Missing: Myself

Parts of me have been missing for some time now and I need to get in touch with them. I'm not really sure how to go about doing that, but I know it does not involve the internet.

The parts that are missing are:

1) The part of me that drew and painted all the time.

2) The part of me that wrote: wrote stories, wrote poems, wrote novels, wrote songs.

3) The part of me that played guitar, ukulele and sang. Sang other people's songs. Sang my songs.

4) The part of me that skied and kayaked- the part of me that loved the feeling of motion over water, both liquid and frozen.

5) The part of me that dreamed dreams that were not stressful, scary, full of missing connections, engagements, appointments, of losing things, husbands, friends, myself.

I am missing a lot of parts. I know I've been barely keeping it together these days, and I'm not beating myself up over this. Yet. I know what I've been through these past few months, years, has been a nightmare, and it's little wonder why I had to draw myself inwards, not outwards. Now there's an image: myself inside of myself, trapped.

But now the excuses are gone. Booth is healing. He went in to work for the first time in almost two months today. "The Sperm Donor" or "Blob" (that is what I call my father) has been banished from my life, my cell phone, my psyche, which is much simpler to write than it is to accomplish. My brother, David can't handle the psychosis that Blob slings his way, so he calls me or texts me to dump it back in my lap, as if I know how to get rid of toxic waste, the latest radioactive crap being that Blob decided to inform the wonderful Ballard Landmark that he wanted to move out, then changed his mind (which happens practically every second of every day) but they accepted his "resignation" happily, and now he is buying a microscopic street level studio condo for more than it's worth, and less than what he has now in security and comfort, not to mention healthy meals and weekly cleaning services. He also told my brother that he wants tattoos on both his neck and his arm. Sure. Why not? Don't all 81 year olds get tattoos? I can't imagine what the images will be, or maybe I can. There is another image for you.

Sigh. Yes, this excrement is still going on, and I do feel more detached from it than I've felt in the past, but it still runs in the background like a computer virus, slowing things down and ruining my files.

So what am I going to do about these missing parts of me? I thought about writing letters to them, asking them to forgive me and to please come back.

I'm offering sacrifices, the biggest one being Facebook. I realize that it was a real comfort during all of the bleak moments and I needed the love and support of my friends to get through one crisis after another. But now it seems hollow and empty like a pretty shell that I don't need to collect right now. At this point I need to build a solid structure, a foundation for the future. I can allow myself a little "check-in" but where I really need to be is in my studio and office, at my computer and/or journal. (Like I am doing right now.)

For my missing art parts- I need to make myself draw and/or paint something every day even if it is just a doodle.

For my missing writing parts- I need to do this- what I am doing right now- and more.

For my missing music parts- I need to open those cases and tune those instruments and make some music- each day, even if it is just a few chords, or one song.

Now, I know I can't ski or paddle each day, but I need to treat myself to it when I can, and I need to keep doing my workout or walk each day, which I have been doing, which has kept me grounded and makes me feel strong and makes me happy that my clothing fits and helps me not worry about the time that my butt is in a chair.

The part of me that dreams will be harder. I think that is going to take longer to heal. But I can help it by reading good books before I go to bed and then hopefully dream of the good books that I will want to write, and then I will begin to feel whole again, and not just a collection of missing parts.

I truly hope this will work, but I understand that this will take time and practice... recovery can be slow, but in my heart I know it is what must be done, and it must be done with love.

I'm off to find myself. Hope to see you along the journey-

Nina

The Late Report: Holiday 2012 Update

Nina and Booth’s Heartfelt Update for 2012

(I apologize for the bad line breaks- I imported the following text and Blogger is not formatting it properly.)

It is with a huge sigh of relief that we are putting this past year to bed. We have had one of the worst

years in the history of our love and lives together, and we are bruised, battered and stitched up, but

we are still here to send our greetings- a bit late, but better than never!

2012 started out on a beautiful note as we celebrated my 50th birthday on the garden island of

Kauai. We flew home to Seattle and continued to provide live-in help for my father, who was still in

depression, although I had finally gotten him to see a psychiatrist. In June we moved him into the

upscale and fabulous Ballard Landmark Gencare retirement community. We did all the moving

ourselves, and I fixed up his apartment to make it a show place. After a few weeks my father thanked

us and called us angels. Then one month later, on July 4th, he started going into mania...and

within another month he had fired his doctor, started drinking and smoking pot, and turned

violently against us as we tried to guide him away from egregious errors of judgement. This ended

in a very ugly manner, and I have since had to “divorce” myself from not only my father, but from

my past as well, as this has changed my concept of my foundation in so many ways.

