Chapter 5

Drawing that picture of Benjie had given me an idea. Well, two ideas actually. One was that I could make money selling my drawings and paintings. I wasn’t exactly Picasso, but I was a better artist than some of the painters whose work the gallery I got my art supplies from. I asked the guy at the counter the next time I went in, and he said they’d put my paintings up for a 50 percent commission, since it was typically pretty slow in the tourist off-season and a lot of their regular artists didn’t bother selling anything. Even if I didn’t make any money off of it, it would be a good way to explain to my parents the money I was getting from prostituting myself to Benjie, and I could put it on college applications.

The other idea was to use painting as an excuse to hang out with Kevin. I could get him to model for me, and my Mom would have no reason to suspect anything untoward about our relationship. Kevin thought that was a great idea and agreed to model for me the next Saturday after our appointment with Benjie. Benjie only wanted a hand job, but he mentioned that he might have a couple of other friends who would be interested in fucking me the next week. Since I was planning on going straight up to my room when I got home, I smoked a joint while I was jerking Benjie off. Naturally, this made me horny, and Kevin and I ended up jacking each other off, after which I decided that we should cuddle in Benjie’s bed for about 45 minutes.

We rode our bikes quickly through the brisk November air back to my house. We didn’t want to risk a conversation with my Mom, so we went upstairs as soon as we got there, pausing only to take our shoes off at the door. Kevin took his socks off when we got to my room, and lay back on my bed with his bare feet peeking out seductively from the cuffs of his jeans. I decided that that was what I wanted to paint first.

I sat down at the easel I’d set up across from the bed and began outlining Kevin’s feet in pencil. In six hours, I had a 16-by-20-inch painting outlining every contour of his feet from the ankles to the toenails, laid out against the red background of my bed. I kissed Kevin goodbye before walking him down to my front door. By that point, it was almost time for dinner, and I went to bed immediately afterwards.

I woke up the next morning expecting that the painting would end up looking awful from having been done while high. In fact, it was better than anything else I’d painted. The marijuana must have helped me concentrate on the details. The only problem was that my parents or anyone else who saw the painting would ask why I decided to just paint someone’s feet, and I obviously didn’t want to provide the answer. I pondered the issue in the bathtub Sunday morning while my family was at church. I reasoned that if I did a similar painting of his hands, I could pass it off as me practicing human figures. I texted Kevin right before my parents got home.

The next day, Kevin went home with me, I explained to my mom that we were painting another picture, and I took him upstairs. I closed the door and turned on some loud music so that we wouldn’t be overheard, and then explained why I needed to do another picture of him. Kevin agreed that the picture of his feet was really good, and got back on the bed for me to do a picture of his hands. I had him take out his phone and pose like he was texting someone.

We didn’t have time for me to finish the painting before Kevin needed to be home for dinner, so he said he’d come back later in the week. At dinner, my Mom seemed glad that Kevin had come over. I think she had worried that I wouldn’t make any new friends when we moved.

“Do you have any other friends that want to model for you?” she asked. The way she said it made me worry that she was suspicious of the true nature of Kevin and my relationship, and wanted to figure out whether this was just a friend doing a favor for me or something more. I decided that to allay her suspicions, I would try to get some other kids to pose for me – maybe a girl.

“No one else has volunteered yet,” I replied, “but a couple of kids said they might be interested if they have time.”