You Don't Look Fat, You Look Crazy

by Ashley Longshore

  I was cool with that.

  The next day, I sold another painting. I was rich!

  Well, not rich. But it was my first show, and I’d sold several pieces. Ask me if that was addictive.

  3

  The Boyfriend from Moneyville, USA

  OKAY, I’VE left out an important part of the story. The Boyfriend. I had been seeing The Boyfriend for a couple of years, and he was kind of a dick, but part of me—the insecure part—believed I liked him. His family had a big spread on the East Coast, as well as houses everywhere else in the fucking world.

  The Boyfriend was trying to take a stab at normalcy, though, or maybe just trying to piss off his wealthy family, so he’d been working as a chef. I guess he was pretty good at that, but in real life, he was dour and miserable, and later I realized that it ran in the family. It was kind of fascinating. These people were making more interest on their money in a day than they could spend in a year; they had money pouring out of every orifice, and they were all incredibly unhappy. And sure, I know, it’s a cliché. Money doesn’t make you happy. But having a little money sure helps, pal, and for these people, it didn’t seem to be helping them at all.

  And, look, as long as we’re being honest, my family wasn’t exactly poor. I had a father who paid for my education. Bought me shit. Had my back. I was lucky. But my father was a nice guy, and a self-made man, and these people were assholes. I wondered whether it was cultural. I was a genteel girl from the Deep South, and these people were East Coast money—the kind of big-toothed people who reminded you at every turn that their people had come over on the Mayflower.

  Good lesson, though. Teachable moment. And I made a mental note to myself: Money is not the answer.

  I’ve got to say, though, from where I was standing, I don’t think any of those people would have agreed with me. For them, it seemed to be all about money. “Oh, you got the small Birkin. I got the big one.” Or, “Oh, my God, Muffy, you’ve been dieting! You look good. Another twenty, thirty pounds, and you’re there.”

  It was astonishing. That level of bitchiness. Didn’t these people have anything better to do? Oops. I guess they knew the answer to that: They didn’t. This was a sport to them, and a very competitive sport at that.

  I remember thinking, Ashley, girl, you are never going to get caught up in that shit.

  On the other hand, as an artist with an eye for the finer things in life, I had to admit that those Birkin bags were awfully pretty.

  But no! I told myself I couldn’t think like that. I knew where that would lead. Before long, I’d be a total show pony, with a convertible Bentley, a waterfront spread in the Hamptons, and a diamond so big my whole body would be listing to the left. Hey . . . that doesn’t sound half bad!

  No! Stop! Pull yourself together, Ash. Not going to happen.

  AS AN ARTIST WITH AN EYE FOR THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE, I HAD TO ADMIT THAT THOSE BIRKIN BAGS WERE AWFULLY PRETTY.

  “Oh, honey, those shoes are so last season.”

  YOU’VE GOT TO LEARN TO DEPEND ON YOURSELF, EVEN IF IT’S HARD, AND MAYBE ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S HARD.

  Shoes? I’m wearing Gore-Tex hiking boots I got from Hippies “R” Us in Missoula. I’m not going to get sucked into your whole peacocking shit. Ashley, don’t play that game. (Although, then again, I must say—and I’m only talking aesthetically here—Mr. Louboutin does make a very nice shoe.)

  ANYWAY, after college, The Boyfriend and I moved to the East Coast. He got work as a chef and I painted. I did what I’d done in Montana, making the rounds of local galleries, and I got a lot of fuck yous before a sophisticated gentleman with great taste decided to represent me. I made a thousand dollars one month, two thousand the next, and it should have been more—except somewhere out there in The Big Book of How to Take Advantage of Artists some asshole had decided that the galleries were entitled to 50 percent.

  On bad months, I’d hit my daddy up for a so-called loan, but he wanted me to try to figure it out for myself. “I know you’re trying, honey, and I would never tell you to maybe look in the classifieds for a job, but it’s a thought.”

  Come on! I’m an artist.

  So I was stuck with The Boyfriend, and it began to look like this yin and yang business is definitely true. He was an asshole, but he paid the rent—or, technically, his parents paid the rent—and that was good for me. (Is that the yin or the yang?) Unfortunately, he was also an asshole about that. “I pay the rent, Ashley! Let’s try not to forget that.”

