Self Portrait

I

I heard a girl standing next to me say “It’s… it’s beautiful” with her voice nearly breaking. I do not know if she was speaking to me, to somebody else, or merely speaking out of an inability to contain the thought. Whatever her motivation was, I felt the need to reply.

“I know. I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said.

I truly hadn’t. This was not a matter of pretentious agreement. If I could have found more words to support my opinion, I would have. However, all I could bring myself to do was to revel in the raw expression in front of me with wide eyes. To call it hypnotizing would be a hideous understatement; to leave without digging into its origins would have been a tragedy.

At that time, all I had to go on was the painting itself. It was placed alone in the center of a large wall on the farthest end of the gallery. The wall could have held at least fifteen more of the same size, yet displayed only this one with confidence. There was no brass plate detailing the artist, or any sort of labeling for that matter. All that could be seen was the four feet high by six feet wide canvas without a single inch wasted. I decided to cut my time at the exhibit short and immediately seek out some background information on the beauty I had just witnessed. After a brief search for a person who looked as if they held authority, I approached the only man I could see wearing a name badge, this particular one reading ‘John’.  Pointing in the direction of the painting, I said “Excuse me, I was wondering if you could tell me about that piece over there,” with an obvious fascination in my voice.

Without even a glance in the direction I pointed toward, he quickly replied with “I’m sorry sir, I’m not at liberty to discuss that.” He was a tall, scrawny man whom I would put somewhere around 60 years old. He had sort of an old-timey feel about him--as if he had travelled from a time far-past, and was slowly adapting to our current culture. I moved away from my observations of his character and instead began to wonder how he knew which painting I was referring to. Before I was able to ask, he spoke once more.

“Everybody always asks about that painting. The tale is too long,” he said very plainly, but then paused and drifted away into his memories for a second before continuing with a slight drop in his voice, “and the ending is unpleasant. I’d rather not relive it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.” He picked up a clipboard that seemed to have some sort of important paperwork on it and wrote on it hurriedly but methodically; each move he made seemed to have great importance to it, like he was the only one who understood the proper way to do it.

I, however, simply needed to know everything I could about what I had just seen. If you were to see it, you’d be just as persistent.

“I have never seen a painting that’s so… so…” I paused for a moment to search for the correct word. Upon suddenly discovering the precise adjective I needed, it slipped from my tongue with relief as if it had been clawing to escape the whole time.

“…alive.”

His hand stopped moving immediately as his eyes rose up from his clipboard to lock with mine. He almost appeared to be angry, and I felt ashamed for prying. He placed the clipboard down on a nearby table gently, tucked his pen into the lapel pocket of his suit jacket as he turned back to me, and said “Walk with me, will you?”

I, of course, followed. Nothing could have kept me from hearing what this man had to say. Whether he was about to tell me about the painting or not, he still had the divine privilege of knowing the story which rendered him fascinating to me. He led me up to the wall that the canvas was hung upon. After gazing for a few seconds, he turned to me with a stern look that drove a chill up my spine. “What I am about to tell you will be unsettling. It will stay with you for all of your days, despite your best efforts to shake it away--efforts I’m certain you will make. It will infect your dreams as potently as it will your waking hours. You will question yourself and others in ways you never have before. Your view of art and possibly all of life will forever be affected by this. Do you understand?”

An even deeper chill ran through my spine, but this warning only bred more fascination in me. I looked back at the painting as its beauty drew me in once more. After weighing out the benefits versus the drawbacks, I finally decided that I’d rather face whatever terror awaits me than to wonder for the rest of my life about this artistic glory. Turning back to John, I nodded.

“Yes sir. I understand. Please, tell me.”

He sighed, signifying that his previous warning was an attempt at persuading me to back out at the last minute. Another moment of hesitation went by and, with glossed-over eyes showing impending tears, he turned from the painting to me and said “I once knew a boy named Jude…”



II



In July of 1978, John moved to Chicago from Manhattan to get himself away from the pseudo-artists who had invaded his block in Greenwich Village. Hoping to finish his series of paintings depicting graphic scenes of the Vietnam War, he expected Chicago to have the perfect balance of available solitude and good company; without a large reputation as a center for artists, Chicago wouldn’t be subject to the constant influx of runaways looking to make it big that he was accustomed to in New York. He moved into a small studio apartment overtop a café called The Epitaph and got right to work. His mornings were spent in the café reading the newspaper and fueling up for a day of work; he then spent his day stocking shelves and bagging groceries at Applewood Grocer, a small store just down the street. Arriving home at four in the afternoon, he would paint until the early hours of the morning at which time he would crawl into bed. Awaking the next day, the process repeated.

