This is an image that we have lived with for years, of a neighbor who (still!) lives across the street from our cabin, Andrew my husband’s family vacation home that we had just acquired. In Riverside county, we live in an unincorporated neighborhood called Meadowbrook, that has a lot of poor man’s castles, dusty white people, and a subdued wild life that seems just outside of the symbolic order. This kid was a meth addict (and still is in and out of jail, now missing teeth) but at the time was also friendly, but a bit menacing—we still aren’t sure if he is a good neighbor or a would-be troublemaker. He wore metal t-shirts, and I knowingly “misspelled” the famous band’s name, as I hoped this person wouldn’t bring us sooner to our fate. The original cigarette, his own, is missing, but I replaced it with this Marlborough that I smoked, placing myself in a doppelganger’s avatar, knowing the mask of the figure could be any person’s own death mask, of mortality, but also of youth.
