by Blake Nelson
“Art school?” she said with surprise. “That’s not something we’ve discussed before. When did you become interested in art?”
“Recently,” I said.
“What sort of art are you interested in?”
“Photography.”
“Oh,” she said. “Did you join the photography club?”
Our school had this lame photography club. Three girls had started it the year before to beef up their college applications.
“No,” I said. “I started helping a guy who’s a professional photographer.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Fogarty. “Well, that’s good. He can write you a recommendation.”
“Well, actually, he thinks that art school is sort of . . .”
When I didn’t finish my sentence, she looked at me over her glasses.
“. . . masturbatory,” I said.
“Oh.”
“He’s more about being super professional. And not getting all intellectual about things.”
“I see.”
“Sorry if I’m not allowed to say that word. The other word.”
“That’s all right,” said Mrs. Fogarty, turning to her computer. “If that’s what he said . . .”
“Yeah, but he would probably do it though. Write me a recommendation. He just likes to complain about things.”
“Let’s hope he chooses his words wisely.”
She typed my name into her computer and pulled up my file.
“Do you think I could do it?” I asked. “Go to art school? Is it hard to get into them?”
“It’s hard to get into the good ones.”
“How do they judge you?”
“Well, I’m sure your grades and your test scores count somewhat. But I would imagine your art would be the most important.”
She looked at my grades and my test scores. “Hmmmm,” she said. “Do you know where you want to go?”
“Cal Arts.”
“Okay. We can look at that. Is there anywhere else you were thinking?”
“I was wondering if you knew some places.”
“I know the Rhode Island School of Design. That’s a very famous art school.”
“Okay. That sounds good. And that’s back East?”
“Yes, Rhode Island is back East.”
I could imagine my father’s smug smile if I asked to go to such a place. But the truth was I didn’t care what he thought. I wasn’t going to screw myself over to avoid his approval.
“Okay,” I said. I wrote it down on the front of my notebook: RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN. “Yeah, I’ll do some research.”
“As will I,” said Mrs. Fogarty, who actually smiled at me for once.
37
The windshield wipers of the RAV4 flopped back and forth. I was with Richie, trying to get to a photo assignment. While we waited in traffic, I imagined Cal Arts, and Los Angeles, and people running around naked in the desert. I pictured palm trees, blue skies, kids sitting in drum circles in the sand, their sunglasses gleaming in the sun. How would I do in a world like that? What would those people be like?
Richie played with the radio, then shut it off. We were doing a shoot for Portland Weekly, taking pictures of some of the new artisanal cupcake spots that were popping up around town.
“Fucking cupcakes,” said Richie, staring at the back of a stopped bus. “I did not get into this business to shoot fucking cupcakes.”
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel.
“Passport photos are more interesting,” grumbled Richie.
“Passport photos are pretty interesting,” I said. I had taken home an entire box of rejected passport photos from Richie’s store recently. I’d scanned a bunch of them into my computer and was messing around with them. Since I was applying to art school, I was starting to have “art school ideas.”
We finally arrived at the first cupcake shop. The woman who owned it was freaking out because we were late. She got a little controlling with Richie, about how to arrange the picture. He finally told her: “Listen, lady, we got it. This is what we do.”
The next cupcake shop was run by an old hippie couple. Their cupcakes were made with special grains. They tried to explain this to Richie, but he didn’t care. Their cupcakes were lumpy and had a greenish hue. Richie asked them if they had any better-looking cupcakes. “You know, photogenic cupcakes?” Richie told the man with the gray ponytail. “Like something you’d want to eat?”
The last place we went to, Hawthorne Bakery, was owned by two women who were quite young. They looked about Richie’s age, midtwenties. They had an elaborate baking area built inside this old wood building. Everything was super clean and shiny and well lit.
One of the two owners wore an actual baker’s outfit: the white apron, the white hat, she even had a smear of white flour on her cheek. The other was more the business person. She followed us around, telling us things about the bakery. When Richie asked her where she got the money to start the business, she talked about her investors and about demographic research and business models.
“Translation: she got the money from her parents,” Richie said to me when we were outside switching lenses. We stayed at Hawthorne Bakery a long time, though. We took a lot of pictures. I realized Richie liked the other of the two owners, the one with the baker’s hat. He must have taken a hundred pictures just of her.
Later, when we got back into the RAV4, he told me not to start the car. “That bakery chick, the one with the hat,” he said. “What did you think of her?”
I shrugged.
“I wanna ask her out. What do you think?”
“With the flour on her face?” I said. “Yeah, she was cool.”
“This bakery thing. I’m into it. It smells good.”
“It looks like fun.”
“I liked her,” said Richie. “The one with the flour on her face.”
“Ask her out,” I said.
“I think I’m gonna ask her out.”
“You should.”
“Do you think she liked me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She smiled at you.”
“Did she?” asked Richie. “Did she smile at me?”
“Well, you told her to smile. You were taking her picture.”
“Fuck it,” said Richie. “I’m gonna ask her out.” He got out of the RAV4 and slammed the door. He went inside. I sat and waited. I could see him through the big front window. He went up to her, started talking, waved his hands around, like he did when he got excited.
