Fashion bitch, fashion bitch why are you here? Fashion bitch, fashion bitch you shouldn’t be near. This is a place of Art. A (theoretically) Holy place where bastardized imitations of Art should not be permitted to tread. Ah, but that’s where I’ve gotten it so wrong all these years. All these years I foolishly believed Art was for those who actually put their blood—in short, their life—into it. It took me longer than most who come out of the Cocoon of Naïveté to understand that Art has little to do with anything. Least of all what the last of the Pure Artists think it does. This is all to say that being born to parents with money was all that mattered. Parents willing to “furnish” their “budding talent” of a child with all they might need to “fine-tune” their “gift.” But, as it is said, money can’t buy talent, just a credible space in which to show or publish art. 

I never went to art school. Nor did I go to some twee English boarding school where a teacher gave me one-on-one instruction on “how to paint.” Painting that then leads into other mediums of art, like, say, graffiti. Even now deemed the ultimate form of “modern” art by the white kids who seem to still be catching up to it. The white kids, like my rival, Fran, who decided to bring the graffiti “inside,” to the interior of the gallery—a moronic, totally negating-of-what-graffiti-means idea. On par with Steve (Will Ferrell) and Doug Butabi (Chris Kattan) in A Night at the Roxbury “brilliantly” suggesting to make the waiting area outside the club into the “inside,” ergo doing away with the “demoralizing” act of waiting at all. One obvious similarity between Fran and the Butabi brothers was that they were both born to rich parents. I use the word “was” very deliberately because, to be frank with you, I had to kill Fran. Her “art” was a crime against both humanity and the very definition of what Art is supposed to be. And if I didn’t stop her, no one else would. 

Some might ask: why keep talking about it—anything? Why keep railing against that which annoys, that which is so utterly stupid? Because if I don’t, I honestly feel no one else will—and it then becomes a form of permission to allow the system of mediocrity to continue to thrive unchecked, everyone licking its asshole in the vain hope of currying favor. After all, Fran was always only too happy to let other people into her show if they stuck their tongues in her crack far enough, telling her how “innovative” and “groundbreaking” her work was. All words amounting to sound and fury, signifying nothing. But to her, they did—which is how her “solo” shows usually turned out to have twenty additional people. Like that final one she did at the Palais de Tokyo. Because yes, by now, she had inserted herself into the Paris art world as easily as her former art teacher inserted himself into her. 

But Paris was just a place to add to her “impressive” resume. What’s more, Berlin was “over” for her, and she had moved on to New York. Like that was actually a place to “move on” to… as opposed to creatively die in. Obviously, that’s what this “art” show was the result of. Not only her inherent talentlessness, but too much time spent in New York, the capital of kissing the right ass to “succeed” in the “art” game. It seemed to me she had been so busy spending time on this “very important” aspect of “art” as capital that she had allowed any “dexterity” itself to totally lapse. 

As though she deliberately wanted to further vex anyone who might have been foolish enough to believe that art was about art at all, Fran timed her show to take place one of the same weeks as Paris Fashion Week. Which meant, of course, that the Palais de Tokyo was going to be overrun by fashion bitches. Like the one I mentioned before talking about Fran briefly got in the way of the present. I only went to see the exhibition as a final form of catharsis, to put a cap on her murder—which was still yet to be discovered, therefore the reason why the exhibit was so sparsely attended that day. For, as any average-turned-“great” artist knows, all it takes is dying young to become worshipped. I suddenly realized I had done her a service she didn’t really deserve. But then, what did Fran ever deserve? Everything was handed to her. She was born into the right circumstances, and the rest took care of itself. What of my circumstances, my career desires? And that was what made me realize I hated “art” as They had rendered it. They forced you to believe it had to be turned into a “career” like every other perverted practice. 

But how was I to do that with my station in life being what it is? They say just because one person’s “light” is permitted to shine, it doesn’t have to dim yours. What a crock of fucking shit, like every other platitude designed to keep the plebes going without killing themselves before they’ve been milked fully by the system. 

