
X-Men's Rogue - my favorite superhero of all time.
Me. I am still figuring out my superpowers, but whatever. Curious? Keep reading.
At a friend’s recent birthday/engagement, I met this dude I was supposed to work for once upon a time. My friend tried to broker me working as his assistant, since I’ve so much experience running an art gallery and all </sarcasm> . This artist basically wanted a slave, and even though I needed money quite badly at the time, I simply couldn’t find the desire to work with/for him. I’d never met the guy, but kept getting a really weird vibe whenever we talked on the phone. Long story short, a few days before I was supposed to go over and “slave about”, I got a very convenient food poisoning, and that entire affair came to nothing.
I had no idea I was going to meet him at the party, but meet him I did, and that weird vibe only intensified. Considering he’d never seen me before, his jaw fairly dropped when we were introduced. (Does someone want to explain to me why my opinion of myself is so drastically different from that of the opposite sex?) He immediately asked me if I could work with him again, but the answer was an immediate no. We barely exchanged a few words, and I thought the episode over and done with.
A week or two passed, and I received a phone call. Would I be interested in posing for him? “Very kosher, I swear!” That’s when my vanity came out to play big time.
Both my mother and my aunt have had their portraits painted by artists, who were complete unknowns at the time. Right now these portraits of theirs could sell for a tidy sum involving quite a few zeros. Money held no interest for me, but I’ve always desperately wanted my portrait painted. Modeling is modeling, but I’ve never been drawn, and I really wanted that portrait. So when the Artist offered, I was flattered, weird vibe be damned (remind me to listen to my intuition all the time in the future, and agreed to pose. I’d seen some of his work before and it’s very pop-art, alive, vibrant, psychedelic almost, and he is definitely going places. My vanity was going places too. I was going to be immortalized, god damn it!
He bombarded me with texts and phone calls before our appointed sitting. I kept stressing that for me it was just a job, but kept getting a very uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t hearing me. I always go to these things alone, but for the first time in my life started thinking about bringing a chaperone. I dismissed all of these fears as irrational, and got ready for Saturday. Doomsday came and off I went to Hannibal Lecter’s studio.
When I arrived, he showed me some of his work, reviews, etc., and I started thinking that I once again blew things out of proportion. I was especially fascinated by the concept of the show I was going to be featured in so prominently. (Not just one portrait, incidentally, but a whole series, and I get to keep one. Hee!) Basically I am this one human, who is surrounded by life-size superhero figurines. Very macabre, tongue-in-cheek, and dark. In other words, right up my alley. SIGN ME UP!
I change and posing begins. The first hour was pretty awkward, and I was talking about anything and everything. “Oh, you’ve horoscopes pinned up in the bathroom. You’re into astrology?” I went into politics, religion, pretty much anything I could think of. What was the Artist thinking of? “So…how serious are you and your dance partner? Are you only dance partners or…you know…partners partners?”
I cut him off by saying that the situation is complicated. Does the boy quit? LIKE HELL! You could have set the clock by the number of times he asked me about my personal life, asking me out to dinner/coffee/drinks, so on and so forth. This one-sided duologue while I am posing. Not to toot my own horn, but those pictures (he is going to be drawing from them) came out pretty awesome </toot>, but good picture or no good picture, I was so idiotically uncomfortable, I was ready to run out then and there, genius artist and being immortalized be damned.
The highlight was when he asked me if I’d be interested in posing nude. *headdesk* Next time my gut tries to tell me something, I swear I will always listen to it!
I keep thinking, what’s wrong with me? Here is a guy, who is perfectly charming (only he makes my skin crawl, but I am sure plenty of girls would find him attractive), who is ridiculously into me, is talented and creative. In other words, everything that I am looking for, only when he tried to embrace me at the end of the sitting, I jumped away. Literally. Oy! Does he stop asking me out after this? HAH!
The show opens in two weeks. I am dying to know what the work looks like, and am not a little scared that he will probably make me look like this.