THE HUNGRY ARTIST
Chapter One:
AS A KID I WAS A COMPULSIVE DRAWER. I would declare war on every blank area left on notebooks, desks, chalk-boards and school walls. My teachers never appreciated this, but I did win recognition among the other kids, including girls. I was independent and pretty much a loner. I rarely communicated verbally, but I never failed to communicate by using my favorite language: images.
My childhood, from outside appearances, was practically a model example of the establishment family with its Norman Rockwell semblance in small-town USA. But it was merely an appearance. My mother was an alcoholic and my father was a “fuck off” dad--as I described him years later. Without the words to describe it, the feelings that my parents had failed me were troubling. They were not cut from the mold it takes to properly perform the duties given to parenthood.
Luckily for me, it was my grandparents who practically raised me, instilling in me all the values I retain to this day. But even though my grandparents offered material and emotional support, I felt abandoned. It was a pain that was muted and sometimes battered into submission. But it was more than that: I sensed that there was something else---a much more disturbing truth that lay at the core of the adult world. Being much too young, it remained a frustrated inarticulate feeling. But there was something clearly evident in the drawings I did.
By the age of eight, whatever I had lodged in the back of my mind came forward in a blurry approximation in art. It was art that rescued me. Many of the drawings had an underlying dark tone. The drawings gave my incoherent inner world some form of expression and substance, however crudely rendered. Grown-ups had a profound effect on my artistic development, but not in a way they would have approved. I began to observe and to judge people, making evaluations about their nature and characters. This, too, found its way in my drawings. One could see from the progression of drawings a groping and developing maturity. It was a discovery and odyssey of self.
Observing one of my drawings, a teacher asked me: “What is the matter Victor?”
I answered: “What is the matter with everybody else?”
My drawings were always funny, but they also communicated increasingly disturbing scenarios. Many of the drawings portrayed crazed adults expressing myopic personalities in morally compromised positions. By now, my artistic talent had made quite an impression at home and school. I was wont to disrupt the class by passing from desk to desk a sketchpad in which I drew bizarre caricatures of the teachers. Boys stifled their laughter and girls tittered during class as the caricature drawings were clandestinely passed around under desks.
My talent for drawing, my attention to detail, and above all, my grotesque sense of humor were obvious in the drawings. The teachers were sitting ducks for my scorching satire. Seeing them as deeply flawed, I had little respect for any of them. And as subjects for my drawings, they were fittingly portrayed as I saw them. A fascination with deformities was rife throughout my drawings and each deformity was intended to convey a spiritual malady.
“Why don’t you draw real people?’ a teacher asked. Her voice was a mixture of inquisitiveness and frightened irritation.
“They are real people’, I answered.
“This is how you see people?” she persisted.
“How am I supposed to draw them—how I don’t see them?”
***
At the age of thirteen I became a make-out artist. I was well aware of the favorable response my art curried from the opposite sex. I decided to take advantage. In turn, girls exploited me. One of those girls was Stephanie. She was the school cutie.
“You would like to see it, wouldn’t you?” she asked matter-of-factly one day in class. “Excuse me?” I gulped, having an idea that the question had a sexual overture to it.
Stephanie was a year older than me. She was a dark haired beauty who filled out well before her time, and this fact was not lost on her. She had all the makings of the town’s soon-to-be slut. She exploited her good looks, bending all the local boys to her will. Even men ten years her senior were taken by her and she was happy to oblige them on occasion.
Stephanie loathed most of the other boys in my class, but she liked me and my rebellious ways. In exchange for a drawing, Stephanie promised to show me her private parts. “You can look but you can’t touch,” she admonished this fervent artist. Being a highly curious young man, I agreed to the conditions.
The clandestine exchange took place in a clearing in the woods where this excited youth caught an eye-full of her “private parts.” Stephanie held her dress up around her waist, her fingers pulling her panties to the side. She smiled, alternatively looking at me and herself. My expression flushed red and I swallowed hard.
“Let me touch it,” I pleaded, my voice almost cracking. “No, just look,” came the flat response. Feasting my eyes upon the coveted goods, my youthful hunger peaked and I wanted to plunge. But the Garden of Eden was for viewing only and no tasting of the fruit was permitted.
“Please, let me touch it,” I beseeched her once again, a look of lust and irritation flushing across my face. “No, I said.” Her voice had the punch of finality to it. “If you ask me again, the show will be over.”
Before leaving, I asked Stephanie a single question: Why me? She answered: “Because you can draw.”
The joys of being a boy artist achieved only minimal satisfaction.
When I turned sixteen, a conscious awareness of the adult world came into sharper focus: my overall impression of adults was that they were bogus liars and hypocrites, saying not what they thought, but rather what they believed would serve some particular purpose, some hidden agenda. Everybody came armed with two faces. It seemed to me that the world thrived on bullshit, hypocrisy and lies. I noted a desperate whoring after status, an irrational and pathetic desire to “beat the Jones” followed up by saccharine sentimentality by mealy-mouthed charlatans—and all of it showcased to the people they themselves loathed. Lies, backstabbing, deception, two-faces, malice and hypocrisy was the currency of exchange in the adult world.
I took a profound disliking to most people I came across. I could sense the spiritual emptiness and viciousness within them. I wanted to like and admire people but I rarely came across anyone who was worthy of it. The only noted exceptions were my grandparents.
Christmas brought distant relatives and immediate family together at the Pross household. For me, people were bad enough on their own, but it became worse when they assembled together under the same roof. It was on such occasions that fully demonstrated the insanity and phoniness of these people. I would scan the large living room absorbing the adults sitting on the couches and chairs, each one looking anxious and distant. They were tipsy on day-long benders of Bloody Caesars, making efforts to appear jovial. To lighten the mood, somebody put a dance song on. I watched with keen interest as glasses were overturned by dancing feet and the coffee table was moved out of the way. A frenzy of stimulation bubbled in the room and everyone’s voice rose imperceptibly in pitch.
There was a constant display of smiley backslapping and “Merry Christmases” by people who maligned one another the moment backs were turned. There was an unvarying spectacle of petty bickering over trivia and the sudden surfacing of years-long resentments best forgotten. All the forms of human flaws and ugliness to be found in the world---a world which insists on being imperfect—were on display before the eyes of the juvenile artist.
Each relative represented an unsavory social stereotype or archetype of one kind or another. They were caricatures. From the town’s busy body gossip-mongering to the dour spinster to the town’s fast-talking used car salesman to every other stereotype imaginable, it was all here. Sitting near the Christmas tree, I was observing my Uncle Bernard—better known by his nickname “Bernie.” He was the jet-set wannabe playboy type. He sported a dyed perm that looked as if had come straight off a Styrofoam head from 1973. Assuming himself a lady-killer, he actually had all the charm of a toupee made of straw dipped in black ink. With each attempt at a pickup he was invariably shot down. “Lesbian!” he would bellow at anyone who rejected him. He was a caricature.
Sitting next to Bernie, I turned my attention to my mother, Terry. She was immersed in conversation, laughing with a forced hilarity, her drink spilling over. There was something that troubled me about my mother. She was a woman who was so utterly self-absorbed, preoccupied with what others thought. My mother’s sense of personal value was crucially dependent on the image of herself as a glamorous beauty. At the age of thirty-eight, she was wont to ask for reassurances of her looks. “Do you think I have nice legs? I use to be a Go-Go dance, you know?” and “When was the last time you saw a woman as gorgeous as me—and at my age?” With each passing year she began to perceive every wrinkle on her face as a metaphysical menace. Taking aging as a threat to her identity, she plunged into a series of sexual relationships with men fifteen years her junior demanding fresh admiration to assuage her hollowness. She, too, was a caricature.
