Page 29 of Café Diablo

I feel the thrill of my body waking, and my heart pumping, and the sharp tension of stepping out of my comfort zone into something new and uncharted. It’s incredible to be filled to the brim with this vibrant, luminous passion.

It makes me want to paint. Paint for real. Or at least try. It feels like I can’t lose when there’s so much raw vibrating energy inside my body.

I zip down a small side road that winds away from the metropolis of Honolulu’s tourists and head for my tiny surf shack of a home. The palm trees line the beach as the road follows the shoreline, swooping and curving along the splashing coast. I take several more dirt roads before I’m at the doorstep of my tiny bungalow.

My house is small—one-person sized and hidden in a grove of palms like a pearl inside a scallop shell. If I’m honest, it’s a glorified she-shed. When the tiny-house craze hit, I fell in love and I went all in. Plus, I live in Hawaii where owning a plot of land will cost my second kidney, and that doesn’t leave much in the way of funds for carpentry. So, I live small, but small is all you need when you have your own little corner of paradise.

I pull up and park my moped in front of the stone pathway that leads to my mini turquoise mansion. A hammock hangs in front of the main door, strung from the rafters of the A-frame lanai. That small overhang also shades my deck, which is barely large enough to hold a yoga mat. It’s a multi-purpose hammock/lounge/workout space/breakfast, lunch, and dinner nook. If there’s only one of you in your world, you don’t need more than a small metal chair and a side table and a mason jar of peach sangria. The big open sky and the jungle of palms and ocean peeking at me through the trees in the distance is enough.

Morethan enough.

I don’t need Edwin’s big view, or a fancy job in a tower, or fame, or any of those things that yell, ‘pay attention to how awesome I am.’ A small house that’s mine is like a tiny diamond—perfect and precious.

I walk inside my 300-square-feet of modern-beach-simplicity. If there’s a creative way to store it, it has been: stairs that are drawers, concealed cabinets, tables and surfaces that flip down and are hidden. But the true secret to living small is deciding what you really want. If I don’t need it, I get rid of it.

For me, there are four essentials that make this place livable.

One—a place to sleep, which is the cozy nook in the upper loft at the top of the staircase. It’s like the top of a tree house, with its plush mattress snug amongst the angled beams of the ceiling.

Two—a place to cook. The kitchen is what you walk into once you’ve moved past my hammock/patio/grand entertaining room of a front porch. One small burner, one small oven, one kitchen appliance to rule them all.

Three—a bathroom. Because yes, I would like to live in the 21stcentury instead of hiking into the woods like an animal.

And four—my pride and joy, my art studio. The painting area takes up the bulk of the house, covering the whole rest of the space once you pass the kitchen area. It’s tucked under the loft that holds my bed and, for all the minimalism of the architecture, my studio is a Tetris game of colorful excess: paints, brushes, canvas, sketches. Small studies are clipped to the wall by clothes pins and several small table easels are propped up along the back desk.

Everything has its places—brushes, gel mediums, drying space—you have to be economical when your life is a 300 square foot cubicle of precision. It’s my own treasure trove of wonders, where gold coins are tubes of paint and crown jewels are jars of turpentine and India ink. To top it all off, I have my own floor-to-ceiling picture window that looks out into the jungle of lush green forest, allowing natural light to spill into the studio. It’s a tropical portal that changes color all day long, from the first hints of dawn to the purple twilight of evening.

It couldn’t be more perfect.

And I couldn’t be more ready to cover a canvas in swirls of earl grey and espresso. I was inspired by Arie’s tarts the second I saw them at the restaurant, but now they’re charged with this erotic need to paint both something candy-colored and vibrant with something that’s more soft and intimate … wicked even.

I strip out of my wrap-around dress, placing it at the edge of my work area for inspiration, and then I put on my paint shorts and a tank. I wrap myself in an apron that’s covered in streaks of chartreuse and violet and goldenrod, before pulling out a blank canvass.

The stark white makes me balk, creating a hiccup in my heart and reminding me of all the half-started pieces I’ve abandoned. But I remind myself to just begin and trust that the creative energy will hold out.

I don’t paint things that are pictorial. I don’t paint people or landscapes or things we can see. I paint something more primal. I paint what I feel, what I imagine, what I can let out. There’s an ephemeral part of life that we can’t touch or see, but somehow it’s fathomable. The invisible mystery, that’s what I paint. That’s what I try to give physicality.

I start with circles. Simple. Approachable. Shape.

I start with the disks of tarts and the swirls of dizzying heat. Then, I add slabs of pink and cherry paint that dance and overlay and build like a skin atop the rough texture of the canvass. Then there’s navy blue from my dress and orange petals like flowers that fold into white and gold. Gold that’s the sun streaming through Edwin’s window. And blue that’s the ocean—a large expanse of cerulean trapped inside my chest, behind my eyes, filled with sea and sky and all that’s wide and opening.

I don’t paint Edwin, though he is a part of this. I don’t paint his eyes or his lips or that dark lust knotted in his body’s tension. I paint how it felt to be between the rocks of his shoulders and to feel him hovering a breath from my sex. The buzz of lightning between my thighs and the anticipation of his tongue parting that fluffy, soft, white of frosting.

I paint what I imagine he would have felt like—the erotic silk of his lips. Then I pick up my palette knife and slash wide lashes of color into a string of tension—the anticipation and unfulfillment that had me moaning and empty. It was almost sweeter than actually being tasted. I paint all of that heat and hope in lines and shapes, tension and undulation, creating an asymmetrical balance.

When I’m done, my knees and elbows are scuffed with streaks of rose and plum and sherbet dreams, and there’s this balloon of satisfaction that inflates my lungs. Inspiration has been such a finicky devil, elusive as the sunlight hiding through the sheers, winking at me before slipping into obscurity. But not with this painting, this painting is alive and charged with something fresh and new. It’s like I’ve shed my clothes and have found a virgin skin to stand in that’s unexplored.

It’s a beginning. My first painting in months. The rush of it feels so delicate that I don’t want to spook it. So, I stand quietly in the tingling space of curiosity and breath and creation.

I lean forward and sign the bottom of the painting. Then, on the back, I title the elegant square of colorful joy:Edwin #1.

And like the spark of a fire first breathing to life, I can feel it in my ribs, the dragon’s breath and the fireflies.

I’ve just started my next series.

13

Ned

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