This routine went on for a few weeks before he made any friends in the area. His first companion came in the form of a young man named Jude. Walking into the café one morning to get his normal breakfast, John spotted him sitting at a table across the café. The particular table that Jude chose had most likely seemed like just another table, but it was actually John’s table; this, of course, was in no way official. The table was, in fact, just another table. But every morning for two weeks, John had eaten his breakfast there before heading to work. Every breakfast John had eaten since he had moved to Chicago, since he had started over, had been at that table. He ordered his food-an onion bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee-and took it over to the table Jude was at. Standing next to the table in awkward silence for a moment, he was finally noticed by Jude.

“Can I help you?” asked Jude, but not in a rude manner; he seemed to genuinely want to help John with whatever was keeping him standing. Jude was young, probably nineteen or so. He was thin but healthy looking, with fantastic posture and an overall liveliness about him. He had shaggy brown hair on the verge of unkempt but a completely clean shaven face.

John, taken aback by the kindness in Jude’s voice, could no longer bring himself to assert that Jude was occupying his table and that vacating was necessary immediately. It was, after all, an understandable mistake; the café was small for Chicago, but quaint. It had 10 tables, each adorned with two chairs. The walls were covered in old wallpaper featuring a pattern long outdated. The door was nearly always open, partially for heat control but mostly to ward off the strong musty smell that had been accumulating inside for years unknown. Bookcases were placed sporadically throughout the establishment, each one overflowing with literature.

“No. I’m sorry,” said John embarrassedly. He then turned and sat down at the table next to Jude’s. Commencing his daily breakfast ritual, he halfheartedly skimmed the newspaper and repeatedly checked his watch to make sure he would not be late to work. Halfway through his bagel, he heard Jude’s kind voice once more. This time, it was attempting to get his attention.

“Hey, buddy.”

Turning towards him, John said “… yes?”

“You paint?” asked Jude with a sort of childlike inquisitiveness.

Shocked at the stranger’s insight, John’s eyebrows raised as he said “Yes, yes I do. How did you know?”

Jude silently raised his left hand with the back of it facing John and used the finger of his right hand to point at the fingernails. John looked down at his hands and realized that his own nails were caked with an entire palette of oil paint remnants. Slightly embarrassed at this obvious oversight in hygiene, he curled his hands up to hide them and looked back at Jude.

“Very attentive, sir,” he said. “My name’s John.”

Jude excitedly slapped John on the shoulder and exclaimed “Damn great to meet you. My name’s Jude.”

He had a firm excellence about him, a confidence rare in people of his age. He seemed to know the world on an intimate level, to a degree where he had no fear of it--as if he was in on some secret that nobody else knew. There was something about him that left John eager to hear him speak more.

“So, Jude, do you paint as well?”

“I do, indeed,” he said. And so John, without requesting permission, moved over to the seat across from Jude and struck up a conversation. They spoke of their past works, of their origins in life, of their current projects, and of Chicago.

The talking lasted longer than either had intended and by the time John finally remembered to keep track of his watch, he was already half an hour late for work. Jumping from the table in a fit and wrangling his belongings, he managed to assemble the words “I’m in here every morning” before rushing out the door and down the street. He had hoped that Jude would understand the meaning of his statement, being that he would like to talk to Jude again sometime. More importantly, he was late for work. He knew his boss would not be pleased.



III



John paused. It seemed as if he had lost is place in the story for a moment. It then became obvious to me that he was making the transition from 1978 to now, shifting his consciousness from that hot summer morning to this rainy November afternoon. After staring steadily at the painting throughout the whole story, he broke his gaze to look at me.

“You know, I haven’t painted since that summer. I haven’t even considered it,” he said with a thinly veiled sadness in his voice.

