FOURTH
HOUSE
Monica Stone
Photos by Eddy Pula
Nude women dance upon the walls. An oil slicked model smolders in a seedy basement filled with ghosts, smoke, and debauchery.
Descend into temptation in FOURTH HOUSE, a meditation on excess, inheritance, and memory.
I keep dreaming that I'm lost in a maze so vast that I forget it's a maze at all.
In the dream I see a single wiggling thread and I remember that it's what I've been following my entire life. I reach out a hand and it slips through my grasp like a current.
I used to lived in the house where these pictures were taken. Most of my memories from that time are just images matched with sensation. I remember velvety pink mixed with comfort and a heavy bobbing weightlessness. It may be my earliest memory of being aware of separation between myself and another person. I pressed my cheek into his chest and let it rock me in a steady rhythm.
The first time I remember being in this space I recall a moment of being lost in golden light streaming through the single, high-up window. Lingering smoke caught the beams and held them the way a cobweb gathers dust. As a child I don't have any memories of being there. It plays only in my imagination.
I imagine girls and cocaine and gambling.
I see disorienting mirrored surfaces that reflect the chrome-and-leather tangle of high chairs haphazardly arranged around a bar stocked with glittering bottles. An unattended cigarette trails smoke into the air.
Flanking the bar on one side, the dance floor is large enough for a single swaying pair. On the other side of the bar people lounge on leather couches and the long shag rug soaks up ash and booze.
Hundreds of beautiful nymphs gaze lazily outward from the intricately printed walls.
The day of the shoot I found a small sink built into the bar.
The spigot sputtered and shook before settling into a steady stream. I stood there watching and wondered if it was safe to drink.
The basement was flooded by the next day.