Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [76]
It didn’t take me long to find that cheaper apartment on the Oakland-Berkeley border: three rooms in a row, railroad-style, with a Murphy bed, on the ground floor of another old stucco building. And no, I still wasn’t planning on having furniture. Free of the compromises required by having roommates, I seized the opportunity to set up my new apartment the way all the big boys did: as a studio. I would transform my little flat into an enormous warehouse full of important art. Immediately I began setting aside a little money from every paycheck at the Lunch Box to buy the things I knew I needed more than tables and chairs: a jigsaw, a belt sander, and a power drill.
The day I walked out of the hardware store as a full-fledged power tool owner was a very proud day for me indeed. I was holding real physical evidence that I had transcended every stereotype and limitation associated with my gender. There could no longer be any doubt that I was an artist of substance, despite the fact that my version of the requisite ranch-hand/artist persona now sometimes included miniskirts with knee-length high-heeled boots.
Summer quarter seemed to be shaping up very nicely. I got in line early enough to be enrolled in all the classes I wanted. Plus, even more validation was waiting around the bend. One of the Internationally Famous Art Professors, a man who’d had solo shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Marlborough Gallery in New York and London, began to show special interest in me! Not only did I get into his class, but I was the one he invited out for coffee during our midmorning breaks! I could hardly believe my good fortune.
The Internationally Famous Art Professor was a medium-sized bookish-looking guy with short brown hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a trim graying beard. He wasn’t young or hip or especially fun to talk to, like my classmates. But I didn’t really expect that from someone so prominent in his field. When you were that successful you didn’t really have to say much, I figured. Talk was cheap; fun was overrated anyway. Learning to look past uncomfortable silences and see the depth lurking beneath them was part of the privilege of knowing a real art star.
I never said much during our class breaks together. Just being allowed to stand there and sip my coffee, while my professor and his friends held forth, seemed like reward enough. The extra attention he lavished on me made me feel so special that I began to carry myself in a way that reflected my newfound status. I felt more three-dimensional. I had a sense of place and weight in the world. I began to develop an image of myself as magnetic and powerful, as someone of whom you should be aware.
Still, when Mr. Internationally Famous asked me matter-of-factly, at the end of class one Friday, if I was available to go out with him the following night, I wasn’t sure, at first, if I was understanding him correctly. After the words finally sank in, no other answer made sense except yes.
It never occurred to me to think of him as anything but a mentor. It didn’t seem possible that he was asking me out on a “date.” I wasn’t even nineteen. He was, like, forty-five or something: much too old to be attractive, an adjustment I assumed all people over forty were aware of and had learned to deal with somehow.
I remember standing in front of the small closet in the corner of my studio, staring at my unexciting wardrobe, not sure what to wear for this occasion. It didn’t seem right to show up in jeans for a Saturday night outing with an internationally renowned art star. I tried on different combinations of the various things I owned, until I finally settled on a short navy blue belted T-shirt dress with white