Chapter 35
Andi pulls a sketchbook from behind the seat as I get in their truck.
“I wanted the self-portraits to be completely identical. That was my point. I tried out different approaches but once I found the right one I did it the same way every time. Same lights, same pencils. And you know I draw exactly what I see. But I can’t make them right. Each one looks different.”
They turn on the overhead light and quickly pass me one picture after another so I only have time for a first impression before I’m hit with the next.
In each, Andi looks directly at me, their eyes penetrating, but I know when it was drawn that look was pointed at themself in the mirror.
I couldn’t name how one is drawn any differently from the next, and yet each has a different effect.
In the first I’m confronted, pushed back.
After that I’m allowed in. I recede. I soften.
I’m unnerved by the intimacy. I feel safe.
I feel grateful for Andi, I feel lucky that I get to know them.
By the ninth and final portrait I see why it isn’t possible for Andi to keep themselves behind this face, and why I can’t keep myself hidden from mine anymore either.
We need to allow ourselves to be seen. We need to be seen and to see each other.
Before I can say anything, Andi closes the sketchbook and looks out the window. The seeing is over.
“What would help you draw the last one?”
“There is no way I will look at myself again for that length of time.”
“What if I held up the mirror?” I say. “With the other portraits, you were alone and scrutinizing yourself. This time, I’d be looking at you.”
“I don’t know,” they say, but they nod. “We could try it.”
Moving quickly, they take out a mirror from the back of the sketchbook and a pencil from the glove compartment. They hand me the mirror and position it in my hands so it’s facing them. “Don’t look away,” they say.
They sit back with their sketchbook and a pencil.
No eraser. They look at me and hold my gaze, then glance in the mirror and draw.
The other portraits were careful studies that must have each taken hours.
With this one, Andi’s hand moves quickly as they look from my eyes to the mirror to the page, and after a few minutes they pause and look longer at the drawing, possibly done.
They look back at me with a fierceness I’m frightened by, and they go back to the page and add a few more lines.
“Okay.”
They flip the sketchbook around to show me.
It’s Andi without anything in the way. Andi when they’re seen as they are.
Andi when they’re seen by me. Or by a version of myself I didn’t know I could be.
I’m usually the one who’s an emotional disaster.
I’m the one who needs someone else to make it okay.
But maybe that’s not all of me. I take care of Mom sometimes, don’t I?
Maybe I can also be someone who cares for others.
Andi turns the drawing to look at it again. “It’s not bad, right?”
“It’s beautiful.”
They smile.
We sit in silence for a while. It’s not an awkward silence. I don’t wonder if I should be saying something. We simply sit.
Eventually Andi turns to me and says, “So you and Elijah aren’t talking?”
“I really messed up,” I say. “It took me time to make sense of being bi. It’s reasonable it would take him a minute too.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh,” I say with mock-seriousness. “You’ll see what you can do?”
“Yes,” they say. “I’ll ask him to come to your Vanderbilt show with me, and then you can win him back with an awkward sex story.”
“He said that at the end of my set at Captain’s, he wanted me to say why I couldn’t cry, but instead I made a joke.”
“A funny joke.”
“But I guess this time I have to give the real answer.”
Andi lets out the longest, most displeased sigh. “I told you this outside of McGuinn’s the night of your birthday.” They enunciate every word. “You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. That includes Elijah.”
I put my hands in my pockets. “So what are you recommending I do?”
“Whatever you want, man. You were funny at school and everyone thought you were funny. You were, I dunno, serious and profound for Elijah and he thought you were serious and profound. You were everything for everyone, and how do you feel?”
“Exhausted.”
“I bet,” they say. “Who cares what anyone else thinks? When I see Sean O’Brien onstage, I want to see whatever you feel like doing that night. Not trying to hit everyone else’s invisible targets. I want to see you hitting your own target.”
Something shifts in a place I can feel but can’t explain.
When Andi returns me to my car at the Big Duck, I follow them westward onto the expressway.
The horizon turns pale and purple behind us and the sun rises and paints the sky in the rearview mirror every color.
I’m driving into the day. I’m feeling my way into the future.