by Daryl Banner
When I look up from the spoon to see if Clayton’s laughing at my joke, I find that he’s missed every word, still buried in his phone and typing away. As if pulled by my little glance, he looks up suddenly, then smiles. “Sorry. Dessie just scored Jeremy Hardenberg. Can’t believe it. Our set’s gonna rock! I can’t wait to work with him and make a fucking color and light orgasm onstage. Oh, how’s the painting thing going?”
I’m gonna make a color and light orgasm with an art chick Saturday night. “Photography, not painting,” I correct him with a smirk. When he gives me a quizzical look, I bring a couple hands to my face to mimic a photographer looking through his camera.
“Shit. Photography. Right.” He sets his phone down. “What’re you gonna do with your photography degree? Doesn’t that add, like, two more years to your college time? You’re gonna miss graduating with the … the rest of us.”
I sigh, annoyed. “It’s not about graduating that’s the goal. It’s—”
“You need to graduate, dude.”
His phone jumps, but thankfully he ignores it, keeping his eyes on me. I hate how much like a scolding older brother Clayton looks right now. He’d given me this same look half our lives ago when he could still hear, reprimanding me for how dumb I got when I talked to girls, or berating me about what we’d achieve when we grew up, or fuming over my inability to skip class without getting caught by Principal McPherson. The tables turned when we hit high school, and then they seemed to turn even more when we hit college. Now he’s the driven one with the fire in his eyes and the arrow in his heart, and I’m the one with just a fire between my legs. I think the arrows are there, too.
“So?” Clayton prompts me, lifting his eyebrows. “Is this art school photography thing gonna work out?”
“I hope so,” I finally say. “It’d be better if I was any good.”
“You’re no good?”
“Not sure. Last week, I had to take forty photos of trees. Lights and shadows, or something. The hell I gotta take photos of trees for?”
“Trees?” he echoes, eyes on my lips.
“Yep.”
He smirks. “The more you take, the better you get, right?”
“I guess so,” I respond, thinking of all the girls I’ve taken, each girl like a photograph burned into my retinas.
“Maybe you’ll score some perfect photo and it’ll land on the cover of a magazine or some shit.”
“Maybe I’ll work for a newspaper.”
“Maybe you’ll take pics of dead bodies at crime scenes.”
“Maybe I’ll work for some porn company,” I throw in, sneering as I poke a finger through a ring I make with my other hand, simulating the mystic act of human fornication. “I’m told I catch good angles when it comes to photographing the ladies …”
Clayton laughs, and whether it’s at my gestures or he actually caught my words, I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter; I laugh too. And for a fleeting second, it’s just like old times.
Then his phone vibrates yet again. He pulls it to his face right away, still laughing, and starts to text.
I look down at my arm, distracted by a crescent scar that still lives there. I got it the day Clayton and I fought as prepubescent twerps, not long before he lost his hearing. We were fighting over a girl. This was back when he thought that the way to show me how to get girls was to take them away from me, each and every one that I ogled.
We’ve come a long way. Or perhaps just traded places.
Or else I’m all alone in this lady-lovin’ conquest.
“Maybe,” I say, knowing full well I’m talking to myself, “I’m still that kid who can’t look a girl properly in the eye. Maybe I’m kidding myself with this whole photography thing. Maybe the more photos I take, the less I actually see.”
Clayton smiles at the text he gets back, then types a hasty response. In the next moment, the server comes by with our food, and with the noise of late night laughter and familial banter engulfing us, we stuff our faces.
Chapter 5
Nell
I really didn’t expect him to show up at all. So color me a pale shade of surprised when I find him waiting by the Quad fountain, perched on its stone lip like some romance-tormented college boy bard. The only thing he’s missing is a lute and a song.
Upon my approaching, he turns his head and a charming smile stretches the length of his face, his dimples popping out. I would never admit this outside the confines of my head, but the sight of him sends a nervous flutter of excitement through my body. He is such a pleasant sight. I wouldn’t mind walking up to a hundred different fountains if a guy like that was perched on every single one, awaiting me and smiling the way he does. Where’s his chariot?