Our foundations were then rattled again by Booth’s declining health. On Labor Day weekend Booth

confessed to me that he thought that he may have had a mild heart attack while riding his bicycle up

a steep hill. That set us down a rocky avalanche chute that led us to his diagnosis of “left main

disease,” and that led to triple bypass open heart surgery on December 7th at Swedish Cherry Hill

Hospital. Surgery went well, but post-op did not. On December 12th I had to call 911 and Booth went

to the ER and back into the hospital with a collapsed right lung. He lost over 2 liters of blood and had

3 transfusions. Booth is now facing thoracic surgery with Dr. Ralph Aye to remove blood clots in the

pleural cavity on January 4th. Then we hope the recovery will truly begin. We are ever so grateful for

the amazing team at Swedish, especially Dr. Joseph Teply, the cardio-surgeon, Gil Friedlander, the

Physicans Assistant whose sister lives on Lummi Island, many amazing nurses- our favorite was

Ulf, who was from Germany and he made us laugh... and the Ballard Fire Department and paramedics

who were at our house in less than five minutes and saved Booth’s life. We didn’t get to celebrate

Christmas or New Year’s Eve, but we have all the gifts we need- each other.

Despite all the trauma, work has gone on... Booth continues to work with R.E.Lee International and

X2 Bio (new name) and I am working on my books in between all of the stress. My next book, “Once

Upon A Memory” will publish with Little, Brown in December ‘13. It is the first time I am not illustrating-

Renata Liwska did the incredible art. I am currently working on 3 new board books for

Chronicle Books- and other book projects for the future.

Here’s hoping that 2013 brings all of us excellent health, happiness, love and success!

Our Love,

Nina and Booth

For Better or Better

So much has happened since my last post. There is nowhere to begin except at the heart of the story. When I met my husband, Booth Buckley in January of 1989 in a bar in Atlanta, Georgia I never could have predicted that we would be married and living in the Northwest almost twenty-four years later, yet here we are. We have been through so much together both good and incredibly bad, and we have only grown stronger and more in love. When we eloped in September of 1994 we did so for two reasons: Booth was previously married in a Baptist Church in Alabama, and he did not want a church ceremony; I wanted a small ceremony but the only person who I truly wanted to be there was my mom and she was dead. I had spread my mom's ashes on Martha's Vineyard, her favorite place, so that was where we eloped to. The ceremony was very quick and the justice of the peace forgot to do "the vows" so we never said the "for better or worse, in sickness and in health, richer or poorer" part. We did say "I do."

We have embraced those vows, however, and we are tested again and again. Right now I am facing one of the scariest moments of my marriage. If I thought getting through the loss of my mom, my husband's diagnosis of celiac disease, the discovery and recovery of two of my stepsons addicted to heroin (now clean), the bipolar psychosis of my very egomaniacal father, were turbulent waters to navigate, I have just been hit by a rogue wave.

Booth has not been feeling good for some time. In September, around the time of the photo of him holding those roses, he started experiencing chest pain while riding his bicycle up hills. A long story short: On November 20th we went in for an angiogram after trying just beta blockers and statin drugs, and we thought maybe the cardiologist would put in a stent or two, and we were hit by the wave. Booth has "left main disease" (which is genetic in his case) and he has 70% to 90% blockage in two dangerous places. This Thursday he goes in for open-heart triple bypass surgery.

We are very lucky. We did catch this in time. We have a great surgeon and one of the best hospitals for cardiac care in the world, here in Seattle. We have insurance; we are not fully insured being both self-employed, but we have always maintained our individual healthcare and now it has proven itself worthy. We have the love of so many friends and almost all of our family. The sad truth is that my very own father wishes us dead. This is mental illness speaking, and in this time of our stress I have let him go. It is the only choice I have. I did what I could to help, and now all I care about is my beautiful husband.

Thursday will be a very difficult day for me. I just want the 4-6 hours of surgery to be behind us, and the long recovery to begin. Booth so looks forward to a new lease on life, and so do I. I have book projects piled up and waiting for me to work on- three new toddler books for Chronicle Books, and I'm very excited about my 2013 release from Little, Brown & Company Books for Young Readers, "Once Upon A Memory," written by me and illustrated by Renata Liwska. I want my books to be back fully in my life and my heart, but first and foremost, I want Booth's heart to be better- better than ever.

