17. Art Imitates Life
Art Imitates Life
AIDAN
“I should’ve anticipated traffic like this on the Monday before Christmas,” Henry said, gulping coffee out of his thermos as we sat stalled in his car. Honks chorused around us.
I didn’t mind one bit. The heated seat kept me warm, and the scenery kept me occupied.
Philadelphia—the City of Brotherly Love, as Henry informed me—crackled outside the car. I’d never seen so many people in one place before. At a stoplight, I ducked to see out Henry’s window as he pointed to the grandiose City Hall, rising like a castle out of the center of Broad Street.
The museum eventually appeared at the end of the Ben Franklin Parkway on the far side of a roundabout. It was a stunning structure buttressed by columns. Guests in coats and boots clomped up the salted steps as we snaked around back and into the parking garage.
“It’s a mall for artwork,” I mused after we paid our admission fee and entered the European art wing.
“Except none of this is for sale. Just for show,” Henry chimed.
In the spacious galleries, the walls were pure white, drawing my eye to the golden frames and shiny statues displayed along the perimeter.
People milled about, speaking in hushed tones about composition and emotion and “Where can we get something to eat?” Some wore bulbous backpacks strapped to their fronts, making them look like they had Santa Claus bellies.
Henry caught my confusion. “It’s so they don’t accidentally hit and damage any of the pieces. ”
After a while, I stood in a circular room among a large crowd before a painting of sunflowers in a vase, breath lodged up in my throat by the sheer beauty of the colors. “Wow,” I uttered quietly. The name Vincent was scrawled in red across the brown bottom of an image of a flowerpot.
“Van Gogh is one of the great master artists,” Henry said to me. Everyone held up their phones to snap pictures.
“I can see why. It’s beautiful. I like the little brushstrokes,” I said, stepping closer, spurred on by Henry’s smile.
Henry tugged me back by the hand then. “Don’t get too near. You’ll sound an alarm. Someone will think you’re trying to steal it.”
“I wish I could take it home with me,” I said.
“Don’t we all?” crowed a woman in clogs to my right with a high-trilled laugh.
The rest of the group seemed to wander off to other pieces, but I stayed put. Henry hovered right behind me. Looking at the painting or looking at me looking at the painting? I didn’t glance over my shoulder to check. I was far too mesmerized. But his professorial presence remained.
“How does it make you feel?” Henry asked, mouth mere inches from my ear. His lips that close sent little prickly bumps racing up my outer arms.
“Happy. Joyful. Like I want to lean in and sniff. This van Gogh must’ve been a really positive person,” I said.
“Quite the opposite, actually,” Henry said, breaking the spell the piece had on me. “That’s the power of art.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This is a re-creation of an earlier painting of his. This one he did from memory in the winter of 1889 while he was institutionalized in a hospital for a mental illness,” Henry said.
“Isn’t social anxiety a mental illness?” I asked a little too loudly. Was Henry going to be sent to a hospital if someone overheard?
“Oh, yes, but… it’s a less serious one.
A year prior to this painting, after some tension with an artist friend that had been living with him, van Gogh cut off his own ear in despair,” Henry said.
I unconsciously reached up to feel for my own left ear.
An empathic pain zinged through the area.
“I have both my ears and I plan to keep it that way,” Henry said.
“Good,” I said, catching my suddenly frantic breath. “I like your ears.” They were long and slightly pointy at the tops, almost elfin, and any time I complimented him they turned a brilliant shade of pink.
“Thanks,” he said.
With new context, the painting took on a more solemn quality. The wilt of the flowers made my heart wilt, too. “How come you said art is a way to communicate your innermost thoughts and feelings, then?”
“Art is never just one thing. Here, come with me. I’ll show you.”
Though I didn’t want to leave the sunflowers behind, I followed Henry.
He moved with purpose through many galleries.
We entered the Modern and Contemporary Art section.
The style of the works shifted drastically.
Old shoes on pedestals. A dirty pan of water.
Stacked hay bales. “What is all this?” I asked to no answer.
While the sunflowers stunned me, made me envious of the talent some humans possessed, these works only confused me. Couldn’t I have made these? What made them art?
The confusion grew into a stifling cloud when Henry stopped me before a urinal on a pedestal. He waved his hand and said, “Art.”
“No.” Bafflement crinkled my brow.
“Yes.”
“But… but… People pee in those…”
“True. I think that’s why Duchamp chose it.” He smiled with his arms folded across his chest. Duchamp was one of the artists Henry had name-dropped when we did the thirty-six questions. He admired the person who produced this ?
“Did he at least… make it?” It was porcelain. Quite small.
Henry shook his head. “He purchased it, brought it to his studio, reoriented it, and wrote on it. The original was lost but this is a replica that he authorized in 1950.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, feeling uncultured as others beside us took pictures.
“I think his point was that sometimes art is about skill and other times it’s about intellectual interpretation. The answerless question of ‘Is it art?’ By displaying a urinal like this, he says it is.” Henry took me by the hand to a nearby painting.