“You live in the dormitories?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows. “Which one’s yours and is your roommate gone?”
And then he goes and ruins it. “Follow me, camera boy.”
“It’s Brant.”
We continue across the vast parking lot with the sun hugging us every grueling step of the way. He keeps mostly silent, perhaps inspired to shut the hell up after he realizes how utterly unimpressed I am with his incessant need to think with his cock. Until I open up his pants and find a brain in there, I’ll deflect every sweet, sugary word he utters.
No matter how insufferably sexy I find his voice.
“This … is the bad part of town,” he mutters quietly.
“What makes you say that?” I throw back defensively.
“Don’t have to be a genius to, uh … see the part of town we’re in.”
See? You don’t “see” anything, camera boy.
“I had a buddy, Robbie,” he goes on, “and he was mugged over here on his way to a damn Burger King. Had his iPhone stolen too. 50 or 60 gigabytes of porn and music and family pics, all gone forever.”
“Doesn’t that all back up on a cloud or something?”
“Backing up his porn? You nuts?”
“I’ve been accused of that before,” I admit coolly, taking a left down Pinemont when we reach the first crosswalk.
Brant hesitates a second before crossing the street with me, perhaps because I didn’t wait for the light to turn green. I barely even checked to see if a car was coming.
“I’ve been accused of a thing or two myself,” he calls out, then catches up to my side.
“I can’t imagine what,” I return dryly.
“You know, we might have some more engaging conversations if you don’t pretend to know everything about me.”
He thrusts his hands in his pockets as we walk. I presume it’s a defense mechanism because he’s uncomfortable, but it only succeeds in flexing his arms, which does not go unnoticed by me. Not a good time to get distracted, Nell.
“You can’t say I’m not an artist when you haven’t seen my work,” he goes on. “What if I said the same thing about you? What if I said you’re not an artist? How would that make you feel?”
“I’d laugh.”
Brant hisses his own laughter through his teeth. “Yeah? Why would you laugh?”
“If I called you a banana, you’d laugh, wouldn’t you?” I turn my head, drinking in the sight of his bright blue eyes as they wonder the meaning of my words. Then I take a sip of those chiseled arms of his … and that sexy, dimpled smirk. “Because you’re obviously not a banana.”
“No, I’m not,” he agrees.
“So if you really are an artist,” I go on, “then you’d laugh when I accused you of not being one. You’d laugh and think of your best photo, the one that blew your mind apart, the one that encapsulates everything you are, even to this very moment. You’d laugh at me.”
He stews on that for a second. Then he faces me and flashes his teeth. “I have a banana in my pants.”
I ignore him and his stupid, childish comments—despite the urge to chuckle and betray my cool demeanor. I think he sees it because he snorts breathily, which very quickly converts my almost-smile into a tightened smirk.
After l
istening to our footsteps for a measureless amount of time, we take another left onto Abernathy and arrive at the destination. Brant doesn’t say a word as I open the tall front glass doors. The cool air wafts over us like a refreshing spritz of water as we step inside, the doors shutting gently at our backs.
As I cross the brightly lit room, my heels echo loudly off the tile and the art displays and glass walls. When I stop at one of them and turn, I find Brant standing in the middle of the room with his eyes grown to twice their size as he spins slowly, swallowing in the new environment. With the exception of the gallery owner and likely a student or two in the back, there’s no one here yet but us. The only others in our immediate presence are the countless pieces of art that sit on their respective displays, silently staring back.
“Never been to an art exhibit before?” I ask him, my voice echoing hollowly across the room.
“Holy moly.” Brant stops and stares back at the entrance. “You can see the street. All the walls are glass. They can see in,” he states dumbly, then turns back around to look at all the art projects spread around the room in their little sections and stations. His eyes zero in on one in particular. “Is … Is that a penis?”
I follow his line of sight to a clay pot that looks like a very tall mushroom and would likely be mistaken for one if it weren’t for the two round drums the artist deliberately set in front of it.
