Lee

Lee

August 2002

60 x 50 cms

Oil and encaustic on MDF board

Excerpt from the book "Retratos" ["Portraits"], final work from the BA Fine Arts course at FAAP: 

I could write a whole novel about the short year I spent with Lee. Hundreds of pages about what that time was and what that intense person was. How am I to synthesize everything in a few pages? 

During my years in high school, Lee was no more than an uninteresting face in a sea of uninteresting faces. Just like me. It was a pleasant thing to notice that familiar face at USP. Journalism, like Lilly. But Lee was radically different from Lilly. She wasn't the superior woman. Lee was one of those types of women, dangerous, enthralling, mysterious. One of those types of women. Her round face, her bosom overflowing over a generous cleavage, hand-crafted necklace casually draped over it and that mouth... That hellish mouth, like Milla Jovovich, like the song from Bush, speaking unabashedly. 

And oh, how we'd speak. Of everything. In all that lacking modesty and limitlessness I found comfort to speak about whatever I desired. Even all of which I had been afraid to tell others. That which made me afraid to be labeled a pervert, a mad man, a moron. We were brought together by an overwhelming compassion: we shared all of the mental illnesses and their physical effects, some desires and come cynicism and sarcasm. We were equally perverse. And we got to a point in which she could destroy me if she so chose to. And at the same time, she was totally vulnerable in my hands. My flower, my baby. 

There were so many insane things, so many moment with the right lighting and angle. Moments circumscribed so as to remain as perfect scenes forever cherished in memory.  

Without a moment's hesitation, she barged into the bathroom while I bathed

after our rehearsal of Huis Clos. 

Inês Serrano. 

After so many discussions about bodies and modesty, 

it seemed so natural. 

There was however that initial moment of awkwardness.

Fighting against the worst hangover in my life,

in a state of semi-consciousness, I opened my eyes and saw

she was dancing and whispering some song, 

light as a fairy, 

while she tidied up her friends' house

where we had spent a night of drunken sex. 

She had as much to drink as I did, yet there she was, 

beautiful and fresh as ever. 

We went out of our way to save money just so we could have sushi. 

In our favorite restaurant, 

a tiny place filled with a decor based on Japanese animation, 

she would stand at the door after we had gorged ourselves, 

holding my coat and smoking under fluorescent street light.

The background was the dark alley: so absurdly Hopper.

A Nighthawks mood. 

Before leaving to eat.

She was in my bedroom, caressing the painting on my wall.

I was scared of not having done it properly and of her nails chipping the paint.

I didn't say a word.

And she said impressed that I was talented.

She then asked me if I was scared of not being talented enough

She had a skin like wax. 

A smooth and beautiful back like Ingres' Turkish bather

which I caressed while I looked into her eyes in the dark.

I could barely see straight,

but if we had stayed like that for a while longer, 

I would have memorized that face and that mouth

and would have drawn it in countless pages of my notebook...

The picture and portrait of Lee were a minuscule event in a sea of other memorable situations. So minuscule, that it isn't worth more than a paragraph in these pages. But it was the moment of right lighting and angle that I chose to be frozen in painting. She refused and threw a fit, giving me any random reason for that picture not to exist. But eventually...  

And how does the story end?

During all that time, there was a thought deep in my consciousness, giving off a constant feeling of dejá vu. There was someone before Lee in whom I had found a similar resonance. I had hurt that someone and hurt myself as well. But she was strong, proud and held her head high: she made it through it all. Turned the table on me and got revenge. Makel. And each time Lee and I quarreled, this feeling of being able to predict how it would all end grew stronger: it was in their identical reactions, in the wrathful exaggerations. It was in my relationship with those bodies. I knew they were different people in different times. But it didn't matter: I feared going through it all over again. Trauma. I did everything to make it quite clear that I didn't want to get any more involved than we already were (would that even be possible?). I fled. 

As luck would have it, someone else from my past showed up precisely at that moment, to complete the picture: Tinkerbell. There was a time in which I had to chose between Tinkerbell and Makel. I do not regret choosing the latter, despite everything that happened. But when I had to make this new choice between Tinkerbell and Lee, so similar to the former choice, I decided to take another path. Goodbye, Lee. .

When the following year began, I came to USP to greet the freshmen. I expected some hostility or at least to be completely ignored by Lee. I expected tears at least. I got to the school and sat on one of those threadbare couches. She sat in front of me. We didn't speak, nor did we even engage in visual contact. Tension. Until one of the theater students commented she was rehearsing Huis Clos. And like the tense string of an archer's bow being let loose from the archer's hand, our eyes immediately met. Tension sublimated: we laughed. Blessed be that damned play we never got to present!

Of course, things between us would never be like they were in the beginning. After all of that, it would be impossible. But at least we had chosen not to ignore each other like fools. In time, Lee found another guy, another gang. And kept me somewhere, like a China doll upon her shelf, which she still holds between her fingers and examines every now and then. Just to remember it all.