I needed to get the stolen photograph back somehow. If I couldn’t get it back, I did have a degraded version of it scanned in my computer but the image was so fuzzy as to be almost worthless. Then I had a ingenious epiphany: Perhaps my uncle Polo LeBlanc could do an oil painting of the scanned photograph. Perhaps his painting would elevate the glory of my youth even far beyond that which was contained in the photograph.
It wasn’t easy getting my Uncle Polo to see me. I had to assure him that I had no contagious illnesses and that I had had the swine flu vaccination. As the husband of a pregnant wife, I was a “priority” so I was one of the first to get inoculated. He finally agreed to see me.
Polo is no doubt the most eccentric person I know. He was once a piano instructor in San Francisco, living in a rundown school bus and giving lessons in the bus. Yes, his piano was inside the bus and he slept in there. Then he became convinced that the felt fibers on the hammers were contributing to a “toxic reaction” resulting in headaches, rashes, and lethargy and he quit playing and teaching piano altogether. He moved to New Zealand and lived for a while as a sheep farmer. After that, he lived in Mexico and directed soap operas and low-budge horror films. When he felt that the “medium” wasn’t doing justice to his artistic sensibility he moved to Southern California in the late 1970s, bought a small house in Redondo Beach for under 100K and made a living by selling oil paintings at the beach. Actually, he doesn’t sell the paintings himself. As a germaphobe, he won’t interact with potential buyers at the outdoor galleries. He’s hired an assistant. He’s been making enough to pay his bills for the last thirty years.
I drove to his house, which is across from a high school. He answered the door wearing sunglasses, a white T-shirt, and jeans. He is short and stocky with silver hair and a pate. We sat down while he nibbled from a bowl of red hot peppers, of the Black Scorpion Tongue variety. Polo believes hot peppers increase his immune system and contribute to stimulating his “artistic visions.”
I watched him sweat profusely as he ate the peppers and told him about my stolen photograph, the degraded image I had emailed to him, and my desire for a large painting, grander than even the photograph.
“Yes, I could make such a painting,” he said. “From a technical standpoint, it is very doable. But philosophically I may be opposed to it.”
“Why?”
“Because it is not becoming of you to have a painting of yourself. I find it just another way to fuel your narcissism.”
“Whatever you think of me, Polo, that photo is part of my past, it’s part of my life. It makes me feel relevant.”
“Relevant? Could you expound on that, my friend?”
“Like most people, I am rather irrelevant, especially at my age, which doesn’t mean my pregnant wife doesn’t care about me or that I am irrelevant to her, because of course I am, but in terms of having an important voice in the world, you know, I am a nobody.”
“So you might feel relevant if CNN or some other global TV station would call during a calamity so that you could lend my expertise to assuage the anxieties of the masses or if you published several books that helped millions of people see things in a new and compelling way. Then you might feel relevant.”
My uncle knows me fairly well. I said, “I’d be a liar if I denied never harboring such thoughts.”
“I see, and me making a grand painting of your muscular youth will contribute to your relevance. Is that it?”
“Yes, I acknowledge that this is true. I must say I feel especially irrelevant without my beloved photograph and in all honesty my irrelevance doesn’t sit well with me. It is not something I care to digest. And when I contemplate my irrelevance and see all the relevant people in the world I am overcome with a kind of envy that afflicts me with dyspepsia and crapulence.”
“Oh, so we’re not talking about relevance, are we now. We’re talking about fame. We’re talking about being noticed. Do you think you’d be happy if you were one of those attention sluts always blathering on TV?”
“Polo, enough of the crap. Will or will you not make me the painting?”
“I can see I’m not going to change you. Your narcissism is well entrenched. Very well then. Come back in three months. I’ll have it done by then.”
“Three months? My daughters will be born by then.”
“I’m an artist. Don’t rush me.”
“What about the cost?”
“The cost? Wait until you see it. Then we’ll negotiate a fair price.”
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