Fail Seven Times

by Kris Ripper

  “What he did with the body…he painted it like twisted metal, you see that? The joints? It’s like…” His hand curled into a fist. “You can practically see that hip joint flex.”

  For purposes of Art, Chad had no problem with the naked male form. I avoided looking at the erect cock in the center of the painting and studied the bright pinks, oranges, and yellows off the left side of the body, contrasting with the purples, blues, and indigos off the right side. A thread of scarlet ran through the entire thing, a ribbon almost, connecting the sides with the body.

  “Is it…birth and death?” I asked. “Sunrise to darkness?”

  He tousled my hair. “You’re learning! Look at you. Analyzing art. And yeah, that’s part of what’s compelling. He did some subtle shit with the body, too. You see? The skin’s drawn a little more boldly on the left side, and more raggedly on the right. Like it’s age-damaged. Fuck, I don’t know how I’d get the same feathering effect. You think this guy would be okay with me doing an homage? I’d want to reference the original explicitly.”

  Dear The Estate of Enrico Hazeltine, my fag-hating Republican boss wants to make an homage to the late artist’s work… “Let me look into it. And I’ll find you”—carefully curated—“examples of his other work as well.”

  “Thanks, kid.”

  Chad went to turn the television on, muted as always, and the radio up loudly enough to be heard over his hammer. I pushed all the windows open and put on my headphones.

  * * *

  The first Hazeltine book I’d read as a teenager had been a collection of journal entries, published, I later realized, posthumously. At the time I felt I’d found my soulmate, the only writer who’d ever described the world with the same mixture of wonder and curiosity and remoteness I’d felt since I was very young. Mixed in with a fair amount of rage, but even that wasn’t so much aggressive as disenchanted.

  It didn’t hurt that he would become preoccupied with something strange—the fraying edges of a bandana sticking out of a man’s left pocket, the sound of a grunt in an alley—and wrap an entire essay around it until he’d written into all the corners, his words a beam of light in darkness. In that way, he reminded me of Alex, always exploring things the world overlooked. He had this whole thing on wood nymphs, like the actual mythological creatures, and using them as an allegory for people so afraid of change that they hid in their homes with ear plugs in and blindfolds on, like if they just pretended hard enough, they wouldn’t have to think about how change was inevitable.

  I was a little shocked to see pictures of him, and it took me a moment to realize my brain had somehow double exposed Hazeltine and Alex back when I was thirteen, fourteen, and I hadn’t noticed until right now. In my head he had floppy hair, but in reality he’d kept his short, and dark, with dark eyebrows and an enigmatic smile that was recognizable throughout his life, though by the late eighties it hardly ever reached his eyes.

  In one particular photograph toward the end he was gaunt and pale, half seated on a low bookcase, one knee drawn in to his chest, staring at the lens as if challenging it to see him, really see him.

  I bookmarked it for later and went back to text resources about his life and work, searching for a story about The Longest Day, finally stumbling upon a brief allusion to the work in an interview.

  “For years I’d been circling that idea in other ways. I’d gone after it five, six times before. Then I settled down and told myself I couldn’t leave the room until I’d done it. But I didn’t. Hours later, starving and despondent, I came out of that room. I’d failed seven times. Only a fool tries for an eighth.” The skin around his eyes crinkles, not in a smile or anything like it. In grim triumph after a bloody battle. “Good thing I’m a fool.”

  I began clipping what I could find, but I kept returning to that quote, imagining it. He would have been twenty three, unknowingly closing in on his eventual death, already with a keen, sharp sense of his own power. Though he probably wouldn’t have called it that.

  What would it be like to have that kind of confidence? He called it foolishness, but anyone could see his genius, looking at that piece. He’d made art that wasn’t just smart, wasn’t just resonant, but was accessible. Decades later I could look at it and discover its meaning, or the meaning it had to me, which was the point. It moved people. Hell, it moved Chad, and that was saying something.

