Brian’s Paintings
June 29, 2004
I arrived early to Brian’s opening and hung out beforehand. Another friend of Brian's, a guy named Todd, arrived shortly after me.
"I don't really need to get anything, do I?" asked Brian.
Todd and I looked at each other and shrugged.
"Wine? I guess I should get some wine. But I don't need to get anything else, do I?"
"You should probably have other drinks, too,” I said. “Coke or something."
"I guess so."
"And maybe something to eat. Crackers?"
"You think?" he asked.
"You can't just serve alcohol without something to eat too."
Brian doesn't drink anymore, but when he did, I don’t think he gave much thought to food.
"I guess so—fuck it, okay. Wine, cheese, crackers."
"Yeah man, now that's an art opening."
The three of us went to the deli and got the goods and returned to the studio. Once laid out, Brian feared it looked rather pathetic. Cheap wine, cheese, and reasonably priced crackers. Paper plates and plastic cups.
“It’s fine,” I said.
Todd went downstairs to sit by the door and let people into the building. And to warn them about the elevator that will chop your arm off if you're not quick enough. After a little while, I went down there too. Todd and I just hung out watching the people on the street. About halfway through the night, Brian came down to check on us and to get some air. "Yo, Bri, where's all the heat?" asked Todd.
"The heat? What are you talking about?"
"The hot chicks," he explained. "Where are they?"
"Didn't you see that girl who was here earlier?" Brian asked.
"Yeah. But she's gone now."
"But she's hot though, right?"
"What's her story?” I asked.
"I don't know," Brian said. "I mean, you know, she and I are doing a little dance."
Brian took the elevator back to the studio, and Todd and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. "Doing a little dance," Todd chuckled. "He's doing a little dance with everybody."
June 30, 2004
A lot more people came to Brian's show for it’s second night. Including a few people I haven't seen in forever. Erick showed up and brought his adorable six-year-old daughter, Koryna. She and I were playing with a little pink glitter wind-up motorcycle that she brought with her — revving it up and sending it flying across the room. A tattooed biker-chick friend of Brian's walked in and saw us. Her eyes got wide as she exclaimed, "Oh wow, what a beautiful little girl." Then she looked up and asked, "Is this your daughter?"
"No," I said."She's my girlfriend."
Koryna cocked her head, spun around to face me, and scrunched her face. "I'm not your girlfriend!" she said.
"Funny, that’s exactly what all my girlfriends say."
Later on, Koryna sat in a chair and drew a picture with a fat black magic marker. When she finished, she gave it to Brian, who put it on the wall between a couple of his paintings. "Wait," Koryna said. "I have to add something."
Erick took the picture down and handed it to Koryna so she could write across it: "$100."
As Erick put it back on the wall, an old friend of Brian's named Chopper said that having the price in big black numbers on the picture like that was a good idea. He thought it meant that she'd be a successful artist someday. "More successful than Brian, who doesn't seem to know how to sell himself."
Chopper doesn't really go by the name Chopper anymore. When Joe called him that earlier in the night, he turned red and said, "That was a long time ago."
He used to be called that, not because he rode a motorcycle or anything, but because his roommates in college used to hear him chopping up drugs in the next room. I remember years ago introducing him to my friend Rebecca, who had seen a lot in her short time on earth. "Chopper?" she said. "More like Scooter."
After the show, Brian, Joe, Todd, and I went out for Mexican food, and I spent the entire night listening to outrageous stories of sex and drugs and rock and roll excess. But I had to promise not to re-tell any of them on the blog. Even the story Joe told about a sherpa in Nepal. “Oh man, and that's such a good story too.”
Brian asked Joe to tell it to Todd.
"Dude, I don't like to tell that story."
"Joe!" said Brian, "You love telling that story. Everyone's heard it."
"Yeah, I mean, I used to tell it a lot. I never thought anything of it. But then I told it to a few people and it freaked them out."
July 1, 2004
When Brian’s show came down, he cleared out his painting studio. Todd and I helped him move all of his unsold paintings and supplies to a mini storage facility in the East Village. After we loaded up the truck and started driving them to the storage space, Brian told us about his latest plan to travel around Southeast Asia next spring. "Then, after I travel around for a while, I'm gonna find a monastery — an ashram or something — and just drop out. I'll just walk around the grounds, taking care of goats. I don't want to do anything else."
"What about Ireland?" I said.
"I'm still going. In the fall. I'll stay at my house there until the spring, and then go off on my adventure."
"Will you do any painting in Ireland?" asked Todd.
"No," said Brian. "I'm not bringing anything with me."
"What about a sketchbook?"
"Pfft, no. Sketching is for pussies."
Todd laughed, but being a painter himself, he was having a hard time imagining that Brian wouldn't paint at all -- especially since, until a few days earlier, it was all Brian had talked about.
"Dude," asked Todd, "How are you gonna go for six months without painting?"
"Just watch."
We made it to the storage space, unloaded everything, and took it up the elevator. Brian unlocked the small bin and let its door swing open. There wasn't much in there: a table, an air conditioner, a few crates with assorted odds and ends; and four or five boxes of vinyl albums. "This," he said, with the wave of his hand, "Is everything I own in the whole world."
I looked up and down at the small stack and said, "I'm jealous."
“Yeah?”
“Whenever I see someone who owns less stuff than I do, I get jealous."
"And look at it all," said Brian, "It's all crap. Garbage. I feel like every time I move, all I do is cart around a truckload of total shit from place to place."
We crammed the large paintings into the cramped space, let the door close with a clang, and Brian locked it. As we walked down the corridor, past dozens of locked storage spaces, I wondered, "Do you think there’s anything worthwhile in this place?"
"Totally," said Brian. "People have some real-deal stuff in here."
"Maybe," I said. "But what good is it doing anyone all locked up?”
