returns with a glass of water and another glass of white wine. I drink them quickly in succession. I look around the gallery. All of the walls are covered with giant white canvases, each having one small black dot painted somewhere on them. You have to get really close up to find some of them. The artist’s name is j.—lower-case, no last name.
“The restraint he shows is remarkable,” says Aaron. “It’s quite amazing.”
“It’s bullshit,” says Edgar. I smile at him and he winks.
“Then why did you just buy one?” Aaron asks.
“What Candice wants, Candice gets,” he says.
“Edgar’s wife,” Aaron says to me.
“This guy’s the latest greatest thing, so she has to have one. In six months, it’ll be up for auction and I’ll be staring at some new overpriced painting by the next best thing,” Edgar says, then turns to Aaron. “Do you think they have any scotch?”
Edgar goes off in search of scotch and to entertain his clients. I’m not exactly sure what he does, but it must be lucrative for him to afford those smart suits and to be able to drop ten thousand dollars on a painting he doesn’t even like.
Aaron and I circle the gallery and he tries to convince me how important and revolutionary j.’s work is. We run into a few of Aaron’s artist friends and they, too, are full of praise for j. and his revolutionary dots. I scan the room to see if I recognize anyone, but I don’t. I suppose I shouldn’t expect to—the city has changed so much in the years I’ve been gone. I tell Aaron I’m going to get another drink.
I walk the long way around to the drinks-and-snacks table, past the businessmen and gallery reps, the real artists and the wannabes. The patrons are obvious—they’re dressed in high-end office attire and the women wear heels and hose. The artists are just as cliché in their paint-splattered jeans and expensive glasses with asymmetrical European frames in any color but black. The wannabes are in layers of scrubby clothes and the girls wear tights with clunky boots. They’re dressed like they think artists dress, not like actual artists. I look down at my big black Doc Martens boots. It’s not the same at all—I’m not trying to pretend I’m an artist.
“You go to SFAI?” I turn around to find a young woman with dreadlocks facing me.
“Excuse me?”
“CCA? AAC?” she asks.
“Oh,” I laugh. She wants to know what art school I go to. “No.”
“That’s cool. I like your skirt.”
“Thanks,” I say. Hers is almost identical but about three sizes smaller to fit her tiny frame.
“You know him?”
“Who?”
“j.”
“Not really. Well, not at all actually. My—” What is Aaron? “My friend knows him.”
“You’re with Aaron Neilson, huh?”
“Not with-with him, but I’m here with him—yes.”
“His work is pretty good—better than j.’s.”
“And he has a last name,” I say, but the girl doesn’t laugh.
“Art cannot truly be art if it is bought or sold,” she says. I think about this. It sort of makes sense. “Come on, a bunch of us are going to smoke a joint out back.”
“I shouldn’t.”
The girl shrugs and turns to go. “Suit yourself.”
I look over at Aaron. He’s talking with Edgar and two other men in business suits. “Wait,” I call after the dreadlocked girl. “I think I will go with you.”
“Everyone always says we are living in a patriarchal society, but they’ve got it all wrong—we’re really living in a matriarchal society. It’s our mothers who fucked us all up,” says Nathan, the boyfriend of the dreadlocked girl, whose name is Tamara.
“That’s so true,” I say.
“I mean, look at those suit guys over there—who do you think they’re trying to impress?” Nathan points to Edgar and his friends. I don’t see Aaron. “Their mothers—they’re trying to impress their mothers. That is what my work is about—breaking free of the matriarchal repression we’re all victims of.”
I catch Edgar’s eye. He winks and waves. I blush and shrink down the back of the metal folding chair I’m sitting in. After a quick toke with Tamara and Nathan, we’re back inside the gallery, stoned and drinking and eating carrot sticks. I would die for a bag of chips.
“You know those guys?” Tamara asks.
“Sort of—one of them. Not really—it’s a long story. He’s, well, my brother—sort of—he was—kind of. So is Aaron.” Nathan rolls his eyes. “You know what they say, you can’t choose your family.”
“But you can,” says Tamara. “We can all pick who we want to be in our true family.”
“The traditional family unit is dead,” says Nathan.
“Blood is bullshit,” says Tamara. She raises her plastic cup of wine and we toast.
“What’s bullshit?” It’s Aaron. I didn’t notice him walk over. I’m stoned and everything is in slow-motion.
“Family, matriarchal repression, art,” says Nathan.
“That’s quite a list,” says Aaron.
“It’s true,” says Tamara.
“SFAI?” Aaron asks and both Nathan and Tamara nod.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Edgar wants to know if we want to join him for drinks at the St. Regis.”
Nathan makes a face.
“I don’t know,” I say. I wonder if they sell potato chips?
“He’s expensing it—those guys are clients of his. They wanted to see some San Francisco culture, but I think they’ve had enough,” Aaron says with a chuckle.
“Oh, sure—okay,” I say. If the drinks are free, why not?
Nathan and Tamara roll their eyes. “People are so predictable,” says Tamara.
“You can come, too,” Aaron says to them.
“Really?” Nathan asks. Aaron nods.
“Let me get my coat,” says Tamara.
I can’t help thinking what an odd group we make: Aaron and me, Edgar and his Ohio businessmen, Nathan and Tamara. We settle into a table in the lobby bar at the St. Regis and for a moment I’m afraid that this is a huge mistake, that no one will
