Draw Me In

by Megan Squires

  DRAW ME IN

  Megan Squires

  Draw Me In

  Copyright © 2014 by Megan Squires

  First Kindle Edition: 2014

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Regina Wamba at Mae I Design and Photography

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Here’s to the roses and the lilies in bloom,

  You in my arms and I in your room.

  A door that is locked, a key that is lost.

  A bird, and a bottle, and a bed badly tossed,

  And a night that is fifty years long.

  -Herb Cain

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I want you to take time and walk around. Get a sense for the light. Notice the intentional way it funnels and curves around his body. See the slope and form of his shoulders and back and how they’ve displayed him here perfectly to accentuate and define every vein and muscle.”

  Veins. Even his veins had an aura of life pumping through them. Five hundred years old but pulsing with a pure human essence that withstood the test of time. Made immortal. Not frozen in stone like some would call it, but brought to life from that stone.

  I held up the graphite tip of my pencil in the air, drawing imaginary loops in the space between us and the statue just ten feet away.

  It was crowded here today, especially for a Tuesday. But this was kind of something you had to do when visiting Florence: check out the enormous naked statue on display in the Accademia Gallery. That and consume copious amounts of gelato, washed down by too many glasses of wine, paid for with euros tucked away in your authentic Italian leather purse. If you were going to be a tourist, might as well go all in.

  But today, travelers, art students and Florentines alike were huddled under Michelangelo’s David, admiring the handiwork of the creator that carved him out of the marble. It was done the way a composer draws out the music trapped within the ivory keys. He’d totally composed a symphony here. I could feel the crescendos, the staccato and legato all twisting through the marble, branching out in the form of limbs and appendages, fingers and toes. A note here. A stanza there. An entire composition enclosed within a body that straddled the line between art and rebirth, the limbo where the creator became a living part of his work.

  “Tell me,” I breathed, no sound behind my words except puffs of air that inhabited the void where my vocal chords should be. How could a slab of rock do this to me? It was almost embarrassing. “Have you ever seen the perfection of a man done in such a way?”

  I bit my lips between my teeth sharply, and then quickly shoved my pencil in the space when I realized how desperate I must look. Honestly, I might as well be fanning myself and sitting in a fainting chair. I remembered reading about those in an outdated history book growing up, though I wasn’t sure they even existed. Could have been made up or been some misrepresented history for all I knew. Like the whole ‘the world is flat’ sort of thing.

  But what couldn’t be proved wrong that I was going to faint from the very real fact that I stood in front of David once again. I breathed all too erratically, depriving my brain of the oxygen it required to keep me alive. I needed that fainting chair. I assumed they were used for instances such as this.

  You know, when you looked at a naked guy and nearly passed out.

  In my past three years as an art student at New York City’s University of Visual Arts, I’ve seen my share of clothes-less men, trust me. I’ve sketched, painted and molded the male body into being more times than I can count, but every time I take a class of high school students to view this infamous statue, I’m left even more breathless than the trip before. A few more tours like this and I might have to pack my own paper bag in my purse just in case I start to hyperventilate.

  “Miss Thornton? Why are his hands so frickin’ big? They totally look out of proportion,” Eva, my undeniable favorite from this year’s travel group, asked, her sketchpad folded tightly over her chest in a paper hug. A few of the other students nodded in agreement, their heads of spiked, dyed and dreaded hair bobbing behind her just out of sync. We sure had quite a crew this trip, and I loved that so much of their creativity showed up not only on paper, but visibly poured out of them in their own artistic style of dress, too. It couldn’t be contained within the confines of their body, but decorated the exterior with the excess that sprung out of them.

  I adjusted my navy pullover sweater between my fingers. Would my outward appearance ever match the inner artist that pulsed within me? After twenty-two years, I was doubtful it would. I didn’t often spend my creative energy on myself, but tried to focus it on my work. Sweat and blood and all that jazz. You get the gist.

  Even if I wanted to, I was as far from fashionable as you could get. Think the style sense of your Great Grandma Edna meets thrift store shopping. But not the thrift store that Macklemore made cool again. No, the one where all the hideous, reject clothes went to die. Like the clothing self-proclaimed hippies and even Burning Man attendees wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, even if the pockets were stuffed with cannabis and packed with granola. Then think of me going into said Thrift Store of Rejection blindfolded, spinning around three dizzy times, and putting on the first thing my hand landed on. Only that would require more fashion coordination than I had available. No popping tags for me. This was not f’ing awesome.

  Blue jeans and t-shirts would have to do. Sometimes a girl just didn’t have options.

  I glanced back to Eva. “His hands are exceptionally large, aren’t they? Great observation.” I bounced on the toes of my worn Chuck Taylors. “There are many theories on this. Some say Michelangelo wanted to focus on the strength of David—how his hands were such an integral part in battle when he defeated Goliath.”

  Pressing between the river of bodies at the base of the sculpture, I guided my eight students several feet back until we were no longer perpendicular with the stone. He was at a 45-degree angle. “Look now,” I instructed, swiveling on my heels. The friction of the rubber tread squealed loud enough to draw attention, like I’d taken a balloon and squeezed apart the opening to let the air squeak through, a stinging sound that shrieked into the atmosphere.