I wanted to ask him why, but I had a lurking feeling that patience would deliver my answer before the end of our meeting. Instead I simply nodded, hoping it to be a sufficient response. After a deep breath and a moment of closed-eyed concentration, he trudged on.



IV



John barreled down the stairs of his apartment to the street outside. It was another hot day, but very humid; he found himself sweating within his first few steps towards the grocery store. He was late again, no doubt to the chagrin of his boss. It was his second time being late that week alone. It was all due to his strange sleeping patterns, caused by his forays into deep night artistic explosions; he was finally getting somewhere with his paintings. Solitude had served him well--so well, in fact, that he had scarcely even thought about making friends. He knew Jude, but the three weeks since they met had forced John into nearly forgetting of his existence. His life simply carried on in acceptance of the possibility that he’d never be seeing Jude again; Chicago is a big city, and The Epitaph wasn’t impressive enough a café to warrant multiple visits from anybody who didn’t live close enough to make it a convenience.

Arriving at work precisely twenty three minutes late, John didn’t even have his apron on yet when the boss pulled him aside to have a talk with him. The expression on Mr. Applewood’s face ruled out the possibility of a friendly conversation, and John feared the worst.

“Look, John,” said the portly owner and manager of the Applewood Grocer, “I like you a lot. You’re a great worker, you don’t ask questions, and you listen well. But god damn it, I can’t have you coming in late all the time. This is twice this week, and six times this month. One more time and I’ll have to fire you. Now, I don’t want that and I know you don’t want that. So can you please just start coming in when you’re scheduled?”

John swallowed the lump in his throat and delivered the generic “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I promise it won’t happen again,” while trying his best to make it sound convincingly sincere.

“Good. Now get to aisle three. There’s a cart of canned goods waiting down there that need to be shelved and tagged.”

John went to aisle three and commenced shelving and tagging, shelving and tagging, shelving and tagging until movement caught the corner of his eye. He looked up and, to his astonishment, he saw Jude walking down the aisle toward him--or, at least, something resembling Jude. The youthful vitality he had displayed in their first meeting was now replaced by a cruel parody. His face was sunken, pale, and adorned with a fresh dark circle under each eye. His once statuesque posture had given way to a strange slouch that appeared to be borrowed from a man four times his age. When he moved, it was sluggish and weak. In his hand he carried a large can of coffee as he stumbled toward the front of the store to finalize his purchase. Though John watched him, it wasn’t until he neared the end of the aisle and John called for his attention that he turned and acknowledged John.

An attempt at a smile only managed to show how degraded his condition really was as he slugged back towards John to greet him properly.

“Hi John. How have you been?” he asked with a hoarse, pain-filled voice.

“Oh, not too bad,” John replied. He had always felt bad revealing that things were going well for him to people who were clearly suffering the opposite end of the spectrum.

“Damn glad to hear it,” said Jude, enviously.

“Is everything alright buddy? You don’t look so great,” said John, not wanting to offend him but still wanting to make his reason for asking known.

“No, not by a long shot. But I’ve got some stuff I’ve got to be doing. Will you meet me at that café later? I could really use a talk,” he said with a sullen desperation.

“Yes, of course. I get out of here at around four. Want to meet there at, say, five? That will give me some time to get a shower,” said John.

“Yeah, that works. See you then,” said Jude with no emotion in his voice. He turned and once again slugged toward the end of the aisle.

This meeting shook something deep inside of John. He was saddened at the sight of this young man, a sight which followed him all the way through his workday, through his walk home, through his shower, and all the way up until he was subjected to the sight once more when Jude hobbled through the door to The Epitaph. After ordering and receiving a coffee, he did his zombie walk across the room and sat down across from John.

Wishing to start the conversation, John opened his mouth to speak. Before any words could escape, Jude folded his arms on the table and dropped his head into them with a sigh that seemed to carry out his life force with it. He appeared to be crying, but no noise came from his body; the only indication of his sobbing was a rhythmic gyration travelling through his entire torso. John, not knowing what to say, simply reached over and patted him on the shoulder twice. He had never known how to console a weeping man—a weeping woman is easy enough to subdue, but men are generally prone to take offence when you acknowledge their tears. After a few awkward moments, Jude slowly raised his head to face John.

“I…” he choked a bit on straggling sobs “I can’t do it,” he said with a sense of defeat.

