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Chapter Sixteen Comfortable and Confident 5 pageCoating the insides of the drawer were sketchbooks after sketchbooks, along with a few composition notebooks, piled up fortuitously at the bottom. Pens and pencils were scattered about, looking like bones to unknown carcasses, while the feelings that lined the thick bundles paper were the marrow that used to fill them. There were no slashes of colour that littered through the rest of the apartment, almost blinding at some times, but I began to see that the creativity was still there; just a darker, bleaker version. As I looked at his barely trembling hands riffle through the bottom, I recalled a key piece of information about Gerard. This dark room was the place where Gerard came to get out those dismal and hurtful emotions. This is where he came to be his dark self; to be nothing. He came into the black room when he needed to be a nothing; something that was horrible and desolate, yet could not be destroyed. If you destroyed something, that meant it had to have existed in the first place – it couldn’t be nothing in the face of annihilation because it would have taken up space, and thus proved itself something worthy. It was paradox, and since Gerard himself was an enigma on most days, the two could not work together without conflict. Rather, it was imperative for them to work side by side in order to prove productive. He could not destroy nothing, so kept it, tended to it, and preserved it. He came into this dark room to do all of that conservation. He came here to cry, to yell, and scream because in a world of colour, it was hard to appreciate shading. It was when the shading surrounded him that he could begin to dissect it and actually appreciate the pain it caused. Some of the most beautiful works of art started with shading, just thin lines on paper, Gerard had told me in one of our first art lessons. It is in the darkness where we get our best ideas, sketch, and mold them, and then make them presentable for the real world. People can only see in colour; people only want to see in colour, because on most days, black is just too black. Too dark and scary. People don’t want to see that. Artists paint and perform in colour to please the masses, but we each have our own darkness. As Gerard sat down on the bed and opened the book for me, I realized he was showing me more than just a picture. He was showing me his darkness, his bleak attitude that he thought no one would understand. He was showing me the beginning of a picture that we both hoped would turn into something great; something allowed to be painted with colour. He was showing me his world – but it wasn’t just that anymore. It was our world, it was our picture. This was his soul he was showing me down on paper, but it was me that had somehow managed to be encapsulated in that image. I had never felt more honored in my entire fucking life. I thought it had been amazing enough when he let me in that dark room when we had had sex together; I thought we had been close then. This was so much more than sex (everything was so much more than sex with him, I was soon coming to realize). This was his fucking dark art; something he could never show anyone before (or at least, that I knew of), but he was showing me. I straightened my posture and stared down at the piece he was about to display, knowing that I needed to pay attention to every last little detail. The paper was white and grainy, feeling textured as I held the drawing by its edges. It was done in dark pencil, some of the shading smudged from the greasy fingers drawing it. It was no bigger than normal printer paper, but it was all bound in a coil book. My picture was halfway through the book, but not the last one he had drawn. I didn’t have time to concern myself with the other pieces of art; I was too entranced by what he had depicted of me. There I was, in the centre of the page, illustrated in the bed. I was on my back, face up and to the ceiling, naked like I had been when I had woken up earlier that day. The drab sheet was pulled halfway down my torso, stopping just barely after the belly button. My legs were not visible, but I could see the criss-cross formation they had under the thin sheet. My hips were displayed as round curves and valleys just before the sheet cut off, their trail leading down to the shadow and thin veil where my genitals were. My arms were twisted up above my head, underarm hair shown as a dark and curly silhouette. My face was placid and calm, and the way Gerard had drawn it, my skin was smooth and flawless, draped over my cheekbones in the same manner that the sheet was over my legs. I would have loved the picture even if it hadn’t been me. The fact that it was though made my legs go weak as I held it in between shaking fingers. I thanked God or anyone who was listening that I was on the bed or I may have fallen in the middle of Gerard’s room. I stared at it, opened mouthed for the longest time, just absorbing everything. “What do you think?” Gerard inquired, raising his eyebrows and searching for meaning that I thought should have been obvious. He was sitting across from me on the bed, his legs draped over the side, tips of his toes touching the hardwood floor while I was fully on the mattress, legs crossed Indian-style. “I fucking love it,” was all I could choke out. I placed the book down to the side delicately, as if it were porcelain and would burst into dust or flames if handled wrong. My page was still open, and it took me a long time to finally look away and back at the artist who had drawn it. My face was weak, the muscles tired from expressing all of the emotions I was feeling at once. