First Impressions
Perhaps I found it so funny because we’d circled back to the same topic of conversation three separate times since leaving 81st Street Station, but something about the look on Anthony’s face told me that I probably shouldn’t have laughed as hard as I did. Granted, the subway car had grinded to a halt thirty seconds after departing the station, and that point we had been sitting on the tracks for an hour; no doubt we were both going a little stir-crazy. We had been discussing one of the least favorite paintings of mine, which if I recall correctly was a poorly-attempted cubist portrait of my then-girlfriend Olivia, and for some reason or another Anthony wouldn’t stop asking about her face, despite knowing how much I despised the whole thing; particularly, he was curious as to why I had left out her left eye and nostril, but left her right ear intact. Honestly, I've forgotten why exactly I was laughing so much, but knowing how I operated back then, I was probably just trying to brush off his line of questioning. But with the lights and air conditioning on the train having shut off for the past twenty-five minutes, and the stifling underground air causing us to sweat straight through our both our button downs and crewneck sweaters, maybe I was just able to find the hilarity in our situation a tad faster than he was.
It was the first of those truly hot spring-evenings, the likes of which seem so rare and so distant in our memory all winter until they appear, at which point the proportion of our soul they occupy begins to expand greatly and swiftly. At that point in my life, I was still trying to pass off my cheap imitations as original paintings (rather, I must have been trying to convince myself of their originality), and that evening Anthony and I were headed to the upper west side to meet this curator named Marcel to try and get some of them into a gallery he owned. Back in November, Anthony, my college friend and current roommate, had met Marcel through a tangentially-mutual friend, and, both of us having already attempted and failed to sneak our way into every gallery party and event in the city, took it as a sign from God himself that all of our problems had been solved; in other words, the delusions of grandeur that had for so long given structure and form to my life were finally within reach—all of them pinned on this one man and his gallery.
It all seems like a fever-dream to me now; the paintings, the aspirations, the parties, but back then, my life depended on it as if there were not a single thing else that mattered. I’m almost ashamed now at how little I remember of that time in my life, how little I remember of the day-to-day thoughts and emotions that once seemed so vitally important, so crucial to my every opinion and decision. But somewhere between then and now, I’ve learned to find comfort in the masses, and like most people, my memory has followed its natural course through time: it has filtered out the small details of my youth in exchange for greater themes, and traded in the small particulars for broad, sweeping strokes that now paint the arcs and motifs of my life.
Anthony continued to insist that all I needed to do was impress Marcel, and the aspirations that I had harbored for so long would finally materialize before our very eyes. And while looking back, they were more akin to complete and abject fantasy, to us at the time they felt just like a previous night’s dreams feel to the just-barely-awoken dreamer; they were so vivid—almost tangible even—and yet every morning fading away into the still air, leaving only remnants of their poorly-proportioned beauty. But even the dreamer who has forgotten his dream has still nonetheless experienced it, and in the same way we had already experienced our dreams. We had already lived them a million times over, for every night laying in bed we would imagine ourselves in the place famous artists, and every day we would project our every conversation and thought into their heads—we were living entire lifetimes that weren’t ours, the rapid rises to stardom and their catastrophic falls out of grace. The only issue was their memory—no one else had recollections of these lives, and so what we were chasing was really just validation; we simply wished someone would write them down into history. Anthony was convinced that Marcel would be the one to do that for us. He had sent him multiple copies of all my paintings, most of which Marcel had apparently loved, and over the last few weeks, he had met with him a handful of times for dinner. He also practically spoke with him over the phone every other day, and since their first meeting in the fall, they had grown to become quite good friends.
He continued to talk to me about Marcel, waving one hand in the air in grandiose, vast motions like he usually did, and wiping beads of sweat off of his face with the other—apparently he had told him everything there was to know about me, my dreams, and my paintings. Against my every rebuttal, Anthony insisted that Marcel knew me quite well, all I needed to do was put a face to the name. It was an odd feeling, having someone out there that I had never met claim to know me so thoroughly. We were total strangers, but only unidirectionally—I knew nothing about him, and yet apparently he knew all there was to know about me.
