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Simon tried to distance himself from a growing sense of futility by focusing on the commissioned artwork he’d been working on: Laurence Gantham pressed against a wall, looking away as his lover, Rene, tried to kiss him. Laurence’s open shirt with his pumped up chest and left nipple exposed had been the focus of the painting...but any connection to it eluded him...
Until a new meaning enveloped Simon. This piece was no longer hinting at a breakup but instead was of a man allowing himself to be worshipped while withholding his emotions.
Or approval.
So to put the red bit of paint on him was wrong. It lessened his hardness in the image. Instead, Simon added more shadow to Rene’s shirt to emphasize his own taut body, and shifted Laurence’s eyes to be focused on nothing. Then he put the red daub at the bottom of a shadow along the lobe of Rene’s ear...and hesitated.
Let it sit before him, for a while.
It was right...but not right...yet right. And the more he looked at it, the more certain he was that it was wrong but was in the best spot possible. That anywhere else in the painting would be worse...until he added a red droplet to the top of Rene’s collar.
Two bits of red against the stark black and white provided the balance it needed. Even after taking a photograph and inspecting it as fully as possible in a different medium, he knew he was right.
He let it dry over three days then varnished it. Let that dry for another three days then wrapped it in glassine paper before setting it into an art shipper to send off, overnight via FedEx. Pricey...but he’d worked that cost into his fee.
What surprised him was how much he hated parting with that painting. As if he was removing some part of his body...his soul...by releasing it. Even when the remainder of his fee came through with a note of praise and thanks, he’d felt like he had lost something irreplaceable.
To counter it, he used the truck stop lad crouched before the cold drinks cooler to set a new work. But in this one, he used every layer of color he could in ways that were almost loving. Tender. Building an intimate vision of a young man crouched before a happily blazing campfire.
That cut-off shirt, ragged jeans and rough boots made him seem vulnerable as black towering trees caught hints of the flames and lifted the eye up to a sky where pinpoints of light glimmered behind a pair of soft clouds and half a moon, providing gentle highlights to the lad’s back.
On this, red dots touched his hair, almost like a reflection from the fire but not quite...nearly hiding within the image while giving him a vague form of grace.
Once he’d reached the point where he knew if he added one more daub of paint to the picture it would be ruined, he stepped back and gazed upon it for close to an hour. Actually pleased with himself. Which, for Simon, was highly unusual.
He wished he’d thought to find out who that young trucker was so he could send him a photo of the piece he’d inspired. That would have been the perfect bookend to it. Perhaps he could check back with that truck stop, to see if they knew.
After this, he could not touch his brushes for several days. When he finally did, it was to work up a severe black and white image from Jansen’s photo under the streetlamp. This one was on a cured board, and he chuckled as he adjusted the image in such a way as to emphasize the slutty streetwalker aspect of it. He minimized the points where Jansen’s puffy chest threw the balance off and used the lightest of touches to add smoke from his cigarette as a sort of noose around his neck. On this, the red paint dripped from his fingers.
He took a photo of it, uploaded it to his laptop, polished it in Adobe PS, arranged it in postcard format...4x6”...and added a small ditty in white lettering on black around it as a sort of frame.
He saved it as a high-res PDF and took it to a local print shop to make 100 cards. He paid for a rush because he wanted them before returning to Barrington. He had no idea why; it was just an impulse he gave into.
