The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters

by Chip Kidd

  Officially, the Visual Arts Building was not open twenty-four hours a day, but I soon got wind from Rodney that the senior Painting and Sculpture majors made sure the back door was propped open with a brick after nine, for all-hours access. Regarding this, the Powers That Be at the school of A&A did what they usually did about everything (art especially)—looked the other way.

  That first night I told myself I was just there to bone up on my sketching—the still life was intact, after all, and I was free to capture it as long as I liked. Back then I was still naive enough to believe that drawing a decapitated waterfowl would launch my career as a creative professional, and by God I'd do it till it ran flapping off the page.

  But only fifteen minutes into my halfhearted scratching I gave up, and with the thrill of a novicedelinquent, I mounted the ladder and lit a match. An obscene, exhilarating idea: I could sleep here. The thought that Thenson might get worried sick if I didn't show up was a nag, but not enough to make me go back. I lit the candles, pulled out the mattress, and, sending dust everywhere, fluffed the pillow. I couldn't have felt more pioneering if I was on the Cumberland Trail. My sleep was fitful, afraid I'd be roused any minute with the order to Get the Hell Out. But no one bothered me. It was thrilling—so delinquent . . . so La Bohème.

  • • •

  After two weeks, 210 smelled like an overworked professional wrestling team, the mummified pomegranate had bravely given its all, and I had immortalized Renaldo the Headless Kiwi in graphite and one-hundred-percent cotton rag from every conceivable angle. He began to invade my dreams: My mother served him, stuffed and dancing, for Thanksgiving; we ran rhapsodically to meet each other across meadows set ablaze by the dying sun; and in a particularly gruesome episode, I gave birth to him at Hoskin's Hardware back home and nursed him for more than three hours. Ouch. Woke up to quite a mess—my undershirt was damp at the chest.

  The third week of drawing class, we finally graduated to the human form. While kids were still shuffling in, a man in his late fifties or early sixties—who couldn't have been more than five foot five—climbed onto the central platform in a ratty slate blue terry-cloth robe and crumbling orange flip-flops. Dottie placed a small gray block on the surface for him to put one foot up on. Had I seen this guy before?—But where? After everyone was seated, he threw off the robe to unveil at least two hundred pounds of flesh that looked like a pile of mud in a rainstorm. His hands were clumped into ham fists, and defiantly poked into either pillowy hip. As his head slanted upward, he gleamed with a puffy nobility—Lord of the Fluffernutters. He was, mercifully, not naked, but all that separated his privates from the public was a pair of boxer shorts that featured a pattern of pale yellow daisies. At least, in order to keep looking at them, that's what I made the shapes out to be.

  The session was barely under way when a tiny voice—female—emerged somewhere behind me.

  “Ahem.”

  I stiffened. How did a nine-year-old get in here? Maybelle returned my startled gaze.

  “Miss Spang?” the voice inquired.

  “Yes, dear?” Dottie awoke from her pulp reverie.

  “I thought we were going to draw from the nude. That's what the course catalog said.”

  “Well, yes, dear, “La Spang explained to the back of the room, “we had an undraped model on schedule to appear,” adjusting her marshmallow tiara of hair, ”but she took ill. So our own Mr. Peppie has graciously agreed to fill in at the last minute. Aren't we so lucky? Carry on!” She dove back into the depths of Agatha Christie.

  A gas bubble of recognition rose from my bowelsand popped in my head. Without his gray canvas jumpsuit Mr. Peppie's identity had been camouflaged, but I now remembered: he was the VA building's custodian. I'd seen him day after day, lingering in the hallways at all hours with his mop and bucket of disinfectant—eyes deep behind potato sack lids, full of dull expectancies. Patiently waiting. For this?

  Then: small clicking footsteps in back of, next to, and on in front of me, continuing towards Mr. Peppie. It was a girl in a lemon gunnysack, white ankle socks, and tiny black patent leather pumps, all under a dark bathing cap of hair. From the size of her, she might have just come in from recess. She motioned to the molten rock formation before her to kneel, and he obliged. She whispered for half a minute into his ear—his eyes to the left, to the right, back again, then closed. He gave the shadow of a nod, and stood with lopsided pride. Dottie remained oblivious.

