Salon.com > Pegi Taylor

Out of the frying pan, into group therapy

Thu, 24 Jan 2002 20:00:00 +0000

Bert, a wide-hipped man in his 40s, perches on a stool to the left of a white marker board. He writes down numbers as men in the room call them out. When the math is done, participants in the tally -- 16 sex offenders who range in age from their 20s to 60s -- learn that, all together, they have had 214 victims.

Primarily pedophiles, rapists and perpetrators of incest, the men sit in a nondescript office space in a small Wisconsin town -- across a river, between a feed mill and a car dealership. They meet every Saturday afternoon with Joe Henger, a psychotherapist who facilitates therapy for sex offenders at confidential sites around the state.

These are Henger's highest-risk clients. Most have spent many years in prison, and their parole agents will check to see whether they attended this mandatory weekly session. They all face a possible lifetime of therapy, as well as constant, and sometimes humiliating, surveillance in their communities -- but they are considered lucky. They have, as Henger says, "ducked the bullet" of indefinite civil commitment, a means by which courts in Wisconsin and 15 other states can detain prison inmates identified as violent sex offenders -- even if they have served their sentences.

Not enough nuts?

Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:00:00 +0000

Al Reichwaldt thanks his lucky stars that he was able to attend the seventh annual Cracker Jack Collectors Association Convention in Milwaukee June 21-23.

Just over a year earlier, Reichwaldt, then 61 and a 40-year factory worker, was driving north from Milwaukee to his mobile home, two hours away in the village of St. Nazianz. Suddenly the muggy day turned strangely chilly. He'd heard from the postmaster that a bad storm was coming, and when he got home, he went to watch the Weather Channel with a neighbor who lives 50 feet west of him. It was then that the sky went pitch black and baseball-size hail started to pelt the trailer. Reichwaldt was standing 7 feet away from a window when the pane crashed inward. The bathroom sink from his mobile home nearby had slammed through the glass. "Tank Gods I had on my glasses," says Reichwaldt, who grew up on a Wisconsin farm speaking German until first grade. An ambulance rushed him and other park residents to a hospital, where he received 113 stitches.

It’s a sticky business

Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:00:00 +0000

Cracker Jack associate product manager Don Helms, who spoke at the seventh annual Cracker Jack Collectors Association Convention in June, appeared a little pooped after only four months on the brand for Frito-Lay.

A few minutes into his presentation, everyone started to understand why. Although 96 percent of adults in America, when asked "Can you name a brand of caramel popcorn?" will reply "Cracker Jack," only 6 percent of kids will. According to Helms, who has run lots of focus groups, kids see Sailor Jack on the box and think, "Who's this old dude in a weird outfit?"

As if resuscitating C.J.'s icon trademark status isn't enough of a challenge, Helms must compete with constant additions to the "sweet popcorn" segment of the snack market, like microwaveable caramel-flavored popcorn -- and this segment itself is declining. Cracker Jack and Doritos are both part of the Frito-Lay family of products, but Doritos outsells C.J. 2-to-1.

Of course, a bag of Doritos doesn't have a prize in it. Helms came to the brand during the Pokémon bust. "We missed the boat on Pokémon," he admits. Helms wants to target the toys more toward 10-year-olds than 6-year-olds. He's got livelier paper prizes in the works, not just more stickers and tattoos, and continues developing 3-D toys for larger packages and special promotions.

The art of disappearing

Wed, 24 Jan 2001 20:00:00 +0000

Kenny Hill arrived in Chauvin, La., stayed 12 years and then disappeared in January 2000. He didn't organize a rummage sale or pack up a U-Haul; he abandoned his personal possessions in his sudden flight. Above the kitchen sink he painted a sign in red: "HELL IS HERE, WELCOME."

Few would have paid any attention to his vanishing act had Hill not left something behind. On the banks of Bayou Petit Caillou, dotted with shrimp boats, more than 100 brightly painted sculptures mark Hill's stay in Chauvin (pronounced show-van, population 3,400). Many of the pieces are made from cement and wire mesh, though the most prominent, a 45-foot-tall lighthouse, is composed of 7,000 bricks. Figures in relief stud the outside: musicians, cowboys, soldiers, angels, God and Hill himself.

Before Chauvin, Hill worked as a bricklayer in a town 60 miles west. After leaving his three children and the woman he married at 20 (when she was 14), he rented some property on the bayou in Chauvin for $250 a year in 1988. He lived in a tent while he did bricklaying jobs and built himself a small cottage. Then in 1990, without explanation, he started making religious scenes beside the house. Like many other self-taught or "outsider" artists, he was a resourceful scavenger, lifting sand, cement and bricks from nearby work sites. A neighbor welded the underlying metal armature for some of the sculptures.