  I tried to imagine what he’d look like if he’d lived. An old poz guy telling war stories from the dark days of the eighties, maybe making art in his own studio somewhere, with an assistant who listened to jazz.

  Bald, maybe, though I couldn’t picture it. Wiry strength in those muscles. I’d indulged in a lot of fantasies of him topping me, the rough-sketch types of fantasies that only the inexperienced have, before the mind fills in all the shading and textures with tactile learning. Even after I’d had legitimate sex with people, I’d fantasized about Hazeltine, or rather my Alex/Hazeltine composite.

  Had I honestly been jerking off to thoughts of Alex all those years, with a pass from my brain because I gave him slightly darker hair and called him by some other man’s name? I decided that answering that question wouldn’t get me anywhere good, so I went back to research. I had to find some non-explicit art to show Chad. And I should probably find a way to break it to him that his big artist crush was a long dead gay guy.

  A responsible assistant would definitely tell him that. Imaginary Hazeltine’s imaginary assistant would never set his boss up by withholding that kind of information.

  I decided to let it ride and see what happened.

  Chapter Three

  AFTER KNOWING SOMEONE for twenty-seven years, you learn how to avoid landmines. Some are permanent (my stay in the hospital when we were teenagers remains a topic Alex and I have never explicitly discussed); some are temporary, like the time I brutally mocked his dragonfly tattoo before I understood that it was a damselfly, and also that he’d gotten it, in some misguided way, for me.

  “They’re predatory, but never stray far,” he’d muttered, and left me standing in the kitchen of our apartment at the time, thinking, I’m predatory? Is that how you see me?

  I’d avoided his damselfly when we were naked, even though I’d wanted to spend hours on it. Located high on his back as if just alighting on his scapula, whoever had inked it managed to get just a little bit of movement into the wings, and had done a nearly iridescent blue-green-gray watercolor effect to them.

  For me. He’d inked his skin with an insect who wreaked havoc out in the world, but always came home again. The Justinfly, if you will.

  Between Alex and I, we would have never spoken about our unfortunate sober sex acts of the preceding week again. I wasn’t shocked when on Thursday morning the threeway message thread leapt to life with a flurry of texts about the weekend: what would we bring to eat at the coast? Did anyone know what the weather was supposed to be like? Did anyone even trust the weather report anyway? Should we hit a thrift store and pick up more blankets since it was November and freezing ass cold at night out there?

  For the last six months or so we’d spent every third weekend or so bumbling around trying to fix up the little house Jamie had inherited in a tiny beach town called Saints. It was an hour and a half away, which wasn’t that far, but I told myself I didn’t have to go. Not this weekend. Not right after all the weirdness. It made more sense to stay home.

  Plus, the house wasn’t going anywhere. It was practically falling down. With all the work it needed, we’d be spending our weekends out there until we were fifty. Missing one hardly mattered.

  Though we had been planning to rebuild the back steps. Which, admittedly, we’d spent a lot of time fantasizing about sitting on, with cold beers, watching waves hit in the distance, hoods pulled around our ears to cut the relentless wind. I could picture it: I’d be at the top, and Jamie the bottom, on opposite sides. Alex would sit dead center between us so that we formed a diagonal tic-tac-toe win, the three of us in a line. Were we X’s or O�
��s?

  You could probably make tic-tac-toe dirty without trying too hard, or maybe that was just my train of thought.

  Anyway, I said nothing while they merrily texted back and forth, these two people who lived together, who were more than capable of having this conversation in my absence.

  Until finally Alex texted, Jus, you in?

  I thought about the back porch. The way the rickety gate opened onto a gravely path that led to the beach. The way we sometimes sat together at night watching movies and eating popcorn.

  Fuck it. I was great at acting normal. There was no need to let on anything had changed. Especially because nothing really had; okay, we’d had sex, but that didn’t have to mean anything. I couldn’t let it mean anything.

  Before I’d figured out how to reply, he added, Make sure you bring your drill. It’s a two-drill weekend.