  The girl launched herself on tiptoe, reached up as far as she could, clasped the bottoms of the shorts with each hand, and very, very slowly pulled them down. The spent elastic waistband sidled lazily over his hips and oozed down doughy thighs like syrup on a stack of pancakes, before dropping limply to the floor. Mr. Peppie stepped almost daintily out of the cloth puddle and set his right foot back on the block. The girl calmly folded the boxers and placed them off to one side.

  Maybelle looked up, released a small shriek, and redirected her attention to the floor. Others did the same, united in horror. But I was mesmerized, as I had been in high school biology by projected slides of colossal African meat-eating beetles in midfeast. I confess I had never seen a foreskin before, and yes, I was not unaffected by its duffel bag of skin with the rope pulled tight, nestled under a tumbleweed of tired hair. But it was his scrotum which reminded me most poignantly of the sad fate of the flesh: the massive, sagging union of two rotten peaches, despairing in the Georgia sun.

  Hello, Mr. Peppie.

  The girl surveyed her handiwork. I half expected her to adjust the monstrous genitalia to her liking, but instead she pivoted, and stepped quickly back to her place. She paused briefly at my easel on the way, and took in what I had started to sketch. I returned the favor by scanning her face. I saw that she was indeed college age.

  Her eyes: two black stars in a white sky.

  But what really made my brain twinkle was her earrings. I later learned she made them herself, using plastic accessories from Lionel train sets—the miniatures used to populate the “towns” the toy engines sped through. Swinging from a thread-thin gold chain under her left ear lobe was the figure of a man, maybe an inch tall. He was clad in a dark business suit, his topcoat draped over his left arm, and his right hand was raised toward the hinge of her jaw. Had the technology of molding polymer been any more advanced, he would've held an anxious, longing expression stamped onto his BB pellet face. From her right ear hung a Lilliputian taxi cab, literally headed away from him. After a beat she was gone.

  This was a girl I wanted to know.

  About forty minutes later, I just couldn't stand it any longer and excused myself to go to the men's. On the way out, I located her easel, and creeping back in, snuck a look. Odd: she had cropped Mr. Peppie severely on the page, so all you saw was the the left half of his head from straight on and the top of his left shoulder. Her technique, I'd say, was better than average (no . . . excellent, actually) —neither stylized nor entirely representational—but there was no reason, based on her composition, for the subject to be nude from the waist down. Was it some sort of lark for her, to see if she could talk him into it? Or was she some fantastic new breed of reverse pervert, the likes of which had not yet been classified by the AMA? Certainly her drawing didn't depend on his nakedness one way or the other.

  Back at my seat. Maybelle had recovered from the shock of Mr. Peppie in the altogether, and with the cavalier spirit of a Confederate captain interrogating a Yankee prisoner, she proceeded with her drawing as if nothing had happened. When she got to his genitals (I just had to look), she imposed a seersucker fig leaf with the proportions of a lunch bag.

  At the end of the session, Dottie got up to address the class. It was too good to be true—from my perspective her head was just to the right of and level with Mr. Peppie's groin, an image that still keeps me warm at night: my own Comedy and Tragedy, carved over the proscenium of my imagination. I prayed like mad that the gods of righteous indecency would make her turn around, but by the end of her speech Mr. P
eppie had relaxed and pulled his shorts back on.

  Later, whenever I saw him in the hall, I was unable to shake the feeling that we shared a delicious, terrible secret.

  • • •

  In the middle of my fourth night spent in 210, I was awakened at two a.m. by giggles. At first I thought it was a dream, but there weren't any visuals. So I climbed down the ladder and cracked the door into the hallway's dimmed lights. It was the girl who had relieved Mr. Peppie of his skivvies. She sat, thin as a piece of tracing paper, on a hallway bench, facing the results of the life class. Her knees were pulled to her chin, her left hand clutching what was left of a fifth of Jack Daniel's. I only had the door open an inch or so—she couldn't see me. In her right hand was a sharpened piece of charcoal. Every couple of minutes she'd twitter like a child playing pin-the-tail, make her way to one of the drawings, and put something there. Then she'd replace herself on the bench, take another swig, and grin. This went on for another—what? half hour?—until she finally packed up and staggered away. Only then was I able to venture into the hall to see what she had been up to.

