Part Eleven Evann—April

PART ELEVEN

EVANN—APRIL

1 It started getting warmer, like summer. That’s how spring is, though my dad always tells me there was a time when it wasn’t that way. I was still at his house in-state, but it was getting really old. My dad was still on my case, and Tina—well, Tina just wanted to talk about her hair and her clothes and her nails. All those things are important enough, sure, I mean, you can’t go around not caring about them. But every now and then I would try to talk about art, and she would just give me this blank stare. She didn’t even know who Basquiat was, I don’t think. It was only when I mentioned that he dated that old pop star that she cared at all. With all her money and all the things science can do these days, I think Madonna’ll be alive forever, and that’s fabuleux because she knew Basquiat, actually knew him.

I tried some painting while I was staying there. Nothing came out of it. I’m a terrible painter, to be honest. I knew that. I was just bored.

There was a time when I thought maybe I had the potential to get better. But I don’t. It’s so much easier to appreciate beauty than to make it. When I realized that, one night while I was doing move with my friends in my old little apartment before it got destroyed, was when I decided to become a collector. I have an eye for good things, you know. Going from gallery to gallery, drinking their wine and talking to the artists, making quiet little jokes about the awful things and standing in awe like everyone else in front of the wonderful ones, was something I loved so much more than putting on dirty clothes and splashing paint around a canvas. In the end, I was much better at buying what I knew was great than making what I knew was pretty terrible.