The Medium of Desire Read online

  “Hey, Carol.”

  “I thought I saw the illustrated man coming up the street. Are you headed to Bituminous, too?”

  “On my way to lunch,” he muttered. “Need some coffee.” He tried to project as much unfriendliness as possible without being rude.

  They crossed the street together, holding the door for her, reflexively. There was a line inside, all the tables were full. Standing room was tight and the oxygen thin.

  “Where are you going for lunch?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” he lied.

  They stood for a moment, studying one another. The girl ahead of them in line asked every question she could summon about the menu. Brett wondered whether her questions were genuine or if there was something else going on with her, like maybe making the barista answer one inane question after the other was a tiny power trip, or maybe the customer was very lonely.

  “They should just let you serve yourself if you want regular coffee,” Carol said.

  “That would be nice.”

  “Just pour it and put your money in a jar. This system of waiting in line for coffee is so archaic I can’t believe they even pay someone to stand up there.”

  “I guess they need someone to make sure the customers pay.”

  “That’s a joke.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The owner of this business thinking they can control money.”

  “Why can’t they?”

  “Why can’t they? Okay, well they pay this guy up here $8.50 an hour to stand and collect small denomination currency to pour, froth and mix coffee. They get two to four bucks a cup. Let’s say they sell 20 cups an hour, and make eighty bucks an hour. They pay this guy $8.50, so now we’re down to $71.50. They pay for the coffee beans and to lease the equipment, so now they’re down to $40. They pay utilities, insurance, and taxes, so now they’re down to $10. They give the money to the bank who charges them to open a checking account, so now they’re down to $1. The owner probably spends that on some subscription service he doesn’t even realize he has. So he puts all this time and effort into making exactly nothing. But, if they just let us buy coffee by putting money in a jar, they could save $8.50 an hour.”

  “Someone would still need to brew the coffee, open the shop, turn on the lights, sweep the floors, et cetera.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.”

  “Then how would it get done?”

  “Because people would just do it.”

  “What?”

  “The first customer to get here would turn on the lights, so he wouldn’t be sitting in the dark. If there were no coffee, he would brew it because he would want some. If the floors were dirty, he’d sweep them.”

  “Wholeheartedly disagree. No one standing around would spontaneously clean this place unless they were getting paid.”

  “Of course they would. You see it every day. It’s called volunteering.”

  “People volunteer to read stories at nursing homes and coach little league because they either need spiritual nourishment or to satisfy a court order. No one cleans other people’s floors because they’re dirty.”

  “But that’s only because it’s not our system.”

  “How can we rely on other people to sweep our floors if we’re unwilling to sweep them ourselves? Your idea doesn’t have any accountability,” he said.

  Arriving at the front of the line, they placed their orders, a pour-over Honduran for Carol and a regular black coffee for Brett. Coffees in hand, Carol followed Brett out to the street.

  “I’ve been where you are,” Carol said, refusing to leave it alone. “You think you need structure because you’re so attached to it. You’ve never lived without it, so you don’t understand the beauty of real freedom.”

  “No one’s ever told me I live with a lack of freedom,” Brett said. “But existence is structure. The human form, the mold of the world. Things are the way they are, not the way we fancy they them to be. You think because you’re rich that all this labor going on around you is a bunch of nonsense.”

  “You’re so attached to the status quo, so hooked on Olivia, and she’s what makes you hurt.”

  Where the hell did that firebomb come from? Sure, he’d been pretty broken up over his falling out with Olivia, but what did Carol know about it? Had she been talking to Olivia?

  At the corner of Fremont Street and Aragon Avenue, he realized he’d unwittingly led her across the neighborhood to Crustacean. As they slid into a booth, he cussed himself for letting her follow him. He had hoped to spend this time alone.

  “Let me get us some drinks. What do you want?”

  “Black coffee,” Brett said, shaking his empty coffee cup.

  “Two coffees,” Carol said.

  Then again, maybe Carol wasn’t so bad. She definitely had it in for him, so that was a positive quality. She was entitled to her opinions, and she could be fun. What did he give a damn if she had strong opinions, vacillating between being a champion of the proletariat and a benefactor of the elite? Her wild ideas weren’t going to change anything, cause any essential institutions to fail; even if she were in some position of influence, her ideas would cancel themselves out. She was no threat to world order. Her worst quality, really, was her bitter jealousy of his and Olivia’s ragged relationship, and if he was a gambling man he would bet that his past with Olivia was one of the reasons she was sweating him.

  Carol returned to the table carrying bottles of Hardywood Pils instead of coffee. Other than being disobedient, the act had to be symbolic, suggestive on some level. They sat silently for a moment, sipping their beers. She laughed, almost spewing beer out her nose.

  “What?” Brett asked.

  “What the hell are we doing here?”

  “I’m getting breakfast.”

  “It’s like, noon.”

  “Look, I haven’t eaten all day, and if you aren’t hungry, could you just let me enjoy myself? I haven’t eaten all day and this is my favorite restaurant.”

  “Mister sensitive, okay, I’ll rein it in.”

  “Thank you.”