Before me was a tall rectangular canvas. Across it were lines and squiggly shapes of brown and black and tan and maybe a hint of yellow here and there. If I squinted, I half made out a figure ascending, potentially blurred in motion. “Now this is stunning.”
“Check the plaque,” said Henry.
“Duchamp,” I read aloud. “Seriously? He made this and that ?” I pointed back at the urinal with disgust.
“Artists are never just one thing, either,” Henry said.
His statement made me wonder if he was talking about himself.
In the next room, I took in many sculptures.
A square stone one perched upon a wooden block grabbed my attention.
It appeared to be two people fused together through a kiss.
I was aware this was humanly impossible, and yet kissing Henry felt like a fusing of sorts.
Like what I imagined my mannequin parts being melded together in the factory was like.
The more we roamed, the more pieces stirred images of intimate human connection.
Sensual human connection. The kind that involved touching but didn’t involve clothes.
And by the time Henry suggested we stop for lunch in the café, a different kind of hunger manifested low in my gut.
It followed us all the way back to Ocean Glen and into the apartment.
After shucking our shoes and coats, I was tempted to ask Henry if he’d ever want to have sex with me.
Samantha Jones raved about it. Artists painted it and sculpted it. Shouldn’t I try it?
Wasn’t another name for having sex “making love”?
If we made love, maybe we could fall in love faster.
But all my questions died on my tongue as Henry tossed me my coveralls so we could get to work loading in the next day’s window display. It took hours, and after walking around the museum all day, exhaustion laced up my muscles.
Regardless, it was all worth it because I spent another night sharing Henry’s bed, holding Henry close to my shirtless chest. He shaped himself into the hollows of my body.
At one point, he rolled over, so our noses brushed.
Seconds later, our lips brushed. The quick kiss tasted minty-fresh, and my head swam.
A million new questions zipped through my mind. Was I good at this? Getting better? Was Henry feeling what I was feeling? Was he feeling the hardness hidden away inside my pants?
He had to, as he kissed me again and rocked into me.
He had to, as his tongue darted out from between his lips and into the cavern of my mouth.
He had to, as I splayed my hands along his back and dragged him closer to me, bunching up the sheets and blankets as he complied.
Henry’s shirt bunched up like the blanket, giving me access to a sliver of skin right above the waistband of his pajama pants.
He quivered as my fingers glided along it.
A spellbinding sound escaped his parted lips as I kissed down the length of his neck.
He shook when my finger found his belly button.
A clash of tongues ensued that sent me into a state of utter delirium.
“Aidan,” he cooed. For the first time, he sounded almost out of control. “Aid—”
I accidentally swallowed the second syllable with a voracious kiss. Those three letters rang in my ears for seconds after they were spoken.
With a million nerve endings tingling in time with our kisses, I felt truly like a person.
Sensitive yet strong. Agog yet shy. Needy yet giving.
After a beat, we both stilled. I was unsure what to do next, and Henry didn’t immediately take the lead as usual. His hesitation caused my heart rate to decrease.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Our noses touched as he nodded. “Would you… would you take my shirt off?”
“Yes.” We sat up and I scooted behind him. Gently, I tugged the shirt up over his head.
In the darkness, I roved the pads of my fingers along his back. Little bumps arose in the wake of their path. I pressed my lips to the area. Still more bumps shot up.
“Those are goose bumps,” he whispered, as if someone besides Topher might hear us. “They appear when you’re cold or experiencing a strong emotional feeling.”
“Right now, which one are you?” I asked, removing my hands.
“A little bit of both, I think,” he said.
A glimmer of streetlight bled in through the cracks in the blinds, painting Henry’s profile in jagged slats of orange. “We can put your shirt back on to warm you up,” I said, feeling around for where I’d hastily tossed it.
He shook his head, flipping around to face me. His stirring eyes blazed through the black. “I’d rather you hold me.”
“I’d love to,” I rasped. He moved so that his thighs bracketed mine. He draped his arms around my neck, head on my shoulder. Our bulges pressed into one another. What started out sweet grew progressively headier.
Encased in his arms, I inched deeper into the aching sensation between my legs. I ground my hips against his in a move that felt completely primal. The tug and strain of fabric on fabric filled my body with a million tiny flapping birds—a whole host of turtledoves in flight.
Henry let out little gasps of breath that gave me clues about which tempo he liked. My pelvis felt motorized, fueled entirely by his hot exhales landing on the skin of my sensitive neck.
The walls of the room could’ve collapsed around us, and I’d have been none the wiser. All I cared about was taking Henry with me on this trip into the cosmos because suddenly I was seeing stars, juddering under Henry as he cried out in time.
It was impossible to catch my breath. My lungs felt somehow full and depleted.
There was a sticky warmth in my lap, sweat in my hairline, and a drowsy smile drawn across my face. My eyelids became impossibly heavy.
Henry kept his arms where they were and swung his head back. He donned a matching smile to mine. Our lips crashed together one last time for a salty kiss that we both savored.
From the outside, we must’ve looked exactly like that Brancusi statue.