Unknown - Posed For Pleasure

“To project a mood and then to find in that projection a feedback far stronger than the input-well, you might think such an experience affords a deep inner satisfaction, but it doesn’t.

“Rather, there is an uneasiness, a frantic reaching back, of trying to remember in intimate detail, step by step, the process whereby the far-greater-than intended work was created.

“Not what did I do wrong, but rather, what did I do that was so absolutely correct that I can’t even remember doing it? “Frustrating as hell, let me tell you; and yet, it happens, happens all the time, happens when I least expect it, every bit as much a mystery to me as to the least informed viewer.”

Poor baby, Jessica says, silently, sarcastically, The stuff just pours out of you, doesn’t it, you fucking pig?

And yet, the audience is eating it all up, can hardly wait, some of them, to rush home, set up their easels and start causing all those happy accidents.

How about when you clean out my snatch with your tongue, Armand? How about when you sucked Steve’s jism outta my snatch? Jessica thinks. Were those accidents?

Did they come as a surprise to you? Were you shocked and disgusted, Armand, or was it just me?

If ever there was a case of fire and ice, of contrivance and manipulation in the service of his passion, Armand has to be the prime example.

And as in his sex life, so in his art, she is certain.

Of course, there is the matter of his inner muse.

Can it be that there yet resides within him that spark of innocence, that which allows itself to be informed and amazed by the world?

Certainly, with Steve, his actions were those of a boy, and not a very mature boy at that; still, what makes her think that boys are ever truly innocent, are na ye in those matter which must, surely, have preoccupied them from a very early age?

So that the fire may well be there, but so is the ice, so is that which looks on coldly, which calculates and manipulates.

And which, no doubt, manipulates her as well.

Not that she doesn’t deserve such treatment, she tells herself; after all, she did come to him.

But how could it have been otherwise?

He was, is the great artist and she was, is, the zero, the nobody, drawn to him impurely, drawn to him, not by his greatness but by his track record of side effects.

He did not set out to make either Irene or Darlene famous or rich; rather, their fame and fortune are side effects, fall-out, by-products, waste products, even, of his artistic effort.

Which, she reminds herself, is presently on hold, in abeyance, paused, in recess, inactivated-and possibly quite dead.

Ever think of that, cookie? she asks herself. That nasty little thought ever cross your conniving, angle-shooting mind?

What guarantee does she have that Armand will ever paint again?

Might help if the man owned a brush or some tubes of paint, or a sketch pad not yet filled with rather disappointingly crude studies (she knows; she has looked at them) for paintings already done, sold, gone forever, ancient history.

But the fact is, Armand is out of business.

He has, in essence, taken the money and run.

And is his continuing to hang onto the loft, to live there, his implicit commitment to a resumption of his glorious career-or is it simply a monument to the inertia of his private life, to his indifference to creature comforts beyond his animal appetites?

Even that, now that she thinks about it, she finds puerile but hardly innocent.

It’s like a boy’s tree house, a clubhouse, furnished with castoffs, relics from the real houses of the membership, carted here and thrown together to form a den, a cubbyhole, a, a… lair-yes, that’s it, a lair-into which they can crawl to do as they please-to eat junk food, to talk dirty, and to play nasty, sexy games.

The loft is pristine, is spotless, even in its emptiness; only the living quarters are slovenly, vaguely unsanitary.

It is as though he is at great pains to keep the empty floor between the rows of thick columns polished, a monument-vast, empty, meaningless and therefore imbued with mystery-to his greatness, with himself living there in a corner, tucked away unobrusively, the resident caretaker so that it can be concluded that every great work of art is, at least in part, an accident.

“How could he-in the case of architecture they-have done this? “Answer: They didn’t, the end product being far greater than that which they had intended, than that which, with their mere mortal skills, they dared intend.

“Let us take a clue from medicine.

“That noble profession is at its most noble-and its most honest-when it tells us that medicine does not heal, but merely creates the conditions under which the healing can take place.

“So it is with we creators, we artists, in many, if not all cases-we do not create the masterpiece, but rather that combination of skill and accident the results of which, when completed, are so proclaimed.

“Would that I had a glass of plain red table wine, ladies and gentlemen, and would that you each had one as well, so that together we might offer up a fervent artist’s toast-to accident! “Next week, we shall meet for the last time in this series, at which time we shall look behind the motivation, to answer the question, What is the true purpose of art? “Hint: Hiding cracks in the plaster is not the answer.

“See you all next week and have a good one.”

Applause and shuffling feet and Jessica joins Armand at the podium.

“Feel like a late supper out somewhere?” he asks. “I didn’t get a chance to eat before coming here tonight.”

“Fine with me,” she replies, thinking that this-just shows how little she knows about him, even living with him for a week now, while hanging on to her off campus apartment, which she keeps as an extension of her clothes closet as well as a mail drop.

What did he have to do with himself all day, he who has no classes to attend, unlike herself, that he had no chance for supper?

He gives no clue, makes no statement about his day.

Was he at the gym, working on some new routine?

Was he wandering the streets of the city, taking his muse for a walk, waiting for the stupid bitch to wake the fuck up?

Only when they have finished eating and waived dessert does he tell her, “I’ve quite a surprise for you, back at the loft.”

And her heart leaps within her as she prays to nobody in particular, Please let this mean what I think it does.

In the event, physically at least, it does.

She can actually smell it, a faintly musty odor of raw wood and freshly dried acryllic gesso, as soon as she steps off the elevator.

And the vast emptiness seems, somehow, crowded, as she spies the backs of stretched canvasses of every size, leaning against the pillars.

She wanders up and down the rows of. pillars, silently counting. He is not going to short-change her, dammit, not when she has conjured, has willed this to happen.

Well over a hundred canvasses, she counts, before she stops, turning to see him leaning against a pillar, hands in his pockets, watching her.

She goes over to the easels, disappointed that none yet bear a canvas.

But there, in their midst, the large, metal cart, wheeled out from the wall, its drawers all standing open to display row upon row of full tubes of oil and acryllic paint.

The lower shelves hold cans of paint, as well as turpentine, linseed oil, mineral spirits.

And on top of the cart, if there were any doubt but that he is about to recommence, glass jars, each sprouting a plume of brushes.

“Well, Jessica? Waddaya think?” “Armand! I, I don’t know what to say! “You mean, you mean your, your muse… your muse actually…