“You can’t do what?” asked John curiously. He didn’t know to what Jude referred, but he knew it must have been something serious that left him in this state.

“I can’t finish it. Four months I’ve been working on it, and I hit a plateau. I can’t do it. I can’t do it,” he said in a low and somber voice before shouting “I can’t do it!”

Jude seemed embarrassed by the shout, and made a conscious effort to keep his volume steady through the rest of the conversation. But John now knew exactly what he was talking about, and everybody else in the café now wondered. Jude’s issue was an artistic roadblock; a half-completed painting which had gotten the best of him. It also explained his gravely appearance. What could easily be construed as a sickness was actually the progressed stages of sleep deprivation.

“Why can’t you do it?” asked John.

“I don’t know,” Jude replied with exasperation, undoubtedly as a result of asking himself the same question repeatedly. “There’s something missing.”

This struck a chord with John, as he had experienced this exact same problem several times earlier in his career; he knew all too well how it felt to lose sleep in favor of working toward a goal you had no guarantee of achieving. It was never an easy issue to overcome, but it was always rewarding when defeated; the feeling of artistic breakthrough is unrivaled by any other experience. And here was Jude, a painter of only nineteen on the cusp of his first major breakthrough, asking for John’s advice. John was proud to be the one to inform him that it would all be okay.

“Jude, I know what you’re going through. I’ve been through it too. You will find the missing piece. I promise you that. But you’re not gonna find it here, with me. You’re not gonna find it from anything anybody tells you. It’s inside of you, and that’s where it will be until you let it out.”

Jude thought about this for a moment as his spasms and tears subsided. He said nothing more, but nodded twice very sluggishly. He rose from the table slowly, stumbling a bit on the first attempt at standing. Depositing his coffee cup in the wash-bin, still full, he staggered out the door and down the street. John was puzzled on how to feel about this, as he couldn’t gauge how Jude felt about this response. A sleep deprived person has a very small range of emotional expressions, all closely resembling each other. John could only hope that he had understood and would allow himself to benefit from the advice. Regardless, John had bigger fish to fry: he had to get to work on his own painting if he hoped to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Getting fired wasn’t an option, which meant a readjustment of his schedule. He deposited his own coffee cup in the wash bin on his way to his apartment. Climbing the steps, he closed and locked the door and got right to it.



V



John now took a deep breath and upon exhaling turned to me with eyes that struck me as floodgates, holding back waves and waves beyond my fathoming. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what or how. Before I could think of anything, he pointed behind me and I turned to look at what it was he was signaling towards. It was two chairs against a wall adjacent to the one we had been staring at.

“Would you care to sit down with me? I would recommend it,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what he meant when he said he would recommend it, but I trusted his word and began to walk towards the chairs. Upon sitting, he placed his elbows on his knees and his head into the palms of his hands. Holding this position for a minute or so, he then looked up at me and said very plainly “This is the part of the story I warned you of. So if you would like me to stop now, I understand and think it would be a great relief to both of us.”

His final attempt to evade telling the story fell short on me, and I requested he continue.

With his eyes glossing over, he shivered out the tremors and braced himself for the finale. If I would have known how to at the time, I would have done the same.

John worked feverishly to keep his job while maintaining an artistic life. He rarely had free time free time anymore, even cutting out his breakfasts at The Epitaph. This gave him a  slight increase in available sleeping time, directly resulting in a slight increase in painting time. He immediately set to work on his art upon arriving home, working with double the intensity in order to account for the loss of time. He went on that way for two weeks, thinking of Jude every few days and hoping the young man had found his way past his hang-up. These thoughts were quickly shooed away by his own pressing matters of work and art.

Getting home from work after a particularly long day, he was surprised to find an envelope taped to his door with his name scrawled in large letters across the face of it. Pulling it from the door, he examined it as he unlocked his apartment and walked inside. Placing his keys upon the table, he opened the envelope and removed a piece of paper inside of it. A small card fell out onto the floor with an address written on it. The paper, in small dirty handwriting that took a moment to decipher, said the following:



John,

Thank you. I finally figured it out. You were right. Nobody else could have known; it was inside of me all along. I've enclosed the address to my place; drop by later to see the finished product. I couldn't have done it without you.

