homey

 During a four year period, I visited over 500 new housing communities in the Las Vegas valley, going through each floor plan's mockette houses, spending time in every home, documenting decor and considering exactly what it is the builders have created, and their decision to hire an aesthete, a creative, to fill the boxes with the colors and symbols of home. They've been given a task for which the ultimate goal is making a sale, creating a potential in here for the life of our dreams, perhaps the cliche American dream of home ownership as its base.
 Of course it falls flat as I stand in another tan tile-clad kitchen running my hands over another granite countertop peering out through the window over the sink to another 8 foot cement wall concealing 12 square feet of premium astroturf. I visited obsessively nonetheless, collecting each and every pamphlet, keeping record of the more than 2,500 homes I visited as if they were museums. I began to notice the hot glue here and there, evidence of thieves and vandals, those who bide their time in unmonitored homes with minor transgressions. I began bringing my own photographs, pictures of my friends, pictures of my family, pictures of the women I was meeting downtown on the streets and replacing the stock images hanging in frames and sitting on the mantle with my own memories.
 When I found Ruby hanging out one day on East Fremont, I decided to ask her along as a model, to change the structure a bit of the work I'd been making, possibly combine some of the ideas I was having. She clapped her hands as we drove to the edge of Las Vegas, excited the city had grown so much since the last time she'd ventured off of Fremont. I gave her clothes which I chose for a particular soccer mom aesthetic, and we sat in the car while I brushed her hair and did her makeup. In that entire time it hadn't really occurred to me that what I was doing could be, in fact, very cruel. We took some images and she was thrilled to be there, happy to be out of downtown, but she was always a bit of an excited child by nature. She pulled her hand across a cupboard and commented, "If you play your cards right, all this could be yours one day." Like a punch in the gut when you think about how I thought to myself: "I'd never want this." And I don't. Ruby's life is much more rich in color and texture, so much more authentic, though at the same time I won't confess to knowing shit about her struggles. I found her, days later, beaten nearly to death and confessing to having been gang-raped. She smiled brightly and said to me, "It was fun, wasn't it? The other day, getting those little White Castle burgers? And seeing those houses?" I choked back my tears and anger. I still do, when I think about those horrible green bruises and her swollen arms and cheeks. She wanted to make pictures, so we made pictures.
 I limped out of town, finally, seven years after arriving without a plan, a job, or a place to live, hoping some of the innocence that had been stolen could be retrieved. On return visits, I haven't been able to find Ruby, so I hope for her sake she was finally able to get herself clear too.