My mother’s constant need for validation annoyed me. I was nevertheless fascinated with human behavior. I believed it helped my art. What I perceived in my mother was a definite narcissism, only I didn’t have the word for it at the age of sixteen. Spurred by mother’s conceit, I decided to try an experiment. I played upon her vanity by offering her a lavish compliment, just to see her reaction. My motive wasn’t flattery for flattery’s sake. It was a psychological experiment.
I tapped my mother on the shoulder, interrupting her conversation.
“Mom?”
My mother turned to me, clearly annoyed, her expression a fusion of wonder and irritation.
“Victor dear, can’t you see I’m talking to this nice gentleman?”
“But mom, I need to tell you something.”
“Yes, yes, what is it?”
“I just wanted to say that…you look just like Marilyn Monroe.”
My mother took a deep intake of breathe. She clapped her hands in appreciation and snuggled her darling son into her arms. “Did you hear that?” she demanded of the guests. The room fell to a hushed silence. “What is it, Terry?” asked a guest. “My boy said I look like Marilyn Monroe. That’s my boy! Oh, he knows a good looking chick when he sees one!” My mother then let out an exuberant laugh, which itself was enough to draw attention. After a few more brandy-laced eggnogs, my mother became more of an embarrassment. She made damn well sure to tell new arrivals at the party what her son had said about her. It was a compliment that was warmly recalled by her for years to come. I had always regretted this causal flattery.
My mother was bad enough, but I loathed my mother’s younger sister, Joan, with a greater intensity. There she was off in a darkened corner of the room with a drink in hand, her cigarette clutched between two fingers, ash dropping off on the carpeted floor, struggling to meet her end of the conversation with the other guests. She never said anything of interest and her captive audience tried to find a polite excuse to escape. Joan irritated people with her authoritarian commentary about religion and astronomy. She was never short of offering up an insipid platitude on either subject. With her pink lipstick and pine needled mascara, she was a middle age hippie in an Acquires age offering “love” and “God” as the panacea for all human woes. She had a penchant for summing people up by their astrological sighs: “What sign are you, sweetie? A Virgo? Oh, that won’t do! We’ll never get along! My ex-husband was a Virgo.” All of this was followed up by a lecture in metaphysics and cosmology. She was caricature.
Being an astute young man, I decided to directly challenge Joan’s lunar dissertations. I simply asked: “How do you know this?”
“How do I know what?” Joan asked.
“How do you know that astrology is true?”
“Well, you don’t know that it isn’t,” Joan retorted. She had a self-congratulatory that made you want to wipe the smirk off with a smack or eraser.
“Well, I do know that it isn’t true. I don’t believe in it. You say that it is true, and so you carry the burden of proof.”
“Ah, yes, the know-it-all teenage stage!”
“Who said I ‘knew-it-all’—I told you what I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me how you supposedly know?”
Joan laughed and patted me on the back and turned on her heels to flee into a pocket of people. In a manner as persistent as a drill cutting through stone, I didn’t give up my demand for reasons. “You didn’t answer my question, Joan,” I protested, patting her on the back. Pushed too far by my challenges, Joan finally lost her temper. “Why can’t you just accept some things without asking a lot of stupid questions?” Joan then turned to her indifferent sister with a pleading mask. “Terry, seriously, why does he do that?”
It was my grandfather, Vic, who turned to Joan, and with his blithely resolute air, said: “For Christ sake, he knows a fake when he sees one. It’s obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I beamed at my grandfather as he sat his lazy boy chair, his leg crossed over the other in a manner of a Victorian scholar. The old man was my hero.
Grandfather Vic was an autonomous man who wasn’t caught up in the obsession for small-town conventionality and the hybrid hub over tradition, religion and status. He was a benevolent and rational man---a sharp contrast to the community standard. He held strong convictions in hard work and ability. It was my grandfather who always encouraged me in my raw drawing abilities.
Observing my mania for drawing, my granddad decided to have a heart-to-heart chat with me. He entered my room as I sat at my desk, which was littered with sketchpads of drawings and half-ass watercolors.
Granddad picked up a sketch pad, flipping through it. “You have a real talent there, my boy,” he said. A firm hand rested on my shoulder. “It would be a shame if that went to waste”
I smiled and lowered my head.
“There are a lot of people who always dump on me for drawing, granddaddy.”
“Who dumps on you, son?”
“Other kids…Joan.”
He smiled. “When it comes to insults, consider the source---and also try to consider what you think may be their motivation.”
“The motivation isn’t good.”
My granddad put an encouraging arm around me, playfully mussing up my hair.
He pulled up a nearby chair and sat down next to me.
“Now listen to me,” he said with a pinch of gravity, “you have a talent, son—a very evident and rare talent, but you can’t expect it to do all the work for you. You have to hone and develop that talent. If you want to be an artist, it takes practice, practice, practice. It’s not enough to have talent. You need to have a hunger. You understand?”
“I need to be a hungry artist?”
“I’m serious, son.”
“I know.”
“Good. That’s right, a hungry artist.”
“I am. It’s like a compulsion. I feel so good when I’m drawing. It lifts me up. I suppose that is a hunger.”
I paused for a moment. My grandfather looked at me, his clear blue eyes beaming. His smile conveyed immense admiration…and hope. “I love you, granddad.”
My grandfather funded my hobby. He supplied me with tons of art supplies, making suggestions on objects and people that might make for good practice. He was never pushy; it was always welcomed encouragement by me. I practiced everyday. My grandfather’s words of encouragement reached me. I practiced for two hours---sometimes four hours---each day.
Feeling my skills considerably improved, it was shortly thereafter that I rendered Joan in caricature. My talent had improved dramatically with much practice and that made the caricature all the more piercing. At the next family gathering, I decided to present it to her. “Here, take a look,” I said, holding up the drawing to her and the crowed. In the drawing, Joan’s head was lodged in outer space with stars surrounding her dopey looking face. Watching her reaction to the finished work was priceless. She looked bugged-eyed. I felt that the sheer ridiculousness of the drawing was enough to modify the flakey behavior so clearly evident, but nothing changed. Joan continued to postulate about the supernatural that night, almost as if to defy my caricature.
Her husband, Kevin Weber, felt obliged to pipe in his own one cent’s worth. He demanded to bring the issues “down to earth” and attempted to purge his wife’s discussions of all that “philosophical mumbo-jumbo.” He typically assumed the pose of an authority on many different issues. He was just as much a pontificating windbag as his space-cadet wife.
Kevin Weber was the town’s slickly-dressed, fast talking used car salesman. He was usually decked out in a shiny gray suit. He was a small-town used car salesman type of caricature, the type that becomes enamored with Amway schemes when current income is not enough. He was a total caricature---right from the tip of his shiny black cowboy boots to the tip of his glorious mullet haircut.
Kevin Weber, therefore, was my next target.
