Harold Lankins was an intense old man, with huge elephant ears brimming with white hair and a wobbly mouth you couldn’t help but pay attention to, as much as you kept your distance from it. He spat constantly as he lectured, and never smiled. He liked my work, and I liked him. I felt like he could read my paintings and see what I was trying to invoke, and also see all the obstacles in my way, all the mental clutter that makes most of us fail. Be honest, Derek, he would say, again and again. Stop worrying about what other people think, and think for yourself. That lesson was the only one that seemed to make sense to me back then. I guess the man practiced what he preached as well because he was a phenomenal artist whose paintings sold at galleries around the world, even before he died from cancer last fall. But he also got divorced four times, partly because he was also an alcoholic and cokehead, like myself at the time.

But all that changed when I met Shelly. She was an Art Education major at the university and we met at one of my shows. She loved my work and was in awe of me. She came back to my apartment that very night and we had incredible, vigorous sex for eight months straight before we eventually moved in together and she taught me how to be happy, first with the home cooked meals then with the movie nights at home. Wine replaced whiskey and coffee replaced cocaine. My paintings of strung-out junkies in abandoned, apocalyptic buildings morphed into beautiful women in gardens who all in one way or another resembled Shelly. Our lovemaking became gentler and more routine, and her rapturous screams softened into tender moans, until finally, last Saturday night, afterwards, when I laid heaving on top of her, she actually patted my back and I knew something was wrong. I laid awake for a long time that night and eventually snuck out of bed and went to the studio. The blank canvas sat there on the easel, lit by moonlight. I stood there naked, staring at it, realizing I hadn’t painted anything in weeks. I looked at myself in the mirror and was pretty sure my dick had gotten smaller.

It wasn’t just for my art that I wanted Shelly to scream at me. I wanted the old Shelly back as well. I wanted her to not know what I was thinking all the time and vice versa. I wanted us to be unsure of each other. I wanted her to go down on me like she used to, like she was thirsting for me, not like she was doing me a favor out of love, like cooking breakfast or doing the laundry. She did so many of these things, and never, ever complained. You don’t have to do that, I would say. But I want to, she would reply. She was lovely in every way, I have to admit. I didn’t want to lose her. Quite the contrary. That’s why I painted the cat.

When Elmo wandered into my studio that first day, I grabbed him and dipped his paws onto my palette and shooed him out of the room, him leaving little yellow paw prints on the floor on his way out. Shelly didn’t get back from work until that evening, and I had forgotten about it by then. I was working on a painting of a scrawny, naked old man with a tiny penis, staring at a blank canvas in an empty art gallery, when Shelly came home and screamed. She said, What the fuck is this?! and I remembered the paw prints. I snickered when she opened the door to the studio looking pissed, but she didn’t think it was funny, or least she pretended not to. She told me I better clean that shit up. I didn’t.

An awkward part of the game came when we went out to dinner with her two best friends, a middle-aged gay couple named Matt and Matthew. They were two very sweet guys whom she had known for years. Matt was a teacher in the school where Shelly worked. Matthew was an accountant who had always shown a polite interest in my painting. We had a routine of going out to dinner with them once a month, always on a Saturday night, usually for seafood and wine. For some reason, Shelly and I didn’t discuss whether or not to keep up the act at dinner. We rode in the car in silence, and the curious tension in the car was too exciting to break, so I kept quiet and figured the game was still on.

We greeted them with the usual enthusiasm at the restaurant. Shelly and I hugged each Matt in turn, pretty much ignoring each other. After we sat down she talked to Matt about work, and Matthew asked about my painting. He suggested submitting my portfolio to a new gallery he had heard of. The waitress took our drink order and when I ordered whiskey instead of wine, Shelly shot me a dirty look. The Matts immediately picked up on it, and asked if everything was okay. Oh no, she said, everything’s fine. Dinner went on.

For the most part, Shelly and I ignored each other for the duration of the dinner, although she occasionally rolled her eyes and made subtly sarcastic remarks under her breath at certain things I said. I was kind of enjoying the new atmosphere and ordered two more whiskeys, much to her chagrin. Her attitude was so out of character but the Matts didn’t seem to notice. I figured that they were both too sloshed on wine to notice. When she finally excused herself to go to the ladies room, I felt like I had to let the Matts in on the secret. I started to tell them about my strange request but Matt stopped me and leaned close with a mischievous grin. He whispered to me that they already knew. Shelly had phoned them ahead of time. They thought it was fascinating and hoped it worked. It sounded like fun to them. Matthew, who seemed especially hammered, chimed in that he and Matt also did a little role-playing to spice things up, a certain game involving a bad student going to the principal’s office to be disciplined. Couples do that sort of thing all the time, they said. It worked wonders for them, apparently.

I felt reassured by our dinner with the Matts, and the game continued into the night. When we got home, Shelly gave me the cold shoulder but I pursued her into the bedroom, and after much forceful coaxing, we made amazing, passionate love. I fell asleep that night with testosterone and whiskey seeping out of my pores. It seemed like something useful was happening between us, and when she left for work on Monday, I went to the studio and went back to work full of vigor. I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and had a few glasses while I worked, and in a few days I had finished the old naked man in the gallery. He had a droopy, wet mouth and the belligerent spirit of Harold Lankins. I stared at it for a long time, getting drunk and thinking about Harold, about how close we were, about our intense coke-fueled conversations about art. We would blow lines in his apartment and look through each other’s portfolios, practically screaming in excitement about the truth they contained, about his greatness and my potential. He would grab my arm and pull me real close to that wet mouth as he spoke. Nothing you do, and no one you meet is as important as your art, he said. Money, success, wives, children, houses, these are what normal people strive for. But you and I are different. We are artists.

