Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller)

by Harmon Cooper

  He thinks of calling Maeve. He needed her starkness right now, her matter-of-fact bluntness, her criticism, her sex. Becoming a eunuch would have its advantages; the desire for sex is hard to suppress. The thought dissipates. It slips into the sewer nearby, gets devoured by an alligator named Seth.

  Boy stands. On the studio floor are all the prints he made in the morning. Fat naked men, cosmetic surgery, pregnant women, amputees, stern businessmen, third world children, naked eighteen and nineteen year old women – the people that run and are run by the world. Human Comedy.

  There’s a knock at the door. Boy runs his hand through his hair, feels the scrape of his beard stubble on the downswing. He needs to clean up: the studio, his body, his life. The peephole tells him it’s Red Beard. He’s wearing a Pirates of Darkwater shirt, which is most appropriate.

  ‘Hey,’ Boy says, opening the door.

  ‘Share a beer?’

  Boy slides out the door (best to keep the pictures inside hidden from the world for the time being).

  They sit on the front stoop, each with a beer in a paper sack. Red Beard is from the Midwest, works as a waiter at The Brooklyn Star, moved to New York to become a famous musician, gave up when he couldn’t get any shows and the bills stacked up. The story of most of us. Red Beard talks and Boy listens. Red Beard talks and Boy feels the beer warm in his palm.

  ₪₪₪

  Back to the drawing board. Funny to say that because it’s true. By the time the supplies he’s ordered arrive the next afternoon, Boy’s finished five of six preliminary sketches. He’s having problems with the pregnant teenager; he wants to strike a balance of innocence and defeat. Shame-masked naïveté.

  He takes a break to walk to the bodega. New York temperature dropping. Same thing as always – orange juice and tamales. For good measure he buys a bruised, green apple and a hunk of dark chocolate. For water he buys a Topo Chico. A change in diet is always good.

  The same fat man checks him out and gives him the same glazed over looks. Beluga whale eyes, beady and black. Boy can sympathize; customer service is taxing. Seeing too many people takes its toll. That glazed over look is a shield, the condom of the service industry. Protect me from them. Protect them from me.

  Back in the studio. He drops his chocolate and tamales onto the counter, takes a bite of his green apple and decides to call his sister.

  ₪₪₪

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi, how are you?’

  ‘You know, good. Tired. Just taking care of Lucy. Actually, she’s napping right now. I wish she’d do that at night.’

  Lucy. The name makes his stomach ball up. He’s removed all the clocks in the living room, and reset the clock on the microwave so it just blinks 00:00. He doesn’t want to be affected by time for the next few weeks. Boy wants to exist outside of time. He knows his schedule, knows what he needs to do to complete the six pieces.

  ‘I’d love to see her,’ he finally says, thinking of his niece and the pictures Girl sent him.

  ‘No one’s stopping you.’

  ‘I have too much work right now to travel. My opening is in six weeks and I’ve got six big pieces to finish.’

  ‘One a week?’ Girl asks.

  ‘Well, I didn’t think of it like that. I’m trying not to think of time. I’m just trying to be in this space of creativity. This mode of existence.’

  ‘I meant to ask you last time,’ Girl says.’ ‘What do you actually do? Every time I talk to you, you are on the subway or making art.’

  ‘You mean for money?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I paint. That’s it. It’s my actual job, if you can imagine that.’

  Boy begins his explanation of Oggie’s patronage. As he tells her, it comes to him that he is no different than a contracted athlete who is paid to perform. Boy has even given a cushy existence from which he is to derive consistent performance. Cherry-picked. He’s been cherry-picked.

  ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ Girl says, after he’s finished his explanation.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, what if you have a breakdown or something?’

  ‘I don’t know. It didn’t say anything about that in the contract. I don’t think I’ll have a breakdown. I’m stable… enough.’

  Boy realizes he’s lying at the moment the word stable pries free from his lips. He wants to suck it back down, digest it with the apple.

