| On Sundays I meet up with the boys for a drink and a cigar. It's to decompress really. We shake off the trials and tribulations of the week, like a dog shakes off a bad case of fleas.
We meet up at my friend Sarah's bar, because she has a great smoking patio, and the drinks are poured with a heavy hand. We sit like a bunch of old men and talk of the weeks politics, art, our work, women, men and just basically let it all out like a balloon leaking air.
This is a ritual that we have developed, and it really has become a needed distraction. It's a social thing. We are not out on the make, wolfing around for late night smooches and other such nonsense. I mean the point is a letting go and away, not a grasping of new dramarama and entanglements.
But of course entanglements have a way...of well becoming entangled. Perhaps if we had wives or somesuch, they would wisely head us off at the pass, so to speak, as wives have such a knack of doing. "Honey, do this. Honey do that." Yes wedded distractions can warmly wrap you up in a blanket.
But none of my social set are currently married. We are all out adrift out in the ocean.
So this week has been particularly trying for all of us, Poker Joe had his work issues. Poker Joe is a great guy, he brings the table legs we chew on. He is the official cigar aficionado of our set. He knows more about cigars than any one man should, but we sure do enjoy his "babies", as well as his tales from the casino floor.
Spooky Joe, yes we call him "Spooky" because he's a paranormal investigator. He does, he studios ghosts and UFO's and such. His week was trying, for reasons he kept to himself. And none of us had the were-withal to ask too many questions.
There's a whole host of us that meet up for our weekly club meeting.
But it was the Fourth of July weekend, so it was only me and the Joe's out last night.
Myself I have had a had a week. Oh Boy, have I! I'm working on my new show, "Risqué" which is going to be unveiled at the Leather Realm at this years Pride festival.
As always the studio has been abuzz with painting. Like Kerouac writing, just frantic, frantic painting. Getting ready for the big show. It's a lot of painting's. I committed to 60! And to top that off, I'm not painting my usual menagerie of Hollywood and Music Icons. Rather I have gone naughty. I'm crawling into the back waters of sexuality and crawling around in the places where people go, late at night, but don't talk about.
My tag line for this show is you'll either want to buy a painting, or you'll need to take a shower.
Anyhow it's trying. It's out of my comfort level, and of course I have a whole new level of "stuff" sitting atop my usual plane of anxiety of "I really hope the people like these paintings, and don't bring rotten vegetables to the show and throw them at me."
It's a hard show to paint.
So me and the boys are out last night, enjoying our drinks, and cigars, and talking of this and that. The weeks, politics, news and gossip. Like I said it was a needed for us all. Of course my drink is strong, just the way I like it, the conversation heavy, but lightening our mood.
It is true, there really is no substitute for passing the evening with a drink and a few friends.
And in walks a little, lovely bleached blond in pigtails, with a short skit, long nyloned covered legs and a leather jacket attitude. The type of girl that crosses and recrosses those long stems until every guy in the joint is looking, and acts like she doesn't notice. I mean how can you not just fall in love with that, I ask you?
She's flanked by her 2 "artist" guys, with scraggly beards and heavy sideburns. The type of guys who spray-paint a stencil and call it art (I mean come on guys, is it to much to ask to pick up a brush?), and she was the type of girl who actually likes and is impressed with sort of thing.
They are sitting at the table next to ours, and of course conversations are joined, and lively debate in-sues until it just gets out of hand.
"Now I beg to disagree", should have been my response, should have been the curt statement of the evening but of course I'm amped up from a week of painting dirty paintings and of course the booze isn't helping, no not at all.
So when she lays out the statement, "Van Gogh was a great artist because he didn't care about money, and he only sold one painting on purpose, because true artists don't care about money at all." I should have smiled and went about my Jack and Coke and cigar.
Of course that isn't what happened. I don't know, it just rubbed me wrong. I mean this what I do. You know, I don't consider myself an artist, I'm a painter. I paint. I don't know maybe that's what makes me an artist. I don't like the term though, because it's what dumbass art students throw around, who want to be famous. Trust me, I would rather have the money than the fame any day.
Painting is what I do. I don't have a day job. Painting is my day job. It has been for more than a decade. If a painting of mine doesn't sell, then I don't eat. I can't take a painting to the Ralph's and give it to them for groceries. The drink I was drinking was bought with my paint, my canvas, and my vision.
And here was this little blondie girl, trying to school me, on art! On my trade! I mean I worked my tail off getting a Master's Degree in this stuff.
Perhaps it was the booze. But yeah I let her have it. And her two "artist" friends. Who looked so smartly fresh from some farmer's market somewhere.
Oh I was worked up. I let it out. Not in the nice manner that me and me friends let it out with our little Sunday evening ritual. But yes, I had a rather lively conversation with her.
Oh she worked me up.
Both the artist's slipped me their number's and myspace addresses when she wasn't looking. You know I suppose like all young "artist's" they want the big time stuff.
So I slumped back home, still frothing and foaming and all amped up. And of course my poor roomy Lenora is at it again, talking me down, helping push that indigent "artist" from art school, in me back down to sensible behavior.
Such a good friend. Such a sensible woman. Like the Oracle of Delphi, she summed it up, "She was just some little Bippy girl, who cares?"
And of course, like so many women in my life she was right.
But still, what a pair of gams that gal had on her! |