All of this that we are going through has shown me the tenuous fragility of life and has highlighted only what is important. The Beatles really did get it right when they sang, "All You Need is Love." I have love. I give love. I hope for love. I don't need anything more- except for the man I love to get through this next week and onward.

With Love,

Nina

A Recipe for Disaster...and Fruit Roll

If you googled "fruit roll recipe" and found this post, you may be disappointed. It's not a recipe in the traditional sense, so I apologize to you and hope you come back and visit some other time. Those of you who like non-traditional recipes, read on.

This is a recipe. It is a recipe for how to turn your life into a living hell.

Recipe for Disaster:

Ingredients:
One Bipolar Father, age 80
One Altruistic Daughter and Son-in-law, ages 50 and 57

Place one Bipolar Father, in a depressed state, in the home of One Altruistic Daughter and Son-in-law. Provide love, warmth, security, untangle all financial, personal, and physical messes for one year. Move Bipolar Father, still in a depressed state, into an upscale retirement community one mile from One Altruistic Daughter and Son-in-law's home. Add some summer sunshine and stimulation and agitate.

Remove Bipolar Father, now in a manic state, and let him loose in the Ballard Community where he will start drinking, smoking illegal substances, spending money with reckless abandon, becoming delusional and try to give massive sums of money away to complete strangers, while believing that he is more creative and talented than Leonardo Da Vinci and that he will sell t-shirts he has scribbled on for $1500 each.

Bipolar Father will then stir up clouds of resentment, hostility, verbal and written threats towards Altruistic Daughter and Son-in-law because they try to cool down overheated Bipolar Father and prevent him from making irreversible errors of judgement.

Let Bipolar Father boil over, and step back. Be aware of burning sensations as Bipolar Father takes a flame thrower and turns it on Altruistic Daughter and Son-in-law attempting to turn them into Creme Brulée as he spits and slobbers foaming remarks of utter hatred and vicious epithets.

At this point in the recipe, the Altruistic Daughter may crumble, but if the timing is right, the Son-in-law will drive her to their cottage on Lummi Island, where she will soak in the hot tub, pick apples and blackberries and make fruit roll in her kitchen.

The kitchen view will revive her. Friends will support her and show her love. The fruit roll will come out perfect and delicious. 

The Bipolar Father will continue to shoot flames and will attempt to destroy the Altruistic Daughter and Son-in-law who saved his life. He will stew in his mental illness. One day in the future he will be cremated, (as was his wish, when the Altruistic Daughter helped him create a Will, that he will now leave her out of) and only then will the recipe be done.

Note: It is my recommendation that you do not attempt this recipe. It will only lead to a terrifying and upsetting life. However the fruit roll is highly recommended. 

About 18 smallish apples (Spartan is what I have)

1 32 oz yogurt container of blackberries

1/2 inch cinnamon stick

2 or 3 TBS sugar

A little water

You will need a food mill for this recipe. In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, place the apples- quartered (leave the peels and cores in)- add the cinnamon stick, sugar and the water. Cover and cook over medium-low heat, checking and stirring so the apples don't stick to the bottom. You are making applesauce. You may need to add a little more water if the mixture is too thick. Keep cooking for about 20 to 30 minutes until the apples are all softened. 

Over a large bowl, put the blackberries through the food mill with the finest mesh screen. Clean the food mill, and then put the applesauce through it into the same bowl. (Keep cleaning out the peels and seeds into your compost bucket as you go.) Then whisk the applesauce-blackberry mixture into a cohesive whole. 

Lightly oil your food dehydrator plastic sheets, and using a spatula, evenly spread the blackberry-applesauce mixture on the sheets. I got 6 sheets worth out of the recipe. Run the dehydrator 15 hours- or until the fruit roll is completely dry. Pull off the dried roll, cut into 8 slices for each sheet and wrap individually in saran wrap. Store in airtight container or Ziploc gallon bag. Will keep for a long time. 

Enjoy the little things in life, especially when your own father hates you for all the good things you did

with love,

Nina

Getting Grounded

You may have noticed that I haven't posted for a while. Maybe you think that I've been off traveling the world, or perhaps writing that middle grade novel, YA memoir, stack of picture books that have been sitting in my journal on my ever-lit-back-burner-eternal-flame of creative wonders-waiting-to-be-manifested. I wish I could say that was so. It's summer. Time of long languid days, frivolity, friends, outdoor grilling, right? What did you do with your summer vacation? Remember that first essay you had to write when you came back to school? This year my essay would have probably sent me to the school psychologist. No one would believe that it happened. I must have made it up. 

