I must be wandering out of my mind, she thought.
“I can't believe I just did that,” Judy confessed. “I queued for over half an hour.”
It was now 18:47, which meant that she'd have to walk extremely quickly to get to her date.
“I guess I'll put this back on the shelf,” she said ponderously.
The guy took the book from her and tossed it in the bin. The dust-jacket tore and the bin crumpled under the book's weight.
“That's done then,” Judy said, “but I can't leave here empty-handed.”
“You won't,” he said. He took her hand and led her into the foyer.
* * * *
On the escalator, normally Judy would have wanted to walk, taking advantage of the ability to move twice as fast as would ordinarily be possible, but this evening she was content to stand beside her newest friend.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “Seriously.”
“Mark,” he said, all innocent. “Seriously.”
“Okay then, Mark Seriously. Where are we going?”
They moved to let people by and each time she felt his body brush against hers. Each time she held her breath. It was the closest she'd been to a man for a long time. In a way, she felt closer to him than she did to Peter.
Mark respected her story about 'Peter', which made her like Mark even more.
Peter existed, that was true, and he did used to be a fireman, sort of, but they were not an item. Once. But not anymore. They just weren't compatible. They never had been.
With Mark, she already felt different, but the timing was wrong, and she wasn't used to doing things on the spur of the moment.
“I'm still seeing Peter after this,” she warned him, warning herself in the process.
“Of course,” he said, “But if it doesn't work out...”
“It'll work out,” she said. “I just appreciate your help finding a book he really will like.”
Jesus, she thought, stop being such a jerk. Tell him that at another time in another place, she might have taken him up on the offer. Tell him. Stop hiding. Just say it. What harm could it do?
“The book I recommend is only stocked in the upper bookshop,” Mark said “It's a smaller store, so you'll be served quickly. Don't worry. You'll be on time for your hot date. More's the pity.”
Beneath them, the Turbine Hall was in preparation for the next great exhibit. The previous spectacle had been dismantled and now she saw scaffolding and spotlights. Black drapes hid whatever was being constructed from view.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” Mark commented. “The anticipation.”
Judy saw only metal poles, strapped together. She felt nothing. Mark seemed to sense her lack of enthusiasm.
“Let me show you something,” he said, when they reached their floor.
“In the bookshop?”
“We'll be quick. I promise.”
“I don’t have time,” she assured him.
Mark looked at her long and hard and she found that she couldn't move. At the top of the stairs, people were parting around them, going left and right, as if they had formed an island.
“Please,” he said.
His eyes were so open. He would have accepted any answer she gave right then, because he'd laid himself bare for her.
She opened her mouth to say that she couldn't possibly spend time on a diversion, but what she actually said was:
“Okay.”
“May I?” His fingers were warm against hers. His grip was firm, but gentle. He held her as though holding a precious thing that he must not break and that he must not lose on any account.
She imagined those hands commanding her, laying her down on her bed and positioning her just the way he wanted. She’d be unable to resist him.
They took a necessarily circuitous route through the churning crowd until ahead of them was an enormous, red doorway that stretched up to the ceiling. This was the much-proclaimed exhibition of erotica. An enormous sign above the door said: NAKED.
As they continued through the mass of people, Judy realised that they were jumping the queue. Mark nodded at the gallery attendant at the door.
“She's with me,” he said and at once she felt like his property. She felt every inch that very precious thing. She relaxed and he tightened his hold on her.
“Come on,” he said with a grin.
It was only as they passed through the doorway that she realised it had been designed to look like giant labia. Her instinct was to laugh, but she thought that that probably wasn't seemly in a serious gallery of modern art. Instead, she followed Mark's lead into what must accordingly have been considered the fallopian tubes of the exhibition.
They passed through a stiff, double door on which there was a clear, printed warning that the rooms that followed contained very explicit images and was intended for adults only.
“Ready?” Mark said, but he didn't wait for an answer before pulling her inside.
She felt an illicit flutter of delight with every minute squeeze of her hand in his, every tiny readjustment, every imagined caress.
She was unable to resist him in that moment and neither did she desire to.
The first thing that Judy noticed inside was the crowd, which was a similar size to the mob outside the exhibition. Many of them stared at her and Mark as they entered. She felt a flush of pride at entering with such a gorgeous guy. After glancing at a few of the enormous paintings hung high on the walls, she ascertained that people had been looking at the two newcomers not only because Mark was so good-looking but to gauge their reactions to the work around them.
The first room contained mostly portraits created on canvas in oil. A man on a mission, Mark didn't pause to let her linger in front of each work, and so she took them in quickly in a manner that did not seem befitting of a gallery, but created an impact all of its own. She saw flesh upon flesh, breasts, bellies, skinny and fat, bottom after bottom, flowing hair, faces - beautiful and ugly - open mouths, eyes, blue, brown, grey, shining. Wet lips. Bare legs. Sinuous vines. Red silk.