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I reverted to our position from the couch beforehand. I leaned forward, almost falling into Gerard’s chest. He sighed luxuriously, feeling my arms wrap around him, while I couldn’t breathe. I just wanted to fucking hug him. I could feel my face start to twitch and my eyes brim with something that had been a stranger for the longest time. I didn’t know why I was about to cry, I didn’t even know why I was so thankful for all of this. It was just a picture, after all. But it was my picture, I told myself, blinking back the foreign invader. I had never seen such an accurate depiction, and I had never thought that someone could find that in me. I didn’t even know what it was; it was just there. And Gerard had found that. “Thank you so much,” I oozed, my breath hitting the back of his neck hard. My arms were still locked around him and I refused to give anyone the key. He didn’t seem to mind as held me just as close. The pads of his fingers gripped my shoulders, pulling me down and into him more. I was in his lap again, the folds of flesh once found embarrassing, together into one indiscernible flesh puzzle. “It’s not just a picture, Frank,” Gerard said, seeming to hear my thoughts. “It’s you down on paper; all of you. I drew you naked while you were sleeping after we had sex. That is the weakest position you can ever put yourself in. And I’m so glad I was able to capture it.” He paused for a second, collecting his thoughts and breath, blowing them both out together in a heavy, but meaningful, sigh. “Thank you for letting me draw you.” He squeezed me harder and I could feel my bones turn to dust. Gerard’s words stung my ears, commencing my mind to think on different planes, in different parallels. “But I don’t look weak in the picture,” I interjected, not trying to argue but bringing up a valid point. I didn’t look weak there. I just looked calm, sleeping, and happy. I looked strong, even. A strength I knew I possessed because of Gerard, even though I didn’t quite know how just yet. “You look beautiful,” Gerard answered honestly, loosening our grip a bit. He let go and backed up slightly, just to look me straight in the eyes for his next line. He pushed our foreheads together. “You still look beautiful.” Again, the words burned and my mind raced. It was a good burn though; like a cleansing of old skin, creating new. He was branding me with something that I wasn’t even sure that I possessed. People had always told me I was pretty good looking. I knew I was never ugly or anything; I saw myself in the mirror everyday. I wasn’t too bad looking, but I never thought I was anything special – certainly not beautiful. That trait always seemed so feminine, and though some of my features, like my eyes and lips, were softer than a lot of guys I knew, I definitely did not look like a girl. My jaw line was too rigid to ever pass off as the opposite gender, and though I was severely vertically challenged, my body had those crests and straight lines that Gerard hated in men. And yet, here he was calling me beautiful. He hated the male body in terms of art, but somehow, he cradled my face and called me beautiful. I just didn’t get it. When he described me with any positive good-looking feature, I felt my apparently gorgeous skin crawl. I just didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it, though. I wasn’t supposed to. My opinion of myself was subjective, and that meant it wasn’t my place to see what other people saw when they told me I was handsome, gorgeous, and yes, even beautiful. Honestly, I didn’t want to see it, afraid that I may become narcissistic, and become lost in myself. There were so many other things I would have rather been lost in. I myself was futile and unimportant. And I just did not want to believe that I could be pretty. Or beautiful. Or gorgeous. Gerard had called me all of those words that weekend and it still hadn’t sunk in yet. Right then however, as I looked at the picture again, breaking Gerard’s intimate eye contact, I saw something. I saw what everyone else had seen. I saw beauty in the way my face was draped so smooth like a blanket. The causal way I held my arms and the ridges of my torso. I saw how beautiful they were – but more importantly, I felt beautiful. I had never felt that before. It had always been too cliché and seemingly unattainable. But with pencil and paper Gerard had been able to get me to see and feel that aura of beauty I had to myself that I had never bothered to know. He made me believe something I never thought possible but more importantly, he made me feel it. Confidence was one thing, I realized. I had confidence in myself, that I could do all of these things and be okay with my body naked, but that was so very different than feeling beautiful. I had always been insecure about myself, the way I acted and looked. I began to realize that there was something extremely different about confidence and security. Confidence meant I could do all of these things without a problem; security meant that I could do it and know that I was doing a good job. They were entirely different, and now I had both of them. I looked back to Gerard from the picture, my mouth hung open in sheer and utter amazement. “Thank you so much,” I said again, looking him in the eyes. My brows hung low on my forehead, my countenance tired. We leaned forward again, our foreheads against each other in a visceral manner. He nodded and breathed out a casual response, pulling our lips together to show his own thanks to me for allowing him this wonderful specimen to work with. I kissed him with more passion than I had felt in a long time, feeling his hands go up and down my bare back. His fingers hovered over my spine, sending razor sharp chills that somehow managed to warm me inside and out. He broke away and began to kiss my neck, both of our breathing becoming sharp and intrusive. I smiled as I felt his palms go to my lower back, fingers splayed as they began to reach my backside. Not only did I feel beautiful when he touched me, in every sense of the word, but I had learned from our previous lesson. He smiled into my skin with me, us both coming to the same conclusion as he began to lay me down on the mattress, still kissing my body hurriedly. This time, it was okay to have sex.
