Sketch Artist

By Jack Becker

I’m at a cast party for a college musical. It wasn’t a good show. 

And while this dorm room has enough space for the 15 of us, it’s too humid and bright to make for much of a party atmosphere. But I stay because I have a crush on the assistant director. His name is N. I’m obsessed with him—his droopy eyelids, dimples like craters, with a bulge that would make a nun stare. I’m never going to get with him, I know. He won’t even look at me. He’s just drinking his beer, talking with people a few feet away, and swaying to whatever claptrap bullshit they play at these parties. I pull out my phone. 

A rectangular image of an ass in gym shorts messages me on Grindr. Hey, the rectangle says—the salute of the boring. I send the same message back. 

We make plans to meet up. I’m pretty drunk, I write, but still cognizant, like I won’t throw up on you. 

Omg, he replies, can you bring some booze? 

I shove a beer into each of my jean pockets and two more into the inside of my coat. I leave the dorm, walk across the street, and come to the rectangle’s dorm hall, the same one I stayed in when I was a freshman two years ago. 

I enter, scan my ID at the desk, and take the elevator to the fifth floor, even though I hated when people did that. His door has his name on it. I knock and he opens.

We talk for a while. I take in his features—tired eyes, wide lips. I take the beers out from my pockets and jacket. We open one each as he packs a bowl. We smoke it out his window overlooking the street. 

After the first beer we take off our shirts. After the second we are in bed.

What do you like? I ask. 

Anything you do. 

He is a bad kisser. But he’s earnest. Together we’re nothing electric, but something earthy. We are both thick in the dough sense. I love it when he grabs my breasts; I love it when anyone does that, it makes me feel more feminine. With my breasts touched and my cock grabbed, I am closest to who I am. 

His head is sloppy, too, but I’m never a fan of anyone’s head. Either way, he makes up for it by the way he breathes and the lisp I notice when he says, You’re so sexy…

No, I say, you are. 

Afterwards we lie together in his bed, slick with sweat and chilled by the air from the open window. I notice charcoal sketches pinned to the walls. 

Are you an artist?

Sort of, he says. Like—I’m taking art classes. 

Those are so beautiful, I say. I’m looking at a still life he did of apples, the most hackneyed subject, sizzling with something fresh. The lighting and shading is completely unrealistic, simulacrum eschewed for aesthetic. The apples cease to be even objects on paper. Instead they are figments of imagination. 

You okay? he asks. 

Yes, sorry, I say. God, it’s just… what was in that weed?

Just weed.

Well that shit’s good, I say. 

The Sketch Artist laughs. I’m glad you like it, he says. 

* * *

We meet again at his dorm two weeks later. He asks me to bring condoms, but the vending machine in his lobby is out, and I’m too far from a pharmacy. 

Let’s just do anal some other time, I say.

Honestly I’d be fine with you doing me raw, he says. 

Let’s just wait.

This time I bring a half-full pack of cigarettes instead of beer. We smoke them out the window. 

Where are you from? I ask.

Arizona.

I’ve been to Arizona, I say. It was years ago, but we were driving through there, visited some family friends who had a pet snake. 

I had a pet snake, he says.

That’s sexy.

Neither his kissing nor his head are better this time. But he does something I’d never considered before: he sucks on my thighs. I quiver and moan too loudly for the thin walls. 

After he swallows my cum, he looks up at me with an open, animal look. A viscous tendril of liquid connects his mouth to my pubic hair. I break the tendril, pull him up close to me. 

Tell me a story, I say. 

He does. 

* * *

The third time, about a month later, he comes over to my dorm room. A beanbag takes up most of the floor. Past it there’s a small bay window overlooking the Hudson River. 

We smoke a fat pre-roll I lifted from my parents. We make out on the beanbag. It’s made of this coarse black material. I love feeling the bag’s polyester with my right hand while I touch the Sketch Artist’s soft stomach with my left. I remove them only to take hold of the Sketch Artist’s own hands, still stained from oil paint and charcoal. 

Draw me, I say.

The Sketch Artist laughs. Maybe later, he says.

Why not now?

I don’t have any materials with me right now, he says. And I’m high. 

I roll on top of him. His lips part to envelop both my top and lower lips. I’ve never had this part of me consumed before, at least not all of it at once. I let him bite me. 

I grab a condom from the first drawer in my desk. I come back to the beanbag where the Sketch Artist positions me so I am bent over, knees still on the bag while my elbows are on the carpet. For a moment I pretend he is positioning me like an object in one of his still lifes. Then he fucks me. He pushes into me slowly at first, but soon he quickens.  Syllables of pleasure drop out of his mouth like dumbbells. His hands are planted on my waist, pushing me forward and pulling me back. His penis is striking something far inside of me, something innate. I feel as if my pelvis is about to burst. The muscles around my neck tighten as I grimace.

I must make a sound, because the Sketch Artist stops and caresses my neck. 

Too rough? he asks.

No, I say, I’m just worried I’ll shit on you.

In the morning I won’t remember if he came or not, or if I came. All I’ll know is at some point he got dressed and left, and I fell asleep on the beanbag alone.

* * *

After the night on the beanbag, the Sketch Artist and I never see each other again. Except for the times we spot each other across a dining hall or in line at a bar. I’ll see him, but we’ll stop meaning anything to each other. I’ll go back to obsessing over N. The Sketch Artist will never draw me.