“It’s art,” I answer vaguely.
He scoffs, coming up to it and smirking. “Right. And I can toss a clam on a pedestal and call it a vagina. Is that art?”
My eyes narrow. Every stupid thing that spills from his stupid, sexy mouth just confirms more and more what kind of guy I’m getting to know.
“Want to see more?” I offer tersely, masking my annoyance the way one holds back from shouting an obscenity after stubbing a toe.
His bright blue eyes lift from the penis pot and meet mine.
The effect loosens every ounce of tight frustration I’d just gained.
Then, it’s his soft footsteps that now fill the room, tapping slowly along the tile as he struts up to me. The closer he gets, the more his smile fades until we’re nearly nose-to-nose and all I see are his infinite blue eyes.
“Yep,” he says, quiet as a sigh. “I wanna see more. Much more.”
Every little spark of willpower within me is exercised to its fullest capacity to turn away from that sexy face. He’s really making this a challenge for me.
Over my shoulder, I tell him, “This way.”
I lead him to a work of art that sits on a pedestal out in the open—fully visible to the street from the front and side glass windows, as well as within perfect view of the whole rest of the gallery. There, his eyes fall on the display that gives him cause to lift his brows in surprise, and gape. I watch with secret, dark delight as he walks around the piece of work, taking it in at all possible angles with his big, bewildered eyes. I’m feasting on his every little reaction, joy bubbling within me like a spicy soup on the stovetop. He even stops to cross his arms, bringing a thoughtful finger to his lips as he studies it.
Finally, just when I’m ready for him to offer his admiration, he lifts his face, meets my eyes, and says, “And what in freaky hell is this?”
I lift an affronted eyebrow. “Well, what do you think?”
He tilts his head. “It’s a naked woman,” he observes, “on all fours … and her mouth has … a ball-gag with a censor bar over it.” He shakes his head. “The hell kind of sick shit is this?” He laughs suddenly, his chuckles whistling through his fingers. “Some kind of BDSM thing?”
My face hides all emotion—except for my eyes, perhaps, which feel like they’re glowing with green fire. I merely stand there, my stomach tight and my breath held, and let him observe. It’s like I’m in class all over again, awaiting my stupid peers’ criticism.
“Her hands and ankles are handcuffed to the pedestal,” he notices. “Sorry, but uh … seeing as she’s papier-mâché … or clay, or something … I don’t think she’s going anywhere.” He laughs again.
His laughs ring across the gallery, ring into my ears, into my heart.
“You don’t think there’s a point to the cuffs? That a woman can be objectified … without her consent?” I ask, my voice soft and low.
“Okay, is that what this is? Sorry, but no.” He shakes his head, leans back against the glass wall as he smirks. “Welcome to the new age, my friend. Men are just as objectified. You see ads nowadays? Men with sculpted abs and big, fat biceps and no fuckin’ waist to speak of?”
“It’s not the same.” Now I’m crossing my arms, my words growing more clipped by the syllable. “Women are treated like objects beyond that. Tools only meant to advance men. A pretty, opinionless wife on the arm of a CEO. The First Lady. The slut in a movie. A billboard of—”
“I live in an apartment with two gay men,” Brant cuts me off, and his voice is neither mad nor argumentative; in fact, the asshole sounds downright amused. “Between them and the carousel of pretty boys who slip through my pad on a nightly basis, they have so much damn body dysmorphia and body image issues and objectification between them that even I catch myself counting calories. Hey, did you know that I’m ‘straight skinny’ … but ‘gay fat’? Me. Fat.”
I feel so many thoughts bubbling up my throat and so much anger stewing around inside me that I suddenly—and uncharacteristically—find myself completely devoid of words. I simply stand there and stare at him stupidly, my eyes cold and my lips locked.
Didn’t I say I wouldn’t let him get to me? Didn’t I just say I knew exactly what kind of boy I was getting to know?
Why do I insist on engaging with him?
