I turned to Aaron. “This chair’s for you. And I’ll be here.”
“Cool,” he said, and coming from him it sounded like high praise. “How you want me to sit?”
“However’s comfortable.”
He glided into the chair, lounged back like a lion settling down to survey his pride, and looked straight at me. “This okay?”
“Fine,” I said, fighting to keep that waver from my voice. “I’m gonna do a couple of quick pencil studies, first, to get a feel for your face.”
“You ain’t already got that?” he said, and his smile carried that same I-know-what-you’re-up-to hint that I’d seen before.
“This time I don’t have to do it on the fly,” I smiled, looking straight back at him.
He shrugged, sipped his beer and took a deep breath. “Then let’s get to it, boss.”
So I grabbed my Derwent #4b and the sketchpad and got to work. And I did sketch after sketch after sketch of his face from a number of different angles and aimed for a number of different feels, trying to figure out the best ways to capture his beauty on canvas.
And it was the worst hour of my life! Not one friggin’ sketch turned out right! Not one! Three-quarters left with shading, and his nose became this monster fit for Cyrano de Bergerac. Full-face line drawing and his eyes were off center. Profile swipes of full pencil made his neck seem too thin and the back of his head flat. Quick whipping circles made him look puffy. I tried doing an eye, just by itself, in the basic art school fashion, and it grew deformed. I focused on his chin, and suddenly it exploded into contours that brought to mind Picasso at his most second-rate cubist period. By the time I started trying to get just his mouth right, I was beginning to lose it.
I didn’t know what the problem was, but I could not find a way to translate Aaron from my eye to my mind to my hand! A ten-second sketch I did of him once while he and Andrea waited at a traffic light was a better rendition of him than anything I was doing, that evening. By the time I’d torn the tenth sketch out of my pad and slung it over my shoulder, I was ready to jump out a window, I was so frustrated.
I think Aaron and Andrea felt it because she began picking up the sketches and saying things like, “Oh, this is good” and “Baby, he got your ears just right,” and bullshit like that. And Aaron’s smile kept getting smaller and smaller and less certain. Guess they thought I was locked in some kind of creative death spiral and were afraid I was gonna do the equivalent of a fired-worker rampage or something. I finally slung the pencil across the room, yanked a Bock from the freezer and guzzled half of it down just to shift my focus away from my exploding sense of failure.
I mean, shit, I wanted so much to impress him, to “wow” him and make him like me and become my friend and let me hold him or just be with him and enjoy the beauty of his light, and I was fucking it up, so perfectly. Now he’d know I’m nothing but a stupid little faggot who’s just like all the other faggots who’ve probably come onto him, and I’d be dismissed like I was shit on his shoe. Just something to wipe off.
Aaron slipped out of the chair and sort of crept over to me and said, “Hey, boss ... you okay?”
“Yeah, I ... I’m fine ...I ...” I muttered, then said, “I don’t get it. I can’t get it. I ... I’ve never had this problem before. I ... I can’t get the sense of your face. The contours and life and ... and ...”
I couldn’t continue. My stomach was churning, and I was tasting something far stronger than beer in the back of my throat. Oh, perfect – now I’m about to be sick in front of him.
Andrea took on this soothing expression (I could have killed her for it) and said, “Hey, Joe, it’s okay. I know how you creative types can get ... and it’s no big deal.”
I turned away from her. I couldn’t believe she said “you creative types”! That made me sound like some fucking lab experiment, and I was about to lose my manners with that bitch.
Aaron picked up one of the sketches and shrugged. “Really, Joe, it don’t look bad.”
“What the fuck do you know?” I snapped back, before I could censor the thought. “It’s shit! All of it’s shit! I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, saying I could paint you. I’m a fucking idiot.”
He got this way too patient expression on his face and said, “Tell you what, why don’t I just buy that watercolor off you for the forty?”
I was already ashamed of my outburst, so I nodded. “Lemme get it.”