The space was huge, but bare, so as not to detract from the impact of the work.
Mark paused once, in the second room, to say: “Cezanne” as if he was pleased or impressed that it was here, but still didn’t want to stop yet.
Judy saw a painting of half a dozen naked women dancing in the forest, which gave her a sense of freedom, like flying through a gallery, attached to Mark, cutting through exhibits and their viewers alike.
He knew exactly where he was going and Judy Liked that.
“That's a Picasso,” he said. “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. See it?”
“The women?” she said.
“It's all women in this room.”
“Oh yeah.”
Eventually, she saw which painting he was referring to. There were five women in the foreground, looking somewhat like caricatures. The women on the right were disintegrating and had particularly ugly faces, or at least so she thought. Their bodies were deformed. Here she saw the straight lines that she had recently been telling herself didn't belong in art.
“It's ok-ay,” Judy said, not wanting to badmouth a Picasso.
Mark laughed.
“I think you would have liked it even less if he had finished it,” he said.
“What makes you think it's not finished?” Judy asked.
“What makes you think it is?” Mark said.
They were in the next room, and the next, and the next and Judy wished that she didn't have somewhere to go tonight after all. She'd always looked forward to dinner with Peter, but now she was dreading having to leave the gallery. Tonight, she had to admit, she would have preferred to hang out with Mark, even if it was just to watch him stack books.
She imagined herself helping him to stack shelves, just to be near him like this for a while longer. She imagined them closing up the shop when the gallery closed for the evening. She imaged him locking the door, with the two of them still inside the shop, turning off the light
s, swiping books and posters from the display table.
Back in reality, canvasses gave way to installations as they approached the end of the exhibition. In one room, there was nothing but a light bulb casting a sterile glow on everyone below. People were staring up at it with their mouths open. Judy wanted to lift their bottom jaws to snap their mouths shut.
“It's only a light bulb,” she wanted to remind them.
As she was pulled from that room into another she read something about how the bulb was unadorned by shade or colour. Not only that but it illuminated the spectators in such a harsh way that they too were exposed in all their 'beautiful imperfections'.
I've seen better in my living room, she thought, but she kept it to herself.
There was another artwork by the same artist in the next room. This time it was a red, life-size, wax sculpture of a bulbous, naked woman. She was visible from her torso down to her ankles, because she was in fact a giant candle. Her head, shoulders and bust had melted and collected at her feet.
“People are going to come to see this,” Judy said, “and by the time they get here it'll be gone.”
It was titled: Naked Flame Meets Old Flame.
“Here it is,” Mark said, attempting to keep his grin under wraps.
It was an empty room, aside from the dozen or so men and women who looked as perplexed as Judy did. The walls were starkly white, illuminated by spotlights attached to what looked like scaffolding from a building site that was lashed together with warning tape. The lights appeared to pick out specific areas of the bare walls, making it look as though somebody had stolen half of the exhibition. Here and there, she saw empty frames. No glass, no canvas, no painting. Only ornate, illuminated, bronze frames. Some of them were on the walls, but others were suspended from the metal poles by clear wires, so that they seemed to hover in space.
“Where are the pictures?” Judy said.
“There are no pictures,” Mark said.
“It's crazy,” said Judy and suddenly burst out laughing.
Mark appraised her with those deep, dark eyes. He neither agreed nor disagreed with her. He only seemed interested in her reaction.
“The artist was asked to create something that represented nakedness. This is what she felt. Why not?”
“Because it's not art,” Judy said, incredulous. “It's some dirty, old scaffolding from a building site.”
“That's what you see,” Mark said, “and that's interesting.”
“What do you see?” she asked.
“The scaffolding suggests that something was about to be created, a façade of some sort, but it didn't happen. Instead, we're left with an almost naked room. This is about potential. Not only the room’s potential, but ours, because we fill the frames with our expectation and our imagination.”
“Honestly?”
“No,” he said. “I just made that up. You try now.”
She laughed.
“It's one way of thinking,” Mark said. “Meet the artist halfway and you become a collaborator. You become an artist, even if you think you're not. Even if you think you've forgotten how.”
Only a few minutes together and she already felt that they were friends. She felt as though he understood her and wanted to understand her better. She wanted to know him better, not only mentally but physically.
Peter would have dismissed the more modern part of the exhibition as nonsense, which she had done until now. Now she was attracted to Mark's playfulness and he seemed keen to put her back in touch with her own thoughts and feelings, something she wasn't used to at all. She'd been on automatic for so long that she'd forgotten what she really thought. She only reflected what she was expected to think. Whatever made life easier.
He didn't pressure her, but ushered her beneath the still bars of the scaffolding and into the next part of the exhibition where there was a series of x-rays on the wall.
He released her hand so she could explore by herself and she wished that he hadn't. She strolled around the room, affecting nonchalance, looking at each x-ray in turn.