  And yes, I have an actual drill; the modern gay man uses power tools for remodeling houses, children, not just for DIY sex toys. I texted to ask him if he thought I’d enjoy being the “hey, change that drill bit for me, would you?” elf.

  He sent back a picture of an elf.

  Communication achieved.

  But Jamie…was not content to let sleeping dogs lie. It was probably one of the things he found attractive about her. I found it merely exhausting.

  I stopped off at the usual donut place and picked up a dozen glazed and three cups of coffee early Saturday morning, expecting a confrontation at the door. Nothing happened.

  I expected to be trapped in a car for two hours with a contract law attorney hellbent on convincing me she was right. Instead, we spent the entire trip planning the back porch project (we’d never once finished a project in one weekend, but we kept acting like maybe someday we would).

  I expected, once stranded without my vehicle at the coast, the verbal assault would begin immediately. It didn’t. Breakfast did.

  The closest it came was Cork telling me to put some bacon on. I almost refused just because I was geared up to fight with her and dammit, all that energy was going to waste. But I caught sight of Alex, watching me warily, no doubt waiting for the explosion.

  After twenty-seven years, you know when your best friend is about to detonate. I’d spent a lot of our lives leaving messes for him to clean up, so this time I took the bacon and informed her that I cooked it better than either one of them, and I wouldn’t dream of letting them screw up breakfast by doing it themselves.

  She stuck her tongue out at me. Alex looked like he wanted to kiss me. I turned to the ancient stovetop and pretended not to notice.

  The story of the house goes something like this: once upon a time there was a couple, but they didn’t call themselves a couple. To anyone looking from the outside they were two old men who shared a house in a little coastal village called Saints, nestled off Highway 1 on the California shore. They took great care of the house and gave it all these gorgeous little flourishes—stained glass in the high attic windows, crown molding, inlaid designs using different woods on the doors. I’ve never gone in much for architecture, but even I’m not immune to physical manifestations of this kind of love for a place.

  Then one of them died. Not terribly young, but not so old that he’d taken the time and money to have his possessions sorted out. One of which was this house, solely in his name.

  Of course he had children, and of course because he’d made no provisions, there were squabbles over everything. Which is how Jamie came to be involved. The youngest child, who’d been practically raised by the two men, wanted the surviving partner to keep the house. Which to be fair, he’d been living in for thirty years. The two older kids wanted to liquidate everything and split the money three ways. So the younger kid got Jamie involved (or really her firm, because she was a lowly…whatever-you-are before you earn your lawyer stripes, or get legally pinned, or crowned, or anointed). And Jamie…talked to them. These three adult children and the surviving pre-marriage-equality husband.

  There are days when the good guys win. Maybe not as many as you’d like if you’re into that sort of thing, and maybe not on the scale you’d prefer, but on the day she got all parties to agree to let an old man spend the rest of his life in his home I bought champagne and the three of us toasted her silver tongue. This was before they got together. When I already knew they would, but they hadn’t quite figured it out yet.

  The dude died three years later, and it took another eighteen months before Jamie could take possession of the house, which he’d left entirely to her. She’d had to borrow money to pay the property taxes and whatever else, but now she had this house.

  And after a few years of neglect, it needed a whole lot of work done.

  “It’s like a fairy tale,” she’d said, the first time she let us in with her keys, and we’d all stood on the rickety back steps. “I can’t believe this is real.”

  Alex and I had looked at each other, and maybe both of us were thinking the same thing, or maybe it was just me, but Jamie McGowan could have been a queen, standing there, master of her domain, wind blowing her short curly hair around, back straight, chin level, staring out over the sea. A wild Celtic queen with a ready laugh and a formidable will.

  And a penchant for poking people in the side with the handle of a wooden spoon. “Hey!”

  “Pay attention to your job, boy. I need those broken up.”

  In the McGowan household, bacon was broken into the eggs as they scrambled, which was why it was so important I cooked the bacon, ensuring it was properly crisp. Not soggy, after being eggified.

