Keren Eyal
Portrait

You took an art class once. It was in high school. Well, actually, I think it was eighth grade. Yes, it must have been that year, because you’d waited until the last minute to fill that particularly loathsome requirement. Phys Ed?: yes, please. Home Ec?: sure, bring on the egg-babies. Typing?: you’d rather face Mavis Beacon than Cora Richlur, art demon, any day. As for art, well, Old Richlur taught very little of it—hard to craft masterpieces, you know, when you are crippled with arthritis and also clinically insane. Despite this lamentably lacking artistic guide, you did manage to make a lovely clay whale, as I recall. A beautiful whale, tenderly and carefully crafted from the finest of air-drying clays, lovingly smeared with thick, globby blue paint, and cleverly adorned with orange pony bead eyes and bits of dirt and potato chip from dropping it in the bus carrying it home. A timeless piece, this whale, a piece to treasure, protect, and use to secure your apartment’s disfiguringly warped bathroom door. And although, at the time, this wonderful gem made up for Richlur’s heinous lack of teaching, you are now in a situation nasty enough to reconsider your hasty forgiveness.

*

You met Karmell at the Pink Poodle. She was naked, you were not, it was a perfect moment for romance—no wait, wrong story. You met Paloma at the Four Corners Café’s Open Mic Night for Peace. Somehow the first story seems more likely. Not because Starbucks coffee is single-handedly responsible for 64% of your blood content, although this is also true, but because the word “hippie” describes you just about as well as the word “ring-tailed lemur.” When visitors to your apartment see your framed photos from Yosemite, you cleverly quip that you long ago traded your Tevas for loafers, when, in truth, there never were Tevas to begin with and those pictures came with the frames. But your sister, not the sane, successful, Harvard Law sister, but the lesbian, be-dreadlocked, singersongwriter sister, was performing at the café, and, wisely anticipating a lack of general support for her global warminginspired mime routine, she begged you to come. So there you were, surrounded by lilac incense and people attempting to rhyme “George Bush” with “child-murdering, environment-raping, war-mongering bastard.” Sipping your ginkgo-infused soy chai latte, you were trying, by a sheer force of will and the unstoppable power of humiliation, to turn your navy blue suit into brown corduroys and a tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt. Surfacing from this extreme moment of concentration with no change but a strong headache and a slight inclination to learn to play the didgeridoo, you look up to see the universe’s most confounding girl/clothing combination staring at you in concern. You get a brief impression of olive eyes and auburn hair before your eyes are just about physically assaulted by her outfit. Never had quilting looked so attractive to you. “Come back to my tree house, and we’ll macramé our dreams together,” she murmurs.

*

“You OK there, Loafers?” is what actually comes out of her mouth. “Paloma.” She says. She must not speak English, you quickly deduce. “My name. Like Picasso’s daughter.” She offers a leprous hand. Before recoiling, you recognize the many oozing abscesses and infected wounds as blotches of paint, smeared on her fingers and trapped under her fingernails and cuticles like those of some pigment-consuming ogre. “Salvatore,” you say, shaking her hand, although your name is actually Andy. Two wheat-grass shakes later and you are desperately in love. A torrid love affair begins to the soulful tune of the didgeridoo.

*

Artists, you quickly discover, make surprising girlfriends. Paloma’s studio apartment (that would be 93% studio, 7% futon and hot plate) is adorned with stuffed spider monkeys, huge slabs of pungent red clay, a headless mannequin named Sir Albert, and a Tupperware filled with fingernails, among other curious items. And hundreds of beautiful paintings, filed 10 deep against every wall. But the most surprising of all is Paloma herself. Here is a girl who, unlike yourself, is in possession of an actual life. At night, she reads Jack Kerouac instead of the 2008 Tax Guide; for dinner, she skillfully butchers turnips and beets instead of hydrating Ramen noodles. She makes her own clothes out of tablecloths, infant pajamas, and schizophrenia, or so it would appear. She sings, gardens, and goes for walks in dark alleys in the rain wearing nothing but a sarong for the sheer purpose of inspiration. Your yuppie friends miss you dreadfully at wine tasting and golf, your parents have scheduled an intervention, and your suits, sweater vests, and dress socks are threatening a mutiny. Your sister might be extremely pleased with her match-making abilities; however, it’s hard to comprehend her subtle feelings now that she only communicates in mime.

*

The soft light floating in from the huge skylight illuminates unbelievably daunting rectangles of horrifying color, shape, and texture on every wall. As you sway on the spot in absolute horror, you curse the crusty old memory of Mrs. Richlur. Why could she not have taught you about Impressionism, and brushstrokes, the Italian Renaissance and Dadaism, abstraction, and Renoir, and found object art, and linocuts, and those impossible paintings with the dots? Without this sort of tutelage, your knowledge of art stretches from the Bank of America logo all the way to that clever little crocodile on the pocket of your polos. Paloma has brought you to the museum; brought you home to meet her family, as it were, and you so far have metaphorically vomited on the entrance mat. There she is, stunning in a handkerchief halter top and bath towel skirt, sitting on a black leather poof and sketching a perfect rendering of the bust of, so far as you know, Saint Jupiter the Generally Beloved. This is the end, you know for sure. No self-respecting hippie artist goddess puts up with a man who can’t tell his Klimpt from his Munch. Rubbing her eyes with charcoalsmeared fingers, Paloma closes her sketchpad and walks over to you. “Dear God,” you chant under your breath, your heart palpitating, “may the B.S. flow like a river, may the—” “Cheer up, Loafers,” her long, creative fingers find their way into your stubby, keyboard tapping ones, her round, open smile thaws the terror on your face. “If you knew it all, what would I teach you?” Then she’s off, running. “Picasso’s the first lesson!” You follow her joyous command as she swirls away through her now beautiful, inviting home.

<< Back to Issue 12, 2008