Felix Ever After(44)
“You’re probably one of the best artists in the school, to be honest,” she says. “It’s obvious that you have the eye, the imagination, the creativity . . . But you don’t apply yourself like you should.”
“I apply myself.”
She peers down at me. “Have you figured out your thesis project yet?”
Jill already knows the answer to that. I cross my arms, then realize how defensive that looks and force myself to put them at my sides, then realize how awkward that looks, so end up crossing them again. “No,” I finally admit, “not really.”
“Why not?” she asks. Her tone is soft. I know that she’s just trying to help.
I shrug, but she’s waiting for a real response. “It’s just—hard. It’s like there’s all this pressure, I guess, to make the portfolio perfect so that I can get into Brown and get the scholarship, and then I keep having these blocks, and I have no idea what to do, and it’s just . . . hard,” I say again.
“Well, no one chooses to be an artist because it’s easy,” Jill tells me. “If they do, they’re in for a rude awakening.” She smiles at her own joke before she pauses for a moment. I can tell there’s something else she wants to say, but she wants to be careful about how she says it. “I’m always struck by your portraits, Felix. You manage to capture the spirit, the essence of your subject. But I’m usually left with the sense that you could be pushing yourself in some way.” She plays with her keys in her hand, twirling the ring around a finger. “You end up doing the same thing. Painting portraits of Ezra and your classmates.”
“And that’s bad?” I ask, only a little defensively now.
“No, it’s not bad. It’s just that I’ve wondered what else you might have in you, if you pushed yourself to try something new. I noticed that you never paint yourself. Why is that?”
I’m surprised by the question—not so much because Jill asked it, but more because I never thought about it before. It’d never really crossed my mind, I guess, to think about doing self-portraits. They’ve always felt a little narcissistic to me, and I’m not exactly the kind of guy who wants to, or is even able to, stare at myself all day. I never take selfies, and I barely like glancing at myself in mirrors. Dysphoria’s played a huge part in that. It’s what Dr. Rodriguez first called the feeling I have when I see myself and I know that I don’t look the way I’m supposed to—the discomfort I used to have, in seeing my hair long and a chest that wasn’t flat. I’ve been lucky enough to see most of the changes I want to see, but I’m still the shortest guy of all my classmates, and sometimes, I can feel strangers’ stares as they watch me, questioning my gender.
“Self-portraits are empowering,” Jill says. “They force you to see yourself in a way that’s different than just looking in a mirror, or snapping a picture on your phone. Painting a self-portrait makes you recognize and accept yourself, both on the outside and within—your beauty, your intricacies, even your flaws. It isn’t easy, by any means,” she tells me, then shrugs. “But, anything that reveals you—the real you—isn’t easy.”
She holds up her keys. “It’s just a thought. I’ll leave you to it. And make sure you put all of the supplies away when you’re done.”
She leaves the room, clicking the door shut behind her.
The real me?
I pull out acrylics, a palette covered with dried and peeling paint, brushes of different sizes, some bristles frayed or hardened, and stare at one of the blank canvases. The critique of fine still stings, but being at St. Cat’s for the past few years has taught me to breathe in critique and breathe it back out again. Maybe a part of me also knows that Jill is right.
The real me.
I take a deep breath, pull out my phone, and snap a picture. I look at the photo, and I feel a flare of embarrassment in my stomach. I have dots of acne, my nose and eyes and mouth are too big, my jaw not square, not as square as I’d like—and in my eyes, I can see the fear. The dread in doing this, in confronting myself—in searching for the beauty, in admitting to the flaws. I lean the phone against the leg of a table, kneel down, dip a brush, and begin some simple strokes of red in the corner of the canvas. I grab the yellow, streaks blending into orange, almost like a sunrise, coloring my skin. The green is next, then the blue around my mouth. A bright burst, like a firework, in my eyes blues and purples swirling together like smoke that shadows my nose, a streak of green on my cheek—
My phone buzzes, a message appearing for a moment before it vanishes. The colors, the mixtures, the textures—I sink into the canvas, letting myself fall into the image of me. White, almost like a cloud, twisting around a drop of red where my heart—
My phone buzzes again. I sigh and stand up, dropping the brush into a mason jar of brown water and wiping my hand off on my jeans so that I can grab my phone from the floor. I’m afraid that it could be grandequeen69 again, but it’s just Ezra wanting to know where the hell I am, if I’m okay. I look at the time in the corner of the phone. Four. It’s four o’ fucking clock. I’ve been in here for three hours?
I take a step back from the canvas. I haven’t even filled half of it, but what I have filled . . .
It’s beautiful. I hate how arrogant that sounds, but it’s true. Not me—I don’t think that I’m beautiful—but the painting itself. My skin is flecks of red and gold, as though I’m on fire. The colors almost look like a piece of a galaxy, twisting together bits of light blooming out of the darkness. My eyes hold the same fear, the same dread, but there’s a strength, an intensity, a determination I hadn’t really noticed.