We talk about her acting, and she’s not a twit about it this time—she opens up, we both do. She’s telling me about shows she did in high school and her first professional show—Romeo and Juliet—before I decide where I’m gonna take her. I don’t just wanna take her straight to my apartment—that would give the wrong signal. I also don’t want to take her straight to her home—that would give the wrong idea as well. So I take her to my studio, which is where I paint.
I don’t tell her where we’re going. I just take her in.
“Is this yours?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Juliet has my arm. She grips it, pointing. “Are..these..yours?”
“Yes.”
She looks around. She lets go of my arm.
I sit on the floor, leaning against the couch I have set on the entry wall. I let her look; I let her walk around. I don’t feel like talking. I must be a weird sort of company—and at that point I was doubting whether this date of ours would have a second—but I have to be myself, in a moment..if I’m sad or if I’m quiet or if I’m just not feeling it. I was feeling Jules I just wasn’t feeling this date. Being in my own space made me feel better. I just sat there and watched this girl I liked.
She’s got a short dress. She has long brown legs. She’s as tall as me—five-ten—though we have different proportions. She walks like a gazelle, or a zebra, or a prancing horse. And she looks like a Tekken character today: long legs, high heels, tight tights, a large sweater hanging mostly off her back. “You did this, too?” she says.
She’s standing by my mural.
“Yeah,” I say. I stand.
She tells me that she loves it, which is hard for me to hear. I don’t like when people tell me that they love me—or things I’ve done—it makes me feel uncomfortable. I don’t believe them. I know they’re entitled to their point of view, but deep down, I don’t honor other people’s opinions, at least not when they’re saying nice things about me. I should go to therapy. They could figure it out. Maybe a group session where everyone says nice things to each other and we see how much of that we can stand.
So we look at my mural. And Juliet thinks it’s beautiful. I painted it with my feet. And my hands. But without a brush. It’s a big field of green and blue and orange—it’s twenty feet wide—and in the middle the green and blue come together in these two rushing orbs and there’s kind of an explosion—or a gathering—or some kind of dance that the two orbs do. Some people say they look like two giant sperm—
“They remind me of spirits,” Jules says. She has my hand. “When did you paint this?”
“Last year,” I say.
She looks at me and nods. She takes my other hand.
“You knew,” she says, “You knew.”