A minute later, Richie came striding out. He opened the car door, sat down, slammed the door shut behind him.
He slapped a piece of paper on the dashboard. “Check this out,” he said. On the top it said: HAWTHORNE BAKERY. Below that was a phone number and in female handwriting, NICOLE.
“You got balls,” I said.
“Damn right I got balls,” said Richie, rocking in his seat. “And now I’m shaking with nerves. Let’s go get a beer.”
• • •
We went to a restaurant down the street. We sat at the bar. Richie had brought the piece of paper with him. He kept looking at Nicole’s name and number. “I think I like this girl,” he said.
Richie had his beer and I had a sandwich. Meanwhile, there was something happening on the TV above the bar. Breaking news. A reporter was talking about a police shooting in Seattle. A fifteen-year-old African American girl had been shot by the police for shoplifting the day before. Now there was a protest, which judging from what we were seeing on TV, had turned into a riot.
Commentators were trying to explain what had happened, but they kept cutting away to show live footage from Elliot Square in Seattle. They showed a large angry crowd, arm in arm, shouting something at the police. They showed the police lined up in riot gear, preparing to hold them back.
“What the hell is this?” Richie said, watching the TV.
They showed a bunch of tear-gas canisters flying through the air. And people running through the smoke.
“H
oly shit,” murmured Richie.
They showed a guy with a TV camera running across the street. And then a journalist with a big Pentax camera getting knocked down by the cops.
“Did they just hit that guy?” said Richie. “Did the cops just tackle the guy with the Pentax?”
We both watched the fracas. It was crazy and fascinating.
“We should be up there,” said Richie. “We should be shooting this.” He turned and yelled for the waitress. “Hey! Hey, lady! We need our check!”
38
We paid our check and hurried to the parking lot. Though we were only shooting cupcakes that day, we’d put all the gear in the RAV4. That was one of Richie’s rules: “Always bring everything.”
I got in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Richie was checking the traffic on his phone. It was 4:45 p.m. He thought we could be in Seattle in four or five hours.
“What about you?” he asked me. “Will your parents be cool with this?”
“It’s just my mom. I’ll call her later.”
I drove fast. We caught a couple lights. In a few minutes we were on the freeway, headed north on Interstate 5. We drove for about ten minutes, and then Richie suddenly looked up from his phone. “Hey, what about your mom?”
“What about her?” I said.
“You gotta call her, right? You can’t just take off.”
I had thought of that too but had put it out of my mind. “It won’t be a problem,” I said.
“You gotta tell her. You gotta call her. Like now.”
He was right. I dug my phone out of my pocket as I drove. I called.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, over the car noise.
“Hi, Gavin.”
“I wanted to let you know, I’m not gonna be home until late.”
“Why? Where are you?”
“Uh, we were doing a shoot, Richie and I, and we . . . uh . . . we got a last-minute assignment.”
“Doing what?”
“Shooting some stuff.”
“No,” said Richie loudly beside me. “You gotta tell her the truth.”
“What’s going on, Gavin?” said my mother. “Where are you?”
“We’re going up to Seattle to take some pictures.”
“Where in Seattle?”
“By the protests. For that girl that got shot.”
“At that riot? No, you are not doing that. You’re coming home. You’re not going anywhere near that mess. People are being gassed. People are being arrested.”
“Well, yeah, Mom. That’s kind of why we’re going. . . .”
“Gavin, you are not going up there. That’s final.”
I thought for a moment. I was steering with one hand, holding the phone with the other. “Well, that’s great, Mom,” I said. “I’ll be home pretty late. Don’t wait up.”
“Gavin, you listen to me,” said my mother’s voice. “This is not the time to pull some stunt.”
I swallowed. I felt so sorry for my mother sometimes. Being married to my dad had drained her of all authority. Everyone was so scared of him, she was an afterthought. Nobody listened to her. Nobody did what she said.
But she had chosen her path. And now I had to choose mine.
“I know, Mom. I’ll be careful,” I said loudly into the phone.
“Gavin! Don’t you do this. And you tell that Richie, if he doesn’t bring you back right now, I’ll have him arrested for kidnapping!”
“Okay, Mom. See you soon. Love you,” I said. I turned off my phone.
“Is she cool?” said Richie.
“She’s cool,” I said.
• • •
I drove as fast as I could, and we arrived in Seattle a little after nine thirty. The main protest was in Elliot Square, near downtown. We drove in that direction, but were waved off at a police barricade. The official protests were over, but according to the radio, there was still a large crowd in the square. The entire area was closed to traffic. A curfew was in force.
We got as close as we could and parked. Elliot Square was ahead of us about fifteen blocks. We hopped out. We quickly got our gear together. I had the Canon. Richie had the big Pentax with the super-zoom lens.
Richie talked as we loaded our carry bags. “We’ll walk down there. We’ll see what’s up. We won’t do anything too risky,” he said. Then he stopped for a moment to emphasize his words: “And listen, if there’s trouble, or you don’t want to keep going, you bail. Okay? No shame in that. This was my idea. You’re just a kid. . . .”
