He is a painter and he has asked me many times to pose for one of his
pieces and I have told him many times no, confining him to still lives.

He still lives next door to me. This suburban street just like an
apartment hallway. This apartment hallway just like a suburban street.
So often I can’t keep things straight but I know for sure that he still
lives next door.

Still lives have become a specialty of his. Don’t bother commissioning
him for a portrait of your favorite great aunt. I’m sure by now that
portraiture has become like suicide for him. But maybe that’s just
wishful thinking. He still asks me to come to his studio one of these
days. I say, how about coffee instead?

Didn’t Van Gogh once do a painting of a café? You see, I’m not
completely ignorant about art. However, he balks at Van Gogh. Van Gogh is overrated. Everyone has their own overrated artist. My sister has Dali. My friend has Escher. I have Rembrandt. He has Van Gogh. He likes his coffee black, just like my soul. The cup that I drank from has become his newest masterpiece. A riveting still life.

Still, life cannot be blocked or barricaded, but I can still say no to
him for the umpteenth time. How about a movie instead? We cop out of
going to the theater, which he calls the cinema, and opt for a rental.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I have never seen the movie and I
still haven’t. I fell asleep beside him as the movie started. Maybe he
fell asleep also. Or maybe he forgot me, engrossed in the film. Or
maybe he held me. I have no way of knowing.

He punched me out of frustration. Do I know how difficult it is to
capture the emotions of a shattered vase? No, I don’t. He wants my
face. He wants my body, my hair, and my eyes for himself. He wants
every last expression. He wants me immortalized in his art. He wants
me. Why won’t I say yes? Just a portrait. Just an image. He practically
has it all figured out in his mind’s eye. My eye is bruising from his
rage. Red. Purple. Blue. He has paints for all these colors. I push him
out of my house. I force him out of my apartment and slam the door.

He never apologized about my eye. I don’t expect him to. Staring at the
mirror with an ice bag in hand I can see that I look better with it.
Perhaps a bit more handsome. I look more like myself because of a black
eye. My black eye. Proof that I am alive. Proof that I still live.
Proof that my life isn’t so still.

I sit still in his studio for hours while he works fervently with his
brush. Sometimes he stops and steps away. He peers at me and I give him a look that asks, Well, how does it look? or Are we finished yet? He
just smirks and disappears behind the canvas. My eye is dark and
swollen and throbbing and the room is cluttered with countless still
lives reminiscent of another age.

He still lives next door to me. Still, life is dubious for me. He
assures me that it isn’t. He assures me that we shouldn’t feel dubious.
H has captured an evening of me sitting still for hours and I have
never felt more kinetic. There’s a heat there, a thermal expansion, an
external combustion that occurs whenever I’m around him. We are a
silver six shooter. We aimed and ignited an explosion into the night
sky.

That night, we burned all of his still lives and nothing could
contain us.