At the next family gathering, I presented a drawing to him. “Here,” I said casually, “take a gander, man.” The drawing in hand, Weber’s eyes looked as though they were about to fracture. Of course I depicted him in caricature: his inflated head was that of a hot air balloon, his body a weaved-basket. It seemed as if time became suspended and all motion had stopped. “Well?” I said, impatient for a response. He looked up from the drawing with heavy hooded eyes, his face reflecting a thinly veiled anger that looked like a prelude to a man about to commit murder. He leaned into me and snarled in a hushed tone: “You know, you come across as a smart guy, but you ain’t any better than anybody else. So don’t forget that, kiddo. Okay?”
I moved forward, looking Kevin Weber straight in the eye. “You don’t expect me to take you seriously while you sport that fucking mullet, do you?”
Chapter two:
I FELL INTO A BAND OF LOCAL MISFITS. The McConnell brothers---respectfully Blake, Blaire and Barry—were an extended family of all brothers that also included Bill, Brian, Bruce and Brent. The grand total in the McConnell family was seven boys. I was astonished to behold such a large family. “The next letter in the alphabet is C,” I quipped to Barry’s parents, taking note of the fact that each boy’s name began with the letter B. “Have you heard of birth control?” Of course my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek, but Mr. and Mrs. McConnell were deeply offended as they were stringent Catholics. Barry thought the whole thing was utterly hilarious. “You kill me, man!” Barry said, slapping me on the back. Mr. and Mrs. McConnell didn’t know what to make of me. They feared me because of my weird-ass art. I also took to riding a motorcycle and this, according to them, conveyed a negative image.
Of all the McConnell brothers, I was blown away by Barry’s insanely inspired comedy. One time, I had a seltzer bottle at hand and was stricken with a wicked whim and squirted Barry in the face. As if on cue, Barry immediately dropped to the floor clapping his hands together yelping like a seal. It was uproarious. I was astonished at Barry’s spontaneous zaniness and his impressive take of a seal. Barry McConnell was hilarious and I took to him immediately. All the McConnell brothers proved to be certifiable lunatics looking for trouble and fun. But it was Barry and me who were not to be outmatched by the others. “You guys are crazy,” Blake said, the youngest of the McConnell clan, in response to when he thought Barry and I pushed the envelope too far on some prank.
The McConnell brothers and I hung around store fronts like the Bowery boys sipping Cokes and snacking on Cracker Jacks. There we were, young louts hanging around on the streets arrogantly popping gum, our running shoe laces carelessly tied and jeans tattered. As a group of restless teens, we agreed that life is all far too tedious for unruly punks inclined to have fun and disrupt the social order. Our pranks bonded us. We were each other’s best friend, but friendship had to be demonstrated. A test of true friendship was measured by letting a guy take a swig from your bottle without wiping it off afterwards.
“Hey, don’t hog it all, Pross!” Barry complained after entrusting me with his Coke. I gulped the drink and Barry snatched it from my hand.
“Hey, I’ll let you have a sip from mine one day, McConnell,” I complained, wiping my mouth off. “Don’t flip out.”
Addressing a guy by his last name meant you respected him; it was a form of male bonding to call him by his sir name. Slighting a friend was merely a way of masking the esteem you felt. “Hey, Pross,” you nigger lipped my Coke,” Barry said, examining the bottle as if searching for prints.
The insults rolled out as if on cue:
“Eat my short, McConnell.”
“Eat my mother, tool.”
“I will. I had to take a number.”
The McConnell brothers were forced to attend church. I tagged along for the hell of it. I was enormously inspired by the solemn atmosphere of the services, insofar as it served as a foil for my devilishness. But it wasn’t just that: I was perplexed by the by the referential attitude that this primitive superstition elicited. The McConnell brothers, especially Barry, simply hated the whole process. A religion that supposedly exalted love and joy was, in practice, a set of dreary duties and a source of agonized idiocy.
Seeking relief from the boredom, Barry and I would laugh ourselves silly during the actual services. What we found hilarious was the rigid solemnity of the rituals and the vacant expression from people who looked as if they had just been chloroformed. “These assholes look as if they wished they were somewhere else and are called upon only by duty,” Barry said, making what I thought was an perceptive observation.
Seeking relief from boredom, Barry and I would laugh ourselves silly during the actual services. What he found hilarious was the rigid solemnity of the rituals and the vacant expressions from people who looked as if they had just been chloroformed. Other congregation members looked as if they wished they were somewhere else and were called upon only by duty.
Barry’s restless nature came to full force. Born with an uncanny ability for mimicry, Barry gave way to imitating the minister’s speaking manner with an eerie accuracy that was both amazing and hilarious. He could make me laugh with a simple comical remark, a subtitle nuance in the voice or facial expression. My amusement would inspire Barry to indulge further in his antics. Shortly, I would try to match Barry’s comic skills with my own brand of humor: I drew funny pictorials of the congregation and the minister. “Here, take a look,” I said, dropping the drawing in Barry’s lap. In the drawing, the congregation resembled a flock of sheep and the minister was decked out in cherry lingerie. Barry laughed, and this would get us all laughing. We nearly collapsed from repressed hysterics, causing the blackest of gazes from the congregation. Barry was not to be bested by me in the contest of being a holy disruption. On one occasion, when the preacher was delivering a particularly impassioned brim-stone-and-fire sermon, Barry suddenly rose from his seat and addressed the pew, his facial expression a deadly sober plate: “Please, everybody----don’t drink the Kool-Aid!”
We were never asked allowed to that church again.
**
Barry exhibited a definite gift for humor. He seemed to have an endless supply of one-liners. He executed, with perfect timing, along with an astute ability for characterizations, side-splitting imitations and jokes. Nobody knew what to expect from Barry. He would stroll up to a few friends, with me on the sidelines watching, and with a malicious grin on his face Barry would lay on an impression of some town clown to riotous results. Or else he would flatten you out with some sick little gem: “These kids go to Billy’s home,” Barry said with a stone face,” and they ask Billy’s mom, ‘can Billy come out and play baseball?’ And the mom looks at the kid in a weird way. ‘Why, you know he has no arms and legs.’ And the kid says, ‘That’s okay, we just wanna use him as home plate.’” With the delivery of the sick little punch line, we are convulsed with laughter.
Barry was a small guy who had a gentle smile, soft blue eyes and dirty blonde hair. He didn’t strike one as somebody who had an acid wit that could burn through flesh and bone. He was the Hiroshima of dark humor. Nobody was safe from whatever irked or amused him. For instance, Barry would make fun of the local teen girls and their ways: “I was on a date with this girl who was a complete air-head. She only listens to pink bubble gum music. ‘I love music,’ she says, ‘any kind of music.’ Well, that’s great, chicken head! So why don’t you listen to Pink Floyd, damn it, instead of that pink Quaalude-addicted wedding singer shit that typifies this chancre sore obsession people have with banality, huh? Sorry to burst your power-of-positivity bubble there, little darling. But your taste in music sucks! I would love to take all these generic lame pop twats to the dark side of the moon!” Bam! We are doubled over with laughter. Barry polished off the routine by mimicking a dull-witted fifteen-year-old: “Like, if you can’t dance to it, then like, I don’t see how it can be called good music. Like hello?” Barry would then dance around in a fit of comic extension, still imitating the insipid teen: “La, la, la! I’m a teen dimwit! I’m a dimwit! Don’t hurt my little head with fancy lyrics and complicated compositions!’
