Stories of the Eye, page 3
I stood up from the stool in the empty college classroom. It was late, that indigo hour where the lights on the campus buzzed on in orange and the crowds had thinned to clusters of night classes that you could hear, muffled and remote through the walls.
“How should I move?” I asked them.
“How should I know? Just move.”
I decided to treat it like modeling for gesture sketches, and started snapping into different poses, only a little faster than usual. I arched my back. I knelt. I bowed. I pointed at a window. I clasped both of my hands around my neck.
“Yes,” they said. “That's it! That’s fine. Oh god, yes – beautiful!”
And I tried not to let their words matter but each one landed in me like a spark; I was soon warm with the heat of their casual compliments. Something I had not felt in years. They were looking at me. Really looking. Really seeing me.
I tried to remind myself that this feeling wasn’t real, just a skittering thing across the brain. A release of chemicals into my bloodstream; an accelerated heart rate; a sudden stutter in my respiratory function.
And then they weren’t looking anymore. I felt the absence of their gaze upon my flesh before I saw it; an abrupt chill puckering my exposed skin.
“That will do,” they said. “The position’s yours if you want it, but I can’t pay you much.”
I laughed. “You’re an artist. Of course you can’t pay me much.”
Their face reddened, the tendons on the back of their hands went stark; I’d found a raw nerve. “I’ll be able to pay you more once my vision gets more traction–”
“I just wanted to work with you,” I said.
“Really?” they said. And I felt it again, first as heat then seen: their looking.
“Yes,” I said. They kept looking. Their warmth burned me.
But then they stopped looking. It was late. The interview was over. I had to go home. I hurried and got on the train, sliding over the streets of Santa Monica like a cartoon snake, the X-rayed mouse of myself looking out a window. Lost even though I knew the way home.
My studio apartment is off the books because it’s actually a one-car garage that the obscenely wealthy building owner converted into a studio after viewing too many tiny home shows. The bathroom is the afterthought of an afterthought. The night the artist hired me I stared at the sink as I brushed my teeth. I kept the bathroom mirror in my peripheral vision; I model for artists but I don’t like looking at myself. A lot of my exes think that’s funny, but I don’t. I spat toothpaste at the rusty drain, rinsing the glob away with equally rusty water.
It was needing to be looked at that was the problem – that desire, gnawing and demeaning. The modeling work usually fed that. I was accustomed to being observed, really; didn’t people look at me every day?
But they didn’t. That was the thing. Even when you stood in front of someone naked to the skin and shaking from the cold they could look and only see the vaguest hint of what was really there. A faint outline distorted with their own style and intention. Most people only saw what they were looking for: it was almost impossible for them to witness what was really in front of them at any given time, unless –
I washed my mouth out with water from the tap. Spat it out. A chill from the poured concrete of the floor knived up my legs.
Only the curious really saw things. Or those who cared enough to look. I wanted the latter to be true; I wanted them to care so badly. That was the other thing. Was my desire lying to me? Telling me something I only wanted to think? My thumb twitched over glass. On the surface of my phone they were there: everything about them. The white Latinx non-binary 30-something artist taking the art world by the throat. Their blue eyes and disheveled sidecut and freckle-dotted skin. The critical acclaim of their Out of Tune touring show of several spirit radios that they placed in different rooms of supposedly haunted houses around Los Angeles. The success of their Living Tarot show before that–with hired actors representing the cards of the tarot deck randomly appearing to individual spectators in peepshow rooms at the insertion of a dollar in a slot.
I know too much about them. I already knew too much about them before I showed up for the interview. But my knowledge does nothing to comfort me. It’s just an assortment of facts that brings me no closer to them than this job will.
They’ve decided to draw me at their studio, a small empty room that the college lets them use. I was unclear about the details of the arrangement that they have with the school, and didn’t press them about it. I arrived early, hoping to talk to them. Too early–they weren’t there yet. I took out my phone and unintentionally accessed my camera. The camera was reversed, showing me a picture of my face, horrified and stabbing at the screen to turn the damn thing off.
In the middle of all that, they showed up.
They stared, and I flushed with embarrassment but not the heat of their gaze and that’s when I realized that they were staring in my direction, but they weren’t staring at me. Their brow furrowed as I stabbed the phone. Their fingers kept reaching for their pencil case then hesitating. I put the phone away, and their hand relaxed.
“Hello,” I said.
“Yes,” they said, nodding at me. “Are you ready?” They withdrew a key from their pocket to open the door. The classroom had desks pushed up against a far wall and little else inside of it.
“Of course,” I said, even though I wasn’t.
Disrobing was uneventful – they rummaged around in their pencil case and arranged sketchbooks while I stripped to my underwear. When they appeared to be done, I walked to the center of the room and started moving randomly like I had before.
And then they drew me.
But no, that’s not accurate. They didn’t draw me at all. They weren’t even looking at me; I couldn’t feel any warmth from their gaze touching me. When I was able to peek at them, I confirmed it – they were looking right through me. Peering intently at something just above or beyond me. Fascinated with my spiritual limbic.
“What are you doing? Keep moving,” they said.
