This past Sunday I saw shit smeared on a wall, a man going down on himself, babies being sucked back up the birth canal and a giant pink phallus. But I’ll get back to that in a moment. 

As a contemptuous private school teen in bright, sunny Hawaii, my general mission was to stand out. I wore black patent leather go-go boots, fishnets and glittery polyester shirts tied at my navel. I drove an old hooptie that I painted with flashy yellow flowers and the words “no cherries allowed” across the back. I dated a guy who was banned from all school functions because he encouraged two girls to makeout on stage during the school’s welcome program. I liked loud, gross pronouncements that made people take notice—not just because I got off on shocking others, but because during this, my first conscious effort at finding a place for myself in the world, it was easier to be one distracting thing than many complicated, twined shades of grey.

Last Sunday, when I went to the New Museum and saw the aforementioned works of art in the Jeff Koons-curated show, “Skin Fruit,” I admit, I was wearing black leather boots, ones that were about the same height as my high school pair—mid calf—and equally as cute, but much less shiny. Sure, I bought these shoes because I appreciated the sassy small heel, but I also considered their functionality—I’ve been walking around the city (an east coast city) in them all winter (a real winter that hit below 69 degrees).

These days, life dictates I travel more by foot, but when I did have a car in a different city recently, I can’t recall any features more distinguishable than a broken side mirror and an odd smell coming from my radiator. And when I think of the last truly shocking thing that my current boyfriend has done, it was to say that he actually liked that pink phallic sculpture at the exhibit. 

Of all the in-your-face fecal and fornicating gargantuanness displayed in “Skin Fruit,” one of my favorite pieces was Maurizio Cattelan’s nine white slabs of marble lying on the floor to look like body bags. Another was two child-size cavemen emerging from a white corner of the room, their eyes wide, confused, seemingly already overstimulated at what stood before them; one’s arm around the other, one foot in front of the other, both hesitant and curious to move forward. I took a long, second and third look at their humanistic posturing, my back turned against a fiberglass woman fondling herself.