This story explores the maturing of emotional connections between men via the crucible of love and ambition.
Composite image by Scooter Smith.
As summer ended, my friend and I suspected for the first time what everyone around us already knew: we were holding on too long to the pleasures of a college town.
Once more, our girlfriends matured and flew away, leaving us alone except for the solace we gave each other. Together, we could enjoy the pretense that rejection was just la vie and that we didn’t ache from the cleaving of these evanescent fusions.
Yet experience with love and loss shaped each act of our romantic opera, including the flicker of hope at the end of September’s dark tunnel. Each new school year brought an influx of first-year students, upper-level transfers, and newly hired educators and administrators flooding the campus and local housing.
There was always a chance we would enjoy flirtatious intrigues and, maybe, fall in love again.
* * *
Over the past few years, my drawings and oils sold well. In that same time frame, my friend advanced through the ranks to chef de cuisine at a respected bistro. Our friends called us The Painter and The Chef to match the partly tongue-in-cheek heroic personae we adopted to help us achieve our career goals.
As I developed the character of The Painter, I entertained no concern that my persona could become as assertive, or more so, than its creator. On the other hand, the professional identity of my large-hearted friend was a mere formality. He was who he was.
The Chef, master of an intoxicating cafe, lived to subjugate the senses. He delighted in bringing joy and amazement to his patrons, even as that which he made was destroyed.
He and I, and our friends and lovers, consumed his bounty to excess.
On the following mornings, the pair of us occupied two very different realities. I, The Painter, wracked with bodily and emotional pain, and The Chef, ignoring his hangover, eager to do it again.
My friend believed every day was like a zephyr over a road wandering through a benevolent landscape, while I thought of each day as a frozen moment along an existential highway.
It was that perspective that I tried to express with oil and pigment: abstracting the concrete with pure will in an effort to define reality. The Painter believed that perfect perception was not just an idle thought.
We both loved our paths, I think. Yet, somehow we knew that lives like ours can burn away all too fast, searing the soles of those who follow such a scorching trail. Nevertheless, we pushed ourselves to live as a cosmic explosion of young manhood, trying to light up the universe before it was too late.
* * *
As usual, that September was gray with grief as we mourned the loss of our recent loves, but again, pain drove us to create.
The Chef captained his kitchen with an extravagance that produced ever more inventive dishes. I spent long, meticulous hours at my easel, getting closer and closer to my vision with every canvas.
Mita, a former Juliet long tired of our shenanigans but in love with us still, knew well of our creative calendar. She found herself in a position to present a balm that could soothe my sadness.
On an early October night at The Chef’s cafe, Mita looked into my eyes with the hopes and misgivings of a devoted mother and said, “A friend wants to meet you, God help her.”
A beautiful woman with Godiva-gold hair and eyes like stars from a distant galaxy stood just inside the doorway. Mita called her over and introduced us.
Astrid. Her name matched her eyes.
Immediately, I felt that she was too pretty, too gentle, too in touch with her feelings to be the paramour of The Painter. But oh, how this precious gift beguiled me, and how quickly I feared losing myself to her.
That night, the usual crowd collected, bantered, ate, and drank at our friend’s restaurant. The Chef, also taken by the new girl’s charms, was miraculous. Nevertheless, he was merely emcee to the main act.
After closing, the party moved to my studio. Bards brought wine, herbs, and improvised tales that segued into drums and songs. Artists and scholars argued the arc of history.
Joy, like a downy duvet, warmed us.
Well before dawn, I bid my comrades farewell. Locking the studio door, I realized a golden figure sat on the blanketed couch. Astrid smiled and, with a little giggle, said, “I’m still here.”
Taking the first step on what I recognized as a winding road to a vague destination, I sat beside her.
She attempted to turn serious, but couldn’t hide a coy smile. “Earlier, you spoke of Blake and Kant,” she said. “Tell me again how they figure into your work.”
Ah.
At that moment, I let myself become enveloped by the radiance that was Astrid.
* * *
Over the next two months, talk of art replaced action. Canvases sat unchanged and pigments dried on the palette. Like the husk of a cicada flown away, The Painter felt abandoned.
I remained male, of course, unable to admit that anything was amiss, destructive, or smothering, even as I felt the cost of pretending otherwise.
