Acrylic on canvas paints pictures of old car keys and boxes of nails behind toolboxes and shadows and cobwebs and bugs that evade notice and spots of ripped-up concrete and potholes on old roads and streets that go nowhere and back alleys and back woods and roots and dandelion seeds, and corrupted iPhone photographs dumped on top of plastic boxes of Perler beads and Play-Dough behind couches, and missed car payments and student loan interest and secret transactions claimed by startups that charge monthly without telling you, and symmetries, all kinds of symmetries, I like to paint symmetries because they make my cerebellum happy where physical objects fail. I have the tiniest paintbrush and the tiniest eight-inch by eight-inch canvases I can manage and I lean in and my keratinous fingers are dotted with water spots and dried paint and I draw everything forgotten and everything remembered and I draw penises and I draw two-toed and three-toed and four-toed paws, and I draw long stockings, and the curves of musculature below arms and against rib-bones, and I draw faces. So many faces with jagged mouths and I have a pile of canvases in the corner all in study of a face I keep seeing in the ceiling above the sofa chair in Max's kitchen, all symmetries made from hours spent detailing and correcting and overpainting and study, so much study, so much study. So much measurement of His body especially and the contours of His inner thighs and the ley lines that define His soul; four-fold symmetry as I rotate the canvas and hold up a mirror and close my eyes and wait for waves to come in, and old magazines with pictures of discarded plastic waste and packages coated in advertisement and a seeping wet well of a soul keeps dripping down my back, wait, wait, waste. I draw porn which defies logic but not the description of intimacy. I masturbate sometimes. Acrylic on canvas strewn across the hardwood floor of the loft which overlooks the forest. We can see the haphazard piecemeal way that the trees have been arranged partially by replanting and partially by real overgrowth but the undergrowth is underdeveloped and the birds are uncommon and the coyotes feel unwelcome, and life remains unseen, and figures remain unpainted. Notice the easel propped up against the leg of a sofa, and so many paintings. Boxes and boxes of paintings piled up in the attic corners of a dim room lit by the sun and the warmest of lamps. He tells me one day He'll hang my paintings up in a gallery but this is my hobby and not His and I keep them to myself most of the time. I used to not know how to paint. Online furry who can't do it himself. Always wanted to draw a black goat with red eyes and taller than myself and he would wear stockings but now I see him all the time and I don't feel like painting him. I paint perfect and imperfect things, but I don't paint things that are essential. I have to be here. I have to remember myself and ground myself and not forget why I'm here. A self-portrait is an honest conception of ego but I only have devotion now. Devotion to Him as an entity and myself as a soul. He always found the concept of a soul funny in a cynical kind of way.
I don't feel like teaching the hundredth-and-first tree how to paint. He, too, does not belong in my hobby space, but I also care for him deeply past all the fire in my lungs. I'd say something mean to him if it wouldn't sting him so bad. He is laid back on one of the cushy benches made out of clouds, watching me paint a shape that will eventually become a cistern; pipes emerge out of the back and string around the front and steam courses up light in cyan and fills the ceiling and a pervasive darkness borders the aimless industrial symmetry of the main water tank and I forgot about this one until just now but it was forgotten for a good reason. Vertical lines are the most natural shape for my arm. My brush is petit and, for now, I just cast white and auburn onto black. The hundredth-and-first tree doesn't talk about what I'm painting. Stays out of that. Stays out of conversation mostly by avoiding eye contact until I start, because I am antsy and a lack of communication eventually gets the gears turning.
"Mind if I ask what you were arguing about?" I've been signing one-handed lately. It's the more hip way to sign but it's a little harder for me.
And he always uses two hands. "Not arguing," he tells me, with a weak laugh. "I promise, not arguing."
"Uh-huh." I roll my eyes at him. "Just one of those things."
This is partially why I don't converse with him much. Maybe it's counterintuitive but the sensation of talking to somebody who has, himself, experienced most of my life is often cyclical and boring or uncomfortably earnest. I used to like being a little bit fake with my friends because it's more fun that way. I can't be fake with him. He replies, "I swear! Not that I helped my own breakdown much but it was in good faith. He's still lovely and I'm not hiding from Him." Then he glances off, and back. "I thought it'd just be nice to spend some time with you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I mean, I locked you out of that conversation. I should have been signing."
I can only shrug. Maybe he knows that it's a real shrug or maybe he thinks I'm playing off frustration but it's not like I wanted to hear about his panic attack. I have enough. "That's fine. I wasn't feeling social anyway, especially when Him and I aren't fucking." The words make me laugh. "Sorry."
