I told her it wasn’t, and we were quiet again.

Once we got back to her property, she mentioned she was going out of town to visit her boyfriend, who was working in Denver. “I’ll be back late Sunday night. Get yourself settled this weekend, and I’ll see you Monday morning.”

As I was walking toward my new apartment, she said, “Hey, Joe.”

I turned around.

“I’m really looking forward to working with you.”

FIVE.

On paper, I was the project coordinator and studio assistant at Casa Diez, but the majority of my day was spent working on the specific Living Exhibit that October was focused on during that period.

October dubs her long-term performance pieces Living Exhibits because that’s exactly what they are—life experiences she turns into performance art. The one she was working on when I started there was a film project called 365 Selfies. My tasks included but were not limited to: set designer, camera and lighting crew, website and mailing list admin, general contractor, handyman, and occasional creative consultant.

365 Selfies was intended to be a statement on the “selfie” culture that was all the rage on social networks and in social lives at the time. However, as a contrast to the somewhat narcissistic nature of the trend, 365 Selfies would only be available on a hidden website. October didn’t intend to publicize the page, and when she finally announced the project, she didn’t include a web address. Her fans and the art world found it eventually, though it took months, and I’m still not sure how it was discovered. However, I suspect it had something to do with the fact that the project was sponsored by Phil Pearlman, the art aficionado, entrepreneur, and founder of Ribble. Mr. P. was worth a couple billion dollars and chose to spend a miniscule chunk of his vast wealth supporting art and artists.

October told me she’d worked at Ribble for over a year before Phil knew she was anything other than one of his designers. But she’d invited him to her first Living Exhibit, VooDo, and he was so taken by her that he pledged to fund and promote her Living Exhibits for as long as she continued designing his Ribble scribbles.

“Basically, I’m a Ribble scribble whore,” she sighed.

For VooDo, October had rented a small gallery in the Tenderloin. She wrapped her body in thick felt, crudely stitched it together at the beginning of the performance, and then stood on a pedestal while gallery visitors were invited to stab her arms and legs with extra-long, colored-ball pins she’d made especially for the exhibit.

“A human voodoo doll,” she explained, as if that needed explaining.

The video footage she showed me was hard to watch. But what shocked me more than the performance itself was the way people reacted to it. I had assumed the visitors would be gentle with the pins or refrain from using them at all. Quite the reverse, they were overly aggressive, laughing and looking at one another as they stabbed October’s limbs. She was a bloody mess by the end, and still has a few pinprick scars on her arms to show for it.