[lit-ideas] portraits of angry Jesus

Marlena in Missouri
ready to order multiple copies of Eric's book for our booktalk
collection...if he'll just finish it...
_____

Okay, since you didn't ask for it.

Here is a scene from an old novel I completed in 1997. The comic bad guy 
is a painter obsessed with portraits of angry Jesus. In this scene, he 
is having a moment of enlightenment, which is particularly repugnant to 
him, and also cleaning out his medicine chest. -EY

_____



Unknown to his trendier acquaintances who really didn't want to know 
anything about him, Wayne harbored a strict envy for the work of Warner 
Sallman, whose Head of Christ is perhaps the most popular painting of 
the century. In the torturous Sunday School of his youth, Wayne had been 
intimidated and tracked by Head of Christ's eyes.

There was no getting away from white, middle-class Head of Christ. Its 
purity and rigor were rife with impossible demands. His angry Jesus 
portraits were a way of countering Head of Christ, maybe even a way of 
reclaiming his youth, although he would not see it that way. He hated 
Head of Christ, and would have had it unpainted if he could.

Wayne had, at times, called the 1-800 How Am I Driving number, and 
complained, claiming the 1-800 How Am I Driving truck was parked in a 
bus stop while its driver was handing out Xeroxed Head of Christ 
posters. Did this, Wayne asked, represent the policy of The Buzz-Less 
Beer Company, which the driver putatively represented?

As his own series of (mysteriously foul-smelling) Jesus paintings 
progressed, it bothered Wayne that people mistook fantasy images of 
Jesus, like Sallman's white middle-class Head of Christ, for historical 
pictures. People actually thought Head of Christ was Christ. He didn't 
hate that thought; he just thought it was funny. Nor did Wayne hate the 
thought that Sallman's Head of Christ was an American spinoff of Leon 
Lhermite's L'Ami des Humbles of 1892.

He did hate the thought that he would have to break away from his own 
painting, stop the only work he'd enjoyed for over a year, just to 
rescue Marty Hatboy. He hated the complexity that Hatboy brought into 
his life. He hated to be reminded of Slabtown. The power of Hatboy's 
sculptures didn't phase him: Wayne was not a sculptor. But he hated the 
success of others, and Hatboy had been very successful.

The door buzzer cut through Wayne's hatred and through the scratchy 
intercom, Wayne heard Wilmot Kane's frantic voice. Because of this tone 
in Wilmot Kane's voice, Wayne knew that he'd always have the sexual 
upper-hand with him. Kane, who in other company might be masculine, 
abrasive, noncompliant, with Wayne became servile and hysterical. Wayne 
hated that, and punished Wilmot Kane by manipulating him.

"Wayne, let me in."

Wayne threw a bedspread over his canvas and reluctantly opened his 
apartment door to Wilmot Kane. Kane looked wrinkled and older, a growth 
of stubble on his oily cheeks.

"I'm going to the police, and turn myself in," Kane said, "and I thought 
I should let you know."

"You're what?"

"I don't want to be part of any murder, and that poor women on TV 
without her husband, without her man . . . " Kane stopped as though 
about to start sobbing. "I don't want to be any part of this, I . . ."

"Stop flipping out man. I know where he is, and I'm going to get him. 
You hear me? I said I'm going to get him; he's not dead. I know where he 
is. We'll be the heroes who rescued him."

Wayne hated Wilmot Kane's hysteria more than his servility, hated having 
to calm him down. Now Wilmot Kane was looking at him like a dog whose 
owner has just decided not to throw it in the bathtub. "You know where 
Marty Hatboy is?"

"That's right, and I'm not telling anyone where until I'm ready to go 
get him. So go home. I'll call. I'll leave a message on your machine."

As the door was closing behind Wilmot Kane, Wayne Felker immediately 
launched work on Jesus Fallen Among Thieves. He thought he could taste 
chocolate on the back of his throat, and wondered why. He really was 
falling in love with this painting, more than anything else he had ever 
done, as though this were the only thing he had ever done. Maybe this 
was the only thing he had ever done. Wayne had read about crucial 
moments, turning-points, landmark events of personal growth, another 
artist's sea change into a rich and strange new style, chrysalis into 
successful butterfly--he hated those stories until now that they seemed 
to be coming true. For the first time, Wayne Felker was in love.

He was out of cocaine again. Worse he was crashing from weak speed he 
had hustled from a hooker in a bar. The edges of his world slowly turned 
black and gray as the ebbing speed flooded his need with its yellow 
fire. This is hell, he thought, his face clenched like a fist of parchment.

