The Sheila Heti Ebook Bundle by Sheila Heti

Author:Sheila Heti [Heti, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781487009328
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc

ACT

1

• chapter 1 •

SHOLEM PAINTS

We were having brunch together. It was Sunday. I got there first, then Misha and Margaux arrived, then Sholem and his boyfriend, Jon.

A few weeks earlier, the own­ers had repainted the diner walls from a grease-­splattered beige to a thicky pastel blue and had spray-­painted giant pictures of scrambled eggs and strips of bacon and pancakes with syrup. It ruined the place somewhat, but the food was cheap, it was never crowded, and they always had a place for us.

I shared a breakfast special and a grilled cheese with Margaux. Jon asked for our fries. I don’t remember what we started off talking about, or who was the funniest that day. I remember none of the details of our conversation until the subject turned to ugliness. I said that a few years ago I had looked around at my life and realized that all the ugly people had been weeded out. Sholem said he ­couldn’t enjoy a friendship with someone he ­wasn’t attracted to. Margaux said it was impossible for her to picture an ugly person, and Misha remarked that ugly people tend to stay at home.

These are a few of the sordid fruits that led to the Ugly Painting Competition.

When Sholem was a teenager, he had dreamed of being a theater actor, but his parents didn’t want him to go to theater school. They didn’t think it was practical, and encouraged him to go to art school instead. So he went, and his first year there, up late one night painting, as the sun began rising with the morning, a sudden and strong feeling came up inside him that said, I must be an artist. I must paint for the rest of my life. I will not settle for anything ­else. No other future is acceptable to me.

It was an epiphany and a decision both, from which there would be no turning back—­the first and most serious vow of his life. So this past spring, he completed his M.F.A. thesis and graduated.

Who came up with the idea for the Ugly Painting Competition? I don’t remember, but once I got enthusiastic, suddenly we all ­were. The idea was that Margaux and Sholem would compete to see who could make the uglier painting. I really hoped it would happen. I was curious to see what the results would be, and secretly I envied them. I wanted to be a paint­er suddenly. I wanted to make an ugly painting—­pit mine against theirs and see whose would win. What would my painting look like? How would I proceed? I thought it would be a simple, interesting thing to do. I had spent so much time trying to make the play I was writing—­and my life, and my self—­into an object of beauty. It was exhausting and all that I knew.

Margaux agreed to the competition right away, but Sholem was reluctant. He didn’t see the point. The premise turned him off so much—­that one should intentionally make something ugly. Why? But I egged him on, pleading, and finally he gave in.

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