A SMALL NATION OF MEANINGFUL OBJECTS
PAUL KINSMAN
A SMALL NATION OF MEANINGFUL OBJECTS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN IMAGES IN THE STYLE OF SOPHIE CALLE
LUCKY STRIKES We ordered them off a website: we ordered them from Indonesia. We ordered them because Z. had them in France, the filtered kind. The American ones are exclusively unfiltered. They're too strong. Too harsh. So we ordered them from Indonesia. They took a long time to get to Ohio. When they did, Z. and I split the carton. He covered up the warning designs with duct tape. He didn't like most of them. The first packs we smoked disappeared in a matter of hours. You can't order them from Indonesia anymore.
TOYOTA He died because he started dipping when he quit smoking. The truck still smelled like cigarettes.
DIET COKE When she left me, I told her to take her things with her. Are you serious? she asked me. I am, I said. I was. When she left me, she took everything but this.
GOLDS I was convinced that it would be a great project. To photograph people's brand of cigarettes with one half smoked by them. It'd be a photoseries. When I had the idea, I asked M. to put out her last cigarette early. She obliged and gave me the pack, the burnt edge. If you look closely, you can see her lipstick on the filter. I never did that photoseries.
ROSES She'd stuffed them in the envelope with a letter she'd written me. To be burned, she said. I tried to burn the roses, but the fire wouldn't catch. I soaked one in Jack and it still wouldn't burn. Not a bang, but a whimper.
BAD WINE We got high and started drinking at noon. The most sober of the group drove us down to the Cincinnati art museum. We looked at the art while fucked up and drank more outside. When we drove back to Dayton, we picked up a bottle of wine and made dinner. Pasta for everyone. But we couldn't uncork the wine. It took us an hour. When we finally drank it, it tasted of sour shit.
PALL MALLS I don't know where I was – somewhere in the wasteland between Cleveland and Columbus. I was coming back from seeing Jenny Hval in Oberlin. I stopped at a gas station and asked for Pall Mall Unfiltereds. I hadn't seen them in ages. The clerk looked at me. Pall Mall Unfiltereds? he said. Yes, I said. The clerk pointed at the Camels. Not these? he said. No. The clerk pointed at the Lucky Strikes. Not these? he said again. No. These? He pointed at the Pall Malls. Yes. You know, in all my time working here, I've never – never – heard someone ask for Pall Mall Unfiltereds, the clerk said. You must have snuck these from your granddaddy now, didn't you? He smirked at me and slid them across the counter. Don't worry about the money, he said.
CUP The coffee there was bad. Really bad. But the cups were small and well sized. I was in Wooster to hide from death. Someone there liked me and thought I was cute. I kissed them that night and took the cup the next morning. When they came to visit me, we kissed in my bed. We did not fuck. I lit incense and lay it in the cup to burn.
NEW YORK REDS I tried to bring my own, but I smoked them all. New York is a place ripe for smoking cigarettes. I bought more at the bandit's price in a Williamsburg deli. I tried to conserve them and later I stole a copy of Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS from The Strand bookstore.
I peeled the sticker off the front – Winner of the Pulitzer Prize – and pressed it into the front of my cigarettes. Later in the evening, I was at an open mic. Someone played their guitar, acoustic, faster and louder and with more fire than anything I'd ever heard. I gave him a cig and asked him to sign the pack after the show.
MEDALS When I was in the 1st grade, my father gave me the medals he'd won in Vietnam. He'd achieved the rank of colonel before leaving the military, and I could not spell that word. I wore the medals around the house and pretended to be him. I imagined what it would be like to earn them and to wear them with adult pride. I could not imagine it. It did not occur to me why my father would treat the medals with latent disdain.
BOTTLE OPENER Before she left me and her Diet Coke, the two of us drove to Ocracoke, North Carolina. My mother lived there, and we were to stay with her and take a vacation. Before leaving the island, on our way to catch the ferry, we stopped and bought a half-dozen bottles of Coca-Cola. They could not be opened by hand. We bought a bottle opener and drank all the Coke while waiting to board the ferry.
KENTUCKY'S BEST It was a mission trip to Tennessee. We'd go down and build things for people in the Cumberland. Whatever they wanted, we would build it. On the way back, I bought cigarettes I'd never seen before. Kentucky's Best. I smoked in front of the pastor's husband and he grimaced. He lit up himself and said, It's a nasty habit. Be careful, he said.
PILLS I don't even remember what they all were: their names. SSRIs. I would swallow them dry before walking to school. I stopped taking them because they killed my dick. I started taking them again and they killed my dick. After a few years, my dick was fine.
KOOLS I read somewhere that Hunter S. Thompson wrote to the distributors to complain that he could not find Kools in San Juan. I smoked them in a smoking lounge – the only I've ever been in. It was in the Denver Airport. I am confident I was the youngest person there. Before the lounge, I smoked them on my father's porch. He lived on the side of a mountain, and I would look at the rest of the rock, the range. At night I had to keep in constant motion so that my feet would not stick to the ground. Looking out at night mountains, I did not feel like a person.
CVS I've never even been to a fucking Wallgreens, who the fuck do you think I am?
CHRISTENING I've had a tankard with my name on it for as long as I can remember. A gift received at my christening. Inside it, there was a note from the people who'd given it to me. I would read it as a kid and think of my history of being loved.
UNCLE ED & AUNTIE JUDI
I have no idea who these people are.
FAKE, PLASTIC At the time it seemed important. Homecoming, prom with a girl – and we had sex. We had sex and it was important because if you had sex you were in the select group of other kids, the demographic of 15 and 16 and 17 year olds who fucked before they knew what fucking meant. You were in the club: the I've-been-insidesomeone-and-now-I-am-in-geometry-class club. The flowers, they're plastic.