A life more interesting

I have a friend who spends much of his time being lusted after by beautiful women.  Interestingly enough, he likes beautiful women and seems to enjoy the fact that they like to spend time with him.  His life is more interesting than mine.

My friend is an artist, and in addition to teaching art to unruly masses of middle schoolers, he's also earning an MFA in a program where the bulk of the studio work occurs during the summer.  If you're not reading this too closely, fear not.  The details of his studies are secondary to the message of the first paragraph, which is that women feel compelled to spend time on their backs when in his presence.  Have I mentioned that his life is more interesting than mine?

One of the instructors in his MFA program is a woman and therefore wishes to sleep with my friend.  As a token of their friendship, or more likely as a precursor to sleeping with him, she gave him a painting she had made of herself.  It's a self-portrait, and if you have virgin eyes, it's really best that you stop reading now.  The portrait depicts her facing the viewer with head tilted back and tongue extended slightly beyond a set of full lips.  I haven't a clue what she titled the painting, but I have a name for it, and it's pretty easy to remember:  the blowjob painting.  It's a good name in much the same way that The Boston Massacre is a good name.  It captures the essence of the subject.

The blowjob painting was hung in a hallway in my friend's trendy apartment in a trendy area of Pittsburgh.  Each and every time I visited his abode, I spent a few moments admiring the majesty of the work.  My friend would offer insights about the inherent limitations of self-portraits and the creative dead-end that is the fascination with one's own form.  But, I didn't care.  I was too busy marveling at the baseness of the painting or trying to imagine a life in which I might be gifted such a work.

Recently, my friend had to vacate his trendy apartment, and during the rather hectic move, he handed me the painting and asked me to be its caretaker for a spell.  As I recently moved myself, and as I have not yet located a job or housing in Pittsburgh, I'm temporarily staying with my parents.  Which means that the blowjob painting is now on display in my parents' house.

Last week, my parents had roofers over to re-roof their roof.  (There are no synonyms for roofer, re-roof, or roof, so don't pepper me with complaints about poor writing... at least not with regard to the use of the word roof or one of its variants.  Actually, I don't think that re-roof is a word, so that's fair game.)  As part of this three-day debacle, the roofers needed access to the attic area on my parents' house to disable a cooling fan.   There happens to be an attic access point in one of the upstairs bedrooms approximately three feet from where the blowjob painting is currently on display.  I wasn't thinking when I chose which attic access point to which I should guide Bill the Roofer.

Bill the Roofer had pretty much been all business in my previous interactions with him.  But being all business has it limitations.  When I pointed to the attic access door, Bill looked at it for a brief moment, cocked his head slightly, and looked three feet to the right at the blowjob painting.  He was a man of few wasted words, few wasted movements, and even fewer wasted moments.  But he stared at that damn painting for about 15 seconds before coming back to reality.  And, I had to laugh.  Because for some beautiful fraction of a minute, Bill the Roofer was positively -- and mistakenly -- convinced that my life is more interesting than his.