Gen-Zennials

THE GIRLS TRY STREET ART

"I don't think you should feel bad about shitting yourself on an interview. I mean, men offer prostitutes extra to shit on them. And, people literally make art out of shit. They make paint, sculptures...and it sells, like, 6 figures."

"Oh my god, that's it!" Brooklynn's head pops off her pillow excitedly.

"What's 'it'? Brooklynn..." she warns, slowly rising off her own pillow as well to meet Brooklynn, worried about her having another disastrous idea.

"We could make art, out of our shit!"

"I mean, I was serious. But I was fucking joking. We're not doing that."

Brooklynn sighs with a grump and plummets her head back on her pillow, sulking at the ceiling again. And they lay in silence.

"...But," Charlie ends up saying, "I mean, if we had to."

Brooklynn smiles with mischievous charm.

"But, we don't have to right now! What about just...normal art?" Charlie points with an open hand at her little canvas and clay gallery lined up drying along the walls.

"Yeah, only one of us would be making any money with 'normal' art." Brooklynn rolls her eyes. "What if I just did a live cam where I made chocolate fudge, and told subs that it's actual poop to inflate the price, since it's a 'specialty fetish' or whatever, and just finger paint with it for like 20 minutes or something."

Charlie pushed her mouth around thoughtfully.

"Ok, know any links to the deep, dark web?" she asks sarcastically.

Brooklynn lays unimpressed eyes on her. "You underestimate what men will do out of sexual frustration, and you overestimate their ability to use the internet."

"Ok. Fine. I'll try to sell my sculptures and wall art. If I don't sell anything all week, we'll...finger paint on cam."

"Deal!"

And they spent all day going through Charlie's paintings while listening to songstresses with raspy vocals croon over bassy triphop songs. She had canvas art of assorted sizes, with abstract paintings and portraits done with mixed media from oils, to acrylics, to watercolors, to gouaches. There were trippy and psychedelic patterns, there were faces done with cubism, and there were expressionist paintings of multi-colored faces of people and animals of all kinds. Excitedly, they went through them, commenting and deliberating their selections.

They finally pick out a starter pack of 5 canvasses, some big, some small, some huge. Charlie slips them in a big black portfolio tote. She's on their couch putting her burgundy Chelsea boots on meeting the ankles of acid wash skinny jeans; she was otherwise ready, in a droopy purple beanie, her black leather jacket over a black hoodie, and fingerless wooly gray gloves.

"Come on, sunshine," Brooklynn cajoles with a sarcastically sweet smile. She's standing at the door watching Charlie, which was hardly a distance away, while wearing an erect cotton highlighter green beanie, her usual orange puffer unopened over a lemon tube top and calaveras-style espadrilles at the cinched ankles of colorful nylon tracksuit joggers from the 80s that she serendipitously scored at a nearby thrift shop.

Charlie speaks in heavy exhaling whispers: "Ok...! Let's go...! It's now, or never."

She tries to pump them up as they stand on a subway platform, at a newly parked train that's preparing to unload about 100 people.

Normally, they either aggressively shuffle on their feet to get in a train through the thick and selfishly unbudging crowd, or they slither and maneuver in, and sometimes straight up push and bump and elbow their way in. But now, they're meekly stepping aside letting others exit, almost like doormen. When no one else has to exit nor enter, they beat the doors closing and step in softly.