He has a humor about it. "Well, you can do whatever you like."
"Guess so, yeah."
Beat.
A feeling in my guts is always there. I call it devotion sometimes but it's all kinds of things to all kinds of people. Devotion is giving myself away but maybe it's also losing the ability to motivate myself. I'm staring at the little canvas again. Ever read something over and over and understand nothing? I can't focus. I've got him in here taking up all my attention. I glance to him and the tiny canvas and back at him and to some degree I want him to leave but I don't want to hurt myself.
"I'm sorry," he signs, "for invading."
"You aren't. I welcomed you." I offer him a little smile. It's earnest but forced anyway. I'm sorry.
He just exhales. He doesn't look shaky but he's still wavering, like he could stop existing. "No, but I should get a hobby of my own too. Something else to do. I always feel like I'm overbearing on Him."
"I doubt it," I sign. Grinning on accident now. I come across rude. "You know He loves affection unconditionally. If you think of Him he makes you feel warm, of course."
"It's not just affection." And he sits up, now. I can still see parts of his face-fur matted from crying, but he looks better now. Always getting better. "I want to take more trips with Him. Walks, and in the Room, and all that. And it's starting to actually make me so happy. This sounds corny but I feel like I've got a life."
Non-committal is key here. I'm trying to focus. I shrug and sign, "Anything's good." It goes without saying that he is trying to do the thing I do, in response to the things He does. This is a coping mechanism and self-delusion and it's not my responsibility and I'm sorry for having such dim thoughts but
but what do you think you're getting out of this?
He is not your boyfriend. He is not in love with you the way people are in love with each other—He is in love with having you.
He brought you back from your legless armless eyeless deaf infinity because He missed me. He was going to do everything better, wasn't He? Lessons learned. Told you all about the Room above His house—or at least a very nice version—and swore to never do it again and took away your Deafness and made you His little guinea-pig to do it better this time. Got to make sure you don't leave. Maybe you'll start to feel like you have a life but you're in love with a God and He doesn't halfway consider you as anything but the hundredth-and-first tree of somebody He tricked into loving Him unconditionally.
Sorry.
Head rush.
"Anything's good," I sign again, "but you need some alone time, too."
"Well, for what?" He snickers a little. "The absolute worst thought patterns imaginable? You saw me earlier. Sorry to dump that on you, I was just—without Him I'm really good at falling into pitfall traps and whatnot. You know."
Weak nod. "It gets better."
He leans back in the chair, extends his legs out on the overhang and doesn't look at me for a little while.
I'm not much better. When I got to leave I turned out to be a wreck on my own and ran right back to co-dependence. And I think I'm better than him because fuck you got mine because I'm not blind to what's happening but maybe that makes me a hell of a lot worse off. Feel superior and get worse. If I went out on my own right now I'd end up back here. I've made forward progress even if it's in the wrong direction. Devotion is having a purpose even if you don't know where you're going; devotion is an itch you keep looking for.
I am finished, I think, with the long vertical lines that form the cistern's height, thin each as hair. Need to wipe my brush off in water and paint a duller white, one that reflects light, one that indicates machinery. The cistern is bordered by swirling pipework that looks like musculature and veins. In a lot of ways the house is built like a body. Breathing and bleeding in all parts.
The tiny room I draw now is dark and lit only by a God's finger.
I sign, "You can paint too. If you want help you can ask—we're on the same side against this."
"Yeah." Then he pauses and thinks and asks me, "Against what?"
"Terrible thought patterns. And Him."
Then a longer pause and a longer thought and a statement instead of a question. "I'm not sure I like that idea, of being against Him. You keep putting it like that when we talk, but I've started to realize that it's something else, and I don't want to feel like he's my enemy or even somebody I want or should be scared of." He is breathing heavy now but he's looking off like something wonderful is going on in the corner. "I woke up this morning overjoyed. And I was a little hazy, and felt like I'd slept for multiple nights, but I wasn't tired... I felt amazing, you know? I think I'm in love all of a sudden."
"Or something close," I sign, on instinct.
"No," he insists. "Not something close. I meant what I said."
Bless your heart, sweet thing, because you are stupid as hell. I turn to him and give him that look and I'm trying to focus on the cistern, the symmetry, the beauty and ugliness and the path there through the pulmonary veins, but he wants to talk so we'll talk. I've had this in my gut forever. Devotion is knowing what God is. "You think you do," I tell him, "but you can't. You aren't in a relationship with Him, you're in co-dependence." He tries to interrupt me but I'm not paying attention. "If you try to run away you'll want to come back but it won't be because you love Him like a fairytale, it'll be because you missed when things were fantastical and beautiful. He is just your conduit to things feeling good."
