Most August afternoons, you can find me sitting at Johnny Og's kitchen table, unmoving, unsmiling, as he studies me a full ten minutes without talking, then lets me get up and brew some coffee while he bends over his paper, sketching hastily, not noticing that I closed the dilapidated old shutters to block the three o'clock sun from his eyes. The scratch of his mechanical pencil gets interrupted by the dull thunk of the mug I put at his side; he likes his coffee black... but never with whiskey, since they call it Irish. Isn't it enough with his hair, he says, running his hands through it, making it stand on end with his fingers, thick and pale, the nails cut too short. I laugh at him. I say that I like his hair, and then I reach over and smooth it carefully back into place, bit by bit, as Johnny Og sits still - very, very still, his Irish temper and American coffee both forgotten, eyes closed in something like bliss.
I lounge, then, and swirl the lukewarm dregs of my coffee - clockwise, two, three... away, two, three - glancing over at the opposite wall, the windowless one, with its bushy covering of paper all scribbled on: charcoal dust making the smooth shadows on babies' cheeks, the sharp lines of the mechanical pencil becoming plowed ridges through ancient faces. But mostly, there's me. From the side, from the front... a three-quarter view, with my hair down... hair up, now, back to the front, head bent in a pensive profile. In that one (my favorite), Johnny Og emphasized the curve of my neck, arching it and closing it, giving the drawing an air of zero gravity - like a contortionist's pose.
His feet go pat on the tile, quiet and sticky, as he gets up to pour himself the last trickle of coffee. He tells me I didn't make enough. I observe, offhandedly, that he must have the heart rate of a sparrow. He laughs, quick and harsh, flashing me a half-grin before sitting back down to bend his head once more over the sketchbook. I wonder why he draws with a mechanical pencil? Perhaps he likes the thinness of the lead, though he curses every time it breaks off. He doesn't always draw with it: sometimes he prefers charcoal, sometimes an old-school yellow HB2. He used one of those to draw the design for his tattoo - a Celtic knot, the long face of a hound hidden somewhere in its coils. I can see part of it now, creeping black and spidery up his backbone to that fleshy piece of shoulder just below the neck, peeking out from his undershirt. I remember the first time I saw it, that day we went swimming at the Y, just a few months ago; it was moving then, twisting and circling like liquid obsidian, rolling through the contoured muscles of Johnny Og's back.
The sketch is finished now, and the tattoo hidden from my view as he straightens and turns the paper to me, gaze curious and indifferent, wanting my opinion, but not needing my approval. Ever the honest artist, he never skimps on details and unsightly truths... still doesn't, and I mull over my swollen nose and disheveled hair before deciding, once again, that it adds character to the drawing, and that Johnny Og and I have been acquainted long enough to be able to accept each others' imperfections. Just like a woman, I pretend this makes me feel better; and there, in the small close whitewashed space that is Johnny Og's apartment, I smile at the artist with his lopsided stare, and at his hair that, no matter my efforts, will never lie flat.
