Free Art Lessons

Paul was staring at the Monet’ when something moved, barely encroaching his peripheral vision. The object was on his right side, so he had to verify that something was actually there. He always had to check the right side because he had a “floater”, a tiny scar on his retina that, in certain lighting conditions, created the illusion that he had company. He liked to josh that he got the scar fighting for a maiden's honor, but it really was a tussle with a weed eater that left him with this annoying little blind spot. He knew other blinding forces too, like the dazzling brightness of a beautiful woman. He turned his head to see this manifested in that moment, and through the glow he could discern that she was young, but not too young, and his first glance at her countenance incited him to take a closer look.

He had taken the male gaze to the level of an art-form decades ago. He knew the exact amount of time it took to get an eyeful without the appearance of staring or “looking her up and down.” She was medium height and shapely, with sandy colored hair and big hazel eyes, He saw enough to know he wanted to upgrade the visual screening to a conversation. He didn’t know that she had already sized him up in a millisecond as she approached - as virtually all women have had to train themselves to do. “Tall, kind looking, square jaw, probably in his late fifties - not bad,” she told herself.

“Are you a fan of Monet?” Paul asked, not looking directly at her.

“I’m not a fan of anyone,” Bridgett replied, “I’m a student of technique.”

Paul analyzed her comment with the speed of a practiced mind. It could be a smack-down or an invitation, or both. Was she insulted that he suggested she was a mere “fan” or art groupie with the first part of her answer, but was she inviting further conversation with the latter part? “I’ll react to part B,” he thought.

He didn’t know squat about art technique, so he couldn’t impress her with that, but he could pivot to that subject by making her his newest mentor. Brilliant! That might nullify the “fan” blunder while keeping the conversation alive. He chose his words carefully, as he turned to her. “I gather you know more about technique than I do. I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

“Well, I teach art at the academy, and I always tell my students that you can’t really appreciate something unless you know how it was created,” she explained.

“I can see that, but sometimes I like to just let things make an impression on me, you know, just take it in. I’m guilty of overthinking sometimes and it can ruin the magic of the moment,” he said, throwing down a velvety gauntlet.

“So how do you react to this Monet?” she pressed.

“Well, it’s called ‘Woman with a Parasol’ but there is a small boy in the background. The woman casts a long shadow, and the artist is positioned below on a hill side because he’s looking up at her.” Paul paused for a second and continued, “It seems like this represents a very strong woman despite her soft appearance and dainty clothes.”

“And do you have a problem with strong women?” she inquired, with a slightly challenging tone.

Paul knew his answer could be a deal breaker, so he took an extra second or two. “It’s a paradox for me. I am sometimes intimidated by them, but I also have much more respect for strong women. I know I can’t have it both ways, so I would rather spend my time with someone who is sure of herself, if I had to choose.”

“Well, based on my experience with men, that sounds too good to be true. You wouldn’t be pulling my leg, would you?” Bridgett asked.

“I kind of wish I was,” he said, then added, “I used to manipulate people to get what I wanted, and it worked pretty well until I realized I can’t always trust that what I want is what’s best for me. A strong woman is like a guardrail. She can keep me from doing stupid things when I can’t stop myself.”

“That's some serious self-awareness, or some really weird dependency shit,” she pushed on.

Paul admired her directness and responded in kind. “I hope it’s the former,” he went on, “like this conversation, I know I wanted to talk with you, but I really don’t know why. Frankly, I enjoy the company of attractive women and that should be enough of an explanation, but there is always something I’m yearning for that is never satisfied.”

“That sounds like a disguised attempt of a sly old man to get in my pants.” She rejoined, grinning like she just busted him.

Paul was knocked back on his heels for a second. He didn’t know which bothered him more, the “old man” moniker, or the implication that he wanted sex, even though they were both true at some level. He decided humor was a better response than exaggerated indignation.

“How did we go so quickly from your paints to your pants?” he quipped.

She laughed loudly and said with curious amusement, “Touché’, but what else could it be?”

“All I know is that when it comes to women, especially those I’m attracted too, I have some unfinished business; something feels incomplete, and it craves some kind of closure,” he clarified.

The Backstory

Maybe I should have warned you in the beginning that Paul is a 67-year-old, married man and Bridgett is 34 and single by choice because of two past relationships that made her feel broken. Neither Paul nor Bridgett intends to have sex with each other. For Paul, it would be a serious betrayal, and for Bridgett, it would be unsettling on several levels. “So,” you might ask, “why are they continuing to talk and what do they want from each other?” That’s precisely the mystery I wish to solve to your satisfaction once the story advances.

