I swear I try my best to be a good parent and shield my kids from the non-age-appropriate, but for some reason sex seems to find me. My six-year-old is Pokemon obsessed (and Bakugon and Ben 10) so when the Takashi Murakami exhibit came to the Brooklyn Museum I knew I had to take him.
Chet was in Heaven. Ava wasn't complaining too much. A and I bribed her with the promise of pizza and ice cream later at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.
I often drag them to museums and they often caterwaul about it but this time Chet, as he wheedled his way onto the crowded floor of a video screening room full of twenty-something hipsters all transfixed by a Murakami cartoon he whispered, "I love it, daddy." I swelled with pride. I was ready for my medal from the Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of New York.
Unlike the brilliant Kara Walker retrospective at the Whitney where friends had warned me not to take the kids unless I wanted some tricky and lengthy explaining to do, my friends who'd seen Murakami hadn't given me a parental heads up. So we just wandered into a room with several cartoonishly buxom topless blondes/motorcycles chasis (?) spears (?). Chet ran to them giggling. Then we entered a room and saw her:
bigger than lifesize on a pedestal. The kids were, understandably, fascinated. And across from her was her boyfriend?, lover? a blonde guy, also a bit larger than life with that same white stuff coming out of his erect, shaved penis. It's all so cartoonish and bright and plastic that the effect of the room is unsettling and funny at the same time. Chet and Ava were doubled over giggling. The older museum ladies in the room with us had eyes as wide as saucers. Everyone in the room, it seemed, wanted to hear what my kids thought of this art.
"What's that coming out of the boy's penis, daddy?" asked Chet. Ava too busy giggling to talk.
"What do you think it is?" his cowardly dad asked him.
"I think it's sperm," said my young genius.
"I think you're right."
The rest of the exhibit was mainly happy and light like this:
and the pizza at Grimaldi's was some of the best I've ever had.