Astrid, for her part, possessed no tendency to doubt. She loved our abstract conversations, her bicycle on sunny days, and her friends The Painter was pained to meet. She loved to swim, to laugh, to make carefree love in a frosty clearing in late November. She loved that I wished to be near her always.
Astrid loved love.
She didn’t ask why I no longer painted.
* * *
The Chef was my cosmic twin, so Astrid embraced him as well. When The Painter grew heavy, they could confide and enjoy relaxed good cheer. She could be comforted by his hearty affability. She could laugh with no malice at his foolish dalliances.
Yet, while The Painter stewed from inactivity, I was in a bubble of delight. Astrid was a movie I watched every day, always the same yet ever new and intriguing. I was happy. Happy to exist. Happy to be admired for my intellect. Happy to stoke each merging of profundities into sexual combustion, paying no heed to how this euphoria affected The Painter.
Beneath December’s fallen leaves, the trail persisted. The Painter needed to draw the reality nipping at my heels; needed to become heady on linseed oil; needed to be the self-creation we were. The Painter needed, needed, yet I felt I had all I could want.
Astrid lived for each season, but the holidays more than the others. An icy nose. Carols in malls. The welcome touch of her parents’ adoration. She enjoyed a bliss that could be mine if The Painter would play along.
Yet lightning struck no less random and destructive than the tongue of The Painter in torment. Our blissful life alternated with anger and apologies, each turn making us fear what we were becoming.
* * *
An hour into the new year, my studio was the promised land for post-partiers, weary servers, and musicians tired of the Auld Lang Syne. They came through the streets, parks, and alleys. From black box theaters and auditoriums hot with electronics. From dance halls and candlelit restaurants. From the present and past. We greeted them on the landing as a pair, Astrid and I.
As she entered, Mita kissed me on the cheek and said we made a beautiful couple. I glowed, maybe not a little from smoldering unease.
The Chef, wrapped in colorful woolens, approached with his crew, who ferried trays of sumptuous fare. He bade his people take The Painter’s direction and I led them into the warmth of my studio. On the landing, he embraced Astrid and kissed her with unrestrained ardor.
Like a creation from his oven, she was ready.
* * *
Many times, I witnessed our tribe gushing praise for the delicious surprises from The Chef’s cafe. I joined in when we oohed and aahed its appearance, lusted to consume at its seductive aromas, and melted inside from its rapturous flavors. He was the master, yes, but what about that which he created?
Think of Michelangelo’s David. Does he stand more Adonis after centuries of adoring eyes? Does Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, a seemingly plain girl, glow more mysteriously beautiful from the admiration she receives day after day? Does the dark, silvery film Casablanca become more tragically iconic with each wave of appreciation after a screening?
Made by the human ego, imbued with the human ego. Most assuredly, they would bask in glory like the human ego, and ache for more.
I could not say Astrid was a product made by perceptions of her grace, but she did not exist apart from them either. She became like a golden calf. Exalted. Loved. Feared.
As a human like any of us, she deserved none of this. However, she was not impervious to cultural myth-making. In many ways, Astrid allowed herself to become this styled being, expecting little more of herself.
How true it is for everyone, even for the dichotomies within us. I created The Painter to be what he is, and in some ways he envisioned me. It is we who led each other into such fantastic caricature, becoming nothing more than shadow puppets playing our parts as if at the end of sticks wielded by an unseen master.
The drums and gongs sounded. We cast shadows on a screen. The eternal drama played toward that which was willed.
It all comes out, of course.
She said The Painter drove her away.
The Chef said he could not help himself.
I said I could not help myself, either.
I let her go; I let them go.
* * *
The Painter in me reemerged, but with our heart stabbed by remorse.
That wound bled throughout our body and mind. It bled into my studio. It bled onto canvases, which in turn bled into galleries.
It bled through the open wallets of benefactors seeking to feel but not to feel so acutely. It bled riches until the risk of contentment threatened.
In thrall of The Painter, I leased a studio in the city to be in the middle of it all, to bask in the sizzling heat of temporary glory.
Meanwhile, The Chef and his new love went to California because that’s where you go before the sun sets.
They played on warm diamond beaches. They sushied and soireed among The Chef’s milieu, he drinking in the love she had to give as well as the fruit of fertile, well-drained Napa soils. Throughout the summer, they caroused along misty wine country roads until the fog that settled into the contorted valleys of Bay Area geology also settled into the folds of his neocortex.
