I was beginning to understand everything. Conserved relief shredded from my fiber because life could be without complexities. I could wake in the morning, breathe, and have tea or coffee with my wife. She would make me one scrambled egg and one slice of toast. She would be happy. I would be happy. We would get a dog. I love dogs. A dog would be cool.

I would go to the studio (with my dog), play music, and paint. He would lie in the corner and sleep or watch me paint. I would throw him bones and he would salivate and chomp. That would be me and him, a man and his dog.

*****

When Ira Einstein called me, I accepted. He was writing an article for Art and Nature on painters and their childhoods. It's not a big fancy magazine, one you would find in medical offices and high schools.

He asked me to pick a coffee house to meet him at and I suggested The Big Brew on Fountain. Mocha Daze was in my past.

We stood at the counter talking politely about the blueberry muffins and the other food items for sale, eventually sitting at a small wooden chipped table by the window. The traffic sped by as the aroma from our hazelnut coffees awakened our senses.

He sipped, swallowed, and scratched his balding forehead. "I've seen a good amount of your paintings. It seems as though the last year you've gone through quite a dynamic change."

"No, I don't think so." I wanted to say more, but my mind halted.

"Well, I mean change in a good way, because it's clearly depicted in your paintings."

"I have not changed. I am the same person I've always been, even as a boy. I am the same."

"Don't you think we all change? I know I have. I'd like to think my writing is more directive."

"Well, that's good for you." A chill went through me thinking of my mother, realizing that's what she used to say to me for fear I'd say something too intimate.

"Well, that's good for you." She would say, " And that's that." There would never be any further conversation. I wanted to explain this to Ira but instead I became more silent and aloof.

I must admit he tried to get me to open up a few more times, but I refused and his impatience took over and he left abruptly. I was glad I hadn't told anyone about the interview. When it came out, I secretly read it at the newspaper stand at Fairfax.

...Greg brings to a blank canvas what each and everyone of us bring to work each day of our lives. He has learned to isolate and capture a look on a face that dramatizes the full experience of the person's life, maybe his own

His one flaw is his inability to tell the truth. It is difficult to know a person only after a few hours on an LA morning, but I didn't learn anything about this man except that it's hard to believe it's the same man painting these revealingly sad and trapped male nudes.