I understand now why Cole has always stayed in this house.
He destroyed his father’s office but not the garden. He kept the garden living and growing for his mother, long after she was gone.
I wonder if that one act kept a spark of humanity burning inside him, in all the years that followed.
Cole seems strangely light since he told me this last piece of his history. He’s unburdened—finally understanding that I do see who he is, without judgment.
I can’t judge anyone. I’ve been a fucking mess for most of my life. A literal crazy person at times.
Everyone is a mix of good and bad. Can the good cancel out the bad? I don’t know. I’m not sure I even care. If there’s no objective measure, then all that matters is how I feel. Cole is a shade of gray I can accept.
He suits me like no one ever has.
He understands me.
How can I reject the only person I’ve ever felt connected to?
We were drawn together from the first moment we saw each other, when neither of us wanted it. Like recognized like. We bonded in place, like mercury atoms.
If Cole is wrong, then so am I.
When he pushes me to change, the change feels good.
It’s like his corrections to my paintings—once he points out the improvement, I can see its merit just as clearly.
He’s been encouraging me to promote myself more openly on social media. I was always hesitant to post anything too personal, too specific. Still plagued by that old fear of exposing myself as weird, broken, disgusting.
“You think the painting is the product, but it isn’t,” Cole tells me. “You’re the product: Mara Eldritch, the artist. If you’re interesting, then the work is interesting. They have to be curious about you. They have to want to hear what you have to say.”
“I’m the product?” I tease him. “You know who you sound like …”
“There’s a difference between creating a fake version of yourself for market,” Cole says, sternly, “and simply understanding how to show people who you really are.”
Cole encourages me to dig out my old Pentacon and take photographs of my paintings in progress, before they’re perfected, before they’ve even fully taken shape. I photograph myself at work, in moments of frustration, even breaking down in front of the canvas, laying on the floor.
I photograph myself in front of the gloomy plate-glass windows, thick with fog, tracing my finger through the steam.
I photograph myself eating lunch, food scattered amongst the paints, hands filthy on my sandwich.
When I need a break from painting, I pose naked and streaked in paint. Wearing a sunburst crown of paintbrushes, swaddled in a canvas drop-sheet like the Madonna.
The pictures are moody and grainy. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes charged with ethereal beauty.
I don’t worry about my privacy or if I might look unhinged. I post the pictures and I tell the truth about my mental state, for better or for worse, as I update my progress on the new series.
At first I’m mostly doing this for myself, a digital diary.
I have few followers, and most of the interaction comes from friends and old roommates.
Slowly, however, I start to pick up more friends. At first, it’s people I’ve begun to follow myself: a girl who sews hand-drawn patches onto vintage shirts. A guy with phenomenal spray-painting techniques. A woman documenting her heartbreaking divorce with a series of self-portraits.
I comment on their posts, they comment on mine. My feed becomes more inspiring than before. I stop stalking old acquaintances from high school and begin the process of what Cole calls “real networking”—making friends intentionally amongst people I respect and admire, people who inspire me with their creativity.
I wouldn’t have had the confidence to message any of these people before; they’re legitimate working artists. But so am I now. I’m not a cosplayer anymore. I’m passionate about my current series, I believe in it. I’m not embarrassed to talk about it. Quite the opposite—I want to discuss childhood trauma and self-destructive impulses. My mind is full of ideas.
The more I open up, the more I realize how many other people share these experiences. My past was ugly, but not so unique that no one else can understand it. Instead of judgment, I find acceptance.
A few of my posts go viral; most don’t. I don’t pay attention to that. I care more about the growing conversation amongst our group of like-minded artists.
Opening up to Cole, seeing his calm acceptance of even my strangest statements, is helping me to trust other people. To believe that they could meet the real Mara and actually like her, flaws and all.
Some of my new friends live in San Francisco. We meet in person at shows. Some are already known to Cole.
Cole is different when he’s introducing me around. He turns on the full measure of his charm, which is not as boisterous and loud as Shaw’s but is extraordinarily effective nonetheless because of his sly wit and his intense focus upon the person with whom we’re speaking.
At a dinner at Betsy Voss’ house, Cole sets the whole table roaring with an anecdote from art school.
Afterward I say to him, “I’ve never seen you like that. You had the whole room eating out of your hand.”
Cole looks at me, pushing back his fall of dark hair with one hand.
“I only told that story for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You looked bored. Something inside me whispered, ‘Say something funny. Make her laugh.’ ”
This touches me in the strangest way.
Cole and I had just spent the whole day together and fucked in the car on the way to the party. The fact that he still felt compelled to entertain me is ridiculously flattering.
The Siren prints a photo of us climbing out of Cole’s car, Cole holding the door open for me, dark and moody-looking with his long black coat swept back by the wind, and me with my hair in a maelstrom, my sparkly mini dress glinting like a disco ball, my head thrown back in laughter as the gust tries to take me away.
The caption reads: The Crown Prince and Princess of the Art World.
Below that, a brief article talking about Cole’s half-built sculpture in Corona Heights Park, and my upcoming show. The photograph shows one of my paintings, not Cole’s work.
It’s Cole who shows me the magazine, our glossy image looking far too glamorous to be anyone I know.
I glance up at his face, wondering if it bothers him that they talked more about my show than his sculpture.
“I’m sure they’ll write about you again when the maze is finished,” I say.
Cole snorts. “I don’t give a shit about that.”
I find that hard to believe. Cole is competitive, with a well-developed sense of his own merit. I can’t imagine he enjoys being overshadowed.
He catches my look.
“Give me a little credit,” he scoffs. “Whatever else I may be, I was never a man who had to tear a woman down to shine bright beside her. If you’re not as good as me, then you’re no good at all. And when I saw you, Mara … I thought, this girl is really fucking good. I don’t want to hold you down, chop you down, diminish you in any way. I already know I found something special. Now it’s time for everyone else to see it.”
