Page 9 of Morsel

The gallery is full of people who know art. Who care about art. Who don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or whether or not they’ll find a true connection with another human being. I’m not like these people. I don’t belong here. I know that.

I also know that I need to calm down.

Control yourself, I repeat internally. A woman like Mona is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even if she was using me for her performance art, there aren’t many people who would even pretend to indulge in something like sexual cannibalism. For fuck’s sake, she told me to eat every last bite of her. And with the way I ran out of there like a scared little boy who came too fast, I probably ruined my chances already. She probably thinks I’m a little bitch or something.

“‘Thanks for a good time’,” I mock myself. “How stupid can you be?”

I take a long swig of the second beer, then ponder my next move. The art pieces blur around me, and it’s like being in the middle of a grocery store, except instead of branded product boxes, you’re left trying to guess what’s inside. Eat blue. Eat red. Eat green. Eat white. The colors swirl until my mind can’t stop fixating on that word: Eat. Eat. Eat.

Eat me, she said. Eat every piece of me until there’s nothing left.

I can’t let this be a one-time thing.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?” a male voice asks.

In my periphery, a man with long hair stands next to me. His dark gray ponytail trails down his back.

“Violence,” the man says.

My nostrils flare. Shallow wrinkles crowd his temples. He’s older than me, maybe in his mid-to-late forties. A leather jacket dominates his thin frame, making him look like a half-starved rooster. I recognize him, though I’m not sure why. Maybe when I was researching Mona, he was in the background of one of the pictures. A loyal super fan or something.

I turn back to the “marvelous” art in front of me. I don’t really see it.

“The devastating hunger for total power that lurks within all of us,” he continues. “The need and desire to conquer the weak through sex.”

I grunt, my only attempt at conversation. He angles himself toward me.

I don’t face him this time. I don’t want to.

“What do you see?” he asks.

Jagged mirrors cover the surface of a dog kennel and a twin bed. Puzzle pieces of my reflection stare back at me: my strong jaw, my clean-shaven cheeks and chin, my muscular neck and shoulders, my dark blue eyes. A tan wallet covered in the same mirror scraps lies on top of the structure.

It’s a bunch of junkyard scraps.

I don’t see the same things other people see. Art is supposed to represent emotion and deep, intellectual thought; I don’t have the patience for that. Art is just colors and textures. Or garbage, I guess.

I don’t say any of that out loud. The man seems like the kind of person who would repeat my words to Mona, and even though I don’t like being used in her little bathtub show, I find myself desperately wanting for a second chance with her. I don’t want her to hate me yet.

“I see mirrors,” I say.

“No, my friend. Look beyond that,” the man says. “Look inside the cage.”

Cage? Not a dog kennel?

I crouch down and peer inside. Another mannequin, this time with a faceless expression, is positioned in a crawl. Dirt paints the plastic in wide strokes, and chains wrap around the object’s neck and body.

Mona wore a metal leash like that in her personal ad, and there are so many possibilities for human food preparation with strong chains, like hanging the carcass in a walk-in freezer. I can’t say that out loud though. This man doesn’t need to know about Mona’s and my sexual interests.

“It’s just mirrors, man,” I say.

He chuckles like I said something funny, and a gnawing irritation creeps in my jaw, itching to slit his throat on the broken glass and see how much he likes eating those fucking mirrors.

“That’s the interesting thing about it. We see what we want to see,” he says. He scrutinizes the sculpture like it’s that one asshole’s painting of the Last Supper. “You see mirrors. I see the lines,” he continues. “The cuts. The spiteful layers. The way our own image slices through reality and creates something new. Something chaotic and frightening. Something we must keep inside.”

“Arty!” a woman shouts.

Though the voice is too low to be Mona’s, I swing around like she’ll be there with wet hair and pink bath water pooling on the floor beneath her.

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