I kept moving. I knelt. I covered my eyes. I touched my toes. It became a kind of dance, odd and without rhythm. Their hand constantly moved across the pages of their sketchbook. There was an instinctual quality to their gesture, reminiscent of automatic writing or the motions of sleepwalkers. Their dance, different but in disjointed time with my own. There was an intimacy to this matched biology, a primal duality, but then I remembered the invisible subject in the room, the one that they were drawing, and I could only feel cold. I was shivering, my shivers moving their pencil across the page until they stopped and tore the page free, crumpled it in their fist.
“Are you cold? You’re not moving much. Take a break,” they said.
And that flicker of care, quick across me, made me jump with its heat. I stood in front of them, absolutely confused, as they stretched and took a sip of water from a bottle they’d brought with them. I put my robe on, and headed towards their sketches, intent on taking a look for myself.
“Oh no, not yet. This is going to take a while. I’ll show you the finished pieces, I promise. But not these,” they said.
“Oh, okay,” I said. But it wasn’t. Not a bit.
That night I went home to yet another message on my phone from my mother misgendering me. The only person I had come out to, and she never bothered to get it right. It was difficult to imagine anyone bothering to get it right. Anyone seeing me completely. There were moments of recognition, slim like waning moons, but they seemed too few and far between. Most days were overcast with bullshit like this one.
I deleted the phone message and tried to look at profiles on the dating app I’d downloaded. People were interested in me, or more accurately interested in the pictures that I’d chosen to post, because I barely dared to put anything about myself up there. My 33 years of age were there. My interest in art museums. I used to have my career posted, but too many bizarro inquiries get sent to an “artist’s model.” I tried to focus on the multitudes of faces on my phone screen, but they were the one I wanted to look at. I gave up and put the phone away.
“Keep moving,” they said.
“I’m tired,” I said. I wasn’t tired, but I still said it.
Frustrated, they put their charcoal stick aside. “Fine, take a break.”
“Why don’t you draw me instead? Just for fun. It’ll make it easier on me.”
They frowned. “Take your break,” they said. They got up and collected their sketches together. Took a sip from their ever-ready water bottle.
I put my robe on. Went up to them. “Any finished sketches today?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s a shame. I’d really like to see them.”
They scrubbed the shaved part of their head with their stained fingers, smearing charcoal into their stubble. “It’s not happening any time soon,” they said.
“Well, can you at least tell me what my soul looks like?”
More charcoal darkened their stubble. “Like energy. Like raw forceful power.”
That shocked me. “Really?”
“I don’t lie about the spiritual limbic.”
“Does it look like electricity?”
“No.”
“What does it look like?” I asked. But they just sat down and frowned at me. Took out a ballpoint pen and started chewing on the end of it.
Finally, when the pause had gone so long I’d half-forgotten what I asked, they said: “It looks like something inside of myself.”
“What do you mean?” I said, but they wouldn’t answer me.
They can’t love me. It’s impossible for them to love me. How can they love this jumbled assortment of sacrospinal ligament, acromion, and gastrocnemius? This absolute chaos of blood vessels and bacteria? This disgusting pile of living, dying, breathing meat?
They love invisible things. Divinity only they can see. I’ve asked to look at their sketches but they refuse to show me anything, time and time again. They insist on my patience. They aren’t ready yet. At this point, I don’t know if they’ll ever be ready. If their big gallery show is even going to happen. It’s been months since they first started drawing me.
I don’t care if the show happens, but I want to know what I look like to them more than anything else. I hate that I want to know. I hate how much I want it.
I did an adult photo set, but my energy was lackluster and the photographer that I usually work with called it off early. She told me to go home and gave me fifty bucks more than we agreed on. When I objected, she folded my hand around the money and said I needed the rest. Made me agree that I wouldn’t call her until I worked on myself. I wanted to cry right there in her studio, but I didn’t.
I wish I could feel that powerful energy that they saw moving me. I wish that I could see it. Some days I want to see it even more than I want to know how they see me. As if knowing the shape of my soul would clarify all the murk I slog through, or at least be the kind of secret that made slogging through the murk worthwhile.
It feels like everything I want right now is hidden in their sketchbook. Everything.
For our final modeling session, they wanted to draw me in a different room on the college campus than the one we usually used. They gave me directions but I got lost twice, and when I arrived at the numbered auditorium, they kept giving me angry looks that made me blush.
“I got lost,” I explained.
“I don’t have this room for very long,” they said. “Just an hour.”
When I entered, I realized that it wasn’t just an auditorium; there was a raised wooden stage bordered with red curtains at the bottom of the tiered plush seating. This was one of the theater department’s stages.
“Go on the stage,” they said.
I shivered. Descended the narrow path of stairs between the seats to the bottom. A spotlight went on, highlighting the gold of the polished wooden boards. I looked back but couldn’t see them behind the flare of the spotlight. I disrobed in the shadows just offstage, hesitated, then removed my underwear. They hadn’t requested it this time, but I wanted to be as exposed to them as I possibly could be.