  My eyes took a walk all over the wall, and didn't recognize anything amiss. Groggy, I was on my way back to the loft and to sleep when I took a last look at my own drawing.

  It was fine. No, wait. Jesus.

  Mr. Peppie had two left feet. In my drawing style. But I hadn't done that. And it now sported a title, in tiny lettering in the lower left-hand corner—“Vive la Danse.” Son of a bitch. I went back over the others with a keener eye. Christ, they all had something wrong with them you'd never immediately notice. One sported two right thumbs, another's eyes were slightly crossed, yet another had a microscopic tattoo on his left thigh devoted to kitchenware, several of them had their crotches modified, with a realist's sober hand—all were altered in the manner of the original artists. The only one left untouched, of course, was hers. There it hung—with its odd cropping, just as it was on her easel.

  “Gee,” I thought. “I think this needs a little something . . .” I got my art supplies from the loft, returned to the girl's drawing, and went to work.

  It didn't take long . . .

  • • •

  Later that day, during the critique for the Mr. Peppie Nude Class, I was certain everyone would recognize something was wrong. Not so. They all just sat there in the hall outside the studio, slackjawed. Dottie was having a time getting anyone to speak up. I finally volunteered.

  “I think it's great that people took a lot of chances.” I looked the nutty girl in the eye. “I mean, like this.” I pointed to my own drawing. “Two left feet, titled ‘Vive la Danse.’ Now, that's funny.” The girl was not happy about this. She recrossed her legs and looked down the hall.

  I advanced to Maybelle's drawing. “This is especially adventuresome, the heavy charcoal work under here.” I pointed to Mr. Peppie's midsection. The Dixie fig leaf was gone. I ran my finger along the scrotum, now in lurid, full flower, “Bold. I think that's exceptional.” Maybelle did her best not to betray her shock—manners and modesty kept her from spilling the beans. She nodded at the acknowledgment, but her face was clear: “Thanks. That's enough. I don't know what's going on. Move along to someone else, please.” I did. To the wacky girl's. By now she was most distressed.

  “This is great too.” I circled her drawing with a vulture's grace. “The picture within the picture. I think that's very clever.” She was pie-eyed.

  “Really? What do you mean, dear?” asked Dottie.

  “Well, in the center of the eye, very small,” the girl was transfixed, “there's someone's face, the artist's I imagine.” I was referring to the sketch I had put there not four hours ago, “Quite striking. I'd ask her about it . . . if I knew whose it was.” Now I deliberately avoided looking at her. Dottie went up to the drawing to see what I was talking about.

  “Oh, yes . . . isn't that something. Very like . . . Magritte!” She turned to address the class. “Whose is this?”

  You could have parked a Buick in the space of the following pause. Finally,

  “It's mine.”

  “Oh! What's your name, dear?”

  “Himillsy . . .” she said, with a suspect's reluctance. “Himillsy Dodd.” Him-ill-zee? H. Dodd—a girl?

  “Well, dear. What a unique view you have. It's really very special.”

  “Actually,” she replied, “I don't know what got into me,” her eyes went hard into mine, “to do something so badly drawn. It really is a low point in my career here. I have a yeast infection. Please forgive me.” She rushed to the wall, snatched her drawing, and made for the exit at the end of the corridor. I could see her though the doorway—she jammed the sheet into the stairwell's trash bin and tramped down the steps.

  End of crit.

  I gathered up my things and bolted, rescued the drawing from the metal cylinder, and continued after her. I caught up at a corner, waiting for the campus bus to pass. I stopped short of taking her arm.

  “Hey!” I held up her drawing like a bagful of kittens she'd dropped in my river.

  “Keep it, Caravaggio” she said without looking, and went to cross the street. I panicked.

  “I mean, . . . I'm sorry!”

  She stopped, turned, and lowered her sunglasses. Then she let my desperate stare ricochet off her face, and released this from her jelly mouth:

  “We're all sorry.”