  I’d think, What exactly does that mean—that you expect me to take out the garbage every night? Well, yeah. Sort of. Kind of. Because that’s how it works, right? That’s how everything works. That’s how life works. There’s no free lunch, yada, yada, yada.

  And you know what? I didn’t want it to work like that for me. I didn’t want this asshole paying my rent. Well, okay, a few more months weren’t going to hurt, right? We’ve all got to deal with a little humiliation, but if I kept painting like a whirling dervish, I knew I’d land on my own two feet.

  Jesus! The excuses we make; the lies we tell ourselves. I was weak. I kept putting up with that asshole. And he wasn’t just an asshole about the rent, either. He was an asshole with other people. Every time we went out to dinner, for example, he’d send his plate back. “This is overcooked,” or, “I could get a better béarnaise sauce from a jar,” or, “Is the chef off tonight?”

  Then one day, The Boyfriend and I were lounging around, and he decided to make chocolate chip cookies. I thought they were perfect, piping hot, with just the right amount of chew, but he didn’t like them. He thought they weren’t crispy enough. And just as I was reaching for another subpar chocolate chip cookie, he grabbed the tray, crossed to the back door, and pitched the entire batch into the yard.

  I was like, “I’m done! This is crazy!” Suddenly, I didn’t care that he paid the rent. I didn’t care about his trust fund, and I certainly didn’t care that he’d probably buy me a convertible Bentley once we got married. So, I walked out, rented a U-Haul, packed my shit, and drove all the way from Moneyville, USA, to Charleston, South Carolina, to crash with my little sister, who was going to college there. Nine hundred and forty-two point four miles, and I did the drive in one day. I left at six in the morning and got there just before midnight.

  I was a little upset with my sister—she didn’t have any chilled wine or hors d’oeuvres waiting for me, like those comme il faut East Coast assholes—but I was still in a talkative mood. My sister was young, impressionable. I had some older-sister shit to impart. “This boyfriend business isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” I told her. “It’s a fantasy, Allyson. You’ve got to learn to depend on yourself, even if it’s hard, and maybe especially when it’s hard.”

  After spending two nights with Allyson, I drove out to see my dad at his beach house in the Redneck Riviera. He was very happy to see me. In fact, he was relieved. He had never liked The Boyfriend. He knew he was an asshole, and he knew he wasn’t making me happy.

  I knew better than to ask him for money—he had been good enough to pay for college, and smart enough to cut me off right after I graduated—but he let me set up a little art studio in his garage. I painted every day, all day, and at the end of the day, I celebrated by smoking a little doobie. I also knew I needed to start making a living, so I asked my father to let me know if he heard of anything. “But I’m still going to be an artist,” I said.

  And he said, “Lord, child, the only thing harder than being an artist is being a poet.” And I said, “I don’t care. It’s what I want. And I know I can do it.” I was also thankful I don’t like poetry. Except for Andrew Dice Clay, There once was a man from Nantucket / Whose dick was so long he could suck it. Or my other favorite, Little Boy Blew / Hey! He needed the money.

  My father is in advertising, and at the time, he was working with a publishing group that was about to launch a magazine in New Orleans. He reached out to a colleague there, and I went up, interviewed, and got a job,
and the following week, I packed another U-Haul and moved into a tiny apartment in a former New Orleans whorehouse, right in the heart of the Central Business District. The following Monday, I went to work at the magazine. I was twenty-eight years old. I was alone. But I was happy. I knew I was going to be okay. I had my shit together. I had good energy. I was a woman, not a young, insecure girl. Nobody was going to fuck with me.

  And you want to hear something really strange? When I was in kindergarten, the teacher made each student pick two state flags from a coloring book and fill them out in the appropriate state colors. You want to know which states I chose? Montana and Louisiana. True story. Cue eerie music.