Not wanting to bore you with the details, I will condense it for you as best I can: 

Since I last posted:

I had the flu. I had lovely company from Austin, Texas visiting about a week after the flu started. I lost my voice. My brother moved in with us in the city. My brother was supposed to find a place to live. He wound up in our home for a month. He didn't like the bed. (My father took my good bed to his new apartment a half mile away when he moved out in June.) I had to buy a new bed and put it together with Ikea instructions and the flu. I had to buy bedding for the bed. My father's mania escalated. He called me every day, sometimes up to six times per day. I started letting it all go to voice mail and tried calling back every other day, but wound up having to just walk over to his place as he continued covering every square inch of wall space with photos, captions written on tape, drawings on t-shirts... and he started planning an exhibit in a store on his block. My father also decided to attend a Presbyterian church, to produce two films: one written by a Mexican waiter in his retirement community, the other by another resident- which needs to be filmed in Israel in the year 1AD, and he- my father- thinks he will get an arts channel show on himself, a lifetime achievement Oscar®; he wants to sue a number of people, and he wants a kitten, a woman, and... he wants to buy my house, which is not for sale, by the way. Plus he will get me on his arts show, and he has told me that I will be a producer of all sorts of things. 

That's just about my immediate family.

Then there has been my husband's health. We are now on a new diet adventure and trying to cut out high cholesterol food, so I have been trying to figure out how to bake gluten-free and fat-free... and at the same time my brother-in-law, a sweet, smart, respected judge, was viciously attacked at his home by a stranger wielding a glass container of sulphuric acid, (there is just too much of a horror story to go into here) and my dear mother-in-law lost her "boyfriend"Dale, a sweetheart of a man, to cancer... 

Yes. All this since the last post. 

Needless to say I've been wrung out and torn to shreds. I can't seem to figure out where I left my life, or who ran off with it. Thankfully there is our cottage on Lummi Island, where for the past month each weekend I've been doing almost nothing but processing all the fruit and vegetables we grew. Canning, dehydrating and decanting things like a homesteader on steroids. Use it or lose it. But after this weekend when I pickled and canned beets, made fig jam, blackberry-Gravenstein apple fruit leather, froze blackberries, picked sugar snap peas and plums, and made a plum tart- I snapped. The weather had been picture perfect, just like that photo of my neighbor Michael's sailboat: clear, calm, sunny, warm and crisp. On Sunday night I told my husband that we weren't leaving. One more day... I just needed one more day to try to "not do anything."

So I did. But I didn't do nothing. I went for a long walk on the beach. I looked at Michael's sailboat. I marveled at a single piece of eel grass glistening and glowing in the morning light, slithering across wet stones. I hunted for agates and found one that looked like a belly button... and I found this:

A tiny snail, impossibly orange-red, somehow surviving in a tidal zone where large rocks routinely roll and tumble and crash into each other. And then, just before I saw one of my island friends- who is a much better photographer than me- I saw that the beach had sent me a message:

Kisses and hugs. Hugs from friend, Cheryl. A tail wag from dog, Max. A short, but reassuring conversation. Some grounding. The sense that there is balance out there and it can be restored.

Back at the house, I looked at my truck. It's twenty-two years old now. It lives on the island and it's growing moss and lichen, but it still runs. Some day, I'd like that to be me. Grounded on the island. Sitting still in one place long enough to grow moss, but to still run... 

For now, I'll take a day like this when I can get it and then I'll run back to the city. Back to my crazy life. I hope that there will be time for more posts more often. I hope that my father will find his own grounding and not keep sucking the energy out of me like a hypomanic vampire. 

Maybe then I'll be able to get back to my real bliss. 

Books.

They're waiting for me.

And thank you for waiting for me, too.

With Love,

Nina

Off His Rocker: Two Sides of One Man

This is the Ikea love seat I bought and assembled for my father. Maybe I should say this "was" the Ikea love seat. The one I bought looked like this:

In June I moved my father into his lovely new apartment in an upscale retirement community in our neighborhood. I had moved him out of his decaying house in upstate New York a year before that, saving him from certain death. He had been in depression for almost seven years and remained that way even as I fed him and brought him back to life in my own house. He did nothing. He sat in silence and read books, magazines, listened to the radio, and wouldn't change his clothing or shower. For a year he did not even look at the flat files full of his art or the boxes of photos that I packed moved and unpacked and moved from house to moving pod and moving pod to my house. 