Anthony grimaced in the stale, muggy air. “Can you be serious for a second?” He was waving both of his hands in front of him, and I was unsure if he was trying to express or just fan himself, but I continued to chuckle, finding it interesting how he often stressed words that weren’t really supposed to be emphasized; he placed an accent on his ‘can’ and ‘for,’ just noticeably enough to stand out over the underlying rumble of exasperation that was passing over train car in waves. “I think you’re really going to like this guy, man” he took off his jacket and tied it around his waist; I followed suit. “He practically knows you as well as I do—I mean he’s already seen all your artwork and everything. Fuck. I just hope we’re not late, I do not want to keep him waiting.” He was staring at his watch as if he thought that the harder he stared, the greater chance there was of the hands spontaneously starting in reverse. Luckily, he dropped the subject of Marcel, and as he instead circled back to Olivia’s face for the fourth time today, still somehow fascinated by the presence of her left ear, I was struck by an odd feeling of sublimity. Everyone, everything in the subway car seemed to have its right place in the world, and to touch anyone, to move anything even a single inch, would have caused us to all come crashing down. Like a house of cards stacked perfectly on edge, the car full of aggravated, overheated passengers had reached its peak, its climax, and although each individual passenger was totally alone in that moment, kept apart and coiled around completely by their own, unique stories, they were all, unbeknownst to each other and even to themselves, working together in complete synchrony: a synchrony that was only possible at that very moment in time, and only possible between perfect strangers.
Suddenly, the train lurched into motion. The lights flickered on, and the beautiful hum of the air conditioners sprang to life; I had never heard a more glorious sound in my entire life. We took off, and the rest of the train ride was uneventful, I imagine, as I don’t recall much about it now. I do remember that as we rode the rest of the way uptown, both of our faces positioned directly in front of the AC vent, I grew distracted, withdrawn even; I was becoming less and less excited at the prospect of meeting Marcel, and increasingly nervous that I would make the wrong impression—we had pinned all of our convictions on him, and him standing as the gatekeeper to the rest of my life, I felt as if I would begin uncontrollably trembling once I entered his presence. There was an eerie quality to Marcel’s image in my mind, the borders of which surrounded a silhouette with no face or definite shape, and realizing that over the past few weeks I had constructed them entirely out uncertainty and doubt, I shuddered at the thought of meeting him in person, fearing that I would somehow transfer that fear onto him, simultaneously ruining both my perception of him and any opportunity I had of making a proper first impression.
As we walked out from underground into the open city street, the setting sun and soft, spring air settled on my face, and all of a sudden I grew quite tear-eyed. The air was warm, but was somehow distant, obscure—it pulled away from my skin rather than embracing it, and I became deeply insecure of every impression I had ever made, every conversation that I had ever had.
It was only a few short blocks towards the restaurant where we had agreed to meet him. The evening light, cigarette smoke, subway steam—they all mixed together in a low-lying haze that blanketed the street and sidewalks. I felt it represented my life in some way, as if the haze was all just an extension of my consciousness, and all the pedestrians on the sidewalk were simply visitors on their way through it; each one leaving a unique mark on me, and me leaving a mark on them. A young boy wearing a pair of green corduroys that were definitely two sizes too large, a woman with a red beret stopping to pick up something off of the ground, a businessman lost in his phone, hurriedly racing ahead to nowhere: they all introduced themselves to me, all taking small threads of their lives and twining them into mine, so that no matter where they were headed, or how far away they ended up from me, they would always stay somewhat connected to me by that small thread—threads that I could draw upon to remember our brief interaction, forever able to recall the momentary images that they had left in my mind. In that way that haze of sunlight and smoke and steam and consciousness spread out not only over the city block, but also over a web of thousands of interconnected threads, linking me to each person that had ever entered into it, no matter how brief or insignificant the connection.
I thought about Marcel, and about how even though I had never met him or spoken to him, there existed a thread between us still, just because he knew of me, in the same way I knew of the pedestrians on the sidewalk, and how they each knew of people that I could not see, nor would ever probably see in my life. They were all still connected in this giant web of mine.
Anthony had relaxed since our stint on the subway. We had cooled off considerably, and had both put our jackets back on over our sweaters. “It should be right around the corner. Again, just remember to be yourself. He already likes you, so don’t feel the need to act any differently now that you’re seeing him in person.” He raised his watch up absurdly close to his face, “Fuck. Never mind. It’s not that bad, only thirty minutes late.”
Just then we arrived at the front of the restaurant, an inconspicuously dressed Italian place tucked away between what looked like a closed barbershop and an anarchist-themed boutique lingerie store. There were a dozen mannequins out front of the lingerie store, each one dressed in some combination of army-green lingerie, bulletproof vests, and tactical boots. A short, stout woman dressed in all black and smoking a cigarette was going back and forth between the store and the sidewalk, sweating profusely and dragging the mannequins off by their arms back into the front window for closing time, covering them with cigarette ash in the process.