I went to a closet and pulled out one of my portfolios. I have one for every semester, and I make damned sure I get every piece of my artwork back, no matter how crappy it is. Nobody gets to mess with my work but me. I was already digging through it before I realized I was in the wrong one. I was about to put it back when I noticed a sketch I’d done in second semester drawing. It was a squiggly line drawing of a Chianti bottle with a candle stuck in it and wax dribbling down the sides, like what you see in cheap Italian restaurants. A nice little rendition layered in more emotion than I’d remembered. No great news, but it stopped me dead.
“Aaron,” I said, not thinking (if I had thought about it, I’d never have said a thing), “lemme try something.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
I rose, holding the sketch of the wine bottle.
“My ... my second semester here,” I said, “I took this experimental drawing class, where you try all sorts of things to jolt you out of old habits. One exercise was we had to blindfold ourselves and sketch something by feel. We didn’t know what it was until the professor put it on a stool next to us. I wound up with this candle in a wine bottle.”
He gave me a wary look and said, “Uh-huh.” I think he already had an idea what I was going to ask, so I let it bolt out of me.
“Can I touch your face? Get a feel for it?”
Andrea finally popped in on what I was asking – the dumb bitch. “Wait, you want to what?”
“I want to close my eyes and run my fingers over his face and do a sketch, that way. Maybe that’ll help me out of this artist’s block I’ve got.”
“You can’t draw like that!” she said.
“I already have,” I snapped back. I slapped the sketch into her hands and began digging in my box of supplies. “But I can’t do it with graphite ... I need a Conte pencil. Something I can feel on the paper.”
“That sounds kind of weird, Joe,” Aaron said, and even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could tell he was giving me his I-know-what-you’re-up-to smile, again.
I found a good piece of Conte and turned to him.
“Head and shoulders, only,” I said. “I won’t go any lower. Andrea’s here, so you know I won’t try anything else.” And that was my tacit acknowledgement that I knew he knew I was out to sleep with him.
Man, I was feeling bold, all of a sudden (or maybe it was desperate) but I had to break free of this growing feeling that I was an abject failure, and maybe this would help. It couldn’t hurt, and no one was going to expect anything from it, anyway, not even me. “She can even blindfold me, to make it all correct. Think of it as a magic trick ... or stunt.”
I wish I could have thought up a better argument, but hey – he cast a glance at Andrea, who was not looking too pleased then he slipped me that little grin, again, and said, “Should I sit back in the chair?”
“No, the stool,” I said, and I popped my art table stool right beside my easel. Then I grabbed a paint cloth from the table and offered it to Andrea. “Will you do the honors?”
“Why do I feel like this is something David Copperfield would pull?” she asked as she came over and took the rag. Not a great joke, but not a bad one. Dammit.
I propped my sketchpad on the easel, again, and readied the Conte pencil in my right hand. Aaron sat on the stool, just inches from me, his wary expression still riding his face.
“Just be careful,” he said, only half joking.
I spread my fingers and positioned them atop his left eyebrow, then Andrea blindfolded me. And, she did it tight, too, the bit
ch. I took a couple of deep breaths, ripped the realization that I was actually fucking touching Aaron Friesen’s face out of my mind and made myself focus.
Okay, left eyebrow.
I ran my fingers over it, light and gentle, trying to translate what I felt with my left hand into what I was drawing with my right. Let’s see, nice arch to it. Hair’s smooth, not bristling. Neatly follows the shape of his eye socket. Not bad.
Slowly on to his left eye. Good form. Smooth flesh above the eye, and not too much, either. Lid creases back with a fraction of the lid remaining. Soft eyelashes in good order, too.
“This tickles,” said Aaron.
I shushed him then followed the top eyelid around to the bridge of his nose. So far, he was perfect and smooth and felt exactly as I thought he would feel. And the bridge of his nose was no different. A small round dip from the forehead down to the top of his perfect straight – wait a minute! His nose isn’t straight. The bone bulges a bit at the top then curls down in a slope, and the dip is more of a sharp circle that’s been sliced into it.