  ‘Do you have a copy of the contract?’

  ‘Sure do,’ he says.

  ‘Send it my way. Maybe I’ll catch something you didn’t. I did for Clint, once. He was offered this job paying about 1,000 dollars more per month.’

  ‘That’s a lot.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, I thought something about it was fishy, so I read it over and it turned out, the rest of his salary was based on monthly profit reports. This could fluctuate, which meant that on certain months, he would have actually received upwards of five hundred dollars less than his current salary at the time.’

  ‘Mine isn’t so long or cluttered or whatever.’

  ‘Well, send it anyway,’ Girl says. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Okay, if it makes you happy.’

  ‘Also, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Kind of a strange question.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘When we were kids, who was that you would always talk to at night? You know, it wasn’t every night, but it was some nights.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Boy tries to make his voice sound as nonchalant as possible. The truth shall confine you.

  ‘I think you do. I mean, what about that one night in Virginia when you took a bat to my collection of glass…’

  ‘You know, the other day I thought of you,’ Boy says. ‘I was super hungry and all I had were the ingredients to make Charlotte’s Web. Remember how I used to make those for you?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. Who was it you were talking to? Were you seeing things? I mean, the look on your face some nights, it was like you’d seen a ghost or something. I know that sounds weird to say, but seriously.’

  ‘The only thing I didn’t have were black olives. I just can’t stomach the taste of them. Even on pizza.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she says. ‘Whenever we order pizza, I always get my half without them. Clint loves them. I can’t stand green olives either. Just the thought makes me feel sick to my stomach. And what’s that little red thing inside anyway?’

  ‘What about olive oil?’ Boy asks. ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘No, but that’s only because most olive oil isn’t actually made from olives. The Italian Mafia runs the industry. The olive oil at the store is usually other oils that have been broken down and repurposed. Basically lamp oil.’

  ‘Really? It says 100 percent on some of the bottles.’ Boy continues to push her away from her original line of questioning. I do not want to talk about the things I see or have seen.

  ‘People will buy anything that says 100 percent. I wonder how people would react if we were just honest with our food. Like, this TV dinner is 60 percent bad for you. This Big Mac is 110 percent bad for you. But we’re getting off subject. What was it you used to see? Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing, seriously. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, when you want to be honest about things with me, I’m ready to listen. Maybe it will help you unravel a mystery.’

  ₪₪₪

  Fat Man comes first. Boy does his preliminary outline on the canvas with a No.4 pencil. He closely observes the sag of the man’s girth, the way his obesity hangs off his overburdened spine. He continually refers to the pictures he’s printed off the internet. Stretch marks, weird rashes from excess body weight, blubber, the Blob. He doesn’t want too many skin deformities, just enough to give it a sense of realness. He grants the man a full head of hair, curly and long like Da Vinci’s original.

  Boy’s beard grows, as the time he isn’t monitoring passes.

  ₪₪₪
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br />   Difficult questions. Boy doesn’t want to think about difficult questions as he paints. He doesn’t want to think about his life, his past relationships, Mom or Girl, the future.

  Oggie stops by the following week to check on Boy’s progress. He’s wearing a gray tweed jacket with red suede elbow patches over a powder blue shirt. His corduroys are folded up to the ankle.

  ‘Hi,’ Boy says, cracking open the door. ‘Not ready yet.’

  ‘I’d like to see what you’re working on. Five weeks until the joint exhibit. My friend curating it is doing me a favor by adding you on, especially with the size of your pieces. Six right?’

  ‘Yeah, six.’

  ‘All right. Also, I can’t remember if I told you in the e-mail or not. You’ll be sharing the space with a multimedia artist – this former Sarah Lawrence student – and a woman who makes elaborate collages out of world currencies.’

  ‘Awesome.’

  ‘So, can I have a look then?’ Oggie asks.

  ‘Honestly, I want you to see this when it’s complete. I want you to see it fully realized. At least more than it is now. I mean, sure, you can come in,’ Boy says starting to backpedal, ‘I just think it will leave a bigger impression if you wait.’