I admit I was a little sad to see them go. As I watched them one-by-one get dragged back to their prison, just then a tall figure of about thirty-five seemed to appear out of nowhere onto the sidewalk, stepping directly between me, Anthony, and the remaining mannequins. He was wearing a brown waistcoat, brown slacks, and had surprisingly little head hair for his age. The only other thing that really stood to me about him were his eyes, which were neither light nor dark, neither blue, black, or brown, but instead seemed to shimmer with every possible color, changing shade to match whichever color you could ascribe to them. He was nothing like I had imagined him to be; the darkness that had shaded his outline in my mind began to fill with color, and almost immediately my fears, the preconceived notions that I had had of him, began to subside—standing before Marcel for the first time in person, they seemed almost childish, their irrationality becoming suddenly and clearly obvious to me.
I remember that the first thing he said was that I looked exactly as he imagined I would. That made one of us. But before I could reply, he shook my hand, a little too firmly for my comfort, and then immediately turned on his heels and headed into the restaurant. His quiet, sparkling demeanor was comforting in a way, and there was none of the awkwardness that usually accompanied a first meeting. Instead, our meeting on the street that day in front of that lingerie store was like that of long lost friends that hadn’t seen each other in decades. Anthony quickly turned to follow him inside, and now standing in the entranceway by myself, I noticed the string lights strung up around the perimeter of the restaurant, and how each light bulb blinking on and off, alternating with its neighbors, created the illusion that they were travelling around in a clockwise direction; yet if I shut my eyes for a brief second and re-opened them, I could make them appear to move in reverse. I stood there for a while closing and opening my eyes, watching the lights appear to move in any direction I wished, until the haze that lined the sidewalk faded away, and the sun set below the skyline. Pleased with my small victory over the lights, I followed them both inside. The restaurant was twice as large on the inside than from what it seemed on the outside, and eventually finding them at their table, where they had already ordered a round of drinks and were chattering over a portfolio of my latest paintings, I sat down next to Anthony across from Marcel and ordered a glass of beer. Marcel took a sip from his drink, a reddish brown cocktail that now matched the color of his eyes almost exactly, gave a quick exhale, and turned to me. I was armed for any question he could have thrown at me, and at that moment, I remember feeling like I was not only willing to become anyone, to put on any face in order to tell him what I thought he wanted to hear, but well could have too—I didn’t know who he thought I was, or what he thought he knew about me, but if making a good first impression was what it took to get my work into his gallery, I was more than willing to pretend in order to get there.
“I’ve heard so much about you—” he turned his fork and knife towards me, and dismissively waved off a waiter who had come to take our order, “that I feel like we already know each other. Don’t you?” I replied that I did, even though I felt the exact opposite—and yet there was this feeling I couldn’t shake that he actually did know me, only I didn’t know it yet. But more we talked, the more I realized that this actually was the case, almost to the point where he began to cut me off mid-sentence to tell me about my own life. I wondered how much Anthony had told him about me, or rather, how much it was possible to learn about a person in a couple of months. Every sentence of mine, every detail or opinion that I brought up, was met by its perfect reflection—Marcel nodded with surety at every word that I told him, as if to simply confirm their validity. His multicolored eyes shone brightly in the dim light of the restaurant, but as I spoke at length into them, relaying to him some of my innermost thoughts (which, oddly enough, I had no idea why I was sharing, the words pouring out of me at this point uncontrollably), I began to realize that the appeal of his eyes lied purely at their surface. As inviting as they seemed, the window behind them was closed; nothing I could have said or done that night would have changed his opinion of me, and instead, his preconceived notions being so strong, so concrete in their resolve, that there was no fathomable possibility to change the image he had of me in his mind. Our meeting may as well have already been over, it not necessary to have even occurred in the first place.
“I’d love for you to tell me a little more about your paintings. I’ve seen them all, which, by the way, I’ve all enjoyed very much. I’d just like to hear more about them from your perspective.” Your perspective—I repeated the phrase in my head, thinking that if he really knew what I thought about them, he wouldn’t want me within a ten-mile radius of his gallery. It was right then that I came to understand my relationship to Marcel—my first impression had been made long ago, and he was meeting with me purely out of formality now; there was nothing I could do to change that.
As the realization set in, I became acutely aware of all the world’s presuppositions: I looked around the restaurant, and wondered at how many conversations were taking place, and of all the words being exchanged, how many of them were actually reaching through the other person, and how many were floating off into the ether instead, never to be seen or heard of again. Every introduction, first impression, goodbye—they are all only allowed to be as meaningful or as meaningless as we say they are; we only understand as much as we let in, only let others change us in proportion to our willingness to be changed. Everything else is turned away at our shores, and like rain rushing down drainpipes away after a storm, or afternoon heat dissipating into the night, we filter out everything we don’t like, because it’s easier to remain confined to our own realities, easier to build our own models, than it is to accept another’s.
