Living with a painful past

Weber talks about Peter Beard who died in April 2020, and she has been haunted by his memory since--her own memories, but also the way the world remembers him. To most, he was a charismatic, larger-than-life womanizer whose bold, subversive art offered a degree of cover for the way he lived. Beard was married, but he convinced her that he and his wife had an understanding that allowed him to do whatever he pleased, and she accepted this. The first time he bit her was in his apartment, with his daughter asleep in the next room. She felt some kind of value in enduring the pain without crying out. All of it hurt. She wanted it to stop. But she took pride in letting him do as he pleased. It went on and on. Finally, one day, she broke down. She ghosted him and decided to move to London, where she would continue her studies.