“Did you at least fuck her, man?” asked one guy, a mix of envy and challenge in his voice. Barry strolled on over to the guy with casual nonchalance—which was hilarious by itself—and looked the guy straight in the eye: “Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact,” Barry deadpanned. “Don’t worry. You’ll get laid one day. Really you will. You can find solace in the fact that one day—one very special coming-of-age day---some whore will be willing to give you a knob shine. So make sure you can afford to pay her ten bucks. Maybe one day you won’t have to pay for it. Yeah, maybe one fine day a girl will suck your flesh flute just because she wants to. She’ll suck it as if it were a chocolate cone during a heat wave with no central air-conditioning.” Of course, Barry’s posed counter tough-talk had his challenger and me in stitches.
My friendship with Barry came to resemble the Siamese twins, but we were a troubling double act. We would skip school to see movies, slipping in the backdoor. Sometimes we were guilty of more serious transgressions against the social order. These transgressions included vandalism and shoplifting. There was one occasion when we were brought home in a police car to the gaping stares of the neighbors. But our penchant for trouble-making remained undaunted. My grandmother was very disappointed in me. “What is the matter with you? What would your grandfather say if he saw this?” I didn’t have an answer, and the thought of my grandfather being displeased with me filled me with a muted guilt.
My teenage years were a period of the “angry rebel.” My grandfather had passed away and I felt myself without a moral compass or a source of inspiration. Still, I attempted to be an authentic person in a bogus culture of trivial pursuits. I lived hermetically sealed within my mind, for the most part, incased in my own unique and alternative universe of interests. Drawing remained my constant companion. The other was my motorcycle---which I would sometimes use to let out aggression as I roared up and down a neighborhood street late at night, disrupting the peace and quiet of a dead-end nothing town.
I was a brash young man who demonstrated precious little respect and invariably said what I thought. I shocked others with a bold braggadocio and devastating sarcasm. I enjoyed engaging anyone in inflammatory subjects, such as politics and religion, and I felt justified in going for the jugular in the heat of debate. Joan, and her mullet husband, became a constant presence at the Pross home. She continued to get under my skin, and my outspoken manner remained a thorn her side.
“Why can’t you just be like everybody else?” Joan admonished me.
“Why can’t you just be anyone else other than who you are now?” I retorted.
My art consumed me: I would spend hours sitting in coffee shops observing people and drawing them in caricature. Skimming my drawing pad, one can see every type of personality frozen in caricature. A whole new landscape was unfolding before me. It wasn’t the sights of this Nothingville town, it was its people. I observed and rendered the grotesque folly of the human condition. I found it simultaneously tragic and hilarious. My raw talent for drawing was employed to wreck havoc. My caricatures took a sharper turn in depicting various teachers in humiliating sexual positions. With each rendering my drawing ability improved. The drawings served, as always, as an emotional release. Art taught me to laugh at the ridiculous and not to be overwhelmed by a feeling of incomprehension in the face of idiocy. Art was a form of therapy. It was also a spiritual odyssey.
Coming home one evening, I found my grandmother in the kitchen, stooped over the kitchen sink. “You should be thinking about taking you life seriously,” my grandmother said without context.
I slumped down at the kitchen table, flipping through the pages of my sketchpad, admiring my own work.” What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are a young man now, and you should be thinking about what you want to do with you life.”
“I want to be an artist.”
“You are an artist. I’m talking about making a living.”
“Artists make a living.”
“They make a living—after they’re dead,” she quipped.
“I’ll make a living while I am living.”
My grandmother and I had little quarrels like this on occasion, but nothing serious. She was concerned about me, but she did not see art as a serious activity, and so she was not as supported of it as my grandfather was. It was thoughts that like that filled me with a sharp feeling of longing and loneliness.
I appreciated the art of caricature more so than ever before. I enjoyed the spectacle of observing the reaction of anyone I nailed in a drawing. When people observed a grotesque drawing I had rendered of them—in dead-on accuracy---they would dissolve in self-consciousness. This had a clinical kind of fascination to me. Although one can be disconcerted at witnessing an open incision, I got some amazing glimpses of their guts. What came out of it was a deeply ingrained self-doubt. I knew my art had the power to reach people. “You are a sick guy, Pross,” said one of my displeased subjects. “How is it that I’m sick,” I responded, amazed by this sudden psychological evaluation. “The drawing portrays you are—not me.”
Not everyone responded with agitation to the drawings of this teenage caricature artist. Sam Ferguson, the owner of the diner I frequented at the time, was blessed with a robust sense of humor. As he observed one of my renderings, he laughed with his whole body, his heavy-set frame shook like a bowl of Jell-O resting on the clothes dryer in final spin. “You are a crazy son of a bitch!” Gus hollowed. “How do you think of this stuff?” In the drawing, I had Gus lurched over a hot stove stirring the day’s soup special with beads of sweat dripping into the pot. In the background, one can see an unsuspecting customer slurping the broth, bellowing, ‘Gus, I love the extra flavor you added!’
“Come here, my boy,” Gus said, sliding a hamburger and fries over to me. “Here’s your payment for a job well done.”
“You’re paying me for that drawing…by feeding me?”
Gus looked astonished that I was astonished. “Of course! A man should be paid for his work. That drawing is hanging on my wall, and it gives me a great deal of pleasure.”
“It does.”
“You are very talented. Hey, I want to frame it and hang it up on my office wall. How much do you want for it?”
“You just paid me,” I answered, biting into the hamburger.
“No, not that, that’s a token payment, I’m talking about really paying you. That is a work of art we’re talking about!”
“I don’t know…”
“Here,” Gus said, taking my hand and slipping a hundred dollar bill into it.
“Hey man, are you serious—a hundred bucks!”
“Too little?”
“No, this is cool. Thanks Gus!”
“One day you are going to be a famous artist. People will be paying you a lot more than a measly hundred bucks. Hey, don’t think that I’m cheating you…I’m not a rich guy.”
“Come on, Gus, I know that. This is so cool, man. If only my grandfather could see this.”
I realized that I could temper my art with light-hearted humor, the gentle good wit that my grandfather imparted in me—along with the acerbic wit characteristic of Barry McConnell. It was here that this artist punk learned that caricature has both a dark and light face to it. I also learned that the caricatures I drew, and the people who inspired them, were not confined to the community where I lived. They circled the globe. It was to the wider culture that my focus turned. I resolved to follow my grandfather’s advice. I have talent and it must not go to waste. I need to hone and develop it. It was here that I thought about going to art school.
Chapter three:
THE SUMMER ROLLED IN WITH MUCH EXCITMENET. Barry and I had always been inseparable growing up. We took our first drink together at the age of twelve, sneaking gin from Barry’s father’s booze bottles and replacing it with water. We were now of drinking age, and we took claim to our God-given right to become inebriated.
Barry and I found ourselves as young adults partying at a Nothingivlle park consuming large amounts of beer, chatting up two girls up. These two girls, one of whom was Stephanie, upstaged her friend whose name Barry and I had forgotten the moment she spoke it. Stephanie was in full bloom now, her breasts disproportionately larger from what I remember them a few years back. Stephanie and I recalled our encounter at the clearing in the woods, not by explicit acknowledgement, but by the looks we exchanged.