“And why’s the censor bar over just her mouth?” he asks, giving the work another quick, haphazard inspection. “I mean, you can clearly see her nipples. And her pink taco. I can see her cute little pink taco.” He points at it demonstratively and whispers, “It’s right there. Her a-cooter-mah-twat-a. Right there.”
Maybe I should start offering spoons with my work. “I guess that’s all I’ve brought you here to show you,” I say, giving up. “Y’know. Artist to artist.”
He looks at me suddenly. “Who’s the artist of this work?”
I narrow my eyes. “Some bitch named Nell.”
He nods thoughtfully, then seems to appraise me with his eyes. “So are you done showing me all this art stuff? You ready to … show me a little something not currently on display?” He does a little cheesy dance as he circles the naked sculpture, growing closer to me, his balled up fists in the air bouncing to some beat that only he hears.
My cold stare stops him short. “Let’s be real for a second,” I suggest to Brant—ignoring his soft, inviting eyes and his ridiculously terrible-yet-oddly-sexy dance moves. “The only thing you and I will ever be … is friends. You got it? I brought you here to show you art. That’s it.”
He smirks cockily. “Why? You afraid I’m too much for you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Sure you are,” he retorts. “We’re all afraid of something. I, for one, am kinda afraid of leaving this art gallery without at least a kiss.” He bats his eyes dumbly, smiling with that crooked, dimpled smile.
My fists tighten. What a tool. “And where does that kiss lead? To me becoming just another dent in your headboard?” I lean into him. “Let’s be clear. You’re not an artist. You’re just in my school to score.”
He laughs at that. “Why would you think that about me? I’m not some … weird kind of art school man-whore.”
“No, you’re just the normal kind. Another guy who thinks he can get inside any woman he bats his eyes at. You already had your way with some girl behind that folding partition earlier this week in my studio class. Probably had one or two others that same night. And maybe two the weekend before. And how many have you had since?”
“Wait, wait, wait …”
“Hey, I don’t care,” I tell him, raising my hands up innoce
ntly. “I’m not here to judge you. I don’t know you and you owe me nothing. If you want to be a player, go ahead, play. But I’m not part of your game. I make art. I push at the world. I—”
“Yeah, well, whatever art you do, make sure it’s more meaningful than what this Nell freak did with her naked censored BDSM lady. What’s it called? ‘Object’ … Okay, yeah. Do somethin’ better than this piece of crap,” he says with a smirk down at the work of art.
My work of art.
I stand between him and my sculpture defensively, facing him with red-hot fervor. “You wouldn’t know what art is if it grew hands and feet and slapped you right in that smug-ass face of yours.”
“Okay. First, that piece of crap does have hands and feet,” he states with a smirking, tilted nod at it, “and seeing as it’s cuffed and doesn’t appear to have a pulse, I don’t think it’ll be slapping me in the near future. Secondly,” he adds with a wink, “you are sexy as fuck when you get all angry.”
I take a breath. “If we’re going to stand here debating realness and art and objectification, then I figure the least you owe me is a bit of your unadulterated candor and a little less of your player bullshit.”
It seems my words still do nothing to affect his slick, smooth-talking cockiness. If anything, it strengthens him. He lowers his voice and works his silkiest tone when he says, “Babe, I’m not a player.”
“Babe? I’m not a ‘babe’ on your lady list you can just wrap around your little finger.”
He presses his lips together, tickled. “I wouldn’t call it so little …”
“Your list? Or your finger?”
He snorts. “Alright, alright, alright. You win. We’re gonna be totally straight with one another, then. Out in the open … upfront, direct, honest. That’s what you want?”
I cross my arms and wait in a cool, patient silence.
“Alright.” He claps his hands together, gives them a quick rub, then states, “I’ve been with exactly one girl this past week. One. It was a dancer named …” He squints suddenly. “C-Clara. And …” He clears his throat. “And she was a very sweet girl. A dancer, I might add. Not an artist. Well, an artist on the stage, maybe. Not that I’ve seen her dance. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, things between us were casual, and it’s over. I haven’t even heard from her since, like … you know. The behind-the-privacy-screen thing.”