Nude Men

eyes. She’s a brown person: brown as in brown haireyes. Very sensible, but sensitive; down-to-earth, but warm; moderate, but able to be extravagant. In addition to being a brown person, she happens to be so gorgeous physically, mentally, and emotionally that any man would marry her instantly if he were lucky enough to be the object of her love, like I am.
    Her face always glows with health, and her cheeks are pink. She has healthy-looking teeth that are not too white: they are very real-looking and blend well with the color of her skin. One eye wanders out sometimes, but ever so slightly and imaginatively—I mean “rarely”—that I always think it’s my imagination. It gives her an air of reality, of being a human, alive, who will die, which humans do.
    Her personality, as well, is brown. Brown as in earth, down to earth.
    We spend most of our time together at her place, not at mine, because although I keep my apartment clean these days, hers is bigger, more comfortable, more luxurious, paid for by her parents. It’s a big, pale apartment with lots of light and few cumbersome objects, except for a shiny black piano. She does not play it well but loves to play, anyway, and likes the look of the instrument. She says she has always felt happy in a room with a piano. We sometimes toy with the idea of living together but decide to wait until the perfect moment, a time when it will happen naturally, almost without our thinking.
    I go to practically every one of Laura’s shows, to be nice and because I love her. I privately feel sorry for her and wish I could help her. It makes me suffer to see someone make such a fool of herself. Especially someone I know. Especially someone I like.
    I finally decide I cannot let her go on with her pathetic show without at least trying to shake her up a bit. So one Sunday afternoon, at her apartment, I introduce the subject by making a casual comment.
    “You know, I was thinking, it might not be a bad idea to show the empty boot first, before you take the flower out of it.”
    “My foot’s in it. Isn’t that enough proof the boot is empty?” she asks.
    “Of course not,” I say gently. “You know, I was wondering: you never told me if you know how to do any traditional magic tricks.”
    “You don’t like my show,” she states flatly.
    “Yes I do! I just thought it might perk it up a little to do some traditional magic, like when things seem to really disappear and stuff.”
    “I don’t do that sort of thing. I do modern magic.”
    “It seems more like baby magic to me,” I say. “Any kid can do it. No offense.”
    “That’s what ignorant people say of abstract art. This is abstract magic, modern magic, postmodern magic, naive magic, experimental magic, avant-garde magic, an acquired taste. The dancing makes my work slightly more accessible and commercial. I could add singing, but that might overwhelm them.”
    “To do modern stuff, you have to know the traditional stuff,” I tell her. “You can’t resort to modern stuff just because it’s easier. Good modern stuff is done out of choice, not out of inability to do anything else. Picasso was able to do extremely realistic portraits of people. He simply chose not to concentrate on that style.”
    “I just don’t do realistic magic. It’s not my thing.”
    “I know, but do you know how to do it?”
    “Of course.”
    “Could I see some of your tricks?” I feel like a policeman. Could I see your driver’s license?
    She stares at me for a few long seconds and then goes into her bedroom to get her equipment.
    She comes back and stands in front of me, holding a top hat and a wand. She proceeds to do the well-known, traditional magic trick, which one has seen a dozen times in the subways and on TV, of pulling a toy rabbit out of a top hat, after having shown me the empty hat first. She does it stiffly and clumsily. She truly has no talent for it. Not very coordinated.
    “Pretty good, pretty good,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t compare you to Picasso, but pretty good. Can’t you do anything better than that, though?”
    She makes an ugly face at me and does the well-known trick with the silver loops, of attaching them and detaching them, when they seem unattachable and undetachable. The tip of her tongue is stuck out in concentration. Truly nothing impressive, it’s almost worse than the baby magic she does onstage. You need a minimum of grace and assurance.
    “Isn’t there any trick you can do well?” I