My Secret Family

Gallery

Max

72 kg and falling

I felt dizzy today, as in, really dizzy. I could not stand up, and when I did my legs buckled momentarily when I walked to the bathroom of my apartment. Not a very long distance at all but I felt exhausted from the exertion and had to lie down for a few minutes to recover. When dizziness doesn't go away you get worried, you start to expect that, like a roller-coaster, it will reach some point of no return and send you down a ride that you can not stop. I made sweet tea with extra sugar to fuel my brain. The brain runs on glucose, I remember my biology teacher told us. Sugar is jet fuel for brains. I felt like I had been here before.

I put 7 teaspoons of sugar in my cup.

I had changed, noticing it on myself for the first time that my stomach was almost flat, my shoulders protruded from my shirts that now hung loose around my frame. Girls looked at me on the street and mothers no longer pulled their little kids away from the creepy fat guy with the baggy pants. But it would be a long time before I could adjust to this new feeling of weakness. Weight had an authority within myself that gave me presence, gravity. I could relapse at any time, go back to eating those great, great foods that shouted at me from every street cafe in Colma.

Tonight was art class and I would see her there and ask her. Dammit, I need to stop being such a coward and just ask her.

"You've made a lot of progress, " I said, standing next to Sophie, "especially with the hair."

"Thanks. I still struggle a lot with hands, though. I can't get the fingertips right."

"Hands are a bitch, each one is a portrait on its own. It takes so much work to stop them looking like a bunch of bananas and feel like you can reach out and hold them."

"That's true. " She pulled out a fresh piece of paper.

"Hey," I gulped, because she had opened the door for me and having committed to the sentence could not back out now, "there's an exhibition by Milo Manara at the Encantada gallery on Saturday. If you're not busy in the morning, we could go." I left the words hanging in the air.

"Who is Milo Manara?" She asked.

"Listen to this girl, " I said, talking to no one next to us. "Only the best cartoonist of our time! He can draw hands like nobody's business. It could be, you know, valuable research."

"Okay, yeah, what time?" Sophie had no expression these days, a shadow of her former self. Something I wanted to fix.

"Meet you there at 10?"

"Okay. Sure. That sounds nice. I've actually never been to a proper gallery before."

"What? You're kidding! It's so awesome, there's..." but I stopped myself. "You'll see. See you on Saturday. It's on Valencia and Pine."

"Thanks, Max. I'll see you."

I walked away, ignoring the other students' whispered comments, fighting every urge to tell Sophie all the little details about the gallery. Leave her wanting more, I thought. Leave her a little hungry.

Art is subjective because there is not one type of art, just like there is not one type of body. You either like the one in front of you or you ignore it or you insult it.

"I don't get it," Sophie said, "I know Picasso is famous and everything but what's the big deal?" Sophie stood in front of the large deconstructed drawing of a wild boar. "Does the pig symbolize something? I mean, maybe I'm just stupid but a five year old could draw that."

"That's the thing, " I pointed at the head of the pig in the drawing, "it doesn't symbolize anything, symbolism is not his style. Look, here's the deal with Picasso. " I took her fragile hand and pulled her to the next painting on the wall, an earlier Picasso. "He did that beautiful realistic painting when he was half our age. By the time he was fourteen he had conquered realism, that's younger than most masters learn to draw hands. Then he started asking questions, like, why does it take so many lines for us to recognize a girl? Why not fewer? What is the absolute thinnest I can draw her and still know its her, still have that emotional connection?"

Sophie lightly rested her arm on my back and I tried not to move in case the butterfly of her touch flew away. "I'm not boring you am I?" I asked and Sophie shook her head. "So he started experimenting with perception, asking these deep questions no one had thought about before. Up to then art had always been about pretty pictures wrapped up in politics and religion, you know, only for the people who could afford it. He became famous, not because a five year old could draw what he drew, which they can, but because of the journey he took to trim the fat from his work, so to speak. To find out what makes us human."

Sophie looked up at me and I pretended not to notice her stare, in case I jinxed it.

"How come we never learn about that in art class?"

"Well, it's just my dumb theory, I'm not sure it will catch on."

"Really? You came up with that? It's not a dumb theory at all. I never thought about art that way before, and I think you're right, I think that's exactly what he was trying to say."

A woman behind us said, "You're disgusting. " Sophie turned around.

"Excuse me?" A woman and her two daughters stood behind us.

"How can you live with yourself? You shouldn't be allowed in public, you're a bad influence on my kids."

"I've never met your kids, lady. " Sophie stood her ground, a boxer ready to fight.

"You should go home and kill yourself. You make me sick."

"Hey, that's not cool, " I said. I swear Sophie was about to punch her, but I pulled her back. 

"Come, let's just go."

"No, Max, this bitch should go."

I had two choices, stand with Sophie and defend something to someone who wouldn't care, or do what I always did and avoid the situation. Sophie's sparse frame obscured the Picasso but the woman had chosen to hurt the very thing that made her uncomfortable instead of understand it.