  From our new vantage point under the statue, it was as though he took on an entirely new life, figure and form. My students noticed it too. The widening of their eyes and the sudden drop of their jaws gave it all away. Pure expression like that was hard to smother behind a guard. It oozed, authentic and real. That sheer second of uninhibited reaction. The visceral knee-jerk response that didn’t care what others thought because others had nothing to do with it. It was just you and your impulse. Ignore the rest. It wasn’t about them. Man, how I loved that.

  “Oh my God. Look at that!” Carlo shouted, jabbing his elbow into Eva’s ribs. The canvas bag crossed over his body swung at his side and I could hear his pencils clang within their metal case, a tinkering of potential creativity just waiting to break out of their miniature jailhouse. “They totally look in proportion now!”

  “Yes!” I halfway shouted in an octave just outside of my normal range. “That’s exactly it, Carlo. It’s all about perspective. Just like we talked about with last week’s realism compositions.”

  “I think I’m in love,” Eva swooned as she rocked on her heels. She was all kinds of adorable with freckles smattered across her nose and permanent black charcoal caked under her nail beds. And she totally owned it, which made my heart swell because back when I was fifteen, and had oil pastel and pencil lead as tattoos lining the creases of my hands and fingers, I’d wanted to tuck them away and keep my passion under wrap
s. It was a bravery that I hadn’t possessed back then—being comfortable in my own skin. I was so grateful that now, in my final year of college, I’d finally gained it.

  This was me, no insecurities, no hang-ups, few complaints. Twenty-two was a good age to have finally found myself, though I never felt lost to begin with. I grew to love my clumsy awkwardness at a young age because it made me different than so many other girls. I didn’t fit the mold, and even if I wanted to, I would likely break it. I knew myself well enough to figure that would be the case.

  That was the thing about being comfortable in your own skin—even your faults no longer bothered you, no longer kept you up at night with insecure anxiety. You accepted them because they were a part of you, and to fully accept yourself, you had to take the good with the bad.

  No one was perfect.

  Maybe that’s why I am an artist. Maybe it’s my optimistic attempt to create something that crept just a little closer toward perfection than I’d ever be able to get on my own as a human. I would always skirt that edge, trip over it probably, but my artwork could propel me further. I knew enough of Michelangelo to know he was far from perfect. But his David? Maybe after sculpting him he got just a small glimpse of what it was to be God. To know how it felt to be the Creator, not just the created.

  I couldn’t think of anything else that allowed us to feel that way. That alone was awe-inspiring.

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  I returned my attention to Eva and her unabashed admiration of the stone man in front of us.

  “Sorry, Eves. Can’t have him.” I shook my head quickly and the end of my brunette ponytail bit my cheek. “He’s all mine.”

  “I think I’m going to have to fight you on that one, Jules,” Ian, my roommate, piped up as he bracketed two large hands over my shoulders in a hooked grip. They were warm and friendly as he playfully rocked me side to side, a human pendulum.

  “Hate to burst your bubble, but I’m pretty sure David wasn’t gay. In fact, I think he liked the ladies a bit too much, if I recall.” I reached up to squeeze Ian’s fingers between my own. “Bathsheba ring any bells?”

  “A guy can dream.” He draped a heavy arm over my shoulder and leaned forward, the golden fringe of his sandy blond hair sweeping into his eyes. Those irises were green like always, but his emerald blazer made them appear several shades darker than usual and the intensity that emanated out of them made him pretty close to drop dead gorgeous. He was at the very least encroaching on heart palpitation territory with his lazy smile and telling eyes.

  Ian pushed up his hair with the heel of his hand and swung around toward our students as he continued, “And while I’m dreaming, you all start sketching. Feel free to post up wherever you can find room and not get in the way of the other visitors. But try to spread out. I don’t want everyone’s drawings to be of David’s ass.” With a coy grin that he’d perfected in his youth, I was sure because it was just that good and equally convincing, Ian added, “Who am I kidding, I’d be totally fine with that.”

  There were those gay guys that were like girlfriends. You know, the ones you could go shopping with and blabber on about the latest tabloid gossip over martinis and cosmopolitans. The ones who would watch Sex in the City with you for the 1,846th time, all while painting your toes the latest OPI seasonal color.

  And then there was Ian.

  There was no stereotype when it came to him. He was masculine and strong, yet tender and artistic in a way that made him irresistibly sexy as he took up residence in the space of that juxtaposition. Which completely sucked because his undeniable magnetic aura was the reason I’d spent my freshman year of college pining after a guy that I hadn’t realized could never love me back.

  But as it would turn out, Ian absolutely did fall in love with me, just not in a romantic way like I’d hoped for back when I had naively fantasized about him throughout our freshman Photographic Elements of Composition class. He’d become my brother—my right hand man—and over the past three years he was the best roommate I could’ve ever hoped for or created out of my own needs and wistful desires.