  4

  Getting Fired Can Light a Fire

  I LOVED NEW ORLEANS. My parents had actually taken me there for my thirteenth birthday. They had walked me down Bourbon Street in the afternoon, because it was more age-appropriate at that hour, but there were still people out in the middle of the street, drinking beer and stumbling around, and there was loud music spilling out of the bars, and plenty of women who didn’t look like they were wearing undies. We were a long way from Montgomery, and I liked it.

  For the first six or seven months living in New Orleans, I sold magazine advertising. I was good at it, too. I sold a shitload of ads. I would come strolling back to the office in my high heels, waving the signed contracts in the air, and my colleagues would hoot and holler, congratulating me. But it felt a little soulless. And I was neglecting my art. I still painted, back at the whorehouse, but there weren’t enough hours in the day. But I did have some stuff to sell, so I made the rounds again, and this cool little art gallery on Julia Street agreed to represent me. (Sometimes you get lucky in life and actually meet people with taste.)

  I couldn’t get enough of the city. The people were kind of wild and bohemian, but at the same time had proper southern manners, a charming combination. They were approachable, curious, interested. And whenever anyone found out I was an artist (with a secret life selling advertising), many of them expressed immediate interest. Since I was both needy and shameless, I always pounced: “Would you like to see some of my work? I’d be glad to bring it over. At your convenience, of course.”

  More often than not, people said yes, and I’d reach for a pad and paper and ask them what their schedule looked like. And we’d work it out, Tuesday at 4, after yoga, and a few days later I’d pack several dozen paintings into the back of my big-ass Ford Expedition and drive over to the yogi’s house.

  It was crazy. People started buying my paintings. And whenever I’d travel—to visit friends in Atlanta and Minneapolis or to see my sister—I’d always take my portfolio along, and I’d cold-call galleries and head over with photographs of my work. I oozed charm. I talked loud and laughed loud. I was Miss Charisma.

  WE LIVE IN AMERICA. THIS ISN’T LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD. A WOMAN CAN BE ANYTHING SHE WANTS IN THIS COUNTRY. YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS.

  I honestly don’t know where I got the balls to do that, but I really wanted it, and I knew nobody was going to do it for me. As Audrey Hepburn once said, “When you want a helping hand, look at the end of your arm.”

  I ended up selling a bunch of pieces long-distance. My plan was working. Well, starting to work. I wanted to conquer the world, but I had to start somewhere.

  Some of my local clients insisted on meeting me, and many of them turned out to be exactly the type of woman I was raised to be. They’d be rushing off to lunch at the club or to Pilates class, or they’d take a call on their cell and go on about their kid’s freshman year at Harvard, and they always had these big, happy smiles. But when they turned around and thought no one was looking, they seemed to be close to tears.

  I used to think that could be me. I felt sorry for them, because they were completely reliant on their husbands for money—these women literally had to suck dick for anything they wanted. But it also confused me. I couldn’t understand why they would choose a life that was so unfulfilling, when this great country of ours gives women the opportunity to do so much more than having the world’s best ass. I wanted to grab them by their Givenchy lapels and shake some sense into their coiffed heads. We live in America. This isn’t like the rest of the world. A woman can be anything she wants in this country. You don’t have to live like this.

  I mean if they wanted to, fine. But most of them seemed to be living on the edge of despair.

  THESE WOMEN were not all that different from the women in that fancy East Coast Town That Must Not Be Named; they weren’t much different from my own mother and the women in her social circle; but that had been a generation ago, and these women were my age—they were young. Young and miserable. Not all of them, of course, but lots of them—maybe even most of them.

  It upset and aggravated me at the same time. But then I realized I was being judgmental. So I kept my mouth shut and instead used it in my art. Exhibit #1: She Sucked a Lot of Dick to Get That Louis Vuitton.

  True story: I was shopping in L.A. and found this gorgeous purse for like seven or eight thousand dollars. It was a lot of purse, part of a pop collection, but it was too late: I was already in love. I looked at the salesgirl and said, “Wow, even I would suck dick for this purse.” She started laughing. “Actually, I do get a lot of women who come in here, check out the purses, then disappear and return an hour later with a guy with a credit card. And honestly, their lips always look a little chafed.”

  Who was I to tell them how to live their lives? Who was I to say they were wrong? Nobody. It might not be how I do things, but, girl, if you want, you can go get yours.