Paul’s Problem

The back and forth continued until Bridgett asked Paul if he wanted to go for a coffee. He hesitated because he’d been through this before with other women and, in the end, his itch never got scratched. His craving was not satisfied with or without sex being on the table. It literally did happen on a table once, but that was before he married. His post-nuptial episodes with women always left him temporarily fixated on the sex he didn’t have, or the answers that continued to elude him.

He agreed to the coffee date but only because there was something different about Bridgett. “She doesn’t know what she wants either,” he surmised. Then, grinning to himself, he thought, “Maybe, like the Monet, she just wants to study my technique, and maybe I just want to take her in.” They proceeded to the nearest coffee shop, not really caring which one, because they weren’t there for the beverages or to signal their place in the social hierarchy. Absurd as it may sound, they were there to find out why they were there.

Bridgett’s Baggage

Bridgett took the lead this time. “Before we go any further, I’m not interested in a relationship or sex,” she said. “I have a history of bad partners, and I have a son to raise. It’s weird, but I was married for four years. We tried to have children, but we couldn’t. She was interrupted by the cook yelling about burnt toast and she turned her head in that direction and thought, “Yeah, burnt toast, good metaphor for my marriage.” When the cook finished his rant, Bridgett continued, “After the divorce I went out with a guy and we had sex on the first date, and I got pregnant. One time and I got pregnant! I was devastated but it turns out my son is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She and Paul hadn’t noticed the clanking of spoons on coffee cups or the din of nearby conversations until it all suddenly stopped. Some of the people around them had caught bits of their conversation. Paul, not wanting to draw further scrutiny, almost whispered, “Wow, that’s amazing!” He followed with a barrage of questions. “That’s a lot on you, isn’t it? How do you get by? What about the guy?”

“I never told him because I knew he wasn’t father material, and I still had some hope of getting back with my husband at that point. I live with my parents, and they are a great help. I have a good job too,” Bridgett added. “My life is fine, and I do get very lonely sometimes, but I don’t think it’s because I don’t have a man. I think something else, something deeper.”

“This is exactly how I feel at times,” Paul shared. “I’ve tried a million times to figure it out. I have a good life too. I’m married to a great woman. I have everything, but something is often conspicuous in its absence, as the saying goes."

He continued, “Maybe it’s the anticipation, the burning curiosity. Like when I saw you, I wanted to be with you just to see how the story unfolds. There’s an erotic element but I know it’s not sex I’m really after. I don’t know if it’s something I want to store away for the future, or something I want to reclaim from the past. Fleeting fantasies about sex are just filler until I discover what I really want from it.”

Bridgett let his comments soak in. “Sometimes it feels like older men are trying to steal my youth,” she said.

“No, but I’d like to borrow it,” he countered with a chuckle.

The Lesson

“I think you already are,” Bridgett parried, chuckling back at him. Then she went into full-blown teacher mode. “You remind me of two doomed lovers in Greek mythology. They were from different countries, with a body of water and bitter politics separating them, but, upon meeting, they fell in love. Each night she, Hero, would leave a torch on the shore so he, Leander, steered by the light, could swim across to her. One night the light was blown out by a storm and Leander got lost and drowned. Hero drowned herself to be with him. By the way, Ruben was intrigued with them and painted a famous portrait. That’s how I was introduced to the story.”

“I don’t get the point” Paul said. “What does that have to do with my yearning? I already have the love of my life. I’m a very happy man generally.”

“I might be going out on a limb here, but I relate to your situation,” she replied. “I have the love of my life too, in my son. But realistically, he is the love IN my life, not the love OF my life. Your wife may be the love in your life, but the love of your life can’t be another person.”

Paul was confused, and a bit frustrated. “What are you saying? He asked, his question sounding a bit like a plea.

“Well, Hero thought she couldn’t live without Leander, so she drowned herself. What’s the good in that? The truth is the only person we can’t live without is ourselves.”

Epiphanies

“This is pretty dammed insightful, and it resonates,” Paul acknowledged. “So, are you saying that my yearning is my innate desire to live, to feel complete, and I’ve been looking to others to give me that feeling of completeness?”

She piggybacked on his observation. “And, like me, maybe you’re also seeking an experience that will make you feel fully alive, even if just for the moment. Something to keep you going when you’re in a rut,” she added. “I thought sex with a bad boy could do that when I separated from my husband but look how that turned out.”

“When I was younger, I thought romance and sex were the answers too, but they never were,” Paul agreed. “But it wasn’t for the lack of trying. So, I guess it boils down to the idea that there’s nothing missing in my life except me. By the way, a friend once told me that a rut is just a grave with the ends knocked out.”

“That about sums it up,” she said laughing.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he uttered. “Out of the mouths of babes… I feel the deepest bond with you right now. You’re so wise for being so young. It’s crazy but it feels like you could be my best friend or my muse or something.”