  Clean and organized with his toiletries strategically lining the bathroom like the cologne decoratively displayed at the counter at Macy’s. Talented in the kitchen and a total foodie with culinary skills of an up and coming New York chef. And best of all, he had become a sort of personal shrink for me as I navigated my way through the high and lows of all that New York had to offer, that falsetto versus the natural voice. Ian was my middle C. He was my everything, filling almost every need I could dream up.

  However, when it came to romance, that was a bill he obviously couldn’t foot.

  Unfortunately, that was also the case for the last four guys I’d tried to date. I didn’t consider myself incredibly picky when it came to men, but I understood I was probably a little harder to get than other women my age. And I don’t mean hard to get in a way that implied I was all about the chase. That type of game adults play.

  I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t a tease. If anything I was probably a little too easy. I’d crossed over home plate enough times that I might as well have been a catcher, I hung out there so often. I made myself comfortable, dug my cleats into the dirt and readied my position.

  I wasn’t physically hard to get. Maybe I was just hard to understand.

  The last guy I spent any amount of time with was the son of a Fortune 500 business owner, and I doubted an art student/barista/youth mentor was exactly what his father had in mind for a future daughter-in-law.

  Old men dreamt big for their sons, I knew that. They grew up, lived out their own often unsatisfying lives, and then, when they were no longer convinced they could fulfill their aspirations held from youth, they stole the youth of their kin and tacked their hopes onto them like some type of Father/Son pass-the-baton race.

  Some called it legacy. I called it being a vicarious has-been.

  This particular boy I’d been dating called it off quickly before I had any time to get attached, which seemed to be the running trend with all of my relationships as of late. I’d probably always remain unattached, never even giving my own name an opportunity to fasten itself to another.

  Sometimes I wondered if I’d forever be a Julie Thornton. If my identity would solely be mine and never intertwine with someone else’s. Twenty-two wasn’t old by any stretch of the imagination, but I saw others my age being plucked off, one by one, joining the fold of partners and duos. I was a singleton. If I’m going to let my guard down and be completely honest here, sometimes that got lonely.

  I was thankful for trips like this. For the times when the minutes in my life coincided with someone else’s minutes and our clocks ticked down side by side. These were the experiences we’d sit around reliving years later, drinks in hand. We’d retrieve the filed away memories from the vault and reread the script to live them out again, this time in story form.

  I was lucky to have this season with Ian and my students.

  Life was meant to be shared.

  As I looked back up at the statue, my pulse stuttered at the notion that Michelangelo had been a recluse, much like many of his artistic peers strung across the years before and after him.

  Was I wrong in wanting anything other than that kind of life? Was I wrong in wishing for more than just my art to satisfy and fulfill me?

  Then it hit me, a cold slab of marble to my thoughts.

  Maybe that wasn’t what Michelangelo wanted, either. Maybe that just ended up being the life he created.

  The problem was, you could love your work with all you had—pour every ounce of yourself into it like you were filling it up with your very own blood—but you could never give it a soul, no matter how lifelike and immortal it may appear.

  And from what I figured I knew about life and love, the soul was where it all began.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Earth to Jules.”

  I snapped my head quickly, eyes slamming with Ian’s as he intercepted my far-off stare.
I’d mindlessly been eyeing David’s package for the past hour, which would have been weird, but come on, let’s be honest, that’s what at least half of the other people here were doing.

  “He got you under some sort of spell?” A slight dimple pricked into Ian’s left cheek as he pointed a finger back toward the statue. The dip held there as a smirk fastened to his mouth. “The kiddos are doing their sketches, and I’m off to shoot some Florentine street life. You okay to stay here with the crew or should I find someone a little less hypnotized?”

  “No.” I slid my leather messenger bag off my shoulder and dug into it to retrieve my own sketchpad and pencils. Some women toted lipstick and compacts in their purses as a way to refresh their look. I carted around art supplies and notebooks in my bag as a way to refresh my outlook. “That totally works for me. Meet you at the square at 12:00?”

  “Perfecto.” Ian flashed another award-winning grin as he bowed while walking backward toward the museum exit. “Bye, Jules,” he called over the crowd between us. His words bounced off of heads like an arcade game of pinball. Jump, jump, ping, jump until it reached the shell of my ears.

  “Ciao, Ian.”

  I zigzagged my way through the people, stopping to admire the work of each of my students as I passed. Liquid creativity splashed onto their pages with each brush of their fingertips.

  Glancing to my wrist, I debated whether or not to start my own sketch. Truth be told, I probably had enough drawings of David to wallpaper my room back in our NYC apartment. Actually, I knew I did. I tried it once, but after Grandma passed out upon entering my bedroom the year Ian and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our loft, I decided to take them down and return them to their previous home under my bed.

  Turns out that the whole ‘too much of a good thing’ notion is actually true. I’m not sure Grandma ever did recover, but luckily she was suffering from mild dementia (if literally losing one’s mind could ever be labeled as lucky), so she didn’t remember that one time her granddaughter tried to kill her via nude art overdose.