It was apparent that Barry and I were both focusing our attention on Stephanie. We had discussed this while the two girls ventured into the shrub to pee, each of us laying claim to Stephanie while trying to sell the other on the less attractive What’s-her-name, neither of us yielding to the circular I-saw-her-first arguments regarding Stephanie. When the girls returned from their bush break, the conversation became competitive as Barry and I vied for Stephanie’s attention. Stephanie, who was now tipsy, rode a flirtatious see-saw, encouraging both of us while committing herself to neither. Meanwhile, What’s-her-name slowly removed herself from the conversation and sat on the damp grass, her head bent back to stare at the stars, the beauty of which she sporadically commented on to no one in particular.
Barry excused himself to pee. The opportunity presented itself and so I took Stephanie by the hand and ambled off to a secluded spot, just as we had a few years back. We began to make-out up against the bark of a tree. I could hear Barry’s voice off in the distance, and I’m sure my stifled laughs must have irked him. I was now holding the trump card of I-kissed-her-first to hold against Barry. My territorial rights had been established, but I was very surprised later to return from my own pee-break to find Stephanie no longer present and that both she and Barry were conspicuously absent from the site of our previous conversation. What’s her name was still there, alone, staring up at the stars.
It was at this point that I had recalled Barry speaking of his older brother, Blake, who was throwing a party that very same night now that he was out on his own. It was a typical early-twenties party, where everyone sat on their beer cases behaving like complete idiots. All the partiers were from different schools, but they were all standard-issued interchangeable buffoons who were hot-knifing hash in the kitchen. The party had spilled out onto the lawn. Making my entrance, I navigated through a throng of people ascending a flight of stairs entering the first bedroom door to find Barry and Stephanie in a stare of near-undress. Stephanie’s shirt and brassiere were lifted above her breasts and Barry was clearly enjoying himself, his mouth nuzzling both breasts, his pants pulled down around his ankles. “Oh, there you are! Heeeeey!” Barry shouted out cheerfully, as if greeting an old friend he hadn’t seen in a while. I was frozen in a state of disbelief. But before I could protest—or whatever the hell one is supposed to do under such circumstances—Stephanie was calling me over in a very seductive manner.
Barry and I had shared many things in our life time—such as swigs from each other’s pop, pizza slices and general experiences of waywardness—but sharing a girl was a first that towered above all those other experiences. It was at that moment that our friendship was fully formed, our bond complete, our inauguration as “the best of friends” certain and, above all, our manhood established once and for all.
It was Friday night, the following month, and Barry and I drove to the city for some action at Sweaty Betty’s Place—one of the more interesting bars on the outskirts of Nothingville. We were in the mood to relax and nurse a few beers before returning to our drab little routine. I worked in a factory and Barry was a dishwasher. We had decided that Nothingville’s routine parties were becoming predictable and dull and so we ventured out of the region to find greener pastures.
Driving down a long desolate dark road, Barry turned on the radio to fill up the spooky silence. He winced at the song playing. “What is this embodiment of insipidity that over takes my eardrums attempting to command it like the blob pretending as if were made of skim milk custard?” The sentence rolled off his tongue like a conveyer belt sped up. I laughed out loud, forever mystified at how Barry commanded such felicity with word-images. As the song unfolds it becomes apparent that it is an inspirational Christian tune. “Listening to this sort of sopping cow compost,” he said, his arm resting on the steering wheel as he drove, “it’s hard to believe this is the faith that once inspired crusades and witch-burning.”
“You know what?” I said, smiling and shaking my head.
“What?” Barry asked, turning to me.
“If you were a chick, I would have married you by now.”
Barry didn’t blink. “If you were a chick I would have fucked you by now, taken whatever cash you had while you were sleeping and then dump your ass.”
This was met with more laughter and wise cracks.
We pulled into the driveway of Sweaty Betty’s. We stumbled out of the car like a couple of college kids on a lark. The bright lights emanating from Sweaty Betty’s beckoned us forward.
Sweaty Betty’s looks like an art acid flashback. Though it’s been re-branded as a county and Western epicenter, the campy kitsch décor remains the same: grotesquely ugly lamps with enormous mosaic-covered bases, repulsive shades and red and green light bulbs and fuggy orange vinyl banquettes. Women wear clothes that veers to extremes, their make-up is so heavy it appears to be applied with a spatula. Their hair is extra teased, and their skirts very short. “Wow, I have never seen so much pussy in my life,” Barry said, looking left to right, “except when I had to visit my lonely grandmother who was a multiple cat owner.”
Men are always coming on to the women at this place. Slithering up to a cute little number having a drink at the bar, this short-sleeved balding little twerp was promptly shot down for his unoriginality: “How are you?” he asks, almost choking on the line. The little fox turns, the slowness of her motion emphasising her contempt. “Yes?” she said, her long nails tapping the surface of the bar as she stood face-to face with her would-be seducer. “I’m jes’ looking fer friendly conversation and I thought that a beautiful woman like you would feel the same.” She fixes a deadpan look and drops the axe: “My eggs are rotting and I better move fast. How are you?” The guy picks up the hint and walked away feeling totally castrated.
Barry and I settled onto one of the paddled burgundy booths, near the stage where bands and stand-up comics perform. Sally Barton, a club regular, mounted the stage to sing a Karaoke song. I had heard enough bathetic versions of the Pretender’s Brass in Pocket, usually sung by middle-aged women in tacky bars like Sweaty Betty’s, but Sally Barton absolutely murdered the tune. Barry would mock the women who lunged weakly for a bit of love from the crowd of drunks, friends, management and drunken strangers, and it was Sally Barton faithfully mounted the stage every weekend, riding high on shooters with beer chasers.
She was in her late forties. Her skin was prematurely aged from tanning salons. She had a bulky waist line and wore a pink tight fitting t-shirt that read “foxy.” She sported a butterfly tattoo across her stomach that was bisected from a C-section. Sally Barton was the type of person whose emptiness of spirit is exemplified by her passion for parties, for being the center of attention. People rarely saw her without a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She had a smoker’s raspy voice. When sober, she was usually engaged in various protests and causes. Recently she had successfully rallied the community to boycott a porn store that had set up to do business. In the community, Sally wanted to be recognized as a leader. In the bar, she wanted to be recognized as a star. “I love you! I love you!” she cried out to the audience in response to scattered curtsey applause.
I thought it was fascinating to watch people being publicly promiscuous with their emotional lives. It is more repulsive than real pornography, in which people merely perform sex for money—which Sally Barton was forever crusading against.
Barry and I savored the parade of human debris that frequented Sweaty Betty’s---from the thugs outside the doors to the waitresses inside to Sally Baron. Barry and I laughed at it all, especially the thugs. The thugs traded insults and perceived slights, which demand some kind of manly response—the perpetual pose of masculinity—this being especially true if there are bystanders observing. Barry could imitate their macho posturing with deadly accuracy and to hilarious effect. For me, I took mental notes of these people to practice my drawing.
After Sally Barton left the stage, the twerp that was shot down by the woman he attempted to seduce mounts the one step-up stage with an optimistic Amway-like jostle. He screws the mike off the stand and springs into a volleyball toss of jokes and one-liners. The crowd begins to titter and laugh. Barry sat still with an open mouth gape. He turned to me, scrunching his face in an incredulous crunch. “They think this asshole is funny? I can’t believe they find this asshole funny.”
“You are definitely funnier.”
“Fucking right I am. Just let me up on that stage.”
“Go head,” I urged.
“I will.”
“I dare you.”
After what the twerp left the stage, Barry took a resolute swig of his beer. He took my challenge and after a brief conversation with the club owner, their heads pressed together in intense conversation, it looked as if it were a go. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I saw Barry pointing to the stage and then to himself. The manager nodded consent. It was a go. Barry returned to our table, a triumphant smile on his face.
