Inside Closed Eyes

The mystery was why. Why create this sort of a painting? This dark, melancholy portrait of the artist with black pits for eyes, only for the artist to later paint over them altogether, leaving a black bar across the eyes like they were the patient in a medical case study. Only the sheer variety of colors in the background as well as the stylization of the painting made clear this was not a photograph from a medical case study. No, this was indeed a work of art.

The paint was mixed by hand on a palette. In a world with more and more digital creations, the physical actions took on more significance - the blending of green and brown and blue had occurred numerous times as the artist painted, tried on eyes for size, which again makes the mystery return. Why go through the effort of mixing an exact replica of one's eye color just to drape a tarp of black over the spots? Why then decide you hadn't killed the color properly enough? Tape over the eyes with the rectangle of black?

"Your eyes are so beautiful, love," had been the beginning. The artist had felt uncomfortable even as the night continued, as the taller woman seemed to be coming closer and closer. Why was a mystery, until it wasn't. Until a barrier of cloth and skin was breached, "no, stop, I don't -" met with another comment

"You can say whatever you like, but your eyes are telling me another story," and her hand had never left where it was exploring, and the artist's closed eyes were met with high pitched laughter and yet another intrusion that startled his eyes back open, unable to repress the need to see the woman whose tongue was violating his, whose hands were -

That colorful background mentioned before? The one that made clear this was not, in fact, a medical case study, that the closed mouth straight ahead portrayal had a black bar running through it as a stylistic choice? Those were painted in the same painstakingly mixed color he had painted his eyes in, alongside the blue, green, brown that made the paints he had mixed to get that perfect color, and oranges, reds, purples, images layering over one another like bruises. But the background was not made of abstract shapes. No, these were hands. Painted before he had painted his own face, some hands had to be painted over to portray the artist's head. The blue could be seen beneath the pale skin, the purple fingernail marring the pink closed mouth.

The blue could be seen beneath the pale skin, the purple fingernail marring the pink closed mouth. The artist was frustrated as he had to wait for paint to dry to layer over, only by the time the lips were dry, the idea of using his eye color to paint his eyes had arrived and the artist left the pink glob on the palette untouched.

The painting was not mysterious then, a basic self portrait with a hand motif in the background. The artist was distracted from his work by the woman's arrival, her insisting on taking him out for a lunch date, looking disapprovingly at the work as though the two hadn't met at an exhibit of his work. As though she had any authority to judge what he was creating.

The artist would return to work more on the painting later that afternoon, lips having been bitten, mouth tasting of her, the act of washing the palette calming and cleansing prior to pouring black on and making his eyes unreadable. Again, he had tried to tell her no, and again, she laughed, saying his eyes had been staring down her cleavage all lunch, when truly the artist had just been trying to avoid his eyes meeting hers, only instead he had created this next scenario.

She had insisted since he had stared at them the whole meal, he must want to touch, and again the cycle of violation occurred, where all words were worthless, all efforts to make his eyes scream "I don't want this" only further evidence to her that he did. And maybe he did, maybe she was telling the truth. The artist hadn't pushed her away and been overpowered, hadn't made any effort to physically prevent what occurred besides closing his eyes, blinding himself from the sights but not the sounds nor tactile experiences. Her breath in his ear warm as she whispered, "See, I told you you want me, you just prefer when I take charge,"

"No, stop, please -" but she was still too close and he still wasn't stopping her, why wasn't he stopping her? The artist stopped, resting the paintbrush on the table, feeling the backache from all the hours spent on this specific work. He would ruin it if he worked on it now, too tainted by his own doubts, so he returned the canvas to the drying rack, taking a new one out inside. Then the paintbrush returned to his hand, the memories thick black lines he was painting on untreated canvas, the rough surface of the material making the strokes look violent.

The artist returned to the acrylics, adding a deep dark blue alongside the black since the black being so minimal on his brush had it look blue to begin with. When he returned to his painting, he realized he hadn’t just been painting lines - there were shapes, two prominent twisted black breasts. The artist's breath caught in his throat, palette clattering to wooden floorboards, artist too lost in the horrid realization being forced to feel had twisted into almost unintentionally portraying them visually.