Chapter Seventeen
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered into my ear, asking a question in his delicate statement. “I know,” I whispered back to him, nodding and pulling his bare chest against mine. He let out a deep breath, and that seemed to be the answer he had been searching for. I tried to be as strong and confident as he had taught me to be only moments earlier, but it was hard. I was ready for sex again, I wanted to have it again, but it was still sex. It was still such a huge deal. Though I had been okay the night before, nervous as hell, but still okay, it was different. I had been blinded and distracted from everything because I just wanted to do it. I wanted to get it over with and just be with Gerard. Now I knew I had him, and I knew what sex was like. I didn’t have to have it again – and he told me we didn’t. This was a conscious choice I was making to continue, and though I wanted to, I still needed his guidance. He situated our bodies face to face, adding an intimate appeal. He wanted to see what I looked like, he told me, and when I informed him that he was already well aware of my physical appearance (and all of me by that point), he merely shook his head. “I want to see you in your weakest moment,” he told me, kissing his way over my chest. He lifted my legs up to get into position, and looked down on me with a gaze I had never seen before, but still knew exactly what he meant. He wanted to see me as I climaxed. “Why should I let you?” I asked him, my nervousness leaking through. I could feel his heat outside me, and my breath was catching in my throat every other second. I didn’t know why he wanted to see me as I came – I figured I wouldn’t be making that many attractive faces, and I wanted to limit my embarrassment while being completely naked and having him inside of me. “Because you’ll get to see me too,” he answered so distinctly, so clearly, and so strongly that it removed any inkling doubt from my mind. I nodded my head diligently; I was going to let him do what he wanted. What he wanted was to lower himself and place one final kiss on my mouth before he started to enter completely. It didn’t hurt as much as it had the first time, and any pain I did feel at the beginning was from me being so tense. “Shh,” he calmed me, grabbing my hand or face whenever he could. “Just relax. You’ll be okay.” I nodded, gripping him tightly back, as he went in further. And like he had promise, I was okay. Once he was all the way inside of me, he rested for a moment, giving me his finger to bite on in case I felt anything else unpleasant. “I don’t know how you feel,” he admitted, referring to my less than flattering position. My legs were widely spread, hunched up close to his shoulders. “But if you bite down when it gets too bad, I’ll at least know when to stop.” I murmured something in approval, but it came out muffled under the digit rounded inside my cheek. He started up a rhythm, and though I never really wanted him to stop completely, I bit down on his finger the first few times. I felt guilty, but it was a hard impulse to control – whether I was in pain or pleasure. Gerard paused each and every time my teeth gnashed against his flesh, and cast me a caring look, waiting to see what his next course of action would be. Even if it was feeling really good to him, he still stopped, biting his lip and holding his breath as he looked at me with his whole, caring, green eyes. And no matter how hard I bit on his finger, he kept it inside my mouth, tucked off to the side. I gnawed on it particularly hard once, when Gerard caught two sensitive areas in one go, and even though he hissed in pain, the finger was still there. He wasn’t moving it, even if he was in pain, and he was going to stop if I needed to, even if he was in pleasure. I didn’t realize how big of a deal this was until after we both came. Just like he had wanted, he saw me in my weakest moment, my face twisting in the most unflattering ways as his hand ushered me into orgasm. “Soon?” he had asked quickly before, pressing his lips to the side of my face, breath hot against my skin. His hand’s efforts outmatched his own hips, which were still thrusting into me docilely. I could barely talk myself, so I bit my lip and nodded next to his face, my eyes shut tight. I felt his hand press against my forehead, arching my chin and neck up and exposing my Adam’s apple as his fiery mouth attacked from an angle. He made it hard to swallow and breathe until the final release came. I could practically feel his eyes burn into me as he watched, his hand movements dulled out to last longer, stroking the much more sensitive skin harder. He had been too soon after for me to have a chance to look at him, and though disappointed, I wrote off any concern to the back of my mind. I knew I would have many other opportunities to see him in that way. We would definitely be having sex again, and I realized the real reason why (other than the fact it felt good) as were laying on the bed in its aftermath. Gerard was so fucking caring about everything. He was going above