Your friend,

Jude



“Well how about that?” thought John. “The kid figured it out.”

He decided he would paint for one hour, and then clean himself up to pay Jude a visit. He couldn’t wait to see what Jude had been working on, or how much better Jude must look now that he’s made his breakthrough. After only a few minutes of work, he realized he was much too distracted by the excitement of his later plans to actually get anything done. Cutting it short, he was out the door and down the street headed for Jude’s apartment. The walk was relatively short and easy to navigate. Within ten minutes he found himself on the stoop of Jude’s apartment building. It was a rather slummy building, but John would never judge for something like that; an artist must do what an artist must do. This generally means horrid living conditions, and John had been subject to that for longer than he cared to admit. At least Jude had a ground floor apartment.

An old man walking out of the building held the door to let John in, and John thanked him as he strolled past and began eyeing the numbers on the apartments. It was at the end of a long hallway that he found number 8, the number written on the card.

He knocked. No response.

He knocked once more, louder and with more space between each knock. Still no response.

“The poor bastard must be sleeping,” thought John. “He’s probably been up for weeks.” John was about to turn away when a sudden urge hit him to check if the door was locked. He turned the knob, without actually pushing the door open. It turned freely. Cracking it just enough to allow sound through, he pressed his face to the opening and shouted “Jude? You home? It’s John.” Nothing. He wasn’t sure if he should open the door all the way and step inside. Reasoning it out, he recalled the signature to the letter. “Your friend,” it had said. And, after all, a friend wouldn’t mind another friend popping into their apartment while they were asleep, would they? He was invited over, and the door was unlocked. Deciding it to be an acceptable move, he opened the door to the apartment and stepped inside.

The apartment was larger than John’s, and the room he was in was a kitchenette with a quaint dining table and one chair. That room opened into a living room, which had a bathroom off of it to the left as well as another room to the right whose door was only cracked an inch or so. The room with the cracked door was so dark that the darkness seemed to seep out into the living room as light would behave. John decided this must be Jude’s bedroom, and he was most likely had the windows blocked out to ensure maximum sleeping potential. He walked towards the door across the living room and pushed it slowly open. Feeling around on the wall for a light switch, he finally found one and flipped it on. The painting immediately caught his eye.

Directly across from him was a painting on an easel, four feet high by six feet wide, and indescribably beautiful. It was an orgy of hues, a raw frenzy of emotion and truth, a testament to the inner workings of Jude’s young mind, and a rare groundbreaking piece of art. A tear glistened down John’s cheek as he became entranced by it for several seconds. It was after this brief hypnotic state that his eyes dropped to the floor beneath the painting.

“No…” he whispered.

He ran across the room.

Dropping to his knees, he picked up the limp body that lay before him. He shook it and screamed “Wake up!” as the tears streamed down his face. He knew there was too much blood. No way was this kid still alive. But he shook and he screamed and he cried. He felt his heart break in two and fall down into his stomach as he looked back and forth between the painting and the boy and choked on his own tears.

“Why?!” he yelled into the unforgiving nothingness surrounding him and dropped his head to meet the boys as he sobbed. He rose his head to look at the painting once more and, despite the situation, he couldn’t help but think again of how absolutely perfect it was.



VI



John was now unsuccessfully trying to choke back his tears. In his weeping, I could almost hear the young man from 1978 crying on Jude’s floor. I felt a sharp pain as if I had known Jude myself, as it was that day and I was in Jude’s room with John. Tears began to roll down my cheeks with no warning. I looked at John and felt myself get nauseous.

“I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have made you relive that if I would have—“

But all in a quick instant, his head shot up from his hands as he sharply said “It’s not over.”



VII



I walked away from the gallery that day a different person than I was when I walked in. I may never see a painting the same way again. On that day, on a hot Chicago street in 1978, Jude created art. In doing that, he redefined the word--after what I saw and heard that day, I will surely have a hard time classifying anything else as “art.” The concept will surely be stained for me for the rest of my days. Nobody went through what Jude did for his art. He figured out what his painting was missing. It wasn’t going to come from anything anybody else told him, or from that café with John. It was a deep shade of red, and it would be inside of him until he let it out.

I thought back to the painting as I walked down the street towards my car. I’ve never seen anything that’s so… alive.