I nodded.
“I’m serious,” he said. “They’re gonna have mace. They’re gonna have tear gas. You got anything to put over your face?”
I hadn’t thought of that. But I did have something. I had a tennis towel, a little one, that was still in the back of the RAV4. I found it and rolled it into a triangular shape. I tied it around my nose and mouth and went to one of the side mirrors to see how it looked.
“I kinda have my own issues with cops,” said Richie behind me. “I don’t like them. So if I do something stupid and you don’t want to be part of it, you get away. Okay? I’m serious.”
I nodded. The towel fit so well over my face, it was like it had been designed for that purpose. Tennis towel/gas mask, it was two things in one.
“You got another key for the car?” Richie asked. I found one and gave it to him. We locked the RAV4. We double-checked that we had everything. Then we started to walk.
As the skyline of downtown Seattle loomed in front of us, the reality of what we were doing hit me all at once.
“If we get separated and we can’t call, we meet back at the car,” advised Richie. “So remember where it is.”
I looked up at the street signs. But I was so adrenalized I couldn’t focus enough to read them. I was swimming in adrenaline. I actually felt like I was floating, like I might lose touch with the ground.
“If you gotta run, just run. Don’t worry about me,” said Richie. “We’ll be harder to catch if we separate. And if they get one of us, then we’ll still have the other guy’s shots.”
I looked over at Richie. “Have you been in riots before?” I asked.
Richie frowned. “I’ve done all sorts of stupid shit.”
We were both breathing hard now. We were walking as fast as our legs could go.
“What do the cops do if they catch you?” I said.
“They beat the crap out of you. And they take your stuff.”
I swallowed at that.
“I’m not kidding,” said Richie. “They will. So watch yourself.”
I nodded earnestly to all these instructions. I even told myself: Do what he says. Run if you have to.
But I knew from tennis that you can’t half-ass certain things. If you want to win, you go all out. You don’t play it safe. I had a feeling the world we were about to enter would be like that. This was “all or nothing” territory.
• • •
We were about six blocks from Elliot Square when we began hearing the echoes of a voice coming through a loudspeaker. The sound bounced off the building walls. I heard the word “unlawful.” I heard the words “disperse” and “arrested.” My heart began to beat so fast, I thought I might have a heart attack.
Suddenly, a man came tearing around a corner, sprinting away from the square. Richie spun in place and got the shot: the running man, the black cityscape behind him. It hadn’t even occurred to me to lift my camera. That’s how nervous I was. I gripped the Canon. I had to calm down. My whole body was shaking.
We came to the next corner and now we could see Elliot Square itself. It was lit up by huge spotlights, like the ones they use when they’re fixing the highway at night. You could see people moving around. Then the loudspeaker blared out again, this time much clearer: “THE PROTEST IS OVER. YOU ARE NOW TRESPASSING. YOU ARE NOW IN VIOLATION OF THE LAW.”
Richie started to run. I ran after him. We were moving parallel to the square, trying to get closer to the center of the action. I could see in Richie’s
face, he was as excited as I was.
We slowed to catch our breath. We peeked around the next corner. We could see the police. They looked like an army. They were on horses. They were in cars. The ones on foot were crammed together in tight formation, with shields and helmets and black clubs.
At that moment someone yelled behind us. I looked back. About six cops in riot gear were telling us to stop. They could see Richie’s big Pentax. “Run,” said Richie quietly to me. We both broke into a full sprint. The cops, with their heavy equipment, had no chance. They didn’t even bother to chase us.
We went three more blocks and then ran toward the light of the open square. When we got there, we were on the civilian side, about fifty yards behind the main crowd of protesters.
The minute you stepped into that open space, you could feel the electricity in the air. Every sensation was supercharged and dreamlike: the acid smell in the air, the brutal floodlights, the ominous rustle of all those cops waiting for something to happen.
I followed Richie as he moved up closer behind the protesters. They were mostly ordinary people, standing, talking, occasionally shouting something at the cops. A younger man picked up something off the street and heaved it forward, over everyone else’s head, in the direction of the police. Several people yelled angrily at him to stop throwing things.
Richie and I moved cautiously forward until we reached the front of the crowd. There, across a wide concrete no-man’s land, was the police force. The enormous floodlights behind them were aimed directly at us, so you couldn’t look at them or see them very well. There was a line of cops in riot gear, and in the middle of it, a big military-style vehicle with a machine gun on top. If you squinted, you could see a guy up there sitting behind the machine gun. He wasn’t exactly aiming it at us. But he sort of was.
The floodlights were so bright you could see every detail of everything. I started looking at the people around me. A lot of those near the front didn’t look like protesters at all. They were anarchists: young guys, white guys, dressed all in black, with hoods and scarves over their faces. They threw rocks and taunted the police. They were there for the fight.
But other people were regular citizens, with normal clothes and gray hair and glasses. There were lots of African Americans. Mothers, it looked like, and older black men in suits, some of whom were probably church people or ministers or maybe politicians. There were little kids, too, running loose. One black kid kept running up to the front and back again. He couldn’t have been more than six years old. He was so fast he was a blur down at knee level.