Dull Florescents by Trisky

He looks bored, like he'd rather be anywhere but here, or more likely in bed, sleeping, where I probably should have left him. I would have, but then all I would hear for the next week is how he's not a five year old that needs to be dressed, and what's so wrong with what he wears anyway, it's what he's comfortable in, I need to just accept that, accept him. All of this over a shirt or a pair of pants I may have picked up along the way, because I thought it would look good on him. As simple as that, no other reason, but with Justin there's always some deeper motivation, something I'm not sharing, some hidden insecurity I manage to find just the right way to seize on, without even trying. Some way that he thinks, I wish he were, that I refuse to verbalize. I don't blame him, I certainly don't make it easy on him. But he has to stop these guessing games, stop looking for the monsters under the bed, that he's sure are going to swallow him up one day and spit him out into the cold, dark night. I know what that monster looks like, I see him in the mirror every day. Funny shit, that. Coming from me, of all people. The only thing that seems to interest him is the curve of my back. I can tell from the way he's staring at the musculature that he's already drawing a picture in his head. He's memorizing my stance and the way the god awful fluorescent lights are casting ugly shadows that make my skin look damaged and weary. I fucking hate dressing rooms and having to try clothes on, in them. I know what I look like, I don't need funhouse mirrors to tell me, from every angle, just how much lower my ass is getting, and how much more my stomach is starting to protrude. He'll memorize every single inch, and put it on paper in some form, so I can be constantly reminded of how he sees me, and in this room, all he can possibly see is every scar, wrinkle and sag. I don't care how beautiful you are, fluorescent lighting kills whatever attractiveness you might have had before you walked under them. No wonder why he looks bored he's seen the same routine a hundred times, me pulling at pants, adjusting my package to get them to fit just right, trying on seven shirts in seven different colors and hating every single one of them, because these lights makes everything look ugly. He's an artist, he should know about lighting, and how it can trick your eye into seeing something that's not really there. You would think he'd take that into account when he goes to sit down later and mark this moment for life on one of his sketchpads. But I know Justin, and if there's one place he's totally honest, it's in his art, he won't let himself lie and when he shows it to me later, I'll put on a smile and tell him it's wonderful as always, because he is a goddamn artist, an amazing one, at that. His talent and how he uses it, is a form of art, all unto itself. Well to me it is. He is. I'll forever be immortalized in stages, in Justin's eyes, for all the world to see, and I can't stop him, or deny him the pleasure he gets from something as simple as drawing a picture, because for him, it's not that simple. He's capturing something, some feeling that he can't express any other way, his own personal form of communication. I see it in every stroke that he creates, this is you Brian, this is how I see you, and his work is sometimes angry, sometimes haunted, sometimes sad, sometimes happy, but always beautiful, no matter how ugly the subject, it's always a thing of beauty. And I hate that, hate that his head is so clouded by his own imagination, that he can't see how fucking atrocious his choice for a muse really is, standing under these warm, lying lights. I hate how honest and naive his art is, because it's so far from the truth, from reality, that he'd rather deceive himself into believing it exists, than to actually draw what's there. How does he not see what's there? Can't he see the scar on my back from when I caught myself on the hanger when I was six, the way my hair doesn't grow quite as quickly as it used to, or the way my shoulders are starting to give me a case of humpback. He has to see all of this, has to see how these unforgiving fluorescent lights embrace every little flaw and throw them back in your face, so you will never forget that you've brought it all on yourself. How does he sit here, every damn time we go through this, me trying on clothes he has never showed even a slight interest in, trying not to fidget out of boredom and finding some remote little escape hatch in his head? Why does he do it? What is he going to get out of this, other than a few new shirts he'll throw in the hamper and forget all about anyway? What is so fucking interesting about watching me try clothes on, in the worst lighting imaginable that lets his brain create these pictures that will forever be burned on pages and canvases, forever remind me of who I used to be... I look at him, at his concentration, at his focus and I don't get it. I don't understand what it is he sees, how he can change an entire piece by just shifting my body an eighth of an inch in another direction, how none of his pieces ever look like anything he's done in the past, how it's always all new to him. How *I'm* always all new to him, no matter how many times we've done this. What happens when his work starts to resemble what I really look like, ten years from now, two months from now? When he takes the blinders off his eyes and sees me standing in a pool of fluorescent lights and he sees those scars, and that falling ass? What happens when it's not just watching me get dressed that bores him? What happens to his work then? He looks up, looks at me in the mirror, watching him, and he smiles that fucking smile that kills me, when I'm caught. I'm transfixed at the way everything is always written all over his face, his appreciation, his pride, his glee at having caught me in the simple act of staring at him, his... everything. I look at him, all 21 years of him today, in his boring little khaki's and I know there's not a fluorescent bulb in the world that will ever dull the beauty in that smile, and I simply smile back.

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