Astrid was a hit; a jewel coddled by West Coast party culture. She adored and was adored by the suntanned amigos with bright teeth, by the muscled, wave-riding gods, and by the Midas-gifted machinators of tech magic. The Chef brought it all to her and laid it at her feet, as was his way.
To create with abandon. To create with the intent of decimation. Ever more besotted, The Chef was alone before he knew it.
* * *
The success of my ensanguined paintings brought demands on a soul weakened by disunion. Openings, parties, negotiations, and uncomfortable commitments kept The Painter and me from time in the studio. Small betrayals littered our path. Sometimes from others, usually from ourself.
Paint began to dry and crack on our cerebral palette. And as inside, so outside; a struggle to create ensued. Wandering blind, The Painter and I stumbled into a desolate place.
We craved a torch of desire to illuminate the road ahead. Yet, we saw little more than the embers of an ego stroked to nothing and the struggling phosphors of a lit match flickering in the gentle breeze of over-wanting.
Above the hiss of that meager incandescence, I heard the faint siren song of my college town calling. I yearned for solace, a remembered tribe, and the soul ignition of shared passions.
Seeing no need to sustain an ever more hollow pretense, I folded my promotional tents and went home to bivouac within the protective walls of my old studio. Yet, I found little solace in a familiar place left cold and lonely from the diaspora of close friends.
I withdrew from everything but the daily subsistence. Attempting to work, I could only stare with the eyes of a corpse at a blank canvas.
This time, grief and solitude did not energize The Painter.
* * *
Eventually sober, The Chef, too, found his way home.
He returned still tanned from his adventure under the western sun, looking healthier than he felt. However, inside the appearance of a robust human lived a dispirited creature longing for a mirage, like a copper-clad rondeau half filled with gloomy gravy .
Former associates in the world of cuisine brought him into their restaurants only to discard him when they realized he could no longer summon the erstwhile magic of his art. He, who once helmed the kitchen of a lauded eatery, was forced to cook in a dodgy establishment unworthy of his association.
At first, it did not matter. He was too sad to care. However, as he emerged from mooning over Astrid, another immense grief enveloped him. Not for a former paramour, but for a love he feared was lost forever.
* * *
Early one evening, caught in the gelid texture of a February rain, I saw The Chef on the opposite side of a familiar street. We stood amid the shops, bars, and eateries lining the funky yet trendy block anchored by his former cafe.
I felt cold yet yearning. In the neon light, I saw his sheepish face inlaid with red, pleading eyes.
The Chef held out his hand to me, that gifted hand that brought new realms of delicious bliss to so many.
I didn’t think my broken heart could beat again with the warm comfort of concord. Yet here, now, blood flowed through a different vein, one less choked with the pigments and oils of desirous servitude.
Even so, The Painter in me, who claimed to need no one even while in the manacles of futility, demanded we turn away from The Chef and walk alone into an indifferent night.
I almost obeyed.
In many ways, the truth of The Chef’s return struck me with horror. Could I still be The Painter without the perverse sustenance of emotional discord for creative nourishment? I didn’t know.
I could now imagine, however, that there might be no reason to trust such a precious illusion.
To my surprise, I offered up to him the black hole that filled my soul. I called out like a self-engulfing tsunami, “I cannot paint!”
As the rain turned to sleet, The Chef bellowed, “I am doom to my kitchen!”
Shouting to be heard above the clattering pellets, I cried, “I will feed you!”
For a minute, The Chef stood motionless in the accumulating ice.
Finally, he yelled with an emotion-broken voice, “I’m sorry!”
I left the frozen sidewalk, as did he. We met in the middle of the empty street.
We each wrapped our arms around the other.
The Chef whispered into my ear, “In weakness, I took Astrid from you, but truly, I am your friend.”
He stepped back, held out his hands once more, and looked at them with eyes anew, as if sensing their sleeping potential.
His eyes met mine. “I will paint you,” he said.
It was my turn to stand motionless and mute, awestruck by our confessions and offerings.
When I found my voice, I replied, “You painted me by providing sustenance, and you showed me a worthier path by living in harmony with yourself. How could I fail to express my love and respect for you?”
We grasped each other’s hands, the instruments of our arts, and united them as one.
Seeing my friend once again luminous with inspiration, a warm stream of long-absent tears escaped from The Painter’s frigid grasp and ran down my face, braving the icy night.