Our new existence took on a life of its own after that first week. Matthew called and said he could arrange a meeting with the curator of the gallery he had mentioned and I told him to give me a month, that I was working on a new series and that it would be great. Shelly continued to yell at me for everything that I did or did not do, and I goaded her on. I left the sink full of dishes. I left the clothes unwashed and the cat unfed, the litter box unchanged. I didn’t buy any groceries or anything else we needed. She came home and yelled and I yelled back. Our lovemaking became more urgent and difficult. Her pleasure was exponentially increased, and so was mine. I did push-ups in the middle of the night, her sweat still mingling with mine, thinking of all the imagery in my mind waiting to be free.

I would stay in bed while she ate breakfast and she would shout my chores to me from the kitchen before slamming the door and going to work. I went straight to the studio and painted all day, swigging whiskey from the bottle. I didn’t bathe for days. At night she would tell me that I stunk and that I disgusted her, and sometimes I would go back to the studio to paint when she went to bed. I finished a painting every few days. I painted all the filth that I saw around me: the empty cereal boxes spilling crumbs on the counter, the pebbles of cat litter on the carpet, the empty toilet paper roll and the unflushed toilet. I took all the filth in the house and on my body and soaked in my clothes and portrayed it as somehow existing within me. While I worked it felt like I was exorcising my soul of all the cleanliness and routine of the past four years in that house. I put paint on my body and rubbed myself up against the canvas and on the walls and furniture. And this was all before I called up my little brother and asked him if he knew where I could score some coke. Are you sure? he asked. I told him it was for a friend. A sick friend. He needed it to get better.

I barely saw Shelly for a while, because I was up all night painting while she slept, and I slept on the chair in my studio during the day. My only contact with her was the screaming in the morning when she woke me up and threw things at me. Around noon I would get up, snort a few lines off the bureau, pour myself a drink, and get right back to work. I painted all day and most of the night. Shelly stopped yelling at me in the morning and kept quiet while I was home. I could feel her though, outside the studio door, stewing, wanting me, hating me, perhaps in awe of what I was doing. I was afraid to leave the studio so I urinated in an empty milk jug I kept in the corner. I began experimenting with mixing my piss in with the paint, and then my blood. I began talking to Harold Lankins while I worked. I eventually lit candles and imagined I was summoning his spirit to ask his critique of what I did. He always approved but egged me on to go furthur, deeper. Be honest, he said. Hold nothing back. This is your life we are working on here. This is your soul. This is the most important thing in the world. Sometimes his voice would morph into Shelly’s and she would tell me how proud she was of me, how beautiful my work was, and how much she loved me. I imagined that when the month was over I would collapse and die, sinking beneath the floorboards and all that would be left of me would be these painting and her bottomless love. This went on for days. As soon as I finished one canvas I would start up another.

I was woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of the front door closing. It was pitch black in the studio, and I was lying naked on the floor. My head was swimming and throbbing. The floor was sticky and the room smelled of candle smoke and vomit. Harold whispered something in my ear which I couldn’t quite make out, because somehow his voice was muffled by the dead flame. I felt around the floor for a lighter to relight the candle and make out his words. I heard voices and footsteps in the hall. Two voices, a man and a woman, made their way down the hall to the bedroom. They were a mile away, in another time, like family photographs. I found the lighter and lit the candle and its flame illuminated the canvas above my head like a shrine. It was Harold, his arms outspread and crucified on the canvas in the gallery, which was dripping with tears and blood and semen and excrement and he was dead, and his cancerous tumors peaked out of his chest. Every gesture of his limbs and face were perfect, spoke of timelessness, of care taken and sacrifices made, of dreams accomplished, of promises kept. I heard his voice, and he said one word to me: beautiful.

I managed to lift myself to my feet and find the door. When I opened it I heard the sounds from the bedroom getting louder, squeaky, wet sounds and moaning. I floated in the darkness towards the sound, opened the bedroom door and stepped inside. There was movement there in the darkness, under the bedsheets, the sounds of urgency and uncertainty. The woman’s voice moaned and moaned, then gasped, and was silent for a moment. Then it spoke. She said, Is this what you wanted? and the moans became whimpers, and then sobs. Is this what you wanted? she asked again, and the man grunted yes, and she sobbed some more. She asked again, and the man grunted again, yes, and I whispered with him in unison, yes, yes, yes.

The doorbell rang and I greeted the man at the door. The sunlight stung my eyes. He laughed nervously when I shook his hand. I showed him inside and down the hall. Rubble crunched under our feet. He looked under his shoes and around the house. I showed him into the studio, at the eleven paintings leaning up against the walls. He covered his nose with the back of his hand and he paced around the room, examining each one slowly and thoughtfully, and then turned and examined me. He reached for my hand and shook it, and shook his head in disbelief. Beautiful, he said.