You want me to say that it’s a skirt, that I paint for some broad who spit in my eye years ago when I was a nobody.
You want me to admit that my painting is just some tragic, Sisyphean labor to impress the one who never gave a rat’s ass about me or my art.
Or maybe you just want me to say that I fuck my neighbor’s wife, and there’s nothing unrequited about it. I can have her whenever I want and paint like a banshee afterward.
Not so.
My muse ain’t some skirt at all.
It’s Horace Willoughsby, my grocer. I’ve been getting potatoes and lard from him for going on seven years now, and every time I go in to his shop, I’m greeted with his terrible chaos. It’s shattering really, completely disruptive. Yet when I’m back on top of my canvass he’s all I can think about.
Willoughsby and his double-speak, Willoughsby the tornado.
I hate him. I’m sure of that. He’s a WASPy prick and if he weren’t my muse, I’d smash his face for looking at me wrong.
His bacon is overpriced. And no he’s not handsome. It’s not like that. He’s my enigma, the goddamn lightning bolt who makes me wanna drip paint.
Rothko had his accountant, de Kooning his shoeshine boy.
I’ve got Willoughsby.
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Potatoes and lard