Photo: Jay Muhlin

Did I just see you trading with another Greenmarket guy?
Yes, I exchanged apples for beets.

Have you ever bartered your way up to something more valuable, like a crate of apples for a new bicycle?
[Laughs] Um, no. They’re not really my apples per se, so I can’t just go willy-nilly.

Are you a full-time apple man?
No, I’m a performer. Right now I’m doing some great performance research with a collaborator—like, research in the form of performance.

Okay…I’m picturing historical reenactments.
Well, I’m trying to reproduce a choreography that I created during improvisation.

Is it mostly movement-based?
There’s text, too, which comes from a spam e-mail.

About penis enlargement?
No. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s one of those…pleading letters.

Oh! Nigerian scam artists!
Yeah. And there’s dance theater and silent acting. I suppose you could call it mime. I also participate regularly in Draw-a-thon Theater.

Do you pose?
Yes. I call it performance-art-modeling: Imagine performance art and art modeling, if you smashed ’em up and mixed ’em in a bowl.

In the buff?
Often. It’s been a really great experience. I can do my weird-ass performance art and get paid for it.

What do you say to people who are perplexed by what you do?
You don’t say, you show. A picture is worth a thousand words and a performance is worth a million.

More thoughts from Gregory

“Beardsmanship is only a matter of willpower. I saw this bearded lady the other day and I was like, Daaamn, think about the willpower it’s gotta take for her to grow that beard!”

“I was at Cha Cha’s House of Ill Repute and there was a banjo player singing a song about busking and how it’s like prostitution. I shouted out, ‘That’s why they call it the world’s second-oldest profession!’ and someone added, ‘I thought that was politics!’ ”

“There’s so much waste in this country, it’s horrifying. There’s this great Far Side cartoon with a Native American elder sitting in a circle of youngsters. He’saying, ‘This is the only part of the buffalo we do not use,’ and he’s holding up this weird fallopian tube sort of plumbing I-don’t-know-what. At the market, we make use of the waste: All the apples that are soft at the end of the day we press into cider or put into pies.”

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