and beyond what he needed to do; with sex and with everything else. He was teaching me things all over again, and we had already covered several lessons already. No one I knew had ever done that for me, and I had been around for seventeen years. They had had plenty of time, and yet it had all gone unused until now. “You’re gorgeous,” he said in a hushed breath, his body beside me. His voice ushered me back from my thoughts, and I looked over at him. His chest was coated with pale sweat laden skin, gleaming under the small bitter fragments of light washing in from the door and cascading along the sweat and pores of his body. His chest rose and fell softly, his eyes half lidded and gazing at me. He smiled weakly, and had to shut his lids for the grin to reach its full potential. I wanted to argue with his statement. I wanted to tell him that, no, I wasn’t gorgeous – not because I didn’t feel it, because God, did I ever. His hand was resting beside mine, his fingers leisurely twirling themselves next to my wrist. I felt that chill go up my spine each time he barely touched me. I felt that wave and aura of beauty wash over me again and again. It was only when I opened my eyes after reeling from it where I felt something else, something better. I was not gorgeous. Gerard was. At first I had been disappointed that I never got to see his face in the same weak quality that he had with my own, but I was able to shrug it off. The gnawing and gnashing from the urge still remained imprinted on my mind, like teeth marks and punctures wounds I would never be able to see. But I could see now – I saw something better. When someone climaxed, they were at the complete will to their body’s own urges. The sensations rushing their system made them twist and turn and groan and moan in ways that they wouldn’t normally. It was their weakest moment because they couldn’t control it. It was interesting to see, an interesting concept to hold in front of you and watch, but when it came down to it, I knew that it wasn’t the best. The way Gerard was at that moment was so much better. The time right after someone climax, where their body feels weightless and they can take on anything in the world – that was the best feeling, and it was an even better thing to observe in another person, and I was doing it with Gerard. He wasn’t even moving or saying anything. He was just there. Being. Breathing. He was himself then, truly himself, and I liked – loved - what I saw. Gerard was gorgeous, and I wanted to tell him that. He began to open his eyes a sliver before I could get the strong words out of my mouth, and I swallowed them whole, settling for a weaker anecdote. “Gorgeous? I thought I was beautiful?” I opted for instead, trying to wriggle my eyebrows in a suave manner, but merely coming off as immature. Gerard’s smile rose to that of a snide quality, and his eyes fluttered, but never opened. His words were more austere than his carefree atmosphere. “You can be everything you want to be, Frank.” I felt my lips move, I felt them want to move – I urged them too, but nothing happened other than weak mews. I wanted to tell him he was as gorgeous as I could ever dream of being, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t form the words as eloquently and beautiful as he could. It must have been an artist thing. So instead, I crawled closer to him, thanking him meekly with my displays of affection. Being bold, I slid an arm around his and linked our hands again as our heads stayed unsupported by the soft pillows at the other end of the bed. Then, like him in that moment, I just was. It was weird looking at the dark room from a different angle. I thought I had seen it all before, in all its glory, but I realized there were small details I had overlooked, mainly because I had not been seeing them in this light before. I saw the unlit corners hidden in the side of the dwelling, stray cobwebs nestled and hung together, like my arms that were draped around Gerard’s waist. When the air was clearer around us, he told me that he sometimes slept at the different end of the bed, just so he could observe the different traits he had missed, being too consumed by the proper angles from before. He said that it was when he changed positions he changed mind-sets, and got some of the best ideas for his work. “You have to shake up your life in order to get better ideas from it,” he informed me when I had looked at him strange for his odd sleeping and creative habits. “The mind gets bored of a routine, and it can no longer think in chaos.” “Why would you want chaos?” I probed curiously. I had always been taught that chaos was something to be avoided, and I stood by that fact. I hated the way my stomach would get tied in knots, cutting off the blood circulation to the ever-flowing thoughts in my head whenever something appeared too random, too there, without an explanation. Just like Gerard had at first. He was the one thing that had been a constant in my life, but chaotic at the same time when I didn’t know what was happening in regards to our relationship. I knew now, or at least I thought I did. My stomach was no longer in knots, and I had accepted my feelings of wanting the forty-seven-year-old artist. His wanting me right back had made everything a lot easier to cope with. Now, he was bringing chaos back into the mix, and I couldn’t see why. “It doesn’t make sense.” “That’s the point,” he stated, nodding smugly. “Life doesn’t make sense. And therefore, art doesn’t make sense. Art imitates life, and life in turn, imitates art. It’s a constant chaotic circle.” He smiled, proud of his tortuous tongue-twisting idea. “Why should we force sense on something that is so much more