IF I TOLD HIM

IF I TOLD HIM
An Unexpurgated Portrait of Picasso
—for Gertrude Stein & William Rice

“If I told him”
—Gertrude Stein,
If I Told Him

If I told him he liked them? Would he like it if I told him?

Would he like it if I told him? Les Demoiselles were really young male prostitutes?

If I told him would he like it? If I told him that’s why he put masks on them?

Would he like it if I told them? That Les Demoiselles d'Avignon were really young male nudes?

If I told him would he like it? They were handsome young sailorboys who needed some bucks?

If I told him the one on the right with the Congolese mask was the cute Portuguese one? And the ones with Iberian and Ivory Coast tribal masks were the ugly ones? Would he like it?

Not now not now of course. Picasso wouldn't like it wouldn't like it.

He wouldn’t like it if people knew he was pimping for male prostitutes. What would people say? A shuttering thought that such an important macho cubist avant garde artist liked boys?

Exact resemblance to Demoiselles isn’t exactly what it seems. Exact resemblance, exactly resembling. Even tho it seems like Demoiselles but really isn’t.

Would he agree he’s coming close tho, coming close to resembling it, although not quite exactly so, these lovely boyish Demoiselles with tribal expressions?

Would he agree the Congolese one on the right is first exactly and presently so exactly male?

The face, the nose, the sudden look of exactly how a young male looks just before during after sex?


Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon