04.29.08
piss christ
Matt the teacher looked over our piece.
"It's nice" he said putting a finger over his mouth, "but...it's missing something." He tapped his chin in thought.
The kids in the class all looked at our sculpture with cocked eyebrows. None of them knew what exactly our teacher was looking for.
"Well..." I piped up from the back of the classroom nervously, "I had tried to make sculpey faces for it..." I trailed off, I hadn't spoken all class and now everyone had turned to look at me. I could see Rachel shoot me a look.
"Faces?" Matt asked.
"Yeah...I dunno, I thought it might look cool..." I felt stupid, why had I said anything?
"Do you have them with you now?" he asked.
"Yeah, they're in my locker, hold on a second." I went to the table and opened my locker. I was ready to throw myself from the balcony, I shouldn't have said anything, I was so stupid. I could feel everyone, especially Rachel looking at me as I stood back up holding the face I had made.
Matt took it in his hands and looked at it for a