Lardi C might have been one of those plebes were it not for her “rags to riches” story being required as the every-decade-or-so inspiration those from “the ghetto” (white people-speak for: places that aren’t associated with whiteness) need to be assured that capitalism really does work. Just look at Lardi!—from stripper to whore-in-this-neoliberal-house legend. Yes, she was here, at the Palais de Tokyo. She was the fashion bitch ruining everything, causing the gallery to be mostly cordoned off as they prepared for that night’s Fashion Week show, that she would be starring in. For whatever reason, the Parisians seemed to love Lardi—“her” “style” (as if it wasn’t all entirely curated by a team of other people). Proving to me, once again, that money was all it took to cover shit in glitter. Fashion bitch, fashion bitch why are you here? Fashion bitch, fashion bitch you shouldn’t be near. She was completely ruining my ability to diabolically appreciate the eradication of Fran that I had been single-handedly responsible for. My own little masterpiece, if you will. One I was quickly beginning to think needed to be turned into a multi-series continuation, with Lardi as the next part of the “oeuvre.”

Of course, it would be much more challenging to eliminate her without far more of an outcry. As we all know, “pop” stars are of greater importance to humanity than outright “artists” like Fran. Still, what a coup it would be for my own little art project. Especially if I could keep the authorship anonymous. In fact, that’s what I would sign my name as next to her dead body, in her own blood (bien sûr). 

It was important to me that she was wearing another spiky Richard Quinn outfit for the murder. That would really heighten the drama. I lingered around the gallery, waiting for an opportunity, a chance to sneak behind the right closed door and gain the access I needed. It was just a matter of time before she had to materialize in the dressing room. The second she was alone, that was fuckin’ it for her. And while I was at it, why not go to town on anyone else involved in turning the museum into their own personal catwalk for the sake of splashing themselves all over Instaego? Even grander than gutting Fran in her faux-poverty chic Canal St. Martin apartment, the sight of all these fashion bitches and their hypocrisy-laden guts spewed out onto the floor would be my most unignorable artistic statement yet. 

All of the sudden, I understood why “psychos” like John Wayne Gacy and Richard Ramirez treated their “work” as though it was art. And, though few people will admit to being part of them, there are numerous circles that view these killings as among the most marvelous of art “pieces.” But mine would be the most marvelous of all—for you see, I wasn’t targeting “average” ilk or prostitutes (forced to bear the brunt of most serial killing rage). I was targeting “artists.” And maybe, just maybe, if I “neutralized” the mainstream majority of them—that is to say, all the ones making six figures-plus from their so-called art—that would clear the way for those like me. Just “ordinary” people who would never have a chance to be heard otherwise. Yes, I would be contributing to the profits of their Estate, therefore the vengeance potential for their progeny, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make in the name of Art. If not me, who? That’s when, out of nowhere, the door to Lardi’s pop-up dressing room burst open and knocked me unconscious. Visions of the spikes from her jacket filled my dreams (or nightmares) until I finally woke up to the sight of her and a pair of her assistants gawking at me.

Wasting no time, I proceeded to bludgeon the two assistants’ heads against each other, which apparently set off one of their phones to play Lardi’s “I Like It”—which is actually a rather ideal murder song. Lardi, screaming things like, “Okurrr!” and “Coronavirus!” like a broken wind-up doll as I seized upon her, didn’t move quickly enough, still a bit doughy and languid from pushing out her latest spawn. I grabbed a spiked jacket off one of the hangers and proceeded to gouge her eyes out. From that point forward, finishing the rest of the job was easy. 

So, too, was spreading the message of her death. It certainly took far less time for the masses to take notice than it did for Fran, whose murder was actually announced a full three days later after her body was at last discovered in that apartment. Besides, the news was rather busy reporting on Lardi and other assorted fashion bitches’ “atrocious” slaughtering, which “authorities” still had yet to link to anyone of viable interest. How fuckin’ beautiful. I was so irrelevant as a person and an artist as a result of my bank account’s (lack of) contents that I doubted they would ever notice it was me. And oh, I have so many more “artists” to pick off. Like Jillie. She’s the one who practically invoked me to “do” her next by saying, “Got a stalker walking up and down the street/Says he’s Satan and he’d like to meet.” But no, I’m not Satan. I’m something far more terrifying: the disgruntled, pure artist gone unacknowledged for too long by society.