I again looked at Marcel’s eyes, which although still shimmering, were glazed over, and I could tell that behind them stood a solid wall—an impenetrable blockade that guarded an image of me that had long-since fully formed. The image was crystallized wholly over, and I was only now realizing that it was neither mutable nor accessible to me in the slightest. He was staring down at his menu, running his fingers over the dish names as if he were blind and they were written in braille. Never had I seen someone so concentrated on a menu before—he occasionally looked up at me as if to see if I was still there, or to take a sip of his second drink (a bluish-green cocktail, which somehow still mirrored the color of his eyes), but he would invariably return to his menu, running his fingers back and forth, back and forth. He was still awaiting my reply. I realized that we had all been sitting in silence for a while, and Anthony was kicking me under the table.
Realizing the full extent of my predicament, I smiled, and closed my eyes. Starting slowly, but soon working myself into a half-crazed frenzy, I detailed the hatred I had for my own paintings, how I thought they were all derivative, shallow—I told him how not a single one deserved to hang in his gallery, how it was a pure stroke of luck that we had run into him in the first place. Alternating between bouts of laughter and rage, I derided each and every stroke I had ever painted, ridiculing their inspiration, and mocking Marcel and myself in the process for even momentarily considering their worth.
My sentences became fragmented. I began speaking in short phrases and half-finished thoughts. My words were barely intelligible, and with each poorly formed assembly of words that I shouted at Marcel, he smiled his same congenial smile he had worn the whole dinner, and nodded the same friendly, professional nod, each time driving me further into my frenzy. Soon, I was speaking complete and utter nonsense, stringing together words and sounds that held no meaning, and yet he continued to nod, only occasionally pausing in his nodding to scan back through the menu. Anthony was visibly holding himself back from punching me square in the face, and after about five minutes of my tirade (why he let me rant at Marcel for that long, I still to this day don’t know), he began kicking me so hard under the table that I was forced to stop. There was a brief silence. Marcel took another sip from his drink, pursed his lips, and continued nodding silently and attentively as if everything I had said was completely in-line with my character.
“Wow, I am so sorry Marcel,” Anthony, now leaning over the table towards Marcel as if to block me out of his sight, was first to break the silence. He was sweating profusely, and his shirt was almost as soaked through now as it was on the train. “I have absolutely no clue what just got into him; please don’t take anything he just said seriously.” Marcel wiped his the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Why wouldn’t I? I think this young man has some marvelous ideas in his head!” I leaned back in my seat, not at all listening to what he had to say, as I was completely sure of what would come next. He continued. “I knew it! From the moment I saw his paintings I knew he would be as brilliant in person. This is exactly the kind of talent I was looking for in my gallery! When is the soonest you can start moving your paintings in? How about next week?”
Anthony was dumfounded, but must’ve decided it wasn’t worth thinking about—he began talking details immediately. As they discussed the particulars of the move-in, I remained leaned back in my seat, focusing not on their conversation, but on that of the other tables in the restaurant instead. I watched couples chatter away endlessly, each participant engrossed, wrapped up completely in the other’s words—each nodding and smiling precisely on cue, and yet their eyes, tired and gray, clearly betraying their conviviality. All of the words being spoken simply hung around in the air like smog. They began to jumble together into a single mass, expanding and expanding until it displaced every ounce of breathable air in the room. I began to suffocate, nauseous and lightheaded from breathing in its stale odor.
I couldn’t stay inside any longer, and I excused myself outside, not bothering to interrupt the two at my table. It had grown dark, and was much colder than before. Taxis drove down along the avenue, their headlights illuminating the alleyways briefly as they passed. I walked back to the front of the lingerie store and stood at the front window, staring at the soldiers inside. They were all standing still, but each was posed into a different battle position, one aiming a rifle straight at me, another cocking back her arm as if to throw a grenade. As I stood there, I kept imagining that they would all suddenly come to life, and begin to wage war on whomever it was that they had in their sights. I pictured them breaking through the glass, taking their first imaginary breaths of the cool night air, and running to invade the restaurant next door, taking hostage all the patrons inside. Then I thought about how the police would show up, or maybe even the National Guard, and what they would think of the dozen or so scantily clad mannequin soldiers inside, and whether or not they would even believe their eyes. The police, the mannequins, the National Guard, all of them would be cast in the yellow-orange glow of the string lights, still flickering rhythmically in place. And we would all be flickering too, turning clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise.