Just a snippet

O N E

You know I am a liar.

I am a fraud. I am the oaf who has swaggered and spat, scratched and scrawled all over your life. You do not complain. You smile and you kiss me. You wash my socks and iron my suit when I’m not looking. You make our bed.

I have given you everything – all of me. Now I give you this. I give you this aging arsehole, with his scratches and scrawls and his bombastic diatribes on the thumping stupidity of the human gene pool. I give you my love.

Damn you!

#####

“Are you ready?”
I’m in the kitchen snaffling a crumpet dripping with raspberry jam. Of course I’m not ready. I am never ready. I am a work in progress.
“Come on, you don’t want to be late for your own exhibition.”
I gulp, a crumb of crumpet sticks in my throat. I cough and the crumb dislodges, jam stained spittle dribbles over my lip.
“Look at you.” She tuts and picks up a damp dishcloth.
After she rubs the goo from my mouth and from the lapel of the blue linen jacket I follow her meekly to the car.
“I’m driving,” she says.
I shrug. She is right. I will need to drink so that I can stomach the unspeakable pricks. Every year I bare my arse and they come like slime to a stagnant pond, for I have no talent and they have no taste. This is not my life; this is some jerk spewing on cotton canvas and picking the overfull pockets of the privileged. This should never be. The gentle boy in me is lost, drowned by circumstance and weakness; he would feel sad to look through these eyes now, to see my betrayal with its parade of pseudosmilers and its fake humility. I am a hollow husk, devoid of depth, I am dead.

I strut into the exhibition hall, late, of course. Lucy is at my side; they are here, appropriately reverent expressions turned towards me.
I play for a while, nodding at the enemy, parrying with my glass.
Sex is here, and though the taste of it has become bland to me, I must play. There is a woman here; she has hovered on the edge of my awareness for years. I think I know her name but can’t bring it to mind. She is petite and blonde with a sharp nose and a delicate femininity. Five years ago I might have loved her for a season; we would have fucked in the orange light of autumn afternoons, sprawled on the bed in my studio, the smell of oil paints and fresh sweat sucking the passion from us. Ah, I spit at the memories of myself. But I must play.
The name comes. The reckless genie has long since dominated and I allow it to speak.
“Kate?”
She smiles and her face reddens.
Another possibility beckons, I follow.
“You are very beautiful. I would like to paint you.”
My paintings are on the walls all around. She will not look me in the eye; her gaze hops and rests for a second on each one.
A quiet voice says: “Thank you.”
“I will pay.”
She is immediately offended and glares at me; her eyes are true blue and her cheeks still blushed with pink. She would indeed make a good subject though my skills are not up to the job, I would make a show of the painting process and blur her beauty into a mess of colour and form – and the painting would sell because somewhere in that mess would be a hint of her, and that would be enough. I don’t know if I am an artist, but the world thinks so.
“I always pay my posers.” I smile. It’s all part of the game. “It’s a serious offer – it is my job.”
“I do like your work,” she says. What else could she say?

My darling Lucy comes to me. I see the sigh in her eyes.
“Come on,” she says.
I follow. Tony is standing on a chair behind the drinks table. He taps the bottle like a pro.
“Simmer down cowpokes.”
He’s wearing a bloody hat too; a puerile nod to the centrepiece painting that had given its name to the exhibition – Arizona. Arizona my arse. I’d been trying to paint a pair of breast-like hills from a too-dark photograph I took in North Wales with Lucy’s phone. I blew it up on my laptop and reverse printed it out in pieces on A4 paper, then I sellotaped the pieces together. The result was a pixellated blur of a dark landscape. I traced the major contours with a small brush loaded with a thick line of cobalt blue and squashed the paper against the canvas so that it left an outline. I spent a couple of days titivating it and over that time it lightened progressively and the mounds became more angular. I’d stepped back to examine it and the thought Arizona Hills came to me. I’ve never been to Arizona and had no intention of making it look like Arizona. In its darker phase it reminded me of cold-war Moscow and in a bright phase it bristled with Manhattan madness. I just played with the paint and with the brushes until I could think of no other way to change it without causing it to degenerate into a mess of brown. I left it for a couple of days and then added a few black lines to give it some definition. Is that an artistic process? Does that make me an artist? I don’t know.
“Fucking pratt.” I mumble.
Lucy and everyone else within 2 metres of where I’m standing at the back of the room hear me. Lucy nudges me.
“Shut up. Without Tony you would never sell a painting, no matter how good you are.”
“That’s the bloody problem . . .”
“Ssh!”
“Can’t you see? It is his fault.” I am whispering.
Lucy shakes her head. “Shut up.” She says with a false laugh for the audience.
I succumb to her wishes. She is right, except I am not good.