Teasing the Flytrap
October 21, 2004
My tactic for survival is more like a carnivorous plant than an animal. Like a Venus Flytrap, patiently waiting for a juicy fly to happen along. In other words, I'm not exactly a go-getter. Slacker, I believe, is the technical term. Not that I don't get motivated to do this or that, but it's rarely the kind of motivation that leads to a payday. Here's what inspired this little epiphany:
Last month, I met a girl. An elegant Italian girl with a sophisticated accent. She saw some of my paintings online and asked if she could see them in person. She works for a TriBeCa art gallery and is in the process of opening a gallery of her own. She liked what she saw and said that, if they looked as good in person, she might want to exhibit them. Sell them, that is.
"That sounds great," I told her, "But I should tell you that I haven't been doing much painting lately. I have this book project, and it's what I've been focusing on."
She understood. Didn't think it was an issue. Didn't care. So we made a date several weeks ago to meet for a drink on a Friday evening. "In the meantime," she suggested, "Why not stop by the gallery?"
So that's what I did. A few days before we were scheduled to meet, I stopped into the gallery to see her. She was what you might expect a gallerist to look like. Stylish. Long, straight red hair, a gorgeous face, and a perfectly proportioned body draped in chic clothes. But all that's neither here nor there, and I was a perfect gentleman. In fact, when she knelt on the floor to sift through some photographs by a photographer she represents, I only glanced down her shirt once, very briefly, and with the utmost discretion.
In any case, she gave me a short tour of the small gallery and told me about her long-range plans. She was intending to fly to Monaco to discuss the gallery deal with her father.
Monaco?
Anyway, we kissed each other on the cheeks — "The Italian way," she said — and agreed to see each other that Friday. I hadn't been thinking about painting lately, but this out-of-the-blue development renewed my inspiration. I brought what I thought were my paintings to Manhattan and put them in the studio where I keep a lot of my things. (The arrangement surrounding this studio seems to confuse a lot of people, but it's too complicated to explain here.) I wanted to make it as convenient for her as possible and figured it would be easier for her to stop by the Manhattan space than to have her trudge out to Brooklyn. Anyway, it turned out that Friday wasn't going to work for her. Could we reschedule for the following week? Of course. No problem. So what happens? She disappears. We never meet. I call her, and she doesn't respond. I figure she's busy and give her some time. A few weeks pass, and I call again. Leave a message. Nothing. So, like I said, I live my life like a Venus Flytrap. Sometimes I get a fat little bug. Other times, I get tickled by school kids for the thrill of watching me snap.
