Eventually, I’d produced:

Another set of lines catching my eye looked like this:

Some of my other keepers looked like this:

Other kids drew, too, but they didn’t seem to have the obsession I had/have. Some would merely distort reality, producing work that looked like this:

My distortion of reality was closer to the ground. When I was a kid, and even the adult I am today, I’ve not found the caricature of the female form  appealing. The line, form and shape is fascinating and intriguing as I find it.

When I distorted reality, it was a wish fulfilled, like Wendy showing off here, which she never did in real life:

 

All good sojourns must come to an end. When I was ten, the week before Thanksgiving, my mother found my notebook. I wasn’t hiding it. I wasn’t aware I was doing anything wrong. I simply never showed anyone the work.

Not showing my work, she said, was hiding my work out of shame. I was told a lot of things that day, much of which didn’t make any sense at all.

As I remember, the reason, at age 10, I didn’t show (off) my work (or efforts) in my house was because I’d learned no one had anything good to say about anything I did. I gathered my affirmation elsewhere, often from older men around the neighborhood who were eager to do just that. Parents, make a note. I plan to write an essay on my experience with such men in the near future. I think it’ll be just a tad controversial.

Among many other things, my mother went into a long, confused rant about rape. I didn’t have a relationship with my mother when I became an adult, but I’ve wondered if this, and a couple of other comments she yelled in my face at other times, if she’d been raped at one time. I wish I had a chance to ask her about this dark spot, this pain etched on her face.

Much too much like a witch from fairytales, my mother promised my father would have a talk with me. He never did and since he’s been dead more than twenty years, I think it’s doubtful he will. My mother left the room. I recall watching her back move away, the notebook clutched in her right hand as if the notebook were a stubborn child refusing to go. I never saw that child of mine again.

Art can be life-changing.

Around this time and soon after, I’d found my father’s smokers (dirty movies) in the basement. I also found a stack of little comic-type books, obviously homemade, but certainly not in my home. To give you an example, Wimpy is featured in a story where he announces to Olive Oyl, “I have a deuce and a hard on!” while waving money. Close in on Oyl’s face. She’s looking down. “My, oh my, it looks soft to me!” And, indeed, Wimpy’s penis is flaccid. No surprises in this plot: Wimpy says, “I’ll gladly pay you Wednesday, for a blow job today!”

Obviously, I knew at the time, my parents would enjoy the sex movies and dirty cartoons together. I got the idea my artwork wasn’t offensive or shameful in and of itself. It was me doing the artwork that offended my mother.

I put my pencil aside and picked up a book and then another. I started with Wells and worked my way up to Heinlein.

Scroll forward a couple, three years. I had an art teacher in middle school. He was a sloppy southern European with dark, greasy features, a rectangular face, wet eyes and rolling mouth, which barely had his teeth contained. He hated feet. He thought feet were the ugliest thing on the human body, maybe in creation. He liked to lean over me from behind and look at my work. I swear he was humping my chair. He smelled of cigars and stale coffee.

He showed me pictures once, sketches, not unlike the work I produced in grade school. He watched my face, asking what I thought. I might have used the phrase wonderfully erotic if I liked the guy. And yes, at that age, I used phrases like wonderfully erotic and I knew what it meant. I told him about rape, my ranting diatribe not coming to the bitter crescendo of my mother’s, but with my raised voice and heads turning, I got the desired effect: he ignored me the rest of the year, trolling in other waters.

I had an affinity with wonderfully erotic things. I may have been born with an over activated sick-in-love-with-women gene.

I think it was this grabby moron that lit the light for me, reinforcing what I already  thought: my work was okay, as was his. It’s what he used his naked sketches for. I’m sure I could have gotten an A instead of a D in his class if I’d just shown a little interest in him, or maybe drew some dirty pictures. I stuck to classic pastel landscapes.

Those I don’t have anymore either.

When so-called critics don’t care for my work, I listen carefully. I discern if he or she is just puking Bloom’s anxiety of influence on my canvas or merely acting out one of Freud’s family dramas. After all, I didn’t rape you. Don’t blame me.