posing

There was a time when my filmmaker boyfriend took a job as an art model in order to make ends meet. The artist who employed him posed him nude against walls under bright lights and painted him, not as he was, but as he would be in fifteen years. He removed most of the muscle, added some fat, let the cheeks sag, the hairline recede. He added experience and some bitterness to the face, a hardening around the eyes.

It's disconcerting to see what your lover might look like in the future, when time erodes his little perfections. This person. This man. Could I love this man with his sad eyes and sagging flesh? Besides, how well does this artist know my B anyway? Who's to say he'll ever wear that expression?

Around the time B started modeling with more frequency, his restlessness started to shake him. He spent a lot of time thinking, started writing more. Had a birthday, realized some things, locked himself alone in his room for days at a time writing, screenplays, comedy acts, sketches. Then went out at night and performed the acts and shot the sketches. It was a time when things changed for him, sacrifices were made, some relationships deepened, others faded. By the end of the year he had accomplished an incredible amount and built an impressive body of work. In the passage of just one year, he looked a tiny bit more recognizable to the man in the painting. And I found, to my surprise, that I liked it.

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