Milk of Malfeasance

Jamie signed his name at the bottom of the painting, on the side of a cardboard box, of a cow, then put the box on a shelf next to other boxes with similarly bucolic paintings.

He turned to face a crowd of reporters behind. "And that, ladies and gentleman, completes number 523. Questions?"

"Why boxes?" said a man near the front, holding a notepad and a pencil, dressed in a sloppy suit one size too big for him, battered fedora, five o'clock shadow, droopy eyelids, bottle o' hootch in his back pocket.

Jamie gazed at the reporter for a few beats, his face expressionless. "Why not?" he finally said. He turned to another. "Yes?"

A woman in a mauve pantsuit, lots of hair, lots of makeup. "Jill St. Parable, County Gazette-Informer. 'An op-ed in 'Artist Review' last week claimed that your farm credentials are thin, quote, 'he's as lea as the one from Star Wars.' What is your response?"

Jamie lowered his eye, sighed, then turned to the box he'd just installed. He ran a finger gently along the line of the cow's back. "I *am* capable of enormous acts of imagination. I am an artist, afterall. And yes, I could have wrought from the damp, dark, secret places of my soul these scenes. Green for grass, red for barn, blue for sky. Easy. But this... this cow." He turned back to the reporters. "The truth is, this cow and I were lovers."

The crowd of journalists remained silent. Until someone in the back said. "Sexually?"

Jamie smiled a grim smile. "Oh my. Yes. I don't know how *you* make love, whoever said that, but if it's with the pen, I'm afraid this is one arena where the pen is not as mighty as the sword."

"So, bestiality," said the one in the fedora.

"Were all animals, aren't we?" Jamie said. He frowned. "Anyone who's died the little death in the arms of another is an animal-fucker, yes? I know what I said may seem, well, shocking. But it's not provocative because of the word you give it. Our forbidden love stands alone, take it however you like, you needn't infantilize it with pro-homospecies nomenclature."

"Isn't that illegal," someone said.

Jamie shrugged. "That's what artists do. We break rules. We push boundaries. We go to the uncomfortable places that everyone dreams of going but are too terrified to go. And we bring back hope, don't we. We *bring back* love.

"You were in love," said fedora.

Jamie smiled at him, as if to forgive the boxes question, closed his eyes, and nodded. "Would I have loved Cleo if I weren't an artist? Ask me if I would have shat different shaped feces if I'd eaten cheerios instead of muslix this morning. I am what I am. It is all that I am. If I were not an artist, I would not *be*.

"We had a very tender relationship, Cleopatra and I, and while I won't deny, in fact I admit proudly, to our partaking in the carnal delights, there were also our moments of simple companionship. Sharing a glass of wine and a fistful of hay. Or talking about the moon, and lowing. She, lying on her side, gently snoring, while I sat against her bulging teats, scribbling meaningless doodles in my thick, care-worn sketch pad.

"I hear people say 'She got me,' or 'he gets me,' or 'I want someone who understands me.' Let me be clear. That is not what Cle and I had. She didn't 'get' me. No one 'gets' a true artist. No one, not even the most sublimely beautiful, kind-hearted, devotional, self-sacrificing, three-quarters-ton bovine 'understands' what the artist's self-torture is like. The isolation, the loneliness, staring with bruised eyes through tears of blood into that harrowing, soul-raping pit of hell we call 'truth.'

"She was my temporary solace. And that's all we can ask of our muses. Someone or something that can take us out of ourselves long enough to act as a conduit, a vessel to let the canvas drink the colors of said truth." Jamie smiled warmly at fedora. "Or cardboard, in my case."

Fedora wept, as the other reporters scribbled furiously on their notepads.

"She knew she could never be a cure for the disease that is imagination. She could only be hospice. And I knew she knew. I knew she knew hers was to be ever the mistress to me, a man betrothed to art. And I loved her for it, as much as a man can love something other than the self-hatred that drives him to plunge into a sea of madness long enough to bring back a fish of... of..." A tear trickled down his cheek as his eyes held a far-off look.

The journalists ceased their writing, frozen, waiting expectantly.

Jamie smiled. "Well, words are not my forte, are they. I can only 'speak' with a brush and some acrylics. So, honestly, all I can say in response to this alleged 'Artist Review,' is this," and with that, he held a hand up and swept it before his boxes.

Of course none of it was true. But the applause started in the back.