  Alex was in charge of fried potatoes and fruit.

  If this sounds like a sweet domestic arrangement that no one could possibly find fault with…yeah, well. I tried not to think about it too much, since I’d never been interested in a sweet domestic arrangement and hadn’t exactly consented to this one. It just sort of happened, over the last few months of weekends. Slowly at first, starting with coffee and donuts. Then when we got the kitchen usable, we made eggs and toast. Then eventually bacon and potatoes were added to the menu.

  We’d have pizza later, too. Saturday night at the Saints house tradition. I beat my thoughts back into the allowed sections of my brain and concentrated on finishing my breakfast.

  Jamie had a delivery of various things coming from a hardware store (lumber, stair stringers, decking screws: the usual), but until that arrived, we were pretty much left to our own devices. So we naturally started another project.

  “Jus, it’s your bedroom. Say something.” Hands on hips, head cocked, Cork pissed off.

  I shrugged.

  “Unless…” Alex narrowed his eyes at me. “Wait. Do you want this room?”

  “I don’t want any rooms. It’s not my house.” It was only the same fucking thing I’d been saying to them since the first time they tried to act like the house was something we shared.

  Jamie snapped her fingers. “Oh sweet bleeding Jesus, you ass. The attic. Why didn’t you just tell us?”

  “I never said anything about—” But they were already in the hall, heading for the tall, thin door at the end of it. I followed more slowly, listening to their voices as I climbed the shallow steps. It took me a second of listening to hear they were playing Questions.

  Alex: “…under the window?”

  Jamie: “You think we need to worry about storms?”

  Alex: “You mean the glass shattering?”

  Jamie: “Am I making this up?”

  Then they dissolved into giggles and I stopped short of the room so they wouldn’t see me smile.

  “Okay, okay, okay, enough games. I’m honestly not sure if we need to worry about the glass, but I guess it probably won’t kill him, even if it happens to break.”

  I applauded and went up the rest of the way. “Thanks for that consideration, Cork.”

  “I just don’t want to have to get your blood up out of the wood floor. There’s no way we’re bringing a floor sander up here, so we’ll have to do our best finishing th
ese by hand.”

  A tremendous amount of work. “It doesn’t matter where I sleep when I’m here. Let’s not make more problems for ourselves.”

  She rolled her eyes and gestured down the length of the room, which was huge, sprawling even, though the usable space was hampered by the roofline cutting down too close to the floor. At the apex, it was probably another six feet above my head. More than enough space for a bed, anyway.

  Alex held out his hand and turned it over, scattering dust motes like glitter. “I love the light up here. These skylights make the room, don’t you guys think?”

  Since they seemed set on the attic now that we were standing in it, I wandered into the path of the stained glass on the back wall, letting it paint me in saturated, almost inky shades, dyeing my skin for those moments of sunlight. Having a small circle of stained glass on the front of the house was one thing, but the attic had one on each side, as if the sea equally deserved that little touch of majesty.

  I’d always liked the feel of the air in this room, earthy and golden and…contained. The rest of the house had more flair, and correspondingly more fingerprints, more stamps of other people, more reminders of lives lived. But the attic had been full of boxes (nothing risqué or Antiques Roadshow, alas). No one had ever tried to imprint this space with their desires, or projected their needs on its walls.

  I didn’t want that to change. “I prefer the floors unfinished. Is that…a thing people do?”

  Jamie shrugged. “No idea. I’ll ask Denny.”

  Denny—Jamie’s English-teacher-turned-contractor stepmother—was the guiding spirit of our efforts. The McGowan patriarch was a bitter old asshole, but his wife was always available for a consult.

  “All right, lads. You two dust and sweep and for god’s sake, open the skylights and maybe drag a fan up here. I’ll take the bed apart.”

  “We really don’t need to bother,” I protested.

  She ignored me and went downstairs.

  I turned to Alex. “Why does she make everything impossible?”