Something Somewhat Odd

[Barry]

Many years ago I was strolling through the South Park Blocks, near the PSU campus, tripping with a buddy late one night. I found this thing, a poster, stuck to the side of a mailbox with rice paste or something, and it was fresh, still wet and easily peeled off, like it had just been done, and I was fascinated by this thing, so I took it. I put it up on the wall of the bathroom, above the tank, in the apartment I shared with my girlfriend at the time. It never failed to provoke an emotional response. At least with the guys who went in there to pee during our frequent parties. And some of the girls, too.

The heading is THE LOVE PROJECT, just like that, all in caps. The body is a quote from a book, apparently a psychology or psychiatry textbook. Below is a black and white photograph of a youngish man with eyes closed and mouth open, tongue sticking out between the blades of a pair of scissors which he holds in his hand as if ready to sever his tongue. A pretty disturbing image. Even more disturbing is the text in the body of the piece, which I found online by googling part of the first line, "Michael and Beck (1973) described" inside quotation marks like that. The only link I found has it from a book titled Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, Second Edition, by Armando R. Favazza, M.D., published 1996, as far as I can see from the webpage.

I always thought this thing was cool somehow, a mystery, like what's the story behind it, what ever happened to the "patient" referred to, etc. And who put it on that mailbox that night? What's THE LOVE PROJECT all about? I had thought it was lost forever, only a memory, but I found it the other day in our attic.

The somewhat odd thing is I couldn't have found this poster any later than 1990 at the very latest, as I broke up with that girl and moved out that year.

Weird.

You should have seen the looks on guys faces when they came out of our bathroom for the first time.

Peace,
Barry