  Oggie’s wince-smile drops into a thin line. ‘I get it, I get it. As long as something’s coming along.’

  ‘It is. There will be six pieces. I’ll start airbrushing the first piece soon. After that it’s touch-ups and framing.’

  ‘I have a guy for that. You weren’t planning on doing it yourself, were you?’

  ‘I can,’ Boy says. ‘I’ve done smaller works before; nothing this big though. Everything is set up for stretching and framing. I left margins.’

  ‘Okay, call the guy on the laminate in the kitchen. He’ll bring a van around and take the pieces. I’ve already called him about you. Two days turnaround time.’ Oggie’s phone rings. He answers it, speaks for a moment. His hand muffles the receiver. ‘Look, I have to go. I’ll stop by soon.’

  Boy closes the door and turns back into the studio to find Fat Man crucified across the painting wall. It’s an eerie image to switch to from the outside world. The tones of Fat Man have been shaded in certain areas to add a sense of billowiness to the piece. His breasts are two swollen goiters. A line of hair roots from his bulbous belly and disappears into the fold of fat draping over his shriveled crocodile penis. His legs are long and plump, dappled with hair and stubby at the toes.

  Boy wants his portrait to appear almost handsome, to look like a man who would be good-looking had he not nearly eaten himself into premature death. To do this, he printed out photos of heavy Hollywood stars. Jonah Hill, John Goodman, Chris Farley, John Belushi, Jack Black. The faces were taped to the wall in a halo around Fat Man.

  Boy begins taking the photos down. He stuffs them into the recycle bin, carefully moves the piece to a different wall. After pouring himself a glass of orange juice, he turns to the next sketch in his notebook: Amputee.

  The world has various ways to maim people. Gruesome, hard to look at photos, amputated leg like a broken celery stick nibbled at the tip. The results of too many accidents, famine, disease, natural causes. The irony of amputation is that many times, it’s used to actually save someone’s life. Sacrifice comes in many forms. All gods must be appeased.

  Boy grows emotional looking at some of the pictures. Life is never as hard as it could be. He wants to tap into that vein of guilt, remorse and thankfulness.

  He spends the next thirty minutes pasting photos around the blank canvas. He wants the amputee to be an American of questionable origin. Fat Man is white. Cosmetic Surgery will be Asian. Business Man will be white. Pregnant Being will be African. Starving Child will be Middle Eastern. All the elements come together in his amputee piece. He is their protector, the one who has sacrificed for them. They all play their role in his new collection, which he plans to call Human Comedy.

  On his sketchpad, Boy toyed with the idea of either keeping Amputee legless or giving him prosthetic appendages. In the end he chose the latter, keeping with the general motif of the collection and Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. It would also give Boy the opportunity to work with light reflection on the prosthetic legs, which he planned to paint after the acrylic had been applied.

  The closer to real life the better. He wanted people to be frightened by the starkness of the piece, startled even. The bottom line – it can’t look painted. It can’t look fake. He’s never tried something on this scale before.

  Amputee will be wearing chipped dog tags and his upper body will be muscular and covered in tattoos. His face will be borderline grimace, his lips sealed. Thousand-yard stare the results of a SNAFU: do not speak the horrors alive. Boy keeps his eyes pupil-less for the time being. They must be the eyes of a man who has met Death, shook his hand, spit in his face, stolen his scythe and driven it into Death’s bosom.

  Everyday Amputee. Boy deliberately wants him to be the face of the future, the face of the past, the face of the inevitable, the face of the father, the son, the mother, the daughter, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost. Everyday Amputee – Boy scribbles the name on his sketch pad.

  Hours pass, raindrops down a mucky gutter. The light from the sunroof slides away, transitioning to the other side of the room, inviting foreseeable darkness. Boy’s stomach grumbles, tells him it’s time to slap something in there. He continues working into the night.

