Page 263 - A Little Life: A Novel

said no as well, and in the end, he had ended up with the two of them and
Malcolm in Boston, seething at the scene around the table—parental stand-
ins; friends of the parental stand-ins; lots of mediocre food; liberals having

arguments with one another about Democratic politics that involved a lot of
shouting about issues they all agreed on—that was so clichéd and generic
that he wanted to scream and yet held such bizarre fascination for Jude and
Willem.)
So which had come first: becoming close to Jackson or realizing how
boring his friends were? He had met Jackson after the opening of his second
show, which had come almost five years after his first. The show was called

“Everyone I’ve Ever Known Everyone I’ve Ever Loved Everyone I’ve Ever
Hated Everyone I’ve Ever Fucked” and was exactly that: a hundred and
fifty fifteen-by-twenty-two-inch paintings on thin pieces of board of the
faces of everyone he had ever known. The series had been inspired by a
painting he had done of Jude and given to Harold and Julia on the day of
Jude’s adoption. (God, he loved that painting. He should have just kept it.

Or he should have exchanged it: Harold and Julia would’ve been happy
with a less-superior piece, as long as it was of Jude. The last time he had
been in Cambridge, he had seriously considered stealing it, slipping it off its
hook in the hallway and stuffing it into his duffel bag before he left.) Once
again, “Everyone I’ve Ever Known” was a success, although it hadn’t been
the series he had wanted to do; the series he had wanted to do was the series
he was working on now.

Jackson was another of the gallery’s artists, and although JB had known
of him, he had never actually met him before, and was surprised, after being
introduced to him at the dinner after the opening, how much he had liked
him, how unexpectedly funny he was, because Jackson was not the type of
person he’d normally gravitate toward. For one thing, he hated, really hated
Jackson’s work: he made found sculptures, but of the most puerile and

obvious sort, like a Barbie doll’s legs glued to the bottom of a can of tuna
fish. Oh god, he’d thought, the first time he’d seen that on the gallery’s
website. He’s being represented by the same gallery as I am? He didn’t even
consider it art. He considered it provocation, although only a high-school
student—no, a junior-high student—would consider it provocative. Jackson
thought the pieces Kienholzian, which offended JB, and he didn’t even like
Kienholz.