Fire in the Belly - Act 3: Roger Gets A Break
It was mid March when I met Melanie. She was standing in front of me, waiting in line at Joe’s Fish House. She caught me looking at her, and she smiled as we made eye contact.
“Hi.” I said.
“Hi back.” She said.
There was a tense quiet. She paid for her coffee and turned around. She smiled again. I moved to the side, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. It was just another case of misreading the situation; I do that all the time. By the time I’d paid for my food she was bundled up and out the door. I followed her into the blustery night as she hugged herself and made a bee line for the front door of The Belly. Taking the stairs two at a time, I lost sight of her after the first flight. The stairwell was tall and reverberant, brick walls covered with closetsfull of paint coats, stairs steeper than normal and concrete. Roger and I were on the second floor, at the far end from the stairs and freight elevator. The hallway was narrow and high. The bathroom was utterly disgusting. The building itself was really big - a one acre footprint, with 15 foot ceilings and patchworks of drywall. We called it The Belly, but we should have called it The Hole.
As I approached the studio I heard music and voices. Both were vaguely familiar but unplaceable. When I opened the door I saw Melanie and Roger standing by my work bench. They looked surprised to see me.
We said our hellos for the second time and Roger introduced us. We discussed art, we discussed music, we discussed Joe’s, the fish joint next door.
“Do you eat there often?” She asked.
“Yea, I guess I do.” I said.
“It’s OK,” said Roger, “it won’t kill you unless you eat there more than once in your life.”
They laughed. I took off my coat and threw it on the couch. I tore open the plastic lined paper bag. Even with the plastic lining the bag was soaked through with oil.
“Hey,” I offered sardonically, “fish is brain food.”
They laughed, and that’s how I met Melanie. I thought she’d change my life, but it turned out I never really cared for her all that much. When she finally moved out it was my idea, I was just surprised that she agreed with me.
“Who’s this?” I asked her, smiling and shoving a thumb at the stereo.
She pointed to Roger.
“Five Style,” he smiled, “they’re a local act.”
“Oh yea?” I said. “It’s not too bad.”
As the conversation moved on it became clear that Melanie and Roger had only just met. He had taken his slides into a River North gallery, and Mel was working there as an intern. It’s always been hard for me to understand why someone would major in art history, but then again, everybody’s into something different. No surprise that she loved his work - everyone did. She paid passing respect to my end of the studio, but it was clear that she was there for Roger. I finished my dinner and set about making sawdust.
Roger ended up in a group show as a result, but that didn’t happen until July. By then Melanie and I had been seeing each other regularly, and we were just a couple months away from moving in together.
My funk began to melt away with the grey snow. I held on to enough of it to reinforce my cynicism, which angered Roger, and seemed to amuse Melanie.
“Cynicism,” professed Roger, “is truly the worst form of self-indulgence.”
“My cynic,” Melanie would grin, “He’s seen too much of the real world.”
I snorted at them both. What other antidote is there for naivete? I get so sick of these idealistic twits with their high school notions of creative fulfillment and purpose. The art world is just another marketplace, I say, and these precious little objects are nothing more than trophies for the rich.
Roger Murray never lost one drop of blood in the service of his muse. He never wept, not even a single tear. He was never confronted with the horror of losing track of your vision, because he never had one. He was a blind esthete, operating on instinct. There was nothing intellectual, conceptual or metaphorical in his work. That’s why his titles were so corny, and that’s why Melanie was so important to his development professionally. She’s the one who told him to leave each of them “Untitled,” and add a number. It was a deft move, and seemed to be the one missing element in the mix. These days Rog is a professional artist, with works at Art Expo and everything. Someone just told me that he’s featured in an upcoming issue of the Chicago Tribune Magazine.
You’d think that all this would have filled me with anger, but I didn‘t, and don’t care. Why should I? He’s still an idiot. And I know the truth: Roger Murray is a poseur. I did get pissed off when Mel would defend him, or compare the two of us, but the anger never lasted. After all, I was the one who was giving it to her.
In truth that was all I was really after. It’s true that at first I had fantasies of us living out our days together, pillars of the Chicago art scene. She’d be a powerful dealer, or perhaps run the Art Institute, and I’d be the world famous artist, headed for the Venice Biennalle. But over time I came to lose respect for her esthetic sensibilities. How can you really have valid opinions on art if you’ve never been through the process? She never bled for art, either. She was an intern at an upscale trinket gallery, attempting to tell me what was what. Fuck that.
Next week: Act 4: I Discover Urban Archeology
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