Barry would be performing before traveling business men and slaphappy couples out for a good laugh. There is a brief introduction and then Barry raced up onto the tiny platform like an evangelist prepared to deliver a sermon for the express purpose to save souls. He clumsily screwed the mike of the stand and plunged into his first bit without preamble---the rapid little daredevil comic bent on attacking almost every tradition and custom held sacred by Nothingville—the country. That had always been the comedy of Barry McConnell.
“Y’ know, a lot of people like to smoke a cigarette after sex,” Barry began, looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. “I was with this girl who liked to smoke during sex. I didn’t really mind it, except for the cold ashtray on my ass.” This first joke received a small cackle of laughs. Barry felt the buzz. Recalling the local hardware store, Barry muses that it would make an ideal sex toy shop for lesbians. Citing the whole gay scene, he mused: “I use to be very open-minded, and I thought what the hell, I’ll try the gay scene. You know, just to see what it’s like. Now I’m not gay and I just wanted to know what its like. You know what? I liked everything about being gay. Really! Much to my surprise, I discovered that I rather enjoyed it. I like the fashions, the parties, the cool scenes, expressing my emotions openly, and the sensitivity. It was great. Yeah, I liked everything about being gay…oh, except the cock sucking part.”
A wave of shocked laughter overtook the room. Going into a bit that attacked the hypocrisy of lefty liberals on the race issue, Barry prefaced his routine: “You can’t swing a dead foreigner—fresh off a banana boat--in this city without hitting some liberal social engineering asshole whining about quota hiring!” And he offered a similar preface attacking animal right activists: “You can’t swing a dead skinned cat in this town without hitting some animal rights activist asshole!”
Barry finished his impromptu show and zoomed off to the back of the room to a make-shift dressing room, which was the public toilet. I followed behind to discover my fiend lurched over the “porcelain God” throwing up. “Jesus Christ, I have been rehearsing and performing my whole fucking life—in front of friends---and now I have the jitters!” I laughed. Barry couldn’t help but laugh too, but not before he affectionately told me to ‘fuck off’ and to wait for him.
While waiting in the audience for Barry to reemerge, I gazed about the bar taking in the female patronage. It was then that I saw a beautiful blue eyed girl. I was immediately drawn to her sensitive-looking aristocratic features. She returned my glance and then looked away.
Barry returned to his seat with two beers in hand.
I nudged him. “Hey, did you see that?”
Barry smiled, handing me my beer. “Yeah, I saw it. There was a little electrical charge between you two.”
“Fuck off,” I demurred. Then I paused, letting a moment pass. “Do you think so?”
The blue eyed girl and I continued to exchange glances, the game of cat and mouse in full swing.
“Go for it.” Barry urged, pulling my arm forward.
“Okay, okay—take your paws of me, McConnell.”
Barry laughed. “I dare you!”
I took on a determined frame of mind as I gulped my beer, my eyes having never left the pretty girl across the floor.
I later learned later much later that the blue eyed girl was new in town having just moved to the more affluent section of town. She had snuck out from her parent’s house and met up with her girlfriend, Michelle Perrone, looking for kicks. They had selected a bar, well out of their way, figuring none of their parent’s friends would find them. The girls were anxious to party. Each was seeking to escape a restrictive and stifling lifestyle imposed on them by domineering parents.
The girls were on their second drink when I sundered over.
“I’m with my buddy here tonight,” I drawled, clearing addressing the blue-eyed girl while quickly nodding toward the other girl. “But I’m looking to talk to someone who shaves their legs.”
The girls laughed, catching sight of my sardonic crooked smile.
I was intentionally caricaturing the mannerism of a typical caveman jock, mocking the cheesy pick up lines such a person would use.
“Is that some sort of pick up line?” the blue-eyed girl asked, deciding to play it aloof.
I shuffled. “Well, if it’s working, it is.”
Her eyes were at half-mast, her lips lurking around the edge of a smile. I wasn’t sure if she was intrigued or if she was mocking me.
“What’s your name? .
“Why?”
“Why? Come on, what’s your name?”
“Jodie”
“I’m Victor.”
I waved Barry over and introductions were made all around. Barry and Michelle got locked in conversation while Jodie and I fell silent. The heat from our bodies spoke for us. The silence was occasionally punctured with a burst of laughter from Michelle. She clearly appreciated Barry’s sense of humor. It seemed as Jodie didn’t know what to make of me though, as best I tried to be interesting and charming, but I was a little intimidated by the austerity of Jodie’s aristocratic beauty.
“I’ve got to be going home soon.” Jodie said, trying to be audible against the noise of the bar.
“Why?” I asked sharply.
“I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Not supposed to be here?” I shouted back incredulously, crunching my face in exaggerated disbelief.
Jodie went on to explain her parent’s prohibitions against drinking.
I bristled: “Oh, man! It sounds like your fussing over a lot of bullshit rules.”
Jodie was taken aback by the abrasive remark. But she caught sight of that crooked mocking smile of mine. She laughed out openly.
Just as soon as I thought I was making progress, Jodie retuned to her ice maiden pose.
“We don’t want to break the rules now…the bullshit rules,” I said, taking a swig from my beer.
“I don’t know if we should rebel against rules,” Jody challenged. “They’re the guardians of our civilization.”
I chortled. “Is that right? Did you get that from some magazine or something?”
Jodie said nothing.
I pressed on: “Sometimes the rules we lap up are a confession of our fear to make our own decisions.”
Jodie paused, her eyes widening in surprise. “You’re very philosophical, aren’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, let’s get back to reality.”
“Let’s get back to another drink.” I said, holding up Jody’s empty class, motioning towards the waitress.
For the next hour, I tried to melt the icy exterior Jody was exhibiting, determined to master the tasty bourgeois girl who sat opposite of me.
“Victor…that’s a Russian name, isn’t it?” Jodie asked, the drinks softening out her edges.
“I suppose so,” I answered. I think the name was chosen because of its meaning. It was my grandfather’s name.”
“I see. Is there anything else I should know about you?”
I looked thoughtful for a moment, taking on a confessional look.
“Well, I think it’s only fair to warn you.”
“What?”
“I’m an artist.”
“Oh, so that means you’re a Proletarian?”
“What?”
“You’re a starving artist, huh? Lucky for me, I’ve made a conquest.”
I cocked a skeptical brow. “I’m not a starving artist.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You must have me mixed up with someone else.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what are you then?”
“I’m a hungry artist.”
“A hungry artist?”
“Well, I’ll be a professional when I get out of art school.”
“I see. So you are an art student.”
“No, but I will be going to art school.”
“Well, you’ll be an accomplished student…someday.”
As the evening wore on, Jodie felt herself drawn further to me, as she told me much later on. She didn’t know why at the time. As far as she was concerned, I simultaneously conveyed confidence and vulnerability--two traits she found attractive.
“Why don’t you guys get another round of drinks?” Michelle bellowed out, allowing for a one-on-one conference with Jodie. Barry and I supposed they wanted to assess us and we obediently took the hint and left.
Barry and I returned with a fresh round of drinks and the partying continued. The party and conversation continued on to the backdrop of drunken dancers and lounging lizards. At one point in the evening Michelle took a liking to me and was decidedly more demonstrative of it, her forwardness driven by alcohol, as she reached over to tidy a lock of hair that fell forward on my forehead. A pang shot through Jody. Never before, as she confessed later, had she experienced this sensation and she felt perplexed. She finally recognized the feeling as jealously.