Nowhere to hide

Wed, 29 Nov 2000 20:37:00 +0000

As a curious female and an art model, whenever the opportunity arises, I ask male models if they've ever had an erection while posing. Most have at least one story to tell -- though usually not about themselves.

One of the most knowledgeable people I ever talked to about the subject was Robert Speller. Speller probably hires more models than anyone else in New York as modeling coordinator at the New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Design. He started modeling in the 1960s and has seen it all: a father and son who modeled together; a couple who would pose as Adam and Eve with a live snake. In the late 1970s he set up modeling engagements for Madonna.

I asked Speller what he thought about male models having erections and he replied, "Well, men are vulnerable to the air. All male genitals change shape. There are rustlings in all of us, you know."

Once, Speller received a complaint that a model had ejaculated during a pose. Speller considered the model one of his best and called him to ask him what had happened. The fellow explained he'd been reclining with a spotlight shining right on his crotch. He continued, "Let's just say I might have been glistening."

Bone dry

Mon, 28 Aug 2000 19:00:00 +0000

I'm sitting in Susan Wallace's Baylor University lab, where human skulls and bones decorate counters, and flesh-eating insects adorn glass cases. It's mid-September 1999, and I have traveled to Waco, Texas, from Milwaukee so she can show me examples of how to properly rid skeletons of their flesh. To demonstrate, Wallace lifts a meaty red pig spine out of a glass box. Fat maggots, hard at work, cover the spine. Wallace, who isn't wearing gloves, flicks the maggots off the spine using a dental probe. She then reaches over to hand me a lower human jaw with one gold molar. The 50-year-old forensic anthropologist doesn't even pause as she does all this, enabling us to continue talking about our common passion -- donating our skeletons for anatomical study -- without so much as skipping a syllable.

You may be thinking all we'd need to do is contact the closest medical school. This isn't the case. Although many people donate their bodies each year to science, it is not easy to salvage their skeletons for research purposes. As Roger Haushalter, anatomical curator of the Medical College of Wisconsin, explained to me, bodies donated to science have the "flesh cemented to the bone in the embalming process." If a gross anatomy lab wanted a skeleton, it would have to neutralize the formaldehyde, use bugs or chemicals to clean the flesh away and carefully wire the bones back together again. Even then, the bones, degraded by formaldehyde, would be inferior specimens. This is why most cadavers end up being cremated.

Artist at work

Mon, 10 Jul 2000 19:00:00 +0000

On a May morning in 1994, I drove to a home on the edge of Lake Michigan to model privately in the nude for Walter. I'd met him once. I posed for a class he took at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Elderly but standing erect with aristocratic bearing, he wore an ascot and spoke with a strong German accent. When Walter came up to ask for my phone number, I didn't think twice about writing it down for him. He seemed a harmless widower. A few days later, he called. I recognized him immediately by his accent. We settled on a three-hour session two weeks later starting at 11 a.m.

I parked my car on the gravel drive of his wooded grounds and rang the bell. Walter opened the door, happy to see me. Inside, the house had lots of bleached wood and a fireplace of black and white marble. Richly framed landscapes hung on the walls. On numerous small end tables sat vases, silk flower arrangements, antique snuff boxes and framed photographs. The curtains and some of the chair coverings had a pattern of gold cherubs.

Walter wanted to work in the living room. He'd closed the drapes so we wouldn't shock anyone who might stroll by. I usually pose in unadorned quarters and looked forward to modeling in a space with so much visual stimulation. I changed in a powder room conveniently located right off the living room.

Naked to the world

Fri, 24 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

I started nude art modeling while pregnant at the age of 26.

Three months from giving birth, I had attended an art opening and noticed a cluster of tiny pen-and-ink nudes. I wanted a picture of me, too. I approached the local artist, who eagerly invited me to sit. In her cozy home studio, she introduced me to the art of modeling.

My husband moved out 10 years later. I had dated him since high school. We had gone to college together, opened and managed a bookstore together, raised our daughter together. When he left, it was as though he had taken all the mirrors in the house with him. I started to pose regularly for art classes. I thought that the indisputable black lines of the students would prove my existence: I am drawn, therefore I am.

Even today, with my divorce and identity crisis well behind me, I continue to model occasionally for schools and art groups. I think of it as an exercise in self-awareness. Besides, it's my way to participate in the making of art.