Jay Martel - Head of Clay

 

 

When I was 18 years old, my mother paid a sculptor to make a clay bust of my head. [audience laughter] Strangely enough, I don't remember thinking there was anything bizarre about the head. [audience laughter] But the head is definitely bizarre. It's big, it's slightly larger than life-size, and incredibly heavy. 40 pounds of solid brown clay. It also has these flowing Peter Frampton locks, [audience chuckles] and the smug expression that I wore through most of my teens. Imagine a bust of Alexander the Great looking really judgmental and really, really high. [audience laughter] To me, it's a reminder of everything unlikable about me at that age. Its mere existence is a monument to my youthful self-absorption and narcissism. I never liked the head. 

 

After it was made, I went off to college and then moved to New York to try to make it as a writer. My mother spent the next 25 years moving the head around from place to place through three different marriages, nine different houses and apartments. I never really thought about the head until a few years ago, my wife Sarah and I were visiting my mother and her third husband, my stepfather, Stuart. We're chatting amicably in the living room, and then I suddenly noticed that over there on the bureau where my head used to be, there was nothing there. I asked my mom about it. She said that Stuart found the head mildly disturbing, [audience laughter] and that she'd moved it into the garage, and that since I'm here, I might as well take it home with me, [audience laughter] conveniently forgetting that I never liked the head to begin with.

 

So, Sarah and I walk into the garage, and we look around, and there, next to the weed whacker, there's this big brown cardboard box marked neatly with black Sharpie on the side, "Jay's Head." [audience laughter] My mother's very organized. We open it up and look down at it. And sure enough, my head looking up at us, still 18, still smug. I turn to my wife and say, joking, "So, you want it?" She says a little too quickly, "No," [audience laughter] which is the right answer, right? I mean, why would I want to be in a relationship with someone who liked my creepy clay head? [audience laughter] But I still couldn't help but feel rejected. [audience laughter] There's a piece of me in my mother's garage that nobody wanted. It's like a mutant child in the basement. Anyway, we left the head in the garage. 

 

Then, two years after that, my mother and Stuart got divorced, and it was very acrimonious, and she moved out of the house that they shared. She called me afterwards and said, "You know, there are some things that I wasn't able to take with me in the move, and you should feel free to pick them up if you want them." And I said, "Like, what?" And she said, "Oh, those paintings that Aunt Lorna gave us?" "I don't need any more art, Mom." "There's also the big fan, your head, box of Christmas ornaments." [audience laughter] “Wait a second, you left my head in Stuart's garage?" [audience laughter] 

 

I instantly have these fantasies of Stuart channeling all his rage against my mother into the clay bust of me as an 18-year-old, like smashing it to smithereens with a nine iron or sliding it off his roof and watching it smash on the sidewalk, or covering it with female dog hormone and putting it out on the sidewalk. [audience laughter] Anyway, I figure that's it. I mean, that's the good news. I don't have to worry about the head anymore, except my stepfather didn't destroy it. In fact, thinking he was doing me a favor, one day he drives it in his car over to my dad's house and leaves it there.

 

So, I get this call late one night out of the blue, and said, "Hey, Jay, it's Dad. Stuart came by with your head earlier today, [audience laughter] and we're wondering when you were going to come by and pick it up." [audience laughter] And of course, at this point, I'm thinking, like, “God, this head is like my monkey's paw. It's like the head that won't go away.” And I tell him, I said, "Dad, I got a lot of work right now. I can't just drop everything and go up and pick up the head. Can you just hold onto it for a while?" And he says, "You know, your stepmother and I are really trying to reduce clutter in our home. [audience laughter] I think we both really appreciate it if you got it as soon as possible." 