I mounted the stage. The wood creaked beneath me. I looked up and saw only the spotlight. I shielded my eyes, squinting at the seats.
“I’m here,” they said. I couldn’t see them, but they sounded close. “Start whenever you’re ready.”
I nodded, and began my disjointed dance. I swept my leg wide. Clenched my limbs inward like a fist. Hefted an unseen lance. Soon I could hear them join me; invisible graphite scratching across invisible paper. A duet of obstruction, connected at my hips. I thrust my hips as if I could tug them closer to me. Looked up. And saw.
A form so innately mutable it was almost indescribable, but powerful and raw, pulsing–
I fell down. The back of my head struck the solid wood of the stage. All my perception shut off, abruptly replaced with darkness. When my head rebounded and hit the wood a second time, my vision returned. They knelt over me, eclipsing the spotlight and the hideous, perfect glowing thing behind them with the limbs of a writhing star.
“Are you all right?” they asked me. “Are you hurt? Talk to me.”
“I see it,” I said. It loomed over us both. When it briefly enmeshed with the restless form of their soul I felt a dart of heat; they were looking at me.
“You see your arcane liquidity?” they asked. “Do you see mine?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You do? Tell me! What does it look like?”
I blinked. “You can’t see it?”
“No!” I shivered and they peeled their jacket off and handed it to me. “I’ve done everything I can to widen my spiritual apertures! I’ve meditated. Taken mind-altering substances. Consulted countless advisors. But I can only see the spiritual limbic of a few.”
“Really?” I asked. They reached out to touch the curve of my cheek and I witnessed the fleshy, wet fabric of their soul guide their hand there. It pulsed arrhythmically. Expanded and contracted at whim.
“Yes,” they said, reaching up to touch the ropey meat of my glistening soul. As their fingers connected with my ethereal tissue I cried out with pleasure. “I’ve only fallen in love with a few souls so far,” they said, and they buried their tongue in the golden-red sinews of my arcane liquidity while I ruptured beneath them with ecstasy.
When my hips stopped automatically jittering backwards, I reached up and seized a fistful of their soul. They moaned and tumbled to the stage and I pressed my open mouth against their hidden flesh.
Fists bang on the door. A key is scraped into the lock. On stage, our tangled amalgam covers us in golden, fibrous starlight. The stage is flooded with antediluvian fluids spurting from secret apertures above us. A void has formed just above our souls, ink black and gently tugging at the curtains with its cold vacuum. Their sketches are curling in the warm gore on the auditorium floor. They whisper softly into the tender whorls of my wet non-binary soul, and I am luminous, golden, burning with their love and ready for our audience.
HER SKIN A GRIM CANVAS
GWENDOLYN KISTE
You see me for the first time when I’m standing in the shadows, a drink in my hand, my heart on my sleeve.
“Are you alone?” you ask, and I blush a little and nod.
It’s a morbid Saturday night in late December, and we’re at a warehouse party on the South Side, the kind of artsy soiree where everybody who’s anybody is dying to get in.
But part of me is dying to get out. That’s because I don’t belong here. I’m fresh off the bus, a girl with no past besides a grimy small town and an even grimier family. Now here I am in a new city and a new dress, pretending I fit in, pretending I didn’t just bluff my way into a last-minute invitation. I’m so good at make-believe that I almost fool myself.
But you don’t buy my masquerade. You peer into me as if my skin is translucent, as if I’m made of glass.
“This isn’t your scene, is it?” you ask, and I feel caught beneath the impossible weight of your stare.
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
You glance around the room, an arcane look drifting behind your eyes. “I don’t blame you,” you say at last. “Sometimes, I don’t know why I’m here either.”
You never introduce yourself. You don’t have to. Everyone already knows your name. You’re an impresario, a visionary they say. A strange sort of fashion designer with a flair for the dramatic. I’ve seen your dresses. On the covers of glossy magazines and in the windows of upscale boutiques where the purse-lipped women at the counters never make me feel welcome. But it’s worth enduring their glares, just for a moment, just to get a glimpse of what you create.
Even up close, your designs hardly look real, the angles of the shoulders sharp as daggers, the waistlines like grotesque hourglasses. Some call your clothing unwearable, but you never seem to mind. If anything, you carry critique like a badge of honor.
“Would you like to see my studio?” you ask.
“Yes,” I say without thinking twice.
It takes us ten minutes in your vintage Shelby Cobra, the slick interior cold against my skin. Everything’s humming in me, electric and alive. Ask anyone, and they’d tell you: this is the chance of a lifetime. A chance to become somebody. Your confidant, your muse.
I only hope they’re right.
Your studio at the edge of the Strip District is a vast complex that seems to stretch for a mile. It’s packed with pristine fabrics and spools of silk thread and headless dress forms like lonely ghosts, and you delight in showing me every crevice.
“This is where I do most of my work,” you say matter-of-factly, as we breeze past a row of Husqvarna sewing machines and a drafting table draped in muslin mockups. You show me your boardroom and your bedroom and your showroom too with its shiny rows of chairs and a perilously thin runway. Every once in a while, you even host a small event here, private little affairs for your most devoted fans.
