The Body Painter

This particular entry was written for Writing in the City's October 2011 prompt. The theme was 'Transaction' -- how art suffers or thrives in this increasingly materialistic and transaction-based world, especially in Singapore. 

The Body Painter

Word count: 750

Summary: What do you get for three hundred dollars?

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He carefully applied paint around the nipple of her left breast. It was to be a sunflower while her right one would transform into the eye of a shrike. Her torso would be the garden, her shoulder the horizon and her face the overhead sky. Her legs would be decorated with roots and soil so she would eventually become a walking garden of sun-worshippers.

June was lying on the cot with a sheet underneath while he hovered above her body. Her body, his canvas. She wondered how in the world she had ended up naked, with only a bikini bottom covering her, beneath this man whose sole artistry was focused on not making her look naked at all. She fidgeted and the tip of his brush paused. He frowned, as if to disagree with her nervous reflex, and waited until she could still herself back to perfection. “Don’t start sweating on me,” he said.

June kept her mouth shut. She was paid to bare and bear it, not make small talk. She had first met him on Thursday at a bar at Duxton Hill where she worked. He had been watching some of the servers all night before he finally offered her the job. Right body type, he had said, and good walking style.

Three hundred dollars for a weekend. Easy job—lie down, stay still, stay dry and do the catwalk at an event.

The first thing she asked him was why he couldn’t just buy a canvas. He looked at her in disgust and ignored the question. “Nothing sexual in it, it’s art. Do you understand?”

Uh-huh, whatever. She still let everybody in the house know where she would be that weekend—just in case. Yeah, she had finally agreed. Three hundred dollars was too good to pass up. So she would be naked, but based on his explanation of the process she wouldn’t be totally naked, you see. She would be covered in his paintings. It wasn’t the same as prancing around in one’s birthday suit for the whole world to see.

He would make her into a goddess, he said, a daughter of Gaia herself. She would be his symbol of life—raw, bright and pulsing.  Her body would represent a wondrous slice of the earth, one that had often been forgotten.

June realized he actually believed his own words. She did nothing to bring him back to reality. Let him stay on that plane of existence. She only wanted the money.

Overall it took him five hours to paint her. When it was all done, he helped her up, propped a body-length mirror up in front of her and said, “Look at it.”

To her dismay, June was in awe. The creature staring back at her was an exquisite sprite whose body was a timeless terrain filled with vibrant sunflowers, tall grass and an expanse of blue sky. There was no human in that mirror, only a piece of Mother Earth lovingly created, layer upon layer of paint. It was a sight to behold. Petal by petal, blade by blade she was now a breathing land, alive.

“What will happen to it after the event?” she asked him, unable to avert her eyes.

“We’ll wash it away.”

“What?”

“What do you expect? There will be pictures,” he said.

“It’s not the same thing.”

“No, it’s not.” He looked at her. “But that’s the nature of this art. It doesn’t last.”

Her throat suddenly became dry. “How much would someone pay for this?”

“What do you think?”

Three hundred dollars, she wanted to say. But she thought for a while and finally said, “It doesn’t matter, does it? It’ll never be enough.”

He nodded.

It sank like a stone. June felt like she had won the lottery, but at the last minute was told it was all a mistake. It was so unfair. Why couldn’t such a beautiful thing continue to exist? Why did he go through the trouble of making her so magnificent, only to have it all washed away mere hours later?

This cruel taste of true beauty and the price she had to pay knowing it wouldn’t last—it will take more than three hundred dollars to forget. Why did she realize it only when it was too late?

June stared at her reflection. She wanted this to be forever. She wanted the sunflowers, the sky, the soil, the life—all of them.

But he paid her so she couldn’t.

 

Three hundred dollars.

Singapore
October 2011