  And what does one say to that?

  Not that I got a chance. She continued, as if picking up from a conversation we severed a month ago, “You know what has me really steamed, where you really screwed up?” walking towards me now.

  “Where? Tell me.”

  She pulled the paper from my hand. Exhibit A.“I HATE Magritte! He ruined it for everybody — he gives anyone with an accelerated imagination a bad name! A face in the eye. Really. It doesn't look anything like me. It . . . it looks like Betty-Goddamned-Boop! I would never have done that! I'm beyond it. It's such a cliché.”

  Who the hell was McGreet?

  “Oh. Sor . . .” I checked myself. “Where are you off to?”

  “The Diner.” The entitled victim: “Buy me lunch.”

  I had a geo-sci class in ten minutes that I really couldn't afford to miss. I said, “Okay.”

  • • •

  “I'll have a Linebacker burger with pickles, mustard, ketchup, lettuce, mayo, and french fries. And a large black cow Rah-Rah. Thick.” She handed the unopened menu back to the waiter. “Then coffee and a Touch-Down sticky bun— toasted, extra goo.”

  “I'll have a regular hamburger and a lemon Coke.” I had to be careful. Off-campus food expenses weren't exactly in my budget.

  She took a cigarette from her pack of Camels, tamped one end of it onto the Formica tabletop three times, and licked the hollowed paper. Then she produced a Zippo lighter nearly the size of her hand, fired it up in a single expert gesture, drew in the smoke, and seemed to forget about it as it leaked slowly out of her nose and mouth. Someone else might have said she had a child's body, but she wouldn't, so you quickly changed your mind. Her elfin fragility from across the room became unbreakable Bakelite up close. Ray-Bans were perched atop her head above one of those silent movie faces that could say just about anything without a peep. She was wearing a man's pink Oxford shirt with the initials GMG monogrammed in black about four inches below her left breast. She swam in it. Her legs were in black pedal pushers, and her cat's feet, in avocado ballet shoes, dangled just above the floor. No earrings today, only posts. She was looking off to the distance behind me, and didn't seem to be in a mood to talk. I hated situations like this, however rarely I was in them—usually people around here were dying to tell you everything.

  “I . . . I liked your column sculpture a lot,” I started weakly, trying to flatter her by acknowledging her “career,” “I mean, ‘Is NOTHING sacred?’—that was yours, wasn't it?” Still not looking at me, she nodded once. “It was a riot, really, but I was wondering—”

  “Do you know much about
science?” she interrupted, finally releasing the smoke to the side of the booth.

  “A little.”

  “Well,” she tapped an ash into the foil tray, “what's the story with these balloon people?”

  I waited for her to continue. In vain. “Um, I don't know what you're—”

  “I can see wanting to go around the world in a balloon. That I can see. It's lunatic, it's something to do, and the whole rest of it, but they're overlooking the obvious. No?” Left eyebrow arched, she took another drag and held it in.

  “Could you—”

  “Don't you read The Collegian? I mean, I know it's a fishwrap, but what else is there?”

  The school newspaper—yes, I read it first thing every morning, though for obvious reasons, didn't get a chance today. And now I made the connection—it was being reported daily—a group of graduate students in the Meteorological Department were making noise about attempting to circle the globe in a hot-air balloon for the first time. Hugely pointless.

  “Overlooking what?”

  “That's what I wanted to ask you. You look square enough to know about this kind of thing,” she leaned forward, to see if I was insulted (hardly—she was so pretty), saw I wasn't, and suddenly we were old friends. “Now, stop me if I'm insane, because I'm not a goddamned science major, Christ knows, but,” very excited, “instead of having the balloon go around the world, why don't they just do the opposite?”

  The opposite?

  “Look, the Earth turns,” she went on, “why go anywhere? You send up the balloon, okay, in ONE spot. Alright?— Keep it there, and let the whole sonuvabitch world pass under it in twenty-four hours! End of trip! Is that so hard?”

  Whoa. “Wind currents.” I parried, partially making it up. “It's a balloon, not a helicopter. It can't stabilize its position. It can't stay in one place.” Her face fell.