use all parts of the baby. And if you’re offering me to partake in a flying ointment, well, I’m open minded.”
A beam of light shines down beside Regan’s chair, illuminating an easel covered in a crimson curtain.
“I myself have been described with any number of unflattering adjectives. Creepy, eerie, ominous, sinister, macabre. Direful, even. My birth into fabulous wealth is enough to make me inhuman to a great many. And admittedly, my general disinterest in human connection doesn’t help. But women with my inclinations aren’t a recent occurrence. Specifically, I’ve always felt a kinship with the goddess Circe, best known for her role in Homer’s Odyssey. That particular tale paints her as another obstacle for Odysseus to triumph over, and because she’s a woman, eventually fuck. Modern interpretations paint her as a more nuanced figure, damaged and unjustly scorned. When gods and men and monsters deny her a place in the world, she overcomes her traumas to create one for herself. An inspiring tale. For a better understanding of this fascinating figure, your recommended reading is Madeline Miller’s Circe. Pour yourself a cocktail and enjoy.”
“Which brings me to my piece for this evening. Whether your own jinxes are fact or fiction, I trust you’re familiar with Circe’s modus operandi: Ply sailors with cursed food and drink, until they undergo a porcine metamorphosis. Pigs are synonymous with Circe, but in truth she held dominion over all beasts, domesticated and otherwise. I can relate. May I present, Regan Offering the Cup.”
She pulls the curtain from the easel, revealing a picture atop the wooden frame. The reimagined painting is a takeoff of John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses. Regan replaces the titular goddess, dresses in a flowing cyan gown, sitting on a stone throne engraved with eerily Kalinda-esque armrests. With Regan’s right hand, she holds a croquet mallet above her head. In the left, she holds a goblet overflowing with red liquid that she offers to the viewer. Her pig Atticus lays lazily at her feet, eyes betraying no ominous intent in his mother’s gesture. The mirror behind Regan shows no one else, leaving a mystery as to just who the cup is offered to.
“Consider it a gesture of goodwill, Misses Corvin and Emmerson. An attempt, if not at camaraderie, then at least acknowledgement of our mutual vexations.”
A smirk plays across her blood red lips.
“But it couldn’t be that simple, could it? Even with our shared toils, why would I be so gracious now, when we’re in competition with one another? Is this nectar or venom? A ruse or an olive branch? Truth or a trick?”
Regan takes her cocktail, still smoking, from the table. Again, she swirls it, allowing the smoke to waft above her. Her smirk vanishing, she sips, savoring the taste before holding the martini glass toward the camera.
“Ladies, sisters, adversaries, let us indulge. Drink with me.”
The smoke billows past the camera, before fading out.
Anecdotes with Regan Voorhees
Easter is an absolute abomination of a holiday. Irritating enough that every Twitter comedian thinks calling it some iteration of Zombie Jesus Day is the height of hilarity, but the associated practices are a cavalcade of the grotesque. The most vile of which is coating baby chicks and bunnies in paint and awarding them to ghoulish children utterly unprepared to care for an animal. Even as a child, I found the traditions appalling. Yet still, my ambitious nature won out in the matter of hunting Easter eggs. Voorhees Farms hosted a massive hunt each year, over a hundred eggs, all to be sought by me and my awful cousins and the equally awful children of family friends. For three consecutive years I dominated the contest through sheer fortitude, cunning and deductive reasoning. But on the third year, when I was a girl of nine, my Uncle Waylon became emboldened by Easter wine and saw fit to challenge my achievement.
“You’re like that goddamn Omen kid,” he slurred, attempting to infuse his insult with some semblance of pop-culture power.
My Easter basket overflowed with eggs in all colors and patterns. Neons, pastels, glitters, stripes, polka dots, even rainbows. As was my ritual, they would be given a proper burial after I claimed my victory and the Amazon gift card that came with it. The card would pay for extra feed and treats for the eggs’ distraught mothers. A minor reprieve from their fowl grief. I stared back at my uncle, his bloodshot eyes attempting to intimidate me. I would not look away. “I’m not sure what you mean, Uncle,” I explained. “My success in this gastly egg hunt is well deserved, I assure you. Perhaps you should lie down.”
He staggered before me, propping himself upon the white painted fence beside us. Our English longhorn Virgil snorted from within. Like all little girls, I went through a Dante Alighieri’s Inferno phase, which was the origin of his namesake. The bull had a fondness for me, as I would often feed him pears and play my clarinet for him. There was no smacking of my hands when I would butcher Frere Jacques. Only two souls bonding over a mutual love of music. Uncle Waylon, blissfully unaware of his peril, continued his tirade. “You cheated,” he said, thoughtfully adding, “You little shit.”
I denied the accusation, shaking my head. Only one of my pigtails remained, as I undid the other so that I could bandage the ankle of a limping goat with the ribbon. Mother would be aghast at the sullying of my pristine Easter attire, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice. “I used the tools available to me,” I said, unaware that my arms were now hugging the basket and its hard won contents. My claim was the truth. While the other participants enjoyed success of their own in finding eggs, I seized their spoils through the power of argument. At the sight of a heavy basket, I would ask the holder how their own mother might feel if they were torn from her loving arms, never to be returned. If they were then piled together with other abductees, boiled alive and garishly painted afterwards by untalented and uncaring hands. And if, as a final affront to their memory, they were frivolously strewn about under bushes, next to rocks, on windowsills and low-hanging branches as part of some ghoulish contest. Even if they were found, they would be discarded like trash. The best fate they could hope for was to be overlooked and eaten by a dog some months later. Tears would inevitably follow and as they flowed, I would take their plunder as my own.
Uncle Waylon, for whatever reason, took exception to this strategy. Unable to undo my success with words, he lunged for the basket, sliding in the mud as I deftly sidestepped him. Virgil snorted again, dismayed at my uncle’s lack of sportsmanship and charged to my rescue. The fence exploded in a rain of splinters and Uncle Waylon was waylaid by Virgil’s two-thousand pound frame. That day, all three of us learned that with the proper angle, a bull’s horn could enter a man through his anus and emerge out his urethra. Fascinating, anatomically speaking. While it was a triumph for Virgil and myself, a spray of Uncle Waylon’s blood covered the front of my Easter dress, a seafoam piece I was particularly fond of. A dire price.
As Uncle Waylon’s loosed testicle rolled in front of me, I considered collecting it, painting it, and placing it in some devilishly clever hiding spot. Satisfying as that may have been, I doubt it would compare to the sound it made when squelched beneath the heel of my Mary Jane.