i’m standing five feet away from the most enthralling painting i’ve ever seen, a 30x24 inch watercolor at the Roswell Museum and Art Center that is the first moving work of art or the first beautiful thing in the world. the painting is simple. in the center of the paper stands a single white rose, covered in dew and pointing to the sun, half-opened but pleading with nature to open faster - the sun is unseen - but soft golden-yellows, barely out of reach of the stretching flower make it clear: it’s yearning. It wants to move faster, to open itself, all at once without regard, to the touch of the light of the earth, so desperately that the feeling’s changed, it needs. climbing the petals of the rose, moving slowly toward the obfuscated bud is a small slug; curious and cautiously inching its way to a demure embrace of petals and warm sun.
when i entered the room and started looking at the painting I couldn’t understand what the flower’s response to the slug was, whether or not the rose wanted the creature or opposed it. after some time though it became obvious, the white rose and the small slug were one in the same. two forms, one being: sexuality and neurosis, the beginning of the end, Icarian weekends. the slug needs the flower to allow itself to feel the sun, to feel the embrace, the flower relies on the slug to keep it sane, to keep it pointed toward the sky. without the slug, the rose unroots itself; without the flower, the slug is sentenced to the cold isolation of the dirt below.
As I watch the slug and the rose come together and bask in their well-earned reward, I hear someone approaching. I’m in the museum on a Tuesday morning in the middle of the school year and i’ve purchased enough tickets to force the front office to turn away any arriving guests to avoid this very situation. viewing with a crowd is fine if that’s the experience you’re prepared for, but to be interrupted on a meticulously planned and perfectly executed day by an individual you’re unfamiliar with who’s chosen the one occupied room in the gallery to strut into is a particularly visceral kind of annoyance.
The footsteps are getting louder so I turn my head to the right as a man dressed in a padded suit, about my height, converges on myself and the painting. i’m trying to remain indifferent but he’s wearing the tightest padded suit i’ve ever seen. the upper sections of his dress pants are clinging to his thighs, squeezing them with snakish ferocity while his calves burst through the hems. the padded suit is two-sizes too small, his wrists are completely exposed, his jacket buttons moments away from yielding to the immense pressure of meeting across his stomach. from a distance, you’d think he was wearing body armor or a style of bulletproof vest that just hasn’t made it to market yet. up close though, he just looks bizarre. the man’s face is obscured by a jet-black pair of aviators that covers his eyes and the top half of his cheeks. his hair, thinning but long, desperately tries to hide his worsening widow’s peak, and around his neck lies a small silver chain. i shake my head slightly and try to ignore my preconceived notions about this individual. he’s probably just interested in the painting too after all. i breathe for a moment before returning my gaze to the work of beauty that is positioned in front of me.
as soon as my eyes meet the slug’s gentle stalks, the man starts speaking at me and my patience evaporates.
“Heuh. I see you’re enjoying this little piece of history. Romanticism really did change the way art was viewed and this work is no different. Prior to the specificities and particularities of romanticism, everyone was painting portraits, scenes, vaguer and broader impressions of life devoid of a solitary point of possible failure. think about it, if this artist made a mistake on the rose or mishandled the slug, the entire painting would be ruined. such delicate strokes, such attention to detail. How lucky we are to witness! Now, let me tell you more about both the rose and the flower. The artist painted the rose to represent femininity and the womanly need to steal the spotlight. the slug is masculinity and the need to dominate femininity. It’s crazy to imagine how applicable the rhetoric the artist used as inspiration is in today’s day and age. the Rose and the Slug. The Slug moves over the petals in an effort to trap the flower, make it his. the flower, tentatively hiding from the slug, pretending that the slug’s breakability isn’t exactly what she’s trying to determine. Considering how different the world is today, it’s a real miracle the artist was able to say so much with so little.”
at first i thought he was joking but before I had time to speak and ask him what he was talking about, why he felt so sure, he continued -
“See, when it boils down to it, it’s all just traditionalism. The artist used their uncanny ability to show future generations the dangers of falsely symbiotic relationships. there is no ‘us’ there is no ‘we’ there is just ‘me’. So many of us out there think that there’s virtue or merit in giving yourself to another when the truth of the matter is that all you can hope to do in this life is grow your influence, grow your wealth, and find someone that you aren’t too bothered with to procreate with. I don’t mean to ramble but this piece always moves me so much. I can tell that the artist is a man when I look at the slug. No woman would find the little beast as apt as we do.”
at this point i wasn’t even annoyed I was just impressed that someone could be so confidently incorrect. I knew he was going to continue so I didn’t try to get a word in this time. I just looked at the placard by the painting, noticed that the artist’s name was a feminine one, and decided i’d look it up later. almost on cue, he kept going.
“There’s a lot of misinformation available nowadays. Men think they there’s more to a relationship that unbridled conviction and an iron-fist when in reality that’s all a relationship could ever hope for. Take me for example, I was married once, years ago, and I hadn’t realized how callous women inherently are. We were in the middle of a fight, a months-long fight about money, when my wife looked me in the eyes and told me I hadn’t ever provided enough for the two of us. I was flabbergasted. We met at a liberal arts school about two miles south of Baton Rouge and what first drew the two of us together was an incomprehensible need to fund and push social progress forward as quickly and efficiently as possible. neither of us had or wanted children so we both devoted our time to our work. Despite graduating near the top of my class and being inundated with corporate engineering job opportunities, the idealism we shared was intoxicating and i turned down every job offer and set my sights on working for the people. at the time, she thought it was the sexiest thing I could’ve done. Fast forward five years and the same woman is screaming at me in our two-bedroom apartment because I turned those capitalist cronies down. she swore that it wasn’t a change in ideals, that it was more about my unwillingness to stay with any company longer than a few months, and no amount of explaining to her that I only left jobs when they showed their true colors and that I couldn’t be expected to work for a company that doesn’t care about the fundamental truth of human rights could convince her that I wasn’t just lazy and unmotivated. needless to say, our marriage ended. Unfortunately it took another year and a half of hopeless eye-fucking and fumbling conversations with art-school baristas for me to realize that women just don’t know what they want and what they want is subjective, based on what we want.”
admittedly, i’d stopped listening about halfway through his tirade but I heard him end with “women don’t know what they want” - which was funny, so i chuckled, agreed, and tried to smile at the poor soul to my right.
Instantly, his face lit up and I understood why he was here. As he began reaching in his pockets, more footsteps from behind him pattered on the floor. before he could pull whatever he had in his jacket pocket out, security guards had entered the room and detained the man in the padded suit. they apologized profusely and told me that he’d been banned from the premise several times in the past. As they dragged him away, the man kept screaming
“Remember what I said, there’s no such thing as a symbiotic relationship. The man and the woman cannot coexist on equal footing. There is no relationship dynamic outside of dominance that matters on this planet. Women lie because they don’t know any other way. They tell you what you want to hear because they can’t do anything else. There’s nothing else for us here but these truths. We ignore them because we don’t know any better. The same woman who tells you she loves you today and that she’ll never leave you will tell you she’s found something different tomorrow - you must protect yourself, no one else is going to do it.”
the guards are apologizing as they drag the man away, trying desperately to quiet his screams of warring genders. as they continue through the gallery his screams are being muted, getting quieter by the second. then, all at once, i can’t hear him at all anymore.
I finally exhale. I’m happy I let him speak. I don’t agree with what I heard and I did an awful job of paying attention, but I’m sure he feels a little better. As i reacclimate to the silence surrounding me, I turn back toward the painting of the rose and the slug and I know that I’m right.