“I don’t want to be anybody’s muse, but we already are best friends,” she said. “We may never meet again, but we have been so real with each other that, in the moment, you are my bestie.”

With that, Paul got a warm feeling, and he had another epiphany that lit his way like Hero’s torch. “It isn’t how well or how long we know someone, he realized; it’s whether we truly connect with them.”

His mind was racing. “The quality of connection doesn’t depend on how a relationship is defined or whether sex is involved, or even the kind of love we feel. Our love-life is made up of pearls of connection. The trick is how to string them together with periods of beneficial, or at least non-destructive, disconnection.”

Paul’s mind was blown! That burst of ideas amalgamated thoughts he’d had before. His newfound clarity momentarily took him out of his own suffering, and he looked deeply into Bridgett eyes. He saw a sadness that he hadn’t detected earlier. “What about you?” he inquired.

“I’m an old soul’” she answered, “I will keep going until I raise my son, and I’ll worry about the rest then.”

“But you deserve to be loved by someone who will treasure you,” Paul insisted.

“You haven’t been paying attention Boomer, Bridgett teased. “You can’t possess the treasure and have the pirate’s adventure too.”

He knew what she meant - her son and his wife were treasure enough. His happiness was up to him accepting his life as it is. Deep down, he knew this all along, but it took a great teacher to explain it once again to such a recalcitrant student. He didn’t have or need a comeback. With that they both sensed that their time had passed. They stood up, shook hands, and melted into a long, spontaneous embrace. They exited the coffee shop together and took to the sidewalk in divergent directions. Despite the urge, neither of them looked back.

Home

Paul left the scene with some reawakened feelings. He felt a kind of love for Bridgett but didn’t feel a need to see her again. He had a fleeting thought about how soft and supple her body must feel, but it didn’t make him feel deprived like it sometimes did after these kinds of chance meetings. Reflecting on becoming such fast and deep friends made him glow. The noise in his head that whined that he wouldn’t experience her again was muted by the powerful wholeness of the incident.

As he walked toward his car, he remembered his first girlfriend. The other boys in his posse were always bragging about their sexual escapades, but he wasn’t ready for that. His parents were gone one weekend, and he and she were alone at his house. They laid on the couch, arms and legs wrapped around each other. He banished his buddies’ voices from his head that said, “You’re not a man if you don’t fuck her.” He held her until they fell asleep. It was perfect. It was enough!

A couple of years later when he lost his virginity, everything after became sexualized. Now, at 67, he finally understood what he cherished most about women. “They can live in the moment,” his lips whispered. He felt glad to be older and less driven by his libido. He felt lucky to have the ability to be friends with women again, to merge some of his ‘moments’ with theirs. In a brief spasm of grandiosity, he felt wiser than all the celebrated writers who have ever babbled on about lost innocence. “They are cynical fools,” his inner voice proclaimed, “innocence can never be lost, only stolen, and it can be reclaimed during interludes of selfless love.”

He harkened back to the day he fell in love with his partner for life. He was 31 then. She looked especially beautiful that day, but that wasn’t what pushed him over the precipice from attraction to love. One day after they had been in a relationship for a while, she was helping him move into his new apartment. They drove over a hundred miles to pick up some things he had stored at his parents’ house. Halfway back, the car broke down and they were stuck on the road for hours. She didn’t seem bothered at all. They talked until help arrived, and he noticed that he enjoyed the conversation so much that he experienced no impatience. For that one afternoon, Paul was able to live in the moment. He’d had many more of those hiatuses with her since then, but they sometimes got lost in the empty in-betweens. “How many intervals like that will I with her have before I die?” he mused. “As many as I can muster, I suppose.”

Paul arrived home after the love in his life was already asleep. He quietly laid down next to her and listened to her breathe. He imagined that each breath released a magic vapor that filled the air with calm and contentment. He gently draped his arm over her waist until he joined her in deep, restful slumber.

Meanwhile Bridgett had gotten home and was writing in her diary. “Met an interesting man today. He has some of the qualities that I could be drawn to. Unfortunately, he’s married, and he will probably be too old or dead by the time I’m ready to even consider a relationship. It’s better to bury him now and get the grieving over with.” Her grief lasted a day or two longer than she thought it would, but it brought her to the recognition that she had to cling a little less tightly to her son and open herself up to others a little more.

And thus, the story ends, and they lived separately, and mostly happily, ever after.

Epilogue

I promised to help you solve the mystery as to why these two kept the conversation going for as long as they did, but in the end, your interpretation is as good as mine. We are a complicated lot, and motivations are like countless spices, savory or bitter, ever flavoring our lives. Yet, I can’t help but think that part of the answer is that people need tiny tastes of love a la carte, including the occasional chance meeting, to decide when to devour life and when to let it pass by unsampled. That way, those disconnected in-betweens are almost bearable.