  ₪₪₪

  He rarely leaves his studio over the coming week. With the pencil portion of Fat Man and Everyday Amputee done, Boy begins work on Cosmetic Surgery.

  It’s a change of pace: shading in the shadows of her small breasts, adding depth to her skin, working with her thin frame. On his sketchpad, Boy’s tried a variety of colors for the surgery lines. Something Frankenstein about it, something piecemealed. Cut, remove, fix, replace. Where will plastic surgery lead the twenty-first century? I want a new me.

  The piece has more in common with Everyday Amputee than he originally anticipated. Both are products of advancements in medical science. Both show how far we’ve come yet how little we’ve progressed. Boy shades in knots around her shoulders. In the fashion of Da Vinci’s original piece, both of her arms are stretched into a wide V above her head.

  He imagines the piece in its completed form. Her eyes will be closed. Cosmetic Surgery doesn’t want to look out; she wants to keep her gaze inward. She’s going under the needle soon; she’ll be perfect soon.

  Maeve once mentioned something about fake tits. It was after they attended a performance at the Vanguard Theater in Austin. She saw a woman at a restaurant who clearly had had work done.

  Chris offered to pay for it, she blurted out after two glasses of chardonnay.

  Pay for what? Boy asked.

  Plastic surgery. You know, fake tits.

  What did you tell him?

  I told him I’d think about it.

  Well? Boy asked.

  You’ve seen me naked.

  And?

  I’m still thinking about it. What do you think? Should I?

  Of course not, you’re beautiful just the way you are.

  Really? Maeve asked.

  Sure, why not?

  You just went from being sweet to being an asshole in three words, she said as she ordered another glass of wine.

  ₪₪₪

  Cosmetic Surgery will be set before the surgery is to take place. The subject, therefore, needs to appear flawed, human. This gives Boy a new idea. It comes to him while he is peeling the soggy shell off a day-old tamale.

  He will paint two pieces: Cosmetic Before and Cosmetic After.

  They will be displayed next to one another, complimentary. The woman will have her eyes closed in Cosmetic Before. Surgery lines will be breadcrumbed across her body. In Cosmetic After she’ll be wide-eyed and physically modified. Human Comedy will now have seven pieces in total.

  He’d better tell Oggie.

  ₪₪₪

  Time materializes. Clock
s spin and minutes are regurgitated, slurped up and redistributed.

  A few days later, two canvases hang on the painting wall side-by-side. The two pieces are pinned next to one another like butterflies. Before and after – an aesthetic study in vanity.

  Cosmetic Before is nearly finished. Her chin is long, imperfect. Small, plum-sized breasts. Roundish stomach not fat, but not perfect. Nothing is perfect because everything is human.

  Cosmetic After. Augmented, implanted, modified, beatified, improved upon, supplemented, enlarged, reduced, fixed. The preliminary sketches are done. Boy straddles the line between comic book heroine and walking work of supposed art. The pencil base will be finished tomorrow.

  With his collection now at seven, Boy knows he risks the comparison to the Seven Deadly Sins. Boy pushes the fear out of his mind – nothing is original and nothing is what it seems.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  Boy spins around.

  ‘Penelope, you scared me!’

  ‘You never leave the house now,’ she says.

  ‘I’m working. I have to finish this. What’s out there anyway besides New York?’

  ‘Maybe you should leave soon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s coming.’

  Tears. Boy feels them well at the corner of his eyes. Not here. Not here. Not here.

  ‘No.’ He pushes the wave of emotion aside, swallows as calmly as possible. ‘I’m working. Not now. He can’t be here now.’

  ‘You should eat,’ she says. ‘You should go.’

  ‘Not hungry.’

  ‘Go...’

  ‘Penelope, where are you?’

  ‘Here.’

  Boy moves to the stairwell. ‘Where?’

  ‘Here.’

  Boy moves slowly up the stairs, clenching his fists at his sides. He knows he shouldn’t take another step. Curiosity fuels the ghost, ignites the demon, lures the bait.