Max was early as usual, which annoyed me. It made me feel rushed, and that pissed me off. He was a personal trainer with far too much time on his hands. But it was always the same when I greeted him at the door, I found him so physically attractive that it often left me feeling stupid. I don’t even know why I bothered drawing him. I really don’t know. We found each other such a turn on, his naked body showing clear signs of it every time I tried to draw him, that it just meant I spent more time in bed with him than using him as a model. So what the fuck was I paying him for? When I brought it up he said the only solution was to meet up outside of work hours. But no. I wasn’t going there. I had no interest in forming any sort of relationship with him, sexual or otherwise. There was no attraction there except for a physical one, and the sex simply wasn’t enough to draw me to him in any other way. The sex just happened because it had to. It was like scratching an itch. That’s all it was. I didn’t have to make a ritual out of it. Besides, he had already started prying into my past, so spending any more time with him would quite clearly only make that worse.
I had on many occasions contemplated firing him, but though I hated to admit it, the scratching of the itch had become addictive. Plus a series based on my drawings of him had sold pretty well after a critic had called it a ‘new and interesting line of sexual and carnal pieces, taking the artist deeper into her primal self’.
When I say critic, I should perhaps mention here that I was a very little known artist. This critic was in fact just a part-time art blogger who’d followed my work for a while, and supposed he knew something about me. About my ‘soul’. He tended to write similar types of things about other artists too, stuff that, in my opinion, sounded like the pretentious ramblings of a newly graduated History of Art student.
But oh god, how could I have resisted Max’s body? I hated myself for it, yet sometimes I felt relieved to have these simple moments that reminded me I was just another human being with instinctive impulses towards physical pleasure. It was so uncomplicated, innocent and untainted by thought. I was over-analysing it all again. I just wished I wasn’t paying money to create unfinished drawings. Perhaps unfinished drawings would be my next big thing. I was sure I could find a critic who’d come up with a suitably pretentious thing to say about that.
Here he was again at my door. No body contact at greeting, that was always the way. Over the last few days I’d actually allowed myself to think about things a little more than usual. All sorts of things. I’d allowed myself to delve a little deeper. Maybe I was just getting tired of always resisting certain thoughts. Of course I didn’t delve too deep, because there were certain thoughts I feared would lead me to a place that was far too painful for me to handle at that moment. In any case, my recent introspection meant that today I despised him a bit more than usual.
In the two hours since he’d rung the doorbell I’d managed to finish two large and fairly elaborate sketches, which I was happy with. Not once did I hesitate, I was so engrossed in drawing that I didn’t even feel turned on. It was wonderful. Today held one of those rare moments where I had become totally involved in what I was doing. It had been such a long time since I had felt like this.
Max didn’t say much, thankfully. Perhaps he felt that I was clearly uninterested in him sexually today. Maybe I came across rude. But in any case his silence made it all the more easy. What a breath of fresh air. I had enjoyed his body in a totally different way today.
At exactly 2pm I put the charcoal down. I walked towards the panoramic windows and looked out at the wide San Diego skyline. For a moment I was completely oblivious to the fact I had someone in my presence. I looked out at the world, mesmerised. Feeling the effects of my creative high. It was like a drug. Max cleared his throat. I looked his way to acknowledge him and started wiping my hands clean with a piece of kitchen roll. I watched it darken as it took away the black dust from my hands. He made some other little noise to once again remind me he was there. I looked up at him and surprised myself by smiling at him. And then I looked again at the world outside.
‘What do you see when you look out of here?’ I said.
‘Huh?’
I repeated the question.
‘I swear you’ve asked me this before,’ he said, ‘well… obviously there’s buildings and stuff.’
‘No, but what do you see? What do you really see?’
I wanted him to describe the colours, tell me they were rich, dull, vibrant, whatever. I wanted to know.
‘Huh?’
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’
I moved towards the kitchen and asked him if he wanted anything. He sniggered.
‘Just the usual,’ he said.
I knew what he meant by that and I’d expected such a response. And with no thought, no ounce of wondering or analysing, my mind still at peace and still on a high from the full two hours of flow, I approached him smiling, stupidly, like he never usually saw me smile, and we did it right there on the sheet where he had been posing for me.
But an hour and a half later, as I was closing the door behind him, my high was replaced by a sinking feeling, like I was shrinking back to my usual constrained and restricted me. The me that I lived with on a daily basis. Heavy and solid – so different to the ‘me’ that existed in my moments of flow. In those moments I didn’t feel small and limited, I felt boundless. But the bliss was now gone and I had retracted back to the little me. The joy of simply being was replaced by the weight of being somebody: this adult called Silvia, who could never be content.
I ate a late lunch at the kitchen table, staring into the void of the room. The more I stared, the more sadness I felt. I got up and turned up the radio on the most commercial channel, and I shook away the feeling. I danced like an idiot for a minute and then did twenty star jumps whilst forcing myself to smile. These were the crazy rituals you could have when living alone. You didn’t have to act level-headed or composed, you were allowed to oscillate between emotional extremes. There was no one to judge how insane all this looked. After that I went and cut myself a sizeable piece of carrot cake and brewed the perfect cup of milky tea. I sat back down at the kitchen table, smiled at the snacks. Delicious. Sweet, spicy, creamy, perfect. I reminded myself that I, too, was allowed to be a normal and light-hearted person. Even if things got me down, it was okay, that was just life, a part of life, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t who I was. Sadness was something that just happened sometimes. I didn’t have to take it all too seriously.
Cake and tea. How normal and lovely and nice. I was now all set for an afternoon of drawing Arthur. Arthur was a mature art student. I had actually once agreed to pose for him too, but only the once. After I’d slept with him for the first time I could tell he was slightly more sensitive than some of the other men I’d dealt with. That’s why I’d refused to sleep with him again for a long time after that. But the sexual tension grew too strong, so I had to make it clear: it was only sex. And it could all stop at any moment. Those were my terms. That was my disclaimer to them all.
And an afternoon of drawing – not quite in the state of flow as before – and sex ensued. Sex with Arthur was never a given, but today it happened. He was much more affectionate than the others, which I loved, but sometimes felt a little guilty about.
It was rare for me to get two drawing sessions with two different men on the same day. It felt strange having had sex with both of them only a few hours apart. Sometimes I caught myself wondering how I really felt about all these reckless flings I was having. But nobody was getting hurt, and I enjoyed it, whether it meant anything or not. And what is meaning? Isn’t it just an afterthought we add onto experiences, to try and make sense of our lives? So that life doesn’t end up feeling as pointless as it actually is? I enjoyed those intimate moments while they lasted, and that was meaningful enough for me.
But, that evening, when I was alone again, I sat down against the cold metal of the radiator and I cried. I had never cried about any of it before. Why was I suddenly feeling so strange about what I was doing with these men? Was I looking for something more seemingly meaningful? God no. That too was all a load of bullshit. I had long ago learnt enough about all that. All that romantic love shit was just an ego thing – people’s insecurity searching for gratification in someone else. Whatever. I didn’t need that. I didn’t even fucking want that. And, most of all, I couldn’t have that.
I decided to blame this sudden outburst of emotions on the new pill I was taking. Fucking hormones. I’d started taking it a couple of months ago, after I’d skipped a period, found out I was pregnant and had to go through an abortion. Imagine me bringing a child into this world, now that would be really tragic.
I ran a bath and lay in it for almost an hour, until the water cooled, staring into space. Sometimes, quite often, I liked to submerge myself under the water completely, slowly sinking my head further and further down, keeping my eyes open. It was like disappearing from the world for a moment. A moment of relief. A momentary escape. I was but the blur of a body against a blur of white bath. I listened to the high-pitched ringing in my ears. I breathed out bubbles and watched them rise. Underwater. Submerged. Like a foetus. Sometimes I’d be under there a little too long. Testing… Then I’d rise up, gasping for air.
The rest of my week would be quite different. For the next two days I’d be completely alone. I had no one booked in, so I would just work on my large-scale abstract pieces – for it was mostly when I worked on them that I encountered those incredible moments of flow. They allowed me to create whatever I wanted without premeditation, without planning. With them my hands and mind were free.
On Thursday Pete was coming over. He was my plumper client. I’d chosen him because of that. There was no point having all these different men unless they all had different bodies to draw – some tall, some small, some ripped like a marble statue, some fatter than Santa. Pete was in his late fifties, married, and a slightly eccentric hippy. It seemed as though he spent half his time laughing. It was always easy to be around him. He arrived on time, was kind, respectful and left on time. I was always happy with the drawings that came out of our sessions. He was money very well spent. I knew more about him than any of the others, simply because he chatted so much when posing for me. He had once mentioned something about having worked as an immigration lawyer or something like that, but mostly he talked about his personal life. His wife, he’d talk so much about his wife. But, above all, I liked him because he didn’t ask many questions about me. He’d sensed I didn’t like it.
After Pete I would be alone again until next week, when my diary showed that I had a different man coming on each day. Weeks like that were rare too. But then again, I never really had a regular structure. Two of the men coming the next week were men I’d sleep with on occasion.
I actively avoided attachment, or that thing people called ‘love relationships’. I had seen what it had done to my mother, and even as a little girl I vowed to myself that I would learn from her mistakes. I told myself that if I ever should falter and start wondering whether this ‘love’ thing was actually good, all I had to do was think back to when I was a young girl observing my mother’s bad choices. That couldn’t be me. I simply couldn’t allow myself to be that person – blinded.
Perhaps all my issues wouldn’t be so bad if I had someone to talk to. But when you’re sworn to secrecy how can you talk, even if you wanted to? Who could I possibly ever talk to? It was impossible. It just wasn’t safe. I had to keep it inside.
The idea of ‘normality’ was like paradise to me: distant, deceptive and unattainable. I was born never to know the more normal human experience of the people who surrounded me: the people who waited in line with me in the supermarket, the people I painted, the people who rushed around in the city below. If only they realised just how lucky they were.