  Brett ordered a Cobb salad with grilled salmon, and Carol returned the menu to the waitress.

  “I’ve eaten,” Carol said.

  Carol shifted the conversation down a one-way street, to dismantling the foundation of modern economics, advocating a redistribution of inherited wealth, which ironically, he noted, was the same hegemony that gave her endless days of leisure. When his food arrived, his plate was white as a pearl, and he could feel the cool of the freshwater stream his salmon had been recently snatched from.

  “Anyway, that’s my whole problem with the labor unions,” Carol concluded.

  “The union enslaves people,” Brett said, trying to antagonize Carol between finishing his last few bites. Their third round of beers arrived.

  “Exactly.”

  “By preaching muscle of the many, people sacrifice their individualism to become cattle for the elite.”

  “Like you and me!” she said excitedly.

  Brett rolled his eyes, sighed and gazed wistfully out the window at a passing bicyclist, merging through traffic onto Aragon. Carol’s logic was a load of shit, but he was happy to lob a few softballs to keep her agreeable. He just wanted to finish his lunch, escape her, and get back to dealing with his own existential crises.

  “Okay, so you’re burnt out on talking economics,” Carol said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I can talk about art. Let’s talk about art,” Carol said.

  “Knock yourself out. I don’t really have much to say on the subject,” Brett said.

  “How could that be?”

  “It’s something I do, not something I pontificate about.”

  “That’s interesting,” Carol said. “You know it, but you don’t necessarily translate your knowledge of craft into words. What do you attribute that to? Self-study?”

  “Less of an academic focus, I guess.”

  “So do you consider yo
urself part of a school, or a painting tradition?”

  Brett winced. “I took an art history class my first year of college. I got a D. The truth is, no one really cares what category your art falls into as long as it’s good.”

  “I suppose art criticism can be pedantic. Well, let’s talk about something not so highbrow then. What’s your favorite thing to paint?”

  Brett shrugged. He liked to paint everything.

  “Is there a subject you tend to paint more than others?”

  “Not really. No point of focus comes to mind.”

  “What about portraits? Do you like painting portraits?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you paint them on commission or on spec?”

  “I prefer to paint what I want to paint and let my broker worry about selling it. When someone pays you up front they get this idea in their head they own you. They keep coming back asking for changes, thinking they know more than you. It’s not that I don’t respect their opinions, no one knows better how he feels about his likeness than he does, but it just gets so damn time-consuming, trying to please people in that situation. Commissioned projects are like these boomerang projects that never die.”

  Carol leaned in. “Do you ever paint nudes?”

  Brett started to say ‘no,’ because he only painted nudes infrequently, but then he decided to humor her. “All the time.”

  “What’s it like? To have a naked person just lounging around in front of you for hours?”

  “You mean, like is it sensual?”

  “Yea,” Carol asked, leaning in. “Do you ever fool around with them?”

  “Never.”

  “Never? You’ve got this naked girl all spread out in front of you for hours and you never go for it?”

  “Why do you assume it’s a girl?”

  “Woah.”

  Brett laughed. “Painting the human form is very technical and requires a lot of concentration.”

  “I bet. All those bones and joints and skin texture. I feel like the eyes would be the most difficult to paint.”

  “They aren’t the easiest.”

  “What’s it like to just stand there looking at someone naked for hours?”

  “It’s hard to describe. I guess maybe it’s different for me because I’m working.”

  “I want to know.”

  “I guess you could come by the studio one day when I have a model. I’d have to ask for their consent, but they probably wouldn’t care.”

  “Let’s go to a strip club,” Carol said.

  “Isn’t it a little early?” Brett asked, sipping his beer.

  “This is work not pleasure. I want to see a naked person how you see them. I want to understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Their essence? I don’t know, whatever you see when you paint.”

  Brett took another long drink, finishing his beer. What did he have to lose? Anyway, he hadn’t worked in days. Maybe he could use the distraction.

  Deep Dive was a strip club tucked away on the outskirts of the city. He had been to Deep Dive once, with some of Paco’s people on his cousin’s bachelor party. Brett hadn’t taken any pains to hide how uncomfortable the place had made him, and the cousins, picking up on his discomfort and in spite of his staunch refusal, insisted on buying him a lap dance. But their persistence finally wore him down and he succumbed, if for no other reason than to get them to stop. The woman worked like an athlete, smelled like sweat, expensive perfume and fast food. She wore pasties and kept her panties on, rubbing her body all over him, gyrating, moping him with her sweat, raining glitter all over his face and in his eyes, no doubt convinced he’d longed to be violated like this. When the song ended, he was more than glad for her to get off his lap. No, he wouldn’t need another dance.

