Postcard Fictions is set in one of those sleazy hotels where you could catch an STD by sitting on the bed. You could probably find more crabs in this motel than in a Jarvis St. whorehouse.
The book starts off with a way-too-long series of paintings of the motel and its surroundings. The first painting is of a girl (bare-ass naked) standing in front of a doorway. The next few paintings feature young girls in and around a pool (some of them look very underage—kinda creepy). The paintings then move into the hotel rooms, littered with naked women. Most of the women are rather beautiful, but not all of them. One must give Valko props for not going with the status quo’s aesthetic ideal of a woman.
Looking at Valko’s paintings, one really feels like a predatory pervert (which is the point). Valko’s paintings are about our voyeuristic natures, our obsession with watching from afar and glimpsing into other people’s lives. The book’s most interesting paintings turn the tables by showing the women pointing cameras at the viewer, making them the voyeur and us the ones being watched.
Michelle Berry’s accompanying story is typical Berry—quirky, oddball and anything but mainstream. Berry’s story places a teenage couple (Ruby and Michael) in said seedy motel. The story begins with Ruby trying to get Michael’s attention while he obsessively admires his new shorts, nicely ironed for him by his mother. Michael’s fascination with his mother’s ironing board handiwork clearly becomes Oedipal when he starts thinking about her nonstop—even during sex, which, in typical fashion, is his main concern.
Things really become eerie when Michael thinks of what could be either an urban legend or a rape fantasy.
He imagines a man walking by their motel room. The man slits the window screen, crawls into the room and ties Michael to a chair. Michael is forced to watch Ruby being raped. The man rifles through their belongings and splits.
Finishing off on the same eerie note, the story ends when the big fat slob of a hotel clerk brings over some booze, Ruby gets drunk out of her gourd and practically passes out while Michael leaves her there with the creep.
Coupled with Valko’s incredible paintings, Postcard Fictions feel real. So real you can almost smell the hot sex and sweaty underwear—insert your own fish joke here.