The inertia was unnerving, as was his permanent pose, arms folded, legs extended, slouched down, a vacant stare as my husband and I did everything without one single sign of gratitude from him. We were drained and exhausted, but relieved when he agreed, albeit begrudgingly to allow us to move him into this new community.

We became sherpas again, packing and moving, giving him our furniture - because he said he "wanted it," running all over Puget Sound buying things he would need, setting up his new home, gently telling him that being around people his own age would be better for him. (And there was free cable, wifi, a swimming pool, a movie theater, and wonderful shops within walking distance.) 

For the first month he remained silent, but slowly started to show appreciation for our efforts. He started to make friends. He called me on the phone, which in of itself was a small clue. He never called when he was in depression. I had to call him. But then, around the 4th of July, there was a small spark that I knew was about to ignite. He made a pun.

One pun? What's to worry, you might ask. That one play on words (that I can no longer recall) was a blazing flashing red light that went on in my head, displaying this word: "mania." He's going into mania. My father has untreated bipolar disorder; he has had it his entire life, but I finally figured out what it was about fifteen years ago when I fell into a clinical depression and started reading about mental illness and mood disorders. I finally understood why my father turned everything I said into a pun. I also realized that he was two completely different people and that he didn't remember what he did or said from one swing to the other.

This time I got to witness the change with my own eyes and ears and it was shocking.

In a matter of days, my father went from not changing his clothing, not shaving, to being all about hygiene. He started talking incessantly, making constant jokes and puns, and picked up things that he was doing in his last round of mania seven years ago. He started taping things all over the walls and writing captions on everything... and he painted the love seat.

That was the beginning of him calling me up to a half dozen times each day and/or night. He told me before that he didn't want a television, and now the one I did buy him was too small and he kept doing things to the remote that "crashed the TV," and he needed us to fix it.

He started calling everyone from his past, and he started pulling out "pie in the sky" projects that he created in previous manias, wanting to know if I thought he could sell them now. (One of them was an Elvis Presley coloring book. I told him that he'd need permission from the Presley estate and he dropped that idea.)

The list of changes are mind-boggling... being around someone in mania is also mind-strangling. Each sentence he spews might contain about twenty different subjects. And try to get a word in edgewise...forget about it! We kept telling him how to work the TV remote. He hears, but he won't listen.

If I thought caring for him in depression was bad, this is ten times ten-thousand times worse. I have to screen his calls, and maybe for once it was a blessing that I got the flu, which gave me laryngitis... I so need to attend to my own life and my writing and illustrating. He doesn't see that. But I've taken in another wayward sailor: my brother is now temporarily living with us while he looks for a place to live near his new job at Boeing. He's having to help with our father at the moment while I'm recovering.

But this is just the beginning of the wild manic ride. My father has attached himself to a whole new world of folks who live in his community. He has stories for days. He is no longer my father- he's my fodder.

He's off his rocker, and all I can do is take notes.

With Love,
Nina

Gesture Writing

I've been starting the arduous process to organize and move my studio from the city to the island. This has taken me on so many memory trips as I've leafed through my past, going through the layers of sediment and sentiment and discovering treasures long forgotten. As I've dug through my art school journals, I've rediscovered some of my old gesture drawings from figure drawing classes. These are very quickly sketched, usually thirty seconds or at most a minute. They make you see the very essence of things.

All of this processing of old imagery and experiences apparently seeped its way into my subconscious and was reborn in a vivid dream that combined old elements from art school in a new way. In my dream one of the models we used to draw in freshman figure drawing class became a real person to me- in a way he never was before. He began to tell me his story, even though I am fairly certain he is long deceased. It was so compelling that I had to write it down. Quickly.

There are so many reasons why we write. Most of the time we build on things little by little, combining pieces, forming a whole that gradually takes shape. The pieces can be paragraphs, poems, descriptions, or short essays.

I consider this to be "gesture writing" akin to gesture drawing. It is the essence of something. A warm up. An exercise in the durability and staying power of an idea.

I'm not sure where this will lead. Perhaps there will be a collection of these "gestures." But I am going to share this short piece here. I have changed the names, of course. But if you attended Syracuse University's College of Art in the late 70's, early 80's, this will bring back memories, no doubt.

If you feel so inclined, let me know what you think...

With Love,
Nina

TAKING IT OFF

He had climbed the stairs, all one hundred and nine of them, in a trance, as he made his way from Upstate Med down Irving to Crouse Hall. He didn’t feel the biting wind, nor did he pay any attention to the bloody red carpet in Crouse which created a womb-like interior. Art and music students swam by, flowing like storm run-off, holding portfolios and instrument cases like flotation devices as they made their way past Winged Victory who guarded the staircase leading to the upper floors.

