“They’re…fine,” I say, hedging slightly. Nobody likes an overly enthusiastic self-critic. “My work is better now. But it was good enough to get me in here, so…they’re fine, I suppose. A solid foundation.”
“A solid foundation,” Wyatt echoes.
I nod. “Everyone starts somewhere.”
“Is that what you really believe? That these are only worth the price of admission to Parker? Nothing more?”
I steal a sidelong glance at him, but he isn’t watching me; he’s still looking at the photographs. I shrug one shoulder and wish I knew what he wanted me to say.
“They’re fine,” I tell him a second time. “But this one has tonality issues, see? And this one…the focus isn’t right. I should have cropped it a little smaller, cut out some of this negative space. They have flaws.”
“All art is flawed,” Wyatt says, sounding surprisingly sage for a guy with neck tats and a penchant for arguing about sparkling water. “You can’t chase perfection. You just have to figure out what you wanna say, and then say it.”
I keep looking down at my work, the portfolio I labored over for months back in California. Once upon a time, I thought these pictures said everything there was to say about me. Taking them had felt like opening a vein and bleeding out in public. Like everyone could look at these photos and know who I was down to the core, see every muddy, rotten-apple dark spot of my junkie self.
“What do these photos say, Ely?” Wyatt says softly.
I don’t know how to answer him.
Eventually he leans over and shifts the photos around slightly, showing some of the images that had been partly concealed under the corners and edges of their fellows. “Do you want me to tell you what I see?”
I nod again, my jaw clenched so hard my cheeks hurt.
“I see someone who was hurting. Someone who did things they weren’t proud of but who wanted to be better. Someone who fought as hard as they could to claw their way back to sanity. And maybe it’s not perfect yet, maybe they’re still ashamed of what they used to be, but it’s still something.”
I force a shaky, shattered laugh out of my chest. “You’re like a bootleg therapist.”
He laughs too, although Wyatt’s laugh sounds richer, more like it belongs to an actual human. “Nah, I’m just an ex-junkie who likes looking at sad pictures. But I’m really good at looking at sad pictures, so when I tell you these are great, you ought to believe me.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him. I can imagine the expression on his face—gentle, considerate—and something in me feels like if I were to see that right now, I’d crumble. All the flimsy threads holding me together would snap. I don’t know who I’d be then, without those restraints, and I don’t want to find out.
“I’ll do my best,” I say instead, and push a photo from one spot to another on the table as if I’m looking at it more closely. Really it’s just to have something to do with my hands.
Wyatt shifts away, moving somewhere behind me. I hear the rustle of fabric, and when I do finally dare to glance back, he’s slinging his satchel over one shoulder. “You know what?” he says. “Five p.m. is hitting me kind of hard right now. Do you mind if we go grab a coffee? We can talk more on the way.”
Never been so grateful to be invited on a coffee date in my life. “Yes. Please. That sounds perfect right now.”
We pack up my portfolio, and Wyatt slips it into his bag. I can’t help but fantasize, briefly, about him looking at my photographs again later, alone in his apartment with these pieces of my heart scattered across his desk. But I shove that thought aside and grab my water bottle instead, following Wyatt out.
Manhattan has a Starbucks on every corner, but Wyatt takes us to a smaller indie spot wedged between a record shop and an NYU building. We talk about technique on the way, Wyatt pointing out things he likes about my work mostly and offering a few ideas of things to try for my next project. It would be rude to get out my phone and write it all down in my Notes app, so I do my best to just remember. Which is a tall order for me, but hey, I’d like to think I won’t ever forget a single word of photography wisdom that drops from Wyatt Cole’s mouth.
Coffees in hand, we end up sitting on a bench in the park instead of heading back to the cramped quarters of Parker’s visual arts building. Wyatt stretches his legs out beside mine, and even though he’s barely my height, his seem longer. Or maybe that’s just the weight of the work boots he’s wearing, which look like he’s worn them every day for forty years despite being thirty-five, max.
“How old are you?” I ask before I can stop myself.
But Wyatt doesn’t scold me for crossing a line, at least not this time. “Thirty-two,” he says with a little laugh. “Why?”
“No reason. Sorry. You just seem…well, you’re younger than I thought you would be, I suppose.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. People seem to assume I’m some crusty relic of Greenwich Village in the seventies. No idea what it is about my work that gives them that impression; it’s a little insulting to be honest.” He shakes his head and takes a sip of his coffee, watching a pair of kids rocket past us on their skateboards. “Of course, there was great stuff coming out from queer artists at the time, but somehow I don’t think that’s what they mean.”
It takes me a moment to process what he’s said, and when I do, I frown. “Are you really worried that people think your work is boring?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I mean…yeah, sometimes. A reviewer once called my show cold and sterile. That’s the kind of thing you never get out of your brain once it’s in there.”
Sterile. Wyatt’s art is the furthest thing from sterile. I actually want to laugh. “Who the hell would say something like that? That’s so…You’re like the most unconventional photographer out there right now. The last review I saw of your stuff said you might have ‘finally gone too far.’ ”
Wyatt snorts, and when he meets my gaze, there’s something smirk-like about the twist of his mouth. “Yeah. But like I said, haven’t gotten that criticism out of my head since. It was from Donna Fowler, so, you know.” He mimes stabbing himself in the heart. “Used to think about quitting art entirely. Relapsed more than once. But turns out sometimes it’s the bad reviews that do the most for your career. I wanted to win out of spite.”
I find myself mirroring his grin and resist the urge to cover my mouth with one hand; I’ve been told I have absolutely gigantic teeth.
I might not know Wyatt very well yet, but all this tracks with my impression of him so far. Too smart not to be gutted by a vicious critic but too stupid to really let it stop him.