"These are incredible," Avan whispered as he turned to watch those unsettling, unmoving eyes." Did you make these?"
"Yes," Jonathan simply replied.
The hallway was just the beginning. There was a stale, creative energy in the air, like cold, carbonated water left too long in room-temperature. And the smell was somewhere between sweat, sex, soap, some sweet tinge and the touch of rain. Everywhere pictures, fragments of pictures and reference was spread out, drowning the living-room in carpets and layers upon layers of various relations and thoughts, different mind-sets and heart-sets of the person wielding the brush or the pencil.
But it was not dirty in any way. It was what he guessed was called a 'creative' mess.
A great studio of an artist was the centre of this creative mess, with pictures, scraps, materials, paints, brushes and scraps of foods or drinks which had sustained the artist in his artistic rushes.
A canvas stood blank in one of the corners with a few, sporadic streaks of black on. In the other corner was a big, heavy desk with a slender, steel lamp supplying light and various tools spread out on the surface of the polished desk.
On the last wall, framed pictures were hung. Avan walked over and saw, right there, painted with brilliance and a meticulous eye for technicalities and details, a gigantic, erect penis.Avan felt his jaw open.
"I like this one," Jonathan said, walking up to him." I rarely like what I do. Mostly I hate myself for my incapability to bring forth what I see in my mind. Somewhere along that creative highroad, somewhere between that point where a brilliant, beautiful, expressive idea leaves my head and journeys to my finger-tips, it gets fucked-up and everything becomes this horrible desecration of what I really wanted to do. So I mostly just hate myself after I finish something. But this," he said," I really like."
"Why?" Avan whispered, amazed at the life-like quality of the limb but at the same time feeling strangely violated, strangely sullied.
"Because it is such an eloquent symbol."
When Avan just stared at him, his mouth still open, Jonathan smiled slightly and explained further.
"I like it because it makes you feel so small, so minute, so unmanly. It makes you feel as if you have undressed, as if you still were eighteen years old and shy and self-conscious and you have undressed before a woman, trying your best to show yourself from good angles meticulously studied before the mirror, trying your best to hide whatever you were embarrassed about. And you stand there with your erection, feeling her eyes travel downwards and awaiting that moment when she will see you the most naked you have ever been in your entire life." Jonathan lifted an eyebrow." And she laughs."
Avan couldn't help but stare, his eyes flickering from the picture to the artist who conceived it.
"It makes us feel so small," Jonathan continued," so incredibly insignificant and inadequate. It makes us feel as if we are less deserving, as if we should just take anything, anyone, and hold on to them because we cannot possibly deserve better. And, in realizing that, in accepting the way we feel so violated by looking at this enormous, strong, erect penis, we should come to understand how completely ridiculous it is that we feel this way."
"But that does not change anything," Avan said.
"No, probably not," Jonathan replied." I thought someday that if any man was the last man on earth, he would have the biggest penis in the entire world. That was a strange thought for me."
Avan did not know what to say to that, so he panned his eyes over the rest of the wall, drawing in the various pieces, accepting their excellences, accepting their faults, sometimes original and strong, sometimes watered-out and blemished.
"You are really good," Avan said.
Jonathan snorted." I don't agree. I don't understand why I keep doing this. I just feel so. so. I just feel, I guess. I just feel so much. And I want to use that, to create with it, to mould it into something. And I fail. Again and again."
"I don't agree. I think you have succeeded."
"Your opinion has no weight," Jonathan said, his voice still." Because you are not the judge of me. I am. Unfortunately."
"I didn't know you were an artist."
"I am. Or I think I am. I don't know. But I never found the strength to do it at all hours of all days. Because then I could really fail, so brutally that I don't know if I could survive it. Therefore I educated myself and took a real job, as my parents would have called it."
"This one," Avan said as he leaned closer to the wall and a great picture at the height of his head," I think is really disturbing."
"It is the only self-portrait I have ever done. Usually all I do is examine myself, so I never find it interesting to portray that in any way. But I did it, this once."