Dear @alechad The place you’re describing is a small cruising club near Warren Street. You could say that we’ve visited there twice together now, since you were also one of the first to enter my installation at Southard Reid (Descent I. People Come & Go), which was an exact replica of an interior section of this club, re-made in the gallery space. A metal-clad corridor drenched in red light led viewers in one direction only, toward a tunnel where they would confront a white male performer lying on one of the black wipeable mattresses you mentioned — as though passed out, dead, or sleeping, seemingly oblivious, fragile, abject. Irrelevant, perhaps? Everything was made to scale, so for the duration of the exhibition two versions of the club existed at the same time, only a mile apart. One obviously functioned as it normally did, catering to guests who ventured there, usually alone, to have sexual contact with other strangers. However, in my version, time stood still and an otherwise shielded image remained more permanently exposed for anyone to witness. Between the actual club and this facsimile, between the two occasions of night and day, there was also the scent I produced for your exhibition ‘I am here but you’ve gone’. I recall this smell as somewhat contradictory, because it both lured and repelled at the same time. It was musky from the cumin and civet I used, which in careful combination smelt like shit and sweat, masked with sweeter notes like peppermint— reminiscent of cheap aftershave and disinfectant, or the chewing gum of someone getting uncomfortably close. Ultimately, this contradiction is not dissimilar to my affinity with these spaces. They are places I sometimes want to forget, but I clearly can’t seem to leave behind. Maybe this is the romance or melancholy you detect? A romance found in the most unlikely of places, which has admittedly soured over time.