I stopped and felt the sheet of paper, found the smooth waxy line of the pencil and made an adjustment where I thought I had drawn the bridge, then my left hand drifted over to his right eyebrow. It felt the same as the left. Nice arch to it. Hair’s smooth, not bristling. Neatly follows the shape of the socket and –wait! It angles down more sharply than the other.
I stopped and let my fingers play over his skin, trying to get a better feel for the shape of his skull. Then I noticed the hairs on his eyebrow curled into each other more, and there was a slight crease running at a slant through them at the point where they danced down around his eye, and the texture of them changed, slightly. I stopped.
“You have a scar,” I said.
I felt his face turn to me, just a bit.
“Yeah,” he said. “You can feel it?”
I nodded. I heard Andrea come over.
“Where?” she asked. I could picture her bending in close to look. Get the fuck back.
“Right eye, where his finger is. Josh and me had just seen The Three Musketeers and we were havin’ a duel with butter knives, and he got me, good. But that’s back when I was seven. I thought it’d all healed.”
“There’s just a hint of it,” I said. But it was something I had missed just by looking at him.
And then I started to understand my problem – I hadn’t really been looking at him. I’d just been gazing upon him, like you do with a statue or some piece of installation art shit. I wasn’t seeing him because I thought I already had seen him and had already formed him in my mind (if that makes any sense). He was cast in stone, and I was trying to translate something cold and impersonal into something alive, and that’s not right.
Suddenly, I was noticing the little details that made him human instead of merely perfect. I drifted my fingers back over to his left eyebrow and felt it, again, and this time, I noticed the same pattern in the hair – it wasn’t straight and smooth, not really; it also curled just a little, just enough to give it a wavy depth. And this time, I noticed there was just a bit of sharpness in the bone of his brow, meaning his forehead was not just smooth and even, but had curves and meaning all its own. Once again, lightning was screaming from my fingertips, but this time, it danced across my mind.
My hand trailed over to his hairline and along it to his sideburns and caressed the beginning of a sharp cheekbone and drifted down to where his jaw began, just in front of his ear. His skin was not merely smooth but carried hints of blemishes, still, as it rolled across the formations that build his face. I traced the line of his chin and felt the warmth of his breath on my palm as my fingers did their light little dance over the merest of clefts in dead center, directly below his mouth. His breathing seemed softer to me, deeper, and that warmth enveloped me in dreams and made me hesitate. And then I heard him lick his lips.
I stopped. I couldn’t get a sense of where Andrea was, and I didn’t want to continue unless I knew. “You’re not looking at the sketch, Andrea.”
I heard her move, slightly, behind me. She was.
“Don’t tell me what it looks like,” I said.
I heard her swallow before she said, “Okay,” in a soft voice that had risen a couple of octaves.
I choked off a scream of joy. The way she said that one little word expanded reality within me, and I knew the experiment was working, and the sketch was evolving, and she was impressed, which is a good thing, even if it was her.
I drew my fingers up from Aaron’s chin to his mouth, felt the hint of stubble peeking from his skin – does your beard grow fast or do you just not shave every day? His lips felt fuller than I had pictured, rounder, smoother, warmer, and then he licked them, again, his tongue glancing off my fingers.
This time, the screaming lightning ripped right down my back and slamming into my thighs. And this time it took the combination of both my briefs and my jeans to keep my erection hidden. But this time there was a million times more to it. Yeah, it was a charge to be touching Aaron like this, to feel his reactions to my caress, but I felt like it was beyond simple lust. I was finally connecting to him, and that connection was whispering from my left fingertips to my right ones and giving me a view of him I could never have imagined. Now he seemed to be part of me, and he was even more beautiful than before.