 

Now, this rejection of the head hurts me more than any of the other head rejections. More than my wife scoffing at the mere idea of taking it home, or my mother leaving it in her ex-husband's garage, because my father left us when I was 10. As a result, his approval has always been something that I desired more than anyone else's, because it's been so elusive. And so, this really sticks with me. And I say, "Dad, this is going to sound completely ridiculous, but it hurts my feelings that you don't want my head." [audience laughter] And he says, "I know exactly what you mean." I think for a second, “This is great. We've reached this whole new level of father-son understanding.” And then he says, "There's a painting of me in the downstairs closet that nobody wants." [audience laughter] 

 

And I know immediately the painting he's talking about. It's a portrait that my grandmother had made of him when he was 20 years old. [audience laughter] She had it hanging over her fireplace until she died. “I don't want it, you know?” [audience laughter] And so, it seems like we've reached this standoff where neither one of us wants to take each other's crappy art. So, I say, "Look, Dad, do whatever you want with it. Okay, throw it away. I can't deal with it," and I hang up the phone, I go to sleep. I have a very fitful night's sleep, tossing and turning. I wake up the next morning, and I think, “I'm going to go get that head [audience laughter] and I'm going to drive it to my dad's and get it.” My rationale is, if somebody's going to throw this thing away, it should be me.

 

 

And so, I get up there. By the time I get up there, my dad's already put it in his basement. And to get into the basement in my dad's house, there's this little door in the back of the house. You have to crouch down to get through the door, and I do that. I go in there. I'm in the basement, and there's the head staring smugly at the water heater. I go over and I pick it up, and it's even heavier than I remember. It's like, it gets its gravity from Jupiter or something. It really weighs a lot. I'm carrying it across the basement, and I hunch down to get back through that little door, and part of my spine just goes, "Ping." It's just like my back just says, "Screw it. I hate you. Die." [audience laughter] [audience laughter] 

 

I stagger out of this door into the sunlight, blinded by pain, and smack my head. My actual head on this tree branch and I drop it. I drop the head. And for a moment, I think, "Thank God, I'm free, it's over." [audience laughter] But then, I look down and the head is perfectly intact. [audience laughter] I don't know, it's made of kryptonite or something. Staring up at me with that smirk. It's like, it's saying to me, "You're old, dude." [audience laughter] So, I pick it up and I put it in the car. My first impulse is to go straight to the nearest dumpster or garbage can and throw it away. But no, there's just something about imagining the head piled under these dirty diapers, and coffee filters, and banana peels. 

 

I mean, it is still me as an 18-year-old, I got to figure out what to do with it. So, I take it home, and I walk in the house, and I put it on the kitchen counter, and I hear this low, unearthly growling. [growling sound] [audience laughter] I look down and my dog, Walter, [audience laughter] is glaring at the head, all the hair on his back standing on end. [audience laughter] I've never heard a noise like this. It's like that scene in The Omen when the animals all go crazy on the devil child. And then, my wife walks in, she goes, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" I say, "Throwing it away, I guess." She goes, "Okay," and walks out. I want her to say, "No, don't throw that away. That's a valuable family treasure. That's a part of your history." I am so desperate for one person to like my head, which is crazy, because I don't like it and it's me. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I call my mom. If I can figure out why the head was made in the first place, I can figure out what to do with it now. So, I call my mom and I ask her. And she says, "Well, you were leaving home, and I was surprised how much that upset me. After your dad left, you were my anchor. You were the only person I could count on. I thought that maybe having a piece of you would help me get through that time. And it did. At some point, I just didn't need it anymore." And then, she adds, "It's very heavy." [audience laughter] 

 

So, what I got from this, is that the head is the product of a really difficult time in my family's life. My mother basically dealt with my father leaving by creating a cult of personality with me as the personality and her as the cult. [audience laughter] Finally, she'd been able to leave, which is a good thing. I mean, cults are very hard to leave. My wife and my dad had never been part of the cult, which is also a really good thing. Although, to be honest, I wish my dad had spent a couple years at the ashram. [audience laughter] 

 

I don't think I really understood the head fully, though, until a few months after that call when our daughter Cleo was born. I realized when I held her that I'd started my own cult, basically, it was happening to me. I heedlessly and recklessly loved this individual for no other reason than that she was alive. And as for the head, I found a place for it in my garage between some fertilizer and a bag of dead batteries. I think I've finally come to accept my place in a long chain of children destined to hold on to crappy art commissioned by their parents. [audience laughter] Cleo's going to have it a lot easier, though. We're going to keep her head digital. [audience laughter] Thanks.