ABSTRACT
In 1971, Joe Brainard went to Bolinas, California, for over a month to experience life on the West Coast. Scare quotes are a common element of Brainard's style, and they function in a variety of ways. They suggest that such words as final and available are chosen with particular care, but they also distance Brainard from them. Available is most often used today to indicate ready access, as when the hotel clerk says, "your room is available". It also suggests usability, as in "Try all the means available to keep him alive". It has a romantic and sexual meaning as in "He's an available bachelor", and Brainard principally is referring to being open to sex with other men. To be available requires lying around waiting to be used, and in Bolinas Journal Brainard does a lot of lying around. Carter Ratcliff calls the posture "an angular hieroglyph" and remarks on Brainard's ability to "register the sinewy tension of a limb".