"See, I told you you want me, you just prefer when I take charge," but he didn't, he didn't want - he closed his traitorous eyes again, collapsing onto a nearby stool simply because even the act of standing reminded him of her. The artist was so trapped in his memory, he hadn't heard the door creaking open, professor entering, calling his name in surprise that he was still present.

“What’re you working on this late? Did you - are you alright?” The professor entered her classroom further, encroaching upon the artist’s personal space, the artist unaware he was even being addressed until his professor tried tapping his shoulder. Then the young man flinched.

“Don’t touch me, please.” He could physically see this was just his professor, that he wasn’t actually at risk, but his body still felt lips and hands and breasts, his eyes were breast-level again so he closed them. He heard more worried words but the world felt underwater. When he opened his eyes again, he was relieved to see that his painting professor had seated herself on another stool across the table, far enough he could look at her without looking at any specific piece of her that could in any way be mistaken for lust.

“I saw what you were painting over there,” the professor said, tone indecipherable to the artist, as he was too awash in his own thoughts, the realization of what, who he had painted without even trying to, he didn’t want to ruin his self portrait so instead he portrayed someone who loved him as a monstrous embodiment of sexuality.

“Yeah, I - my self portrait is on the drying rack. I thought I’d just free paint for a bit but…”

“Let me see what progress you’ve made on your portrait - oh. Well, that’s certainly different from your last draft! You’ve added more depth to the hands, symbolizing your dislike of physical contact, and the eyes - you’ve erased them completely! Almost as though you’re anonymizing yourself, like a redaction. Is that what you’re going for?” The artist nodded, still afraid if he spoke, he might begin crying. The professor moved on to interpreting his free painting next. “And here, you have a woman… is this the girl I see you around campus with?”

He had to speak but he didn’t want to say too much. “Yeah, but, I don’t - it’s not what it looks like.”

“Well, it looks like you’re grappling with some complicated emotions around her, as the brushstrokes look angry, almost as though she’s popping out of the canvas towards us, and yet her head is empty, white canvas… are you two having relationship troubles?” That prompted another nod. Relationship troubles, that was one way to word the situation. How could his professor know he hated being touched and yet not see the contradiction between that fact about her student and the behavior he had displayed around “the girl [he was] around campus with?”

His stomach twisted, but it wasn’t the professor he felt in front of him anymore. No, it was her. The girl. The one with the hands that made his skin crawl, the one who had never listened to him, who had made him feel like he had no choice.

“I won’t kiss you,” the artist gritted out, tears breaking free from the prison of his eyelids. The professor’s face was too close to his, her concerned eyebrows expecting plenty of words from her student, but not the four that had just left his mouth.

“Is someone kissing you? A professor, I mean?” The artist couldn’t respond to what was being asked. The wetness of his face reminded him of earlier, his hands held against her chest, words worthless but he spoke nonetheless.

“No, I don’t want this; I’m fucking crying Miriam, that’s a pretty clear sign I don’t want this!” Miriam, that was the girl he had been seen around campus with. The professor had misread the situation entirely.

“Nobody is touching you.” The professor said plainly, and the words were enough to drag the artist into the present. The embarrassing, snotty present where he had dried paint on his clothes, where he had just...

"I don't know what that was, Professor Evans, I'm sorry. I - I know you would never -" would never what? The artist couldn't even verbalize his feeling of violation, not when his head was still hazy with memory, even as a hot flush of shame pinked his cheeks, those connections between lips and eyes, between what was taken and what he was trying in his painting to take back.

"This free painting, the brushstokes are violent. My earlier guess about relationship troubles was right. What are you afraid of?"

"Right now, I'm afraid of the fact that I'm alone in this room with you, that you already touched me once; even though it was entirely benign, no touch feels benign anymore. No, I'm not experiencing relationship troubles, except for the trouble that I never wanted this relationship to begin with!" Had he really spoken? His thoughts had exited his mouth almost without his input in the process. His professor's face blurred, and he heard words about help and counseling and they all just washed over him as he grasped the reality that yes, he had admitted the truth that he never wanted this relationship to begin with. The sky hadn't fallen. The woman wasn't there to glare and push and use his body's reactions to insist he did in fact want her, which made the truth as stark as the contrast between paint and canvas in his portrait of her. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, she had given him black out curtains and demanded he pretend to still be transparent. The mystery of his painting could wait. He followed the professor to the student counseling center. Just as with a medical case study, help was available.