  Carol led Brett past the bouncer underneath the pink awning, and they stopped at the coat check to pay the $20 entrance fee. Brett sighed and reached for his wallet, but Carol beat him to paying. The cashier wrapped wristbands around their arms, and Carol led Brett by the hand into the showroom. The room was lit by pink neon reflected by mirrors, serviced by three stages, each with its own pole. Only one girl was dancing: pale and out of shape, she sported a C-section scar down her stomach. They each took a seat in front of the stage. Two older black men watched the dance with a remarkable intensity, one you might have found in someone playing chess or piloting a commercial aircraft. A young white guy slouched in his chair with a hoodie over his head and sunglasses covering his eyes. Was he snoring? A big Italian-looking guy in a loose-fitting three-piece suit tore into a fatty steak, dabbing each bite in ketchup and looking up at the dancer after every bite to smile, as if coming up for air to remind himself this was the good life.

  The dancer climbed the pole to the ceiling, she must have been twenty feet off the ground, wrapped her legs around it, let go of her hands and hung upside down for a moment before righting herself, sliding to the bottom, sucking her fingers, and landing in a split. When her eyes met Brett’s, he squirmed, wishing he were anywhere else. Like city jail or tossed from the raft on a remote river, drowning.

  “Is this enlightening?” Brett asked.

  “It’s entertaining,” Carol said.

  “I thought we didn’t come here for fun.”

  “It’s been fun so far,” Carol said, sipping a Miller Lite with a shit-eating grin on her face. “Why do you look so uncomfortable?”

  “There’s so many germs in this place.” He didn’t want to touch the armrest, but also didn’t want to be mistaken for playing with himself if he folded his hands in his lap.

  Carol jolted forward, covering her face with her hand, like she was about to lose it.

  “What?”

  “You care about germs?”

  “Ha-ha. Very funny.” He was mildly offended. Okay, so he hadn’t bathed in a few days, but this place was a Petri dish. Carol’s howling laugh only heightened his longing to leave.

  The song ended, and the stripper crawled around on the stage gathering up the few bills she’d been tipped, folding them neatly and tucking them into her G-string, walking off stage with her clothes balled in her hand. He wanted to offer her his shirt, but he didn’t want to get caught by some large bouncer’s right hook for doing it.

  “Excuse me,” Carol called to the stripper. “Excuse me, hey you.”

  The stripper had started away, but turned and locked on to Carol with a laser focus.

  “Hey sweetie, how are you doing, baby?” the stripper asked, resting her palms on Carol’s shoulders. When she breathed heavily in Carol’s ear, Brett wanted to throw up, if for no other reason, fear he’d get the same treatment. Carol craned her neck to look at the stripper. She had smeared, purple mascara and a chipped front tooth that compelled her to only smile from one side. “How are ya’ll doing today?”

  “We’re doing just great.”

  “Could we do one of those lap dances?” Carol asked.

  “You sure could. Is it for you or for him?”

  “Well, it’s sort of for both of us. Only, I was wondering if instead of dancing you could just kind of stand still.”

  “What?”

  “Like just stand in front of us for a song, naked, and we’ll pay you whatever it costs, just as long as you stand perfectly still.”

  Brett expected the stripper to be perplexed, but she took the request in stride, taking position, waiting for the next song to start the clock. She’d probably forgotten stranger requests in her career.

  The rap song ended, and a faintly memorable Britney Spears song started playing. The stripper stood in front of Brett and Carol, as discussed, straight and upright with her hands to her sides, looking straight past them, her nipples fully erect.

  “Quit breathing,” Carol said.

  “You want me to hold my breath?”

  “I want you to do whatever the fuck it takes to quit moving,” Carol said.

  The stripper held her breath.

  “What do you think?” Ca
rol asked.

  “Well she’s standing a bit rigid,” Brett replied. His eyes kept going back to her scar, but he wasn’t going to discuss that in front of the girl. “She has nice shoulders, strong, and they don’t have any tension in them. It’s rare you see that. Same for her legs, strong, well-conditioned. She works on them for a living, you would highlight that.” Brett continued, whispering, “as well as the makeup she wears as sort of a mask. She’s not really herself, she’s an avatar. She’s once removed from herself. She causes the girl to dance that’s dancing, but she’s not that girl.”

  “How do you translate that into a painting?”

  “In a portrait? You could paint an absence in the eyes, but even that wouldn’t quite capture it. It isn’t that she isn’t present, it’s that she isn’t her.”

  “Is there some way you could contrast her essence against who she’s pretending to be?” Carol whispered.

  “Perhaps, but not in this setting. Maybe in her dressing room, she sits in front of the mirror as herself, looking back at herself, with the parts of her costume hung about, perhaps a picture of her child on the vanity, capturing her in a deep, deep breath in the exact moment before the transformation.”

  “You thought of that on the spot?” Carol said.

  He was finished with her inquiries. She held her eyes on him for a long moment, waiting, but perhaps hesitant to push the envelope.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Carol said. She stood, yanking a twenty out of her pocket for the stripper. “You can breathe again.”

  While the stripper put her clothes back on, Brett exhaled deeply.

  “Where do you need to be?”

  “I don’t need to be anywhere. I just want to get some exercise. Wouldn’t you like to get some exercise?”

  He immediately thought about work, about the paintings he was not making, but the feeling still hadn’t come back to him. This was making him feel better though, getting out with Carol, as rough and disagreeable as she could be, she could still be kinder to him than he was to himself.