“You are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” that was not a voice talking to me. It
was conceptual artist Tracey Emin to her then boyfriend Billy Childish. She
was referring, thankfully, only to his paintings. The statement led Child-
ish to form the stuckism art movement along with Charles Thomson. An
art movement born out of a rejection, a spurn, and a degradation. “You are
stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” it’s just me talking to myself. What do stuck
people do apart from forming art movements?
They can crawl naked to the right angle intersection between the two walls.
I can do that too. Much like that “Big man” sculpture by Ron Mueck. Put a
hand on my hand to keep it from rolling off. If standing, that man could be
13 feet tall. That’s the only trivia I picked up from Smithonian museum ori-
entation tour. I didn’t hang around to know the answer to how many objects
were there in the collection.
But some information just simply refuses to be dismissed, and so as I was
walking trying to find my way out of the Smithonian castle, two loud visi-
tors were exclaiming at the “136 million pieces in the collection. Whadya-
know!” I could feel the ghost of the screen laughing in there, like a stalker
assuring the star he is after that it cannot get rid of him that easily.
“I see you now have pubic hair” said the child molester to the kid whose
life was ruined at the age of eleven after meeting him in the restrooms of a
nightclub eight years later, leaving the man to go vomit breaking down with
his party clothes on, and crawling into the corner amid thrown tissues that
wiped the puke from overboozed men.
A scene worthy of Ron Mueck, but with clothes on, and puke around, and a
child molester having the time of his life on the dance floor. And someone
banging on the door of the stall “Are you stuck in there? Some people need
to take a leak you know!”
“He was stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck”
The worst part is having no options. For anyone who’s stuck.
With nothing to hang on to.

‘We can adopt if you wish, we’ve been trying hard and it hasn’t been work-
ing.” An option is always welcome for the desperate. “Maybe two brothers.”
Failure is not an option. An option is not an option.
“BEFORE GOING HOME,” the sign immediately grabbed my attention,
“have you made sure you have gathered everything you own?” – And the
list goes on “Valuables, medicine brought from home, new medicine with
instructions….” It was a sign in a hospital hence the reference to the medi-
cine. And somewhere through the covered floor, I felt my liquefied sanity go
down the cracks.
Thriteen feet tall, can you imagine? Sure beats being 5’2’’ and feeling di-
minutive, small, and oh so optionless. And stuck. Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!