Reusing, repurposing, and redecorating
In which I discuss home decor and how I came to possess Val Kilmer's prop penis
My family, particularly on my mother’s side, has a Downton Abbey-esque philosophy that one doesn’t buy home furnishings, but rather inherits them. At any moment, there is a sort of revolving cache of furniture, art, and decor from grandparents, great grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc., orbiting the country between Texas, California, and Colorado, where we all live. Text conversations regularly feature openers like, Does anyone want the brass urns from India?
I got the urns.
In my world tour of undergraduate majors, I spent time as both a studio art major and an interior design major. So, when I moved into my first apartment at the tail end of my senior year, I scoffed when my mother offered me hand-me-downs. Pfft, said late-80s me. Then I priced furniture and decided that I could work with some preowned items at the price point I could afford: free. I chose a white vinyl couch with clean lines and a foldout bed that was, judging from the overall weight of the thing, made of solid iron. Guests reported similar theories after sleeping on the fold-out.
Over the years, I’ve grown to appreciate having stuff that has a history as well as the mid-century modern and Oriental items my grandmother favored, if not her love of a color palette a friend once called “Ode to the Seed Gourd.” I have also accumulated decorative items from aforementioned sisters and cousin. And that’s where the history of some cool art prints I just hung comes in, as well as the story of Val Kilmer’s prop penis.
I am the oldest of three sisters. My middle sister and I both lived in Dallas in the late 80s/early 90s after we’d graduated from college; the economy was in a downturn, rents were weirdly cheap, and we both had small 2BR/1BA places. Middle Sister’s then-boyfriend, a film major, worked in legit Hollywood as a legit editor (he still does). He called to ask her if another young film guy he knew could rent a room from her while he was in Dallas working on the Oliver Stone movie JFK. We were all broke, so the extra cash was welcome.
Film Dude’s role on the project was vague and he was weird in a gross, but nonthreatening way, like, he collected his own nail trimmings in a fancy box, but here’s the interesting thing. Apparently Stone’s big money operation had rented some fancy downtown loft spaces for offices, had them professionally decorated, and then just abandoned the contents when they were done. Dude brought home life-sized paintings of people used to flesh out crowd scenes that gave me a small heart attack the first time I walked past his room, large portfolio slips of art prints, and—here it is—bits and pieces of costumes from Stone’s previous film, The Doors, in which Kilmer had played Jim Morrison.
Kilmer’s costumes included a luscious burgundy velvet shirt with gold beading and a Nehru collar, leather pants, beaded bracelets and necklaces, and a pair of Jockey brand tight-y whiteys. Frontal male nudity, even in an R-rated film, in was front-page news at the time and in one controversial scene in the movie, a drunk and disorderly Morrison urinates in a bar, exposing a penis. I saw the movie in a theater, but never saw the offending body part. It must have been one of those quick scenes that later activated a million VCR pause buttons.
Anyhoo. The tight-y whiteys had, expertly sewn inside the fly, a prop penis made of bouncy, yellowish foam rubber and covered with a beige, pantyhose-type fabric to achieve the desired skin tone. I was both impressed by the costumer’s technical achievement and sympathetic. I envisioned this person hand-sewing the dick onto the undies as not unlike myself: a young, underemployed aspiring artist, wondering what life choices had led to this moment. How many prototypes must have haunted them? When Film Dude Roommate doled out the leftovers, I requested and got the beads and the underwear/penis assembly. It lived on my coffee table for many years and was a popular conversation starter.
I also got a portfolio slip of original, signed and numbered art prints, which brings us back to home decor. Most of the prints were kitschy and/or Texas-themed, but there’s a series of abstract pieces that I’ve loved but never had a place for. They’re sort of like Mondrian grids with simpler color combinations. The ones I love have a leafy green background with ultra-fine deep-red lines. I’ve kept them—very carefully—for decades waiting for the right spot and the white walls in our new house provide the perfect gallery for them. To paraphrase The Dude from The Big Lebowski regarding his rug, it really ties the room together.
(pictured below: “Bali Sue,” from Bali, named by my grandparents)
My daughter’s boyfriend is a horticulturist, so I also have some gorgeous plants. My mother has raided her basement and found lovely decorative items that I hope to get from her when the latests COVID spike allows us to travel again. I am especially excited about a set of gold-tone candelabra festooned with hanging crystals that, according to family lore, one of my great-grandmothers kept on her vanity.
Of all of the reinvention projects I am facing right now, making my surroundings comfortable and beautiful is my favorite one to think about and in a wonderful stroke of luck, Mike not only enjoys architecture, art, landscaping, and decor as much as I do, he’s got great instincts. We’re good collaborators. It’s a project more conducive to pleasant daydreaming than re-strategizing one’s social and professional life. I am reconceptualizing it as staging. I’m staging my life for the next thing.
Postscript:
The famous prop penis died an inauspicious death. One of the most elegant aspects of the assembly was that the penis was sewn into regular, off-the-shelf, white underwear. If you saw them without the surprise inside the fly, you’d have perhaps just wondered why I kept a pair of men’s underwear on my coffee table, which would have been a valid question. And, that realism was their downfall. At some point, someone tossed them into a hamper and they got laundered. While the undies emerged from the dryer intact, the penis was a mangled mess. The pantyhose fabric had perforated, wrapping itself asymmetrically around the foam rubber form, leaving it twisted, strangled, and bulging like a popped can of Poppin’ Fresh biscuits.