My fingers continued their exploration across his face. I found the tip of his nose has a hint of a point to it and little dents over the nostrils to keep them from being too smooth. And his left cheekbone curved a bit more than the right one, but the skin on his face had filled it in so that you would never notice unless you actually measured it. And his ears were colder than his cheeks, so they should be a hint bluer. And his earlobes were soft and rounded and creased under to his jaw. And his right eye was a bit rounder than his left. I felt the softness of skin between the prickly hints of beard above his Adam’s apple and noticed how sharp was that point in his throat. And how the muscles of his neck blended together like tiny threads twisted around a straw. And the pulse of his blood through his veins was in unison with mine. And the little dip of bone at the base of his throat (the sternum?) was a half circle so precise, it could have been measured by an engineer. And the little hairs at the top of his chest brushed against me as if in welcome, and I felt a fullness in my throat and such joy and wonder, and I had to step back from the growing overload of sensation.
I yanked the blindfold off in a bit of a fog, or trance, maybe; I don’t know. Even with the low light, I had a hard time adjusting them to where I could see. Aaron was in deep soft focus, but I could tell he was looking at me, unmoving. His breath was still and deep and quick. And Andrea was behind me, still looking at the sketch. I finally got my eyes under enough control to view what I had done.
And there he was in soft black Conte pencil against white paper. Oh, the lines were uneven in spots, and I’d doubled back over his features in a couple of places. And the shape of his head was indistinct (in fact, I hadn’t even really tried to do more than get his eyes, nose, mouth and chin). But this sketch had captured his look. It showed his beautiful little I-know-what-you’re-up-to smile. And his eyes were deep with feeling. And his nose, which I had tried so hard to make straight and perfect, curved a little and became more real than anything I had sketched before. And the line of his chin was in proportion to everything else. Even his ears looked just a little bit cold (I know it’s crazy to say that, but I really do think they did). I was stunned into silence.
“Aaron,” Andrea whispered, “you have to see this.”
He hesitated then rose and stretched and looked at the sketch, and I looked at him and noticed his nipples were pressing against the fabric of his shirt. Without thinking, I glanced down. His left ankle crossed his right one, making his left leg jut a bit out, but it couldn’t hide the extra bulge showing inside his Dockers – so, he is a boxers kind of guy. I looked up at him, still not thinking, and realized he was looking straight back at me, a hint of c
onfusion in his eyes. I turned away, shaken. I still could not speak.
Somehow, Andrea set up the next session for Tuesday, 6:00 pm. Only reason I know is she wrote it on a slip of paper. All I could do was nod in answer as she and Aaron left.
I cannot remember one single solitary thought I had at that point. I couldn’t even tell you for sure that I had one. I was a zombie caught in some deep black magic so soft and pure and quiet I didn’t even know it existed. All I could do was gaze at the sketch, watch it gaze back at me, watch it seem to breathe and smile Aaron’s secret little smile and wait for me to respond. And suddenly I was bawling.
Now this wasn’t anything at all like weeping or crying or getting misty-eyed. This was gut-wrenching sobs that came from so deep within me it seemed they sprung from my soul. And they didn’t start out of sadness or grief or happiness or any coherent emotion I could name; they came because I knew (without question I knew) that for the first time in my life, I had approached perfection. For the first time, I could understand the story of Pygmalion, who carved a statue so beautiful he could not help but fall in love with it. For the first time, I could understand the fascination with The Mona Lisa and her secret dreams. For the first time, I had looked into a sunset and seen the face of God. But instead of running from Him, I had leapt into the sky to shake His hand and wound up flying higher and higher from the sheer joy of my boldness. And even when I had looked down to see just how far I could fall, I hadn’t grown afraid; I’d just become more certain. I was Icarus caught in the exhilaration of flight and stronger than the danger of the sun. I was an artist, a real honest-to-God artist, for the first time in my own mind, not some twit faking his way through classes and fooling people who didn’t know better. I had only my own arrogance standing by waiting to send me crashing back to earth. I had the fire to be – just to be – and oh-my-God how terrible and wonderful it was.
All of these emotions tore through me at light-speed, careening off my thoughts and exploding into each other to create feelings I never knew could exist. Add to that the honest tensile sensations of my fingers exploring Aaron’s face and the whisper of his warm sweet breath into my palm and the sound of his tongue licking his heartbreaking lips. It became so overwhelming and right, tears seemed the only appropriate sacrifice to the moment.
Boys Will Be Boys - Their First Time Page 29
