I go to the paintings when my vision feels too strong, when my skin feels too tight and I need to confirm that I’m not alone. I skip the elevator and take a rambling route. I start with the ancients––the Babylonian lion with angry pupils and the Greek synagogue tiles, the grove of old stone heads and naked torsos on new pedestals. I flee through the double-height arch and up the dark brick stairwell. When I reach the glass doors, I forget to push. I pull. I do remember to turn left, though, because there’s another naked torso equipped with an especially large penis. He’s so close to the doors I have to turn. Maybe I’m scared of penises, or maybe I’m just gay. Either way, I prefer this floor. After this guy, there are fewer penises and more people: moribund gladiators, Venetian peasants, our old chums Eve and Adam. Then I pass Turner, Van Gogh, Degas. New stairs. Up I go. Then I’m in America. There are no penises here in American Art to 1900. George Washington is exceedingly clothed. Up another flight and modernism kicks in. The gallery is light with white walls and light wood and I’m lighter up here.
So is Jeremy Hudman. Short Jeremy bounces toward me in his blue uniform, striding tall through Contemporary Art.
“How are you?” I ask. Remember, I come here because my skin is tight and I’m alone.
“More great than Frosted Flakes.”
I love that so much I stop moving. Jeremy has a flat head and vast smile. Does he have a favorite painting?
Why, yes I do,” he says, “but it’s a corner, three paintings.” He whisks me to his spot. “Three different paintings, done by different artists at different times. But they talk to each other.”
We form a square with the paintings, two in front and to the left on the adjoining corner walls, one to the right on a freestanding wall. Jeremy points to the right, to the slumped woman on her drooping couch in a green hoodie. She’s a painter, the painter, I assume. She’s huge on the wall and covered in paint stains, phone in hand, earbuds to brain, heavy temple tilted on fingertips.
“So she’s in therapy,” Jeremy explains. She looks familiar, like my therapist––former therapist, actually. Dr. Turbentino moved to Philadelphia. Same messy blonde bun, round glasses, and Birkenstocks kicked off bare feet (Dr. T always wore shoes, though). To the right of her couch, there’s a shy, turned-around canvas, lit by and tilting up towards the window behind Dr. Turbentino. Beyond the black panes, there’s just blue. She’s in the sky. She’s nowhere. She’s in Teletherapy. That’s the title, Jeremy tells me. I miss Dr. Turbentino.
“And she’s staring into the abyss, as Nietzsche said,” Jeremy says, pointing left. I didn’t know what Nietzsche said; I had to ask Jeremy. When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. We turn to gaze long into the abyss: an ink spill of a photograph behind reflective glass. Black, so black I can see as in a mirror myself and Jeremy and Dr. Turbentino behind us. Halfway across the abyss, to the right, emerge thin stems of sailboats. A dock. Some gray water, too, shining, but not brightly. Jeremy spins back to Dr. Turbentino.
“When this one was placed––I want to say a year-and-a-half-ago—I kept noticing, while she was in therapy, she was looking at herself.”
Jeremy’s right; she is looking at herself, mirrored cleanly in Nietzsche’s abyss. Did he piece this story together?
“Yes, I did. Because I read philosophy.” Jeremy tells me he was listening to Machievelli’s The Prince when we started talking, through his earpiece. He swivels to the third painting.
“Because of all of the negative self-talk, she shatters.” We gaze at a tropical travel magazine that exploded and settled into three large diamonds, punched in the eyes by two spouts of black paint. They run down, enraged heads of sopping black hair. Three shattered mirrors, embedded in the canvas, part the palm trees like snake eyes. Untitled Escape Collage, Rashid Johnson named her progeny. I can’t see Dr. Turbentino, only Jeremy and me, our eyes all scattered in the shards. I need to look back at Jeremy. I’m a little off balance, but I can’t blame it all on Rashid. I have two sprained ankles––dance injuries, I tell Jeremy.
We step back.
“That’s the whole therapeutic process. Believe me, I’m in therapy right now. Doing some heavy stuff.” His eyes are wide. “Oh, and notice she’s wearing open-toed sandals. This is gonna sound kind of weird, but think about what feet represent in movies.”
I’m not sure.
“Usually, feet represent a character’s soul,” he says. “She’s opening up her soul and trying to find herself within the void.”
I ask him what he thinks of Dr. Turbentino’s rearward canvas. He has a theory, of course. “Her canvas is unusable right now.”
I tell Jeremy that I’m in therapy too.
“You know what it’s like. When you start, you’re all blocked up.”
My ankles are hurting now. I’ve been standing for more than an hour. I ask Jeremy if he’ll be here later. He won’t. He has therapy.