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Surviving Ricardo Loving an artist is certainly not the hardest thing I've ever done. But I would say it is one of the more treacherous. "Oh, this is my friend, Angela."
I’d been sitting there on that bench listening to Marietta talk with this very cute guy for about three minutes now, wondering when she would get around to introducing me.
"Hi, my name’s Ricardo. I took a few art classes with Marietta last semester."
Looking directly into my eyes, Ricardo shook my hand while flashing an oh-so-charming grin. The sun, peeking through the cherry blossom trees, gleamed on those rock-star white teeth. And I was smitten. He was so boyishly cute in a nerdy kind of way that my immediate instinct was to take him to my bed and thoroughly corrupt him. I wanted a one night stand with this boy artist. Just for one night I wanted to do dirty nasty things to him. I wanted to molest every nook and corner of his scrumptious, pink flesh. I wanted to have my way with him. I wanted to make him my boy-fuck-toy, and then leave him drooling and stupid.
So I did it. After a month-or-so of not-so-subtle sexual innuendo and frenzied teasing (my fractured version of one-night-stand foreplay), I did it. And I did it good. Or bad. Let’s just put it this way: I was very good at being bad. I fingered, licked, sucked and fucked him every which way ‘til Sunday and in every room of his house. But when I’d finally worn us both out and we were sprawled across the kitchen floor, panting and sweaty, dawn sneaking in through the window over the sink, Ricardo had to go and get mushy. He looked at me with those oh-so-blue baby blues and said, "I fall hard." Gulp.
"Well don't," I snapped, "because this was just a one night stand. It’s not going to ever happen again." I quickly gathered up the scattered bits of my clothing and got dressed. And then I got the hell out of there. But I did leave him a memento... my panties. Not because I was being nice. I just couldn’t find them. Anyway, that was the end of that.
Or so I thought. Don’t ask me how it happened, but three months later I found myself leaving behind the campus cottage (not to mention all my furniture) that Marietta and I had been sharing to move in with Ricardo. Hey, I told you he was cute.
Thus began my first major grownup-girl lesson, or rather, series of lessons:
* Wolves often can and do hide in sheep clothing.
* You really can’t judge a book by its cover.
* Listen to your belly and not your friends. Because your belly knows better.
* Pretty boys who draw pretty pictures are not necessarily pretty on the inside.
In other words, Ricardo turned out to be a bastard. And it’s a shame really, because when it came to talent, he was powerfully gifted. In the short time I spent with him, three of his paintings won awards, two pieces traveled around the country in a sort of traveling art-mobile and a prominent local art patron gave him his own very own show. He really was that good.
In spite of all of this, Ricardo was a miserable human being. He was a jealous and angry person, very bitter and viciously vengeful. And nobody saw it but me. Ricardo was wickedly sly. He knew he was fucked-up and was very good at keeping the bile that roiled around inside of him deeply hidden from the outside world. Only I got the rarefied pleasure of witnessing his bouts of depression, his anger, his self-obsession, his tantrums, his self-loathing and all of the other “tortured artist” idiosyncrasies that made life with Ricardo utterly and completely unbearable. I told him once that I thought he could be the poster child for narcissism. I still believe that.
I stayed with him for a while. I was a college student with little money and fewer options. I had classes to attend and grades to keep up. Marietta had moved her girlfriend into the cottage, so I couldn’t go back there. And I honestly believed, at least for a short period of time, that I could somehow talk Ricardo into sanity.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t take me long to figure it out. So, sooner rather than later, despite Ricardo’s pathetic pleading and vacuous promises, I took my leave. I didn’t escape unscathed. You don’t walk naked through barbed wire and come out on the other side all in one piece. But if you care about yourself and the people who love you and don’t want to see you hurt, you learn to sidestep prickly metal objects.
Or pricks, for that matter.
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