beautiful in confusion?” He looked down and raised his thick bushy eyebrows at me, seeing if I understood. I was met with that confusion he found so glorious at first, then it all started to become clear… or everything became just as jumbled again. And in a way, if everything was the same, messy or clean, I could make my way through it because it was familiar. Though we both knew how each other felt now, we still had to live in chaos. We had to switch things up and around to keep it all interesting. We had just started our relationship and, in theory, we shouldn’t have been bored of it already, but Gerard still wanted to change things. We had sex at the end of the bed to prove that chaos in a small step of rebellion. Our whole relationship was going to be based on rebellion, I realized, tracing my fingers over his much older skin as I turned to the side. Though we had some sense of understanding with each other, chaos would leak inside the apartment from the society around us. We merely had to shake things around to be prepared and ready. And creative while we waited. “Come with me,” he requested next, startling me. The chaos discussion was suddenly long gone from our minds, and manifesting itself in another form. It felt like hours, or maybe even minutes, after we had both climaxed and were panting on his bed, still positioned at the other end. I never really had a good concept of time when I was with Gerard. There was no clock anywhere in his house, except for a small broken wristwatch that he kept in the bottom of his bedside table. He hated to look at the time, because he hated working on schedules. If Gerard wanted to do something, he was going to do it; whether it was at three in the morning or at five at night, it was happening. “Time is such a feeble object,” he would tell me, shaking his head as he saw my neck crane to find a wall clock. “Much like sleep. Neither things we can hold in our hands. Both are just there for the sake of productivity. I don’t like either of them.” I would usually laugh and eventually, though it had only been a day since I had been there, I gave up asking the time. My only indicator was the way the sun reflected inside his apartment off his paintbrushes, casting long shadows and making me my own little sundial. Just after his request, he took my hand and dragged me out of his dark room, and the rest of the apartment was cloaked in the same darkness. It was night again and it looked like, as well as with time, we’d be giving up all aspects of sleep. In a way, I agreed with Gerard about sleeping. I always found that when I did my homework or did anything creative, the night was the best time for my ideas. I would be sitting in my bed at three in the morning, my mind flickering back and forth again and again, just going crazy with realizations that would, literally, never see the light of day. When I would wake up in the morning, it would all be gone, and I’d still be tired. Sleep was useless, and I was beginning to understand why most artists were nocturnal. We were still naked when we walked out into the middle of the apartment, but one of my fists had grasped some of the sheets we had fucked on, tearing them from the bed as we walked. (Since I had embraced my newfound confidence, Gerard had unlocked his closet and placed back all of the objects I had once been tempted to use to hide my shame). I wrapped the blanket around my back and brushed the corners of it on my chest, clearing away the sticky remnants on our bodies. Gerard didn’t seem to care that I was covering myself for a few seconds as he plowed on ahead, his mind doing the same flickering like a candle in a nighttime storm. He stopped with a dead halt as he reached the dove’s cage, dropping my hand and removing the fabric he occasionally kept on top of the wire bars. Sometimes the bird got too loud with her cooing and Gerard couldn’t stand it when there was unwanted white noise, so he would cloak her, telling her to calm down. Now however, he seemed to be challenging himself and his artistic principles; a battle I was quite interested in watching. “What are you doing?” I questioned, tilting my head to the side. I let the sheet fall away from my loose grip, hitting the hardwood floor with a soft, oomph sound. Gerard stood in front of the cage, looking inside at the off-white bird moments after he had de-cloaked her. She had placed her head underneath her wing, nestling it as she slept, but now that the shawl was drawn back and her owner in view, she began to bob her head, coos falling out of her beak. She looked excited and happy, and as she cocked her head past Gerard’s side and saw me standing close behind, her coos grew even louder. “I’m going to let her out,” Gerard stated, his sing-song voice the perfect octave to accentuate the music the bird was already making with her vocal chords. He was so calm and cool with his words, treating this as if it were an everyday occurrence. It wasn’t, though; letting the dove loose was not an idea he had ever entertained before. Gerard always kept her caged, at least when I was around. He would only take her out for small amounts of time, just so she could sit in his hands and he could pet her. He’d let me do the same too, mostly when I had to clean, but he was always very adamant about not letting her get away. He seemed to think that the world would somehow collapse if his bird got out of her cage for more than five minutes. He didn’t want her to destroy anything, pecking at his works in progress, and I didn’t want to have to clean up her shit. We were both in agreement over the bird. I didn’t know what had changed. Date: 2015-12-17; view: 469
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