He felt invisible and numb as he ascended the stairs to the fourth floor. The red carpet ended at the threshold to an open door, exposing the well-worn and stained wooden tongue-in-groove flooring littered with the odd-shaped benches which looked like a lower-case letter “h” that seemed to make no sense as furniture until they were straddled by unruly and unripe freshmen resting huge Masonite boards on the high side. He ignored the arriving students and paid less attention to the enormous drafty windows showing dark clouds gathering over the dingy expanse of Syracuse which had been in decline pretty much since the closing of the Erie Canal. It made no impression on him that he was standing in what used to be the tallest building around, an imposing and impressive Romanesque-Gothic revival style castle of a building designed and completed by a man named Archimedes Russell in 1889. It was under-heated and uncomfortable. That he noticed.

He barely looked up and nodded his head in gruff acknowledgment of the instructor standing next to the desk as he made his way into the closet in the corner. He didn’t know the instructor’s name. They were all the same: Steven, Karen, Roger, Carl… they didn’t care about him. He was just a body. Practically a cadaver. He overheard one of the freshmen say, “Dick Wicket? Do we have Dick Wicket today?” He waited for the snickering, which always followed, then he quietly removed his clothing, taking everything off except for his expandable metal wristwatch, folded the vestments carefully, and exchanged them with the polyester floral short kimono-style bathrobe he had in a bag, wrapping it around himself, looking like he had escaped from a spa for deranged women.

For three hours he exposed himself: every wrinkle, every crease, every line and bony protrusion, along with his sullen complexion and general flaccidity. He wore his skin like a suit of armor, deflecting intense stares as freshmen eyes probed his every orifice, attempting to transfer it in charcoal to large sheets of paper. He had suffered worse indignities in Vietnam. This was nothing. He shifted his weight, changing positions every minute as the freshman warmed up drawing gestures; lines that were not meant to be him, but to suggest him in an abstract way.

The poses became longer. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. He could hear his watch ticking, the sound of charcoal and conté crayon scratching, the instructor Steven, or was it Roger, saying “nice,” or “that foreshortening doesn’t work.” He could feel his leg going to sleep, numbness and tingling traveling upwards as he tried to not think about how hard the chair was that he was sitting on, draped only with a flimsy piece of cloth- so that they could draw the folds. He didn’t move, except for his eyes, as he cast them downward, trying to view his watch, waiting for the exact moment when he could break the pose. Relief washed over him as a fifteen minute break was announced. The freshman ran to the basement of Hendrick’s Chapel or The Blinker to buy hot coffee and honey buns. He put on his robe and went into the closet to smoke. The next pose would be an hour. He craved warmth- more of what was slowly dissipating from his nervous system, and a space heater, too. Why didn’t they provide at least the latter? Perhaps it was considered a fire hazard in such an old historic building, or were they that cheap or insensitive to the very nakedness his job required? He tried to feel the heat of the jungle, tried to remember the sweat rolling down his back. He didn’t want to go back there. Cold was preferable.

The one hour pose was not as torturous for him as it seemed to be for some of the others. He didn’t know them very well, the others. There was George. George was all energy and muscle. George would slap him on the back, “Yo, Dick, whassup?” He didn’t know what to say. George was a dancer- a modern dancer. He was black. He was the only one who refused to pose naked. He wore his leotard and often, tights, sometimes striped basketball socks pulled up to his knees. “Shits too cold in there. They don’t pay me enough to strip,” he’d say, “you gotta stand up to them, Dick. Say something.” He didn’t say anything. Not to George, not to the instructors, not to himself. George was from another planet- he brought his own music. He talked to the students, ran around and looked at what they drew, engaged them. He practically taught the class, taught the instructor. “See where my weight is,” he’d say, pointing to his quadriceps, “the weight is on this leg- show that weight with your lines.”

He didn’t care what they drew. He didn’t want to see it. He was there but not there. Frozen in the pose drifting in and out of consciousness while they sketched away, dreaming of the time being up, the darkness of night, and the line the next morning as he waited to get his dose. Unlike the freshmen being taught to use their kneaded erasers to remove areas of the charcoal to create depth and mood, he was working on erasing everything. Everything except the image of him, Dick Wicket, on their papers. He couldn’t erase that. Somewhere in the small recesses of his anesthetized ego, he knew that those drawings were the only proof that he existed.

 ©Nina Laden 2012 

Do not copy or share without written permission.