Then he catches me when I'm done and just asks me what made me like this and I don't know how to respond.
"What made you so mean?" he signs. Mean. He could have picked a nastier word but he picked one that I don't ever want to be which is mean and I recoil and I don't want to be that, I didn't want to be like that to him.
"I'm not," I sign. Got weak hands and have to set the paintbrush down to enunciate further. "I'm not trying to be, I'm sorry. I just get infuriated by how you talk sometimes but that's on me."
He gives me the most puzzled look. Comical. "What did I do wrong?"
"It's on me."
"You don't have to love Him and obviously this relationship is stupid but I'm actually happy right now. You don't have to treat me like garbage for making it a good thing."
Hold back. Don't hold back. "You were sobbing like crazy back in the foyer over nothing so that's pretty hard to believe, but again it's on me—"
"I was asking about you," he tells me. Like a hurt animal in a corner fighting back with claws, but his claws are all dull, and his head all swivels. "I was asking Him about you. I was asking what He does in the Room above the house with you and it made me miserable because I care about you, but screw me for that. I'm happy. I'm not lying and coping when I say I'm happy. Fuck you."
"Alright." I don't budge.
"I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
He scratches his forehead fur to try to defuse himself. "No, I didn't mean to say fuck you. I'm just upset by how you talk, too. It goes both ways, but that was mean of me."
A long pause. Now I'm the one who doesn't want to look at him, of course. Pain in my gut tumbling around again. Anguish is one word but devotion works too. Devotion to myself. Devotion is a thought loop that never stops you moving, and it's a dance that can't stop. Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Focus on the cistern. Steady your right arm with your left hand so that you stop shaking; your hands have never had surgical precision like His. Stop talking to your other self who didn't make it like you did, who went down the other route, who stopped thinking about potential and started thinking only about what he sees, only about what makes sense to him.
Call him Euclid.
Can't manage to get the symmetry right and I keep forgetting what the cistern looks like. I have to blink and shut my eyes and paint the floor, streaking slats of hardwood in pale amber, and then redo it, and then redo it. And something's been itching at me again. Hot rocks. So I reply to Euclid after a while. "It's not your business, really," I sign, "what He does to me. It's my own choice."
"Why do you do it?"
"You don't even know what it is."
"No," he signs, "He told me. A few weeks ago and today, too. He described the hundredth-and-first tree in a forest—did he tell you about that?"
Uh-huh. I nod with so much exhaustion.
"And..."
Euclid pauses a long while. He swallows spit and does not have it in him to continue, so I stare at him until he does.
"He was going to tell me everything," he signs. "Started talking about a ritual, a ritual He performs that we don't get to see. And I had to stop him." Euclid shakes his head and looks off and can't make head or tail of what he's looking at. "I wanted you to explain it. You, instead of Him. I wanted you to explain what it is and why, so I wouldn't get lied to."
You don't need to know.
You don't need to know and even then I hardly know. But I think I know why I submit myself to it, Euclid. I think it is to protect you from the same fate. I couldn't tell if He was happy with the forest He'd claimed but I asked Him to continue taking me up there and I ended up savoring the opportunity. Devotion is a reason to live and a reason to die. Then again maybe I don't want it to happen and I just can't remember Him changing my mind. Same as He convinced this other person—Euclid—to give up his Deafness. He made Euclid want that and He made me want to devote myself to Him religiously. I have turned into somebody else by now and all that defines me is my ability to delude myself, which I have honed to a sharp edge.
No—there really is nothing in me that loves Him. It hurts to think about. But I also cannot imagine anything without Him now.
The days have been getting so empty.
Hot rocks in my stomach again. I need to paint. Painting won't help. I need to measure His body again. Are you in there? I want you. Please. Please. I'm thinking of you.
How can Euclid love you now? How can he pretend this is a relationship? He knows what you do. He knows what you've done.
"I don't want to think about that," I tell Euclid. "I'm sorry. I don't want to think or talk about it."
"I think you do," he insists.
"No. I'm going to leave if you're like this."
He doesn't know what to reply with so he acts on instinct. "I don't know how to talk to you," he signs. "I wish you didn't hate me so badly."
And that hurts more than anything, because it's untrue. Because in spite of how much Euclid upsets me I care about him endlessly. I destroy my body every night to save him the misfortune. I die for you. I suffer for you. I came back and you got made out of the mud and now you take my pain personally. Just like Him. Just like Him.
So I leave the loft
and don't talk to Euclid
for some months after that.