For Wayne Felker it would have been just another day, had he not created 
Jesus Fallen Among Thieves. The painting expanded before him, burning in 
glory. His wall was stretched into a cyclone of motion. It was an 
apocalypse of failed robbery. Downed thugs resembling Sam Tripp and 
Fusby Puppyshins lay in crumpled ocher and blue folds. Frayed figures 
received the coup d'grace. A very angry Jesus strode forth like some god 
of battle taking notes for a travel brochure. He was playing for keeps now.

Wayne looked at the painting and saw a message to himself. Painting this 
would lead him out of pain and into a fresh and new life. He stood back 
from it, thoughtlessly mouthing an ocher brush, and let it dream again.

He dreamed it deeper. The clash between Jesus and the robbers literally 
took forever to resolve. It didn't need help or encouragement. It was 
here for good. This indomitable angry Jesus came for Wayne.

Wayne hated having moments of insight and his hatred grew. He felt like 
cheating a cab driver. He wanted to steal a wealthy matron's purse, drop 
a lit cigarette in a mailbox, drug Kane and rob him, seduce wealthy 
widows from New Jersey, and snort pencil-sized lines of coke under the 
porn screens at the gay bar on 10th Street. He wanted to set false 
alarms, drop stones from tall buildings, drown swans. He didn't care 
whether time was on his side or the color of the weather, his was a 
focused drive to bite his own pain, as a trapped animal will gnaw its leg.

Watching himself repeated as an Angry Jesus, Wayne kept sucking on the 
ocher paintbrush. When the taste of the oil paint first registered in 
his consciousness, it came not as a taste at all, but rather as a grim 
resolve. The taste of oil paint insinuated itself more fully, and 
Wayne's hatred became distracted by the growing, bitter and caustic 
taste. He realized what he was doing. With an expression of mad 
revulsion he spat and tossed the paintbrush against a far wall. The 
paintbrush hit the wall and bounced, crashing through one of the top 
windows. Wayne rushed to the bathroom and began rinsing his mouth.

Lorti was going to have his legs broken, just like the window. Time to 
floss. After rinsing his mouth almost a hundred times, he examined the 
medicine cabinet for his favorite wax mint floss (five years old). If 
death must come, let it come with clean teeth. When he moved the floss 
he found an aspirin bottle he knew he'd used to store drugs. On a whim 
he opened it. Hidden among the aspirins was a tiny glass vial 
quarter-full of white powder. Wayne's eyes widened and the sunlight 
opened before him. This was bliss! Here was something he could not hate, 
this deep gift satisfaction, part discovery, part reward for caution. 
Finding the vial made him a man again.

Smiling and giggling, Wayne Felker danced his way to the kitchen. He 
found a clean plate, put it on the kitchen table, and laid out some 
lines on it. He couldn't use dollar bills because his wallet was 
missing, so he clipped up the cover page of Popular News magazine, 
extracting a rectangle bearing the face of a vocalist. He rolled this 
into a little tube, and snorted the lines right from the plate. Half of 
the powder remained in the vial and he put it in his shirt pocket. When 
he looked up again he was flying.

Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was playing in a nearby apartment. The voices 
flowed together, forming their own passionate church. Wayne was a god. 
 From him flowed magnificent torrents of vital energy. He was a 
spiritual being now and felt it all throughout his body. From his eyes, 
a sudden flash of golden sunlight seemed to soar above existence itself, 
comprehending, participating in the mysterious unfolding of being.

"Oh fuck," exclaimed Wayne to his empty room. "I'm having a vision."

He always regarded hallucinations as unfair competition with his 
paintings. The chorus of voices from the Beethoven next door rose in an 
awesome chorus, like voices of the blessed entering heaven. He was set 
free, mighty, unassailable, seeing as deep as the life-force.

Wayne sat in front of his painting smoking borrowed generic menthol 
cigarettes. An element remained to be completed. It needed something. 
Wayne thought of flight and thought of the pigeons in Hallam's 
apartment. They just broke in like they wanted something. At least they 
wanted something. Pigeons. He decided to put them in his painting, 
flying as one big semicircle over the head of the angry Jesus, lofting 
away from the struggle on the road to Damascus, more than the usual gray 
wilted v-shaped blurs, prouder and clearer. Pigeons. He worked on the 
borders of the image, the pigeons fanning outward and away.     



(c)1997 Eric Yost

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