O is for Other People

It’s easy for me to remember your face. All I have to do is look at you long enough. Give me five minutes and then I’ll know each line and shadow. Five minutes, maybe seven and I’ll have enough to wear your face like a mask over my own face when you walk away.

I draw pictures of strangers for fifteen bucks. I could be doing more, but I’ve never tried, so I draw pictures of tourists whose names I will never know.

I see faces the way that most people remember the smell of bread or cinnamon: a mother tucking them in with toast and sugar, say. The smells of my past and this city right now? They are equally lost on me; I only see. When I pack up the easel and brushes and charcoals, I walk home the same way every time, past restaurants sputtering grease and garlic, past subways spewing sweat and piss, but I smell nothing, I remember nothing.  I see only noses and lips and eyes. Just a face upon a face upon a face that I know and yet do not know.

The nose is the most unique. Even identical twins will have slight differences in their noses -- a subtle twist or nudge to one side – and they won’t see it until I do. There are only five kinds of mouths, at least technically speaking, but lips can be tricky. The eyes are easy.  It’s the eyeballs that make the challenge and I don’t mean color. Every gesture of the eye comes not from the skin but from the bulge of muscle behind it. An eyeball looks one way and a hundred muscles move like ripples across the face. I draw that one face made in that one moment but I have memorized all the others that flashed in the split second before that one smile. I can’t help it.

I see faces the way other people hear songs: a lalalala can shotgun them back – to what? Maybe a funeral, a dance floor, youth? I don’t hear anything when I walk home: five blocks then a right past the liquor store then one block past the fire station and then the alley to home. I only see. I only see scars and freckles and the lines on her face where she slept so hard on her pillow last night. I only see faces of other people. I don’t smell ‘em, can’t hear ‘em, don’t know what they feel like.

Sometimes, the faces of people I draw flash through my sleep. Each face so perfect in its imperfection and each eyelash still so exact in my mind that in my dreams, I can remember how they laughed – I can hear it! – and how they smelled like chicken wings – I can smell it! – and I can remember how they threw their arms around my shoulders. They were so happy to be patiently seen. In my dreams, I wrap my charcoaled fingers gently across their backs and hold onto them and whisper in their ears, “it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay…”

In real life, I just stand there, my shoulders hanging my arms like cloth, like armless sleeves. I let them hang there; I let them hug me. After I draw their eyes, I’ll never look into them again.

How could I? After the paper fades or gets lost or shoved into a glove box, their desire to be known and gazed upon won't go away. After the mouth, it’s the one thing that is the most common in people: the sweet wish to be known and seen. My adoration, my gift, my cheap gimic -- it is temporary and flimsy like chalk, like charcoal. 

I can’t love them all. I can’t love any of them.

Comments

[Jessica]

wow. Very powerful. The last line is beautiful.

[Jett]

There was this beautiful (that innertype is what I speak of, natch) portraitlady at the Doo-Nanny week before last, and oh my sweet merciful Lord, you just wrote her story.

She was exactly this gorgeous, but in an intangible way that kept you wanting after her. One of the boys couldn't stop talking about his amazement with her.

You should maybe stop writing my life so often. Damn.

[Susan (Trout Towers)]

Oh, to be seen.

[TwoBusy]

Love, love, love, love, love this. What a character study. And man, there are some truly gorgeous turns of phrase in here, too.

Well-played, Picket. Well-played indeed.

[angelynn]

This was so beautiful. To really see people is a gift, more so than to be seen. It's a hell of a lot more difficult. I had my portrait drawn at a street market in Taiwan when I was 16. I didn't think it looked anything like me. Seeing someone else's interpretation of what I looked like was what stuck with me. I still have it, rolled up in a tube somewhere. Thanks for reminding me.

[Mongoliangirl]

The only portrait my dad has ever loved of me is one drawn in a Paris market in the late 1980's. It is huge, framed and hung in his office in a position that causes "me" to greet him as he walks in the door and then watch in silence as he works at his desk. It's the only thing in our relationship that is constant. And yet, I cannot remember the face of the man?woman?person who drew that portrait. I wish I could. I would thank him/her for giving my dad and I something. Anything.
Lovely post, Mizz Picket. Thank you.

[foradifferentkindofgirl (fadkog)]

Thank you for spinning this around in such a way that made it beautiful to see in my mind while reading.

[Kevin (Always Home and Uncool)]

Pick, I love how you always take me down the paths I would otherwise miss.