Whatever happened to Andy Warhol's Polaroids? Were they tossed out with the banana peels or are they sharing space in a humidor with Johnny Weissmuller's loin cloth (or Spock's ears) at the Smithsonian, that so spacious slaughterhouse of cross-cultural debris?
And what of all that left-over confetti from Matisse's "L'Escargot", the stray lipsticks (or chunky cigars) from presidential assignations? Who catalogues these things?
I demand to know where they hang the paintings Picasso wouldn't sign — the still-borns and abortions, those rough-hewn slabs of color slashed ingloriously with an "X"? Did they corral them inside the Guggenheim some place, herds of unruly minotaurs confined within figurative lassos?
Perhaps, in a crypt beneath the Louvre, sit the Discarded Ones, trios of anonymous, angular demoiselles, their tongues tied in perpetuity by Paloma's perfidious, piss-elegant papa.
Like an autograph hound I bay on the internet, hankering after squibs Picasso wrote on napkins to pay for meals at restaurants, petite manifestos of modernity (smears of Beef Bourguignon still extant at the corners).
What must fame taste like? Is it hunger?
Ashley Callender is new to creative writing. He has a fondness for high-brow literature and a weakness for low-brow film noir. One day he would like to write a novel.