  MEANWHILE, I kept selling ads, until one day the entire operation was sold to another publisher. The new owners put me to work on a glossy design magazine, which was cool, because it felt closer to art. But then they moved me to another magazine, which was mostly real estate, and I thought that was beneath me, not cool, and I wasn’t happy.

  I had been telling myself that someday soon I would be able to support myself as an artist, only then, fueled by desperation, I told myself the same thing in a much louder voice. “You’re going to be okay, Ashley. You want this. You work hard. You are going to prove yourself.”

  A CUBICLE! THAT’S LIKE PUTTING A LIONESS IN A CAGE. I PROMISED MYSELF I WOULD NEVER AGAIN WORK ANYWHERE WITH FUCKING CUBICLES.

  I looked at the salesgirl and said, “Wow, even I would suck dick for this purse.”

  About a week into this fresh hell, I met a guy at Jazz Fest, and I crushed hard, and when he invited me to spend the weekend at his family’s beach house, I couldn’t resist. Sunday rolled around, and I wasn’t in a rush to get back to New Orleans, so that Monday I called in sick. Was sick on Tuesday, too.

  On Wednesday, I finally went back to work. I had a great tan, so I tried to balance it out by not wearing lip gloss, imagining that my pale, unadorned lips would give me a sickly, consumptive pallor. I got in the elevator and rode up to the sales floor, dreading the day ahead, then made my way along that Kafkaesque collection of open cubicles, en route to my own rabbit warren. I had never hated that office as much as I did at that very moment. A cubicle! That’s like putting a lioness in a cage. I promised myself I would never again work anywhere with fucking cubicles.

  My supervisor came over before I’d even lowered my buttocks into my chair. “Did you get that contract signed?” she asked. “From last week?” I’d had a bad week; I think I’d sold, like, one ad. “God, you know, I didn’t,” I said. She went on her unhappy way. A few minutes later, the PA system blared to life: “Ashley Longshore, could you please report to Colleen’s office?” Colleen was the ad director. I walked into her office, and she looked me up and down, admiring my tan and doubtless worrying about my pale, unadorned lips. “How you feelin’?” she said. And I said, “You know, I’m actually feeling a little better.” And she asked, “Did you get that contract signed?” I said, “No, I didn’t.” And she stuck her hand out, thanked me for my time, and fired me. WTF? A girl can’t go to the beach
for a few days? (Funnily enough, Colleen is now one of my favorite collectors, and she likes to take full credit for all of my artistic accomplishments—she really did light a fire under my ass by firing me.)

  5

  The Art of Self-Promotion

  I DIDN’T SAY A WORD. I went back to my cubicle, feeling a little fragile, then grabbed my things, got in the elevator, and went downstairs. I crossed the lobby, made my way through the parking lot, got into my Expedition, and immediately started sobbing. I’d just been fired. My father was going to kill me. It was a respectable job, and I’d been making almost $2,000 a month, enough to cover my rent and most of my expenses, but now—hell, I was probably going to get kicked out of the whorehouse.

  I didn’t want another job, though. I wanted to be an artist. So I went back to my apartment, parked myself in front of my computer and looked at my lovely website, sitting there, gathering dust. This was Ashley Longshore’s personal web page, a long-ago gift from my wonderfully generous father, who, as an advertising man, understood the art of self-promotion. Ashley Longshore, the artist. I’d never taken advantage of the site, but I did then. I emailed everyone who had ever bought one of my paintings and everyone who had even thought about buying one of my paintings—and even everyone who didn’t realize I was a painter—and I attached the link to my website. Hey, look at me. It’s Ashley. I’m a painter. I had plenty of paintings available for sale, and I attached JPEGs of every last one.

  God, there were tons. I was painting so prolifically that my studio was full of piles and piles of paintings—but as I always say: “If I don’t paint it, I can’t sell it.” Maybe it would have been better to have had nothing for sale, to have been a limited-edition Birkin bag, for example, available only to the chosen few on The List, thereby creating a frenzy of desire. Instead, my paintings were just sitting there, like sad puppies at the pound. Did I say $500? I’ll take $50.