Closing time came. Jody and Michelle were preparing to leave and Jodie didn’t offer a hint that she wished to see me again. I was resolved that I did want to see her and I took her by the arm.
“I want to see you again.” I said, getting straight to the point. The voice had said: “I want to see you again.” The tenor said: “I will see you again.”
Jodie gazed down at my hand. “Excuse me?”
I said nothing. I stood there like a ruffian and that disarming smile flashed across my face.
I released his grip.
“Jodie, give me your number.”
She scribbled her number on a matchbook, trying to appear indifferent.
“Here,” she said, handing the matchbook to me, held between index finger and thumb. “Maybe it’s my actual number…or maybe it’s a fake. You’ll have to see.”
Jodie turned to leave but I called her back.
“Yes?” she replied irritably.
“I want to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Do you think it’s possible that two people can burn through all the layers of bullshit and really see each other?”
Yes, I do.”
I handed the matchbook back to her. “Then give me your real number.”
I called Jodie that week and she agreed to meet me for a date. During the evening, sipping orange juice and vodka, my wire-strung soul began to rattle. After a few hours of pleasant getting-to-know you chatter, I wanted to talk openly. Do I want to talk the latest popcorn movie or about the latest bubblegum pop hit or whatever people in their early twenties talk about? No, I want to have that deep communion, that solacing confessional hour that I enjoyed with my grandfather. I got deep into his philosophical musings about life and art, speaking with the authority of an army general. It all sounded so radical to her. Jody didn’t know what to think. She had to give voice to the paradoxes she was experiencing. We were sitting close together---close enough for me to see a change in her eyes.
“You’re so confusing, Victor,” she said placidly. “One moment you’re so carefree and devil-may-care and then…you’re so wound up and tense”
Later that night, as Jodie told me later, she lay in bed, thinking about me. She was in love with a man who was at variance with everything she had been taught to admire. I was the opposite of her, embodying to an extreme degree every quality in which she was lacking, from confidence to ready wit. Above all, I displayed a profound contempt for authority and everything it entails.
Drawn to me, and yet skeptically leery of her own feelings, Jodie called Michelle after returning home from a third date. Jodie told me later that she was unable to identify her feelings and had hoped Michelle would help.
“What do you think of Victor?”
“He’s trouble,” Michelle answered in a forlorn manner. “I think he’s dangerous.”
This wasn’t what Jodie wanted to hear.
“Dangerous…you say dangerous?” Jodie implored, her tone calling for Michelle to elaborate.
“Yeah, did you ever see his drawings? Whoa, like, what is going on there? I think he has a screw that is loose. You know what I mean? I would be careful.”
The phone fell silent on Jodie’s end.
“Jodie…Hello?”
“Thanks, Michelle. Good night.”
Jodie didn’t know why she bothered asking for Michelle’s opinion; she knew how she felt. Jodie found the idea of dating this rebellious bohemian an aphrodisiac. She was sexually aroused by traits she thought deplorable--qualities like vulgarity, impertinence and aggressiveness, all so abundantly on display in the persona of the town’s nonconformist artist. I was sweet to Jodie, very respectful and romantic. “You are one person to me…and you are somebody else to the world,” Jodie observed. “What is up with that?”
Jodie had once lived for adventure, but now she’d managed to suppress her spirit. She wasn’t sure why, except that adventuring brought change and change often caused uneasiness. As a child she’d put up with a lot of uneasiness from other children, from severe adults and from the establishment in general. She just wanted to be normal but by her own standards. Her mother and father were normal, especially her mother. Jodie loved her mother. But living her type of lifestyle wasn’t really who she was. Her mother didn’t seem to notice the problem, but her father perceived the dilemma. Little by little Jody allowed a veneer of the commonplace to form over her life, and very much in a way her mother would approve of. But now her audacious child ego peeked out and started to take risks—the biggest one was getting involved with me. I served as a symbol to rebel against her parents and all of their snobbish and suffocating traditions. When we officially started dating, Jodie’s parents became incensed, and deep within the chambers of her mind and heart this pleased her. The thrill of defying a lifelong routine conventionally and sterile pomposity of middleclass life was absolutely intoxicating.
Refusing to apologize for her latest love interest, Jodie invited me to her parent’s home for dinner. This was going to be my first visit to the Price home. When Mr. Price first set eyes on me--the disheveled and irreverent artist--his fears was confirmed: I was the polar opposite on the social stratum, the last rung on the ladder. As far as he was concerned, I was God’s forgotten child. The very idea of his beloved daughter dating this sideshow freak made his blood boil. And now this rough would be sitting at his dinner table!
I sat next Jodie who sat next to her parents. Across from us were Jodie’s sister and her fiancée, Chad. I felt out of place among the idiotically stuffy atmosphere of elegance and class. As the evening wore on I was certain of only one thing: Mr. and Mrs. Price reeked of conservative values, values that were largely at variance with my own. They were, as far as I was concerned, veritable caricatures of everything that entails. They were the epitome of all that I most heartedly despised from the upper-class sensibilities to the stiff and overly formal demeanor.
I didn’t clash too much With Jodie’s mother, but the chemistry between Bob Price and me was particularly combustible: one was severe and serious and I was rather blithe and carefree; one was religiously conservative, the other a social libertarian. I was an artist…Bob Price was not.
I left early that night, and Jodie stayed behind. It wasn’t until later that I heard how the evening progressed.
Jodie’s parents made it clear to Jody that they were dead-set against her taking up with a man like me. “The man has no sense of respect,” Mr. Price raved to his wife. “For Christ’s sake, he shows up with paint splattered pants!” I had left and Jody stayed behind at her parent’s insistence. The whole family was unanimous in opposing the union of Victor and Jodie. “How can you sleep with that man?” Jodie’s mother cried out. “Jodie, you can do better than that!” Cindy implored, taking her finance’s hand as a case in point. Her father joined the chorus of protest with this little gem: “He’s a godless heathen bum!”
Jodie would give me a detailed account of her family’s violent disapproval of me. The conflict between the Price clan and me exacerbated whenever I mocked people who were conventional, toed the line, and didn’t join my flouting authority. “God spare me from these robotic bourgeois assholes!” I howled out, reaching my own boiling point.
**
My relationship with Jodie took a decisive turn after a few months. She had tried over a period of time, and in subtle ways, to custom fit this off-the-rack dissident painter into ordinary conformist clothing. She found herself running up against a brick wall. I could not be deterred from his ways. “The man who sold out his dreams but couldn’t forget them is as good as dead,” I said to Jodie once as she stepped from the shower while I was shaving. I said it without apparent reason or context. It just came out of the blue and Jodie didn’t pursue it. She merely wrapped a large white towel around herself and gave me a perplexed gawk and promptly forgot about it
I didn’t forget my dreams. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to study painting. I was set ablaze with the spirit of creativity. The colors burning within me were more vivid than the colors of the falling leafs of autumn. I turned to painting--to thinking and to planning the images I would create. I thought of little else but the paintings I would create, feeling elated that I had discovered my niche: satirical caricature. It was like a radiating force beckoning me onward, enlisting my most passionate determination.
