“My mentors in LA told me never to read my reviews,” I say.
“They’re right. You should protect your passion at all costs. Don’t be like me.” He hides his mouth with a sip of coffee, but he isn’t smiling.
I wonder how much of his brain space is still consumed by these thoughts, obsessing over what other people think of him.
Maybe we’re more alike than I thought.
“Well, Donna Fowler couldn’t take a good picture to save her life, so fuck her anyway,” I say. “Normal people think you’re great. I think you’re great, for the record.”
Wyatt makes a face and waves his hand in the air as if to dismiss the conversation entirely. “I’m not trying to get you to make me feel better. I know I’m good, or I wouldn’t be here. And we’re supposed to be talking about your work, not mine.”
“Oh, okay, Wyatt ‘I know I’m good’ Cole, I won’t compliment you anymore.” I roll my eyes and earn a chuckle in return. At least things seem a little more normal between us now. It no longer feels like we’re both holding our breath, waiting for the other person to cross an invisible line.
As worried as he might be about acting professional, I prefer it when he treats me like a normal person. We threw out professional back when we told each other about our former drug habits. When he fucked me so hard I came. Twice. That used to be something I thought was impossible. I enjoyed myself during sex, sure, but it always felt like there was a defined end point. I’d never really wanted to go further. I’d never wanted more, and so I’d never had more.
Wyatt blew my world right open.
“What are you thinking about doing for your capstone project?” he asks, distracting me from my increasingly florid fantasies about him bending me over this very park bench.
And fuck, of course my face is bright red. He must know exactly what I’ve been thinking about. He’s trying to talk about art, and I’m fantasizing about his cock.
Okay, focus.
“I haven’t really thought about it yet,” I say. “I’ve been busy with the course assignments.”
“Well, if I can give you yet another piece of advice, it’s to start working on it sooner rather than later. People—actual critics—come to the end of program. It’s better to half-ass your homework than put off your capstone.”
“Critics?” I say, waggling my eyebrows. “Like Donna Fowler?”
“Entirely possible,” Wyatt says, “so shape up.” But he’s still smiling, which means he doesn’t think I’m at risk of massively embarrassing myself. That’s a plus. “You can text me if you want to talk about it, you know. I’m always around.”
Oh, are you, now, Professor Cole?
I have to work pretty hard to drag my mind away from careening off into another fantasy and back to thinking of a capstone project idea off the top of my head. You know, how everyone does their best work: off the cuff and under pressure. “I don’t know…. I guess…I was thinking of doing another comparison piece. Like with my application portfolio.” I stop myself from adding, But better, obviously. “Mixed media, maybe. Not for any particular artistic reason, but just because it’s something I want to try.”
“A good start,” Wyatt says. “Did you have a subject in mind?”
Nope. “Something narrative. I want to tell a story. Or…multiple stories, perhaps. I’ve always liked the kind of art that pulls back the curtain and shows you that your reality isn’t the only reality.”
“And what is this other reality you want to show people?” Wyatt asks.
It’s a good question, but this is about where my creativity ends. That must be clear from my expression, because Wyatt goes on:
“One place to start is to ask what makes you different from other people. You’ve shared your addiction, but is there something deeper, more innate to explore? What about your story makes you feel the most vulnerable?”
One thing comes immediately to mind. But I’m not sure it’s the kind of answer Wyatt’s looking for. He probably wants me to say something about my worst fear or whatever it was that made me start using drugs in the first place. But those are harder questions to answer. And maybe it’s just that I’ve been thinking about Chaya, but—
“I grew up Chassidic,” I say before I can think better of it. “You know, like…black hats.”
His expression hasn’t changed. He’s watching me with placid brown eyes, calm as anything. I don’t know what I expected. Shock, maybe. A little rivulet of disgust running through whatever else. People hate us. I know that—have known it since I was three years old. Even as a small child you notice the way people step to the far side of the sidewalk to avoid getting too close to your father. The stares. The whispers under breath and surreptitious photographs snapped by tourists who seem to think your family just waltzed in from the shtetl in Fiddler on the Roof. One time, when I was twelve, my father took me to a bookstore near Prospect Park; as we were checking out, the store owner congratulated me on knowing how to read.
As much as I’d like to give folks the benefit of a doubt and assume that smart people, people who care about social justice and protecting marginalized religions or whatever, will see through the bullshit—sometimes those people are worse. Like a girl I knew in LA who watched the TV show Unorthodox and found it utterly mesmerizing. She went on a rant about how horrible it must be for Orthodox women to be so oppressed and uneducated, ground under the heels of old men and a dying religion. I told her that most Chassidim thought Unorthodox did a bad job representing the community, and besides, those people in the show were Satmars, and there are as many kinds of Orthodox Jew as there are stars in the sky. I said if a woman was happy on that path, well, why not let her walk it? Which earned me a disappointed sigh and a pompous statement about how some women won’t fight for what’s in their own best interest.
But Wyatt hasn’t taken the bait. There’s no monologue forthcoming, or at least not yet. I gulp at my coffee to give him the chance to speak. If he’s got Big Opinions, then I may or may not want to keep talking.
Just silence. Patient, completely unreadable silence.
“I left the community when I was eighteen. I haven’t talked to anyone in my family since.” I work my thumbnail against the lip of my cup, flicking the waxed paper back and forth. “I don’t know if that’s the kind of answer you were looking for, but if you want to know what I wish people understood about me, that’s it.”
Wyatt nods at last, slowly. “That’s a lot to go through at such a young age,” he says. “Losing your family, all at once…it’s like a death. Like the part of you that used to exist is gone, and you have to become someone new.”