There were twenty or so, framed, each exactly the same size and equidistant from each other. They were clinical, of course, but in the third one she looked at she thought she made out the outlines of fingers and two hands, covering the chest. Hands holding breasts, all in the typical blue tones against black of the x-ray.
In the next, there was an x-ray of what appeared to be a substantial, male appendage.
A further x-ray presented two people kissing. She couldn't be sure if they were the same sex. Two blue skulls, locked in an embrace.
When she turned, she saw that Mark was studying her not the photography. Suddenly, it was she that felt naked, as if he had stripped her bare in a room full of people, but only he could see her nudity. His gaze cut through her clothes. It cut through her skin, her flesh and she felt herself laid before him, blue against black, and beautiful.
“...I like the colours,” Judy said reservedly.
“I saw you,” Mark said. “You don't like the colours. You love them.”
She had to admit that for a moment she had been one of the people who had their mouths hanging open.
“I don't think it matters if you think it's art or not. Just enjoy yourself.”
He looked as though he was about to give up on her, so she said:
“What's next?”
He smiled and ushered her into the next room. Again, his proximity to her made her gasp loud enough for him to hear it.
Here, a nude couple had written their most intimate, sexual diary entries on each other's bodies using black marker pens before posing for the camera in intimate poses, touching, holding, making love.
A series of photos of men in various stages of undress, ultimately revealing that they were wearing stockings and suspenders, teddies and high heels.
A busty, pale dominatrix in a face mask revealed the names of her private client list along with their predominant fetishes on a looping video.
Sculptures of men entwined with other men and women, their penises occasionally spearing various orifices as if they were prey. Lovers were conquered, vanquished and pleasured; reborn and renewed.
In the blue, pink, red, orange, yellow and green blaze of one painting, she saw her future. It was a portrait of a woman whose face was twisted during an explosion of pleasure and euphoria.
“What do you feel?” Mark said.
Ready, she thought.
As she walked around the exhibition, she no longer felt self-conscious, but powerful, using Mark's idea of engaging with the artwork on her own level, making it hers. In such a mood, it no longer mattered what she thought about it, only what she felt. Some of the items repulsed her, but others, particularly the sculptures, demanded to be touched. The security cameras mounted in the corners of each room and the attendants waiting on chairs added to this new tension twisting within her.
She would have loved to have cupped some of the sculptures, male and female, to feel their cool, round flesh against hers. To possess them.
Most of all though, it was she that wanted to be possessed.
They stood in a large room surrounded by acrylic paintings inspired by inkblots, in particular the Rorschach tests.
“Originally,” Mark said, “they were intended as psychological tests for schizophrenia. So, no pressure, tell me what you see.”
After all that she had seen and felt, these paintings backed her into a corner. She saw herself, unbuttoned, unrolled and unspun, she saw her legs and her waist, Mark's hands, Mark's tongue, the crown of his head, bobbing between her legs, his solid abs, flat against her forehead.
“You're trembling,” Mark said.
“I'm hungry,” she said. It was a half-truth.
“I'd take you for dinner, but you already have a hot date.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “I should go.”
“My big mouth,” he said.
She found herself looking at his 'big mouth' and imagining his lips cooling again
st her hot skin.
“Let's get that book,” she said, flustered.
He led her out of the exhibition, where there were many more faces, grinning and smirking and staring at theirs to see in what way they had been affected by what they had seen.
“It makes you feel like you're an exhibit,” Mark said astutely, although he appeared as nonchalant as ever in the midst of all these people.
After spending this time with him, Judy had the impression that Mark didn't care much what other people thought of him, only that they thought at all. All the way through the exhibition, he had asked for her opinion and he had listened eagerly to what she had to say. He wanted to know what she liked and what she didn’t like. The truth was that he really cared about what she felt and about how she felt.
She didn't want it to be over. She wanted a chance to tell him that she had had a terrible week, and that the terrible weeks blended into terrible months. She was just so bored, so lonely, so appreciative that he had swept her along in his deceptively calm, but colourful wake.
“Do you have another five minutes?” he asked.
No. Absolutely not. No way. I'm already late as it is.
“Okay,” she said.
* * * *
They sat on a wooden bench in the Rothko Room, staring at one of several giant paintings hung in the gloomy exhibition room. Each painting featured areas of solid colour against a background.
Admittedly, each one had a kind of luminosity to it. Rather than being solid colours, she began to see layer upon layer upon layer. There was more to it than she had thought at first, but every time she felt like she was really seeing the heart of it it slipped from her grasp.
“I feel them,” Mark said. “Do you feel anything?”
“No,” Judy admitted. “But I'm happy to sit here for a while.”
She leaned back under the guise of stretching and she glanced at Mark's side profile. He had a wonderful face. Soft but strong lines. She wanted to touch him and literally had to sit on her hands to prevent herself.
All she could think about was the man beside her. They were sitting near enough to each other for their legs to be touching. Neither moved away. She anticipated his hand on her knee. She was willing it, because she couldn't touch him, but she could allow herself to be touched for a while.
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