Determined to celebrate my artistic Renaissance, I took Jody to a candlelit dinner in the city. Looking at the white table clothe to the flickering candles to Jodie’s luminous blue eyes, I felt drunk with joy.
“No matter how hard the battle, it can be won.” My voice almost sounded shaky. “Honey, the future looks bright from where I stand.” Jodie smiled feebly swirling strings of spaghetti around her fork. It irritated me that Jodie showed so little enthusiasm when I spoke of ideas and art. But I kept my annoyance to myself not wanting to ruin my mood. But then I was reminded of a comment I had made to Barry the other evening: “There are moments when I hated Jody’s whole outlook on life…and yet I also feel an irresistible affinity to her.” Looking at Jodie now sitting across from me, looking fiercely striking, a rush of guilt came over me and I shoved the thought out of mind.
The next day Barry invited me to his place to shoot the shit. After a few beers, Barry’s usual jovial disposition took on a sudden sober tone—something that was uncharacteristic of him. The sun had set and we both sat slumped on the couch before a silent flickering television listening to music and drinking beers.
“You remember when my father died…when I was thirteen?” Barry asked.
I took a sip from my beer turning to Barry.
“Yeah.”
“It was the first funeral I have ever been to…and the first time I wore a suit. I felt like a nerd, you know? I had no experience with…grief and I wasn’t prepared for the emotion. I know now that somewhere inside…I was broken up. You wouldn’t know it looking at me. I stood mute…and feeling guilty. Everybody was crying and…I wasn’t. You know, my father was always telling these cheesy corn bull jokes. I though about how unfunny he was. And then at that very moment a family bent forward and whispered, ‘Thank God we won’t have to listen to his jokes anymore.’ I laughed out loud. I felt terrible for many years after. But now I realize that laughter is an acceptable and necessary force for dealing with life.”
“Dealing with pain,” I added.
Barry paused, as if wanting to move forward but the words got caught in his throat. I could sense that Barry was holding back.
“What are you saying, man?” I urged.
“I want to be a comic.”
I laughed. “Man, you are a comic.”
“No, no, I mean professionally. I want to get the fuck out of this Nothinville down…I want to move to…California or New York, I don’t know. I just know that there is no life for me here.”
I fell silent. We both sat silent, motionless for a moment. I knew that Barry was also speaking for me as well. I felt I had no future in Nothingville.
“Becoming a professional comic is a tough gig, buddy.”
“So is becoming an artist---a painter.”
“Well, you got me there.”
“I think my gig is a little easier than your thing.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, laughter is part of our nature. We learn to laugh at a very early age and this capacity stays with us. My own opinion is that comedy is rooted in indicating some truth. This relates to the often made observation ‘It's funny because it's true.’ You know?”
“That’s why your impressions—and your general observations--crack me up when you’re dead-on.”
“Vic, buddy, you are a great caricature artist, man.”
I snickered, recalling all the funny impressions Barry was able to master—caricaturing personality traits of those around him and doing so to a fine art.
“No, Barry, you are a great caricaturist.”
Barry’s insights stayed with me when I returned home later that night, sitting before my easel. He had said: “The thing to look at is not if comedy is alternative or not, the key factor is a thinking person’s hilarity. There are no boundaries with funniness. If becoming mainstream means dumbing down---not following my sense of humor or outlook, and not pushing myself to explore all that I have in me---then I’m not fucking interested. Comedy needs the latitude to push boundaries and nothing should be off-limits. It needs to be edgy and a little dangerous. It needs to be profane and offensive. Its role is to shine a light into the darker corners of the world.
A revelation came to me: why wouldn’t this exact same outlook apply to the visual arts, to painting? I have always adopted this outlook—almost instinctually—but Barry really drove the point home for me making it a foremost principle. I need to turn inward and explore the light and dark that is within me. I had a mission in my life. Inspired, I panted that night with a feverish intensity.
I awoke to a rainy noon amid the clutter of my room. The remains of last night’s painting session had not been cleared away. Paints, pizza, paint smeared rags, brushes, dishes lay strewn about. I wasn’t in the mood for housework. I putted around, fixing a greasy fried egg sandwich and cup of coffee. I sat on a stool, half-dressed, flipping through an issue of some art magazine. I attempted to paint again, as if bookmarked from where I left off last night. Things were not going well. I stopped painting, surrendering to a feeling that my work was basically aimless and lacked a technique that accomplished artists seem to master so effortlessly. Of course, I knew that they had perfected their craft by studying and practice—tons of practice. I pushed back my chair and looked at the canvas for a moment sneering at the image. I got up, walking up down the floor. I turned and snatched the canvas from the easel breaking it in half.
In the weeks that followed, I started to read voraciously, attempting to give myself a do-it-yourself education. My efforts to assimilate myself and find a direction were obsessive. I crammed my schedule with the study of philosophy, art history and painting. I read omnivorously in coffee shops, at home, in parks, the library, everywhere. Jodie was too tired listening to my ravings about idea’s that I was convinced were changing my life, and I got out of the habit of trying to embroil her in discussion. I was tapping ever deeper into my intellectual and emotional life—discovering the wealth that is the human spirit—and I was totally alone in this quest.
By the time I turned twenty-two, I had achieved an intellectual maturity, a greater facility with drawing than I ever had before. But I still felt anxious and irritable, for I felt that something was amiss. It was all the more frustrating because I couldn’t place my finger on it. I just knew that I hadn’t yet found my “voice” in painting. My art didn’t express completely what I knew I could bring to it. Sitting near my easel, I would skim through a collection of rejection slips—having sent out expensive comps of my art to magazines or newspapers---hoping to be commissioned for anything---and I figured that these people caught on to that which I was beginning to discover: I hadn’t honed my talent yet, not fully. They had every right to reject me. That’s what I thought. I figured the rejection was based on a lack of education in the arts, on a lack of proper training—as if they somehow knew this. How naïve I was. I believed that employment prospects would immediately identify my talent and hire me on the spot. After all, strangers and friends alike have confirmed time and again my “obvious talent”—but everybody else, especially those in a position to hire this inspired artist, treated me as if I wasn’t even worthy to paint their garage door. How much rejection can a person take before a spirit crumbles?
Sometimes I felt as if my so-called gift was not more like a curse. I sometimes think that if I had not been endowed by some gift-dispensing God of the universe with the ability to draw, I perhaps would have taken up a more practical career, like accounting or dentistry. But those laments faded when I imagined myself as a non-artist…gazing over the shoulder of some artist saying something stupid like “Wow, that’s really good, I wish I could do that. Why, I can’t even draw a stick man.”
But even with the occasional bouts with self-doubt, I decided to press on as if destiny had me favorably included in her plans. There is no getting away from what I am. I am an artist. I will succeed. Period. I need to draw and paint like a drowning man needs air. I am an artist! It is in my blood. And With this burst of energy propelled by this thought---I am an artist—I retrieve my sketchpad as if to rebuke any possible lingering doubt roaming around in my head and drew, drew, drew! Leaning on the legs of the chair, I began to sketch with bold and confident pencil strokes and, shaping before me on the clear white paper, a human figure emerges, a highly stylized one. I was caught up in the mania of shading and detailing the drawing and I felt as if the blank page was coming to life, a life that I felt coursing throughout my whole being. I felt a hunger. No matter how much I drew, I could not satisfy the hunger I felt. I wanted to be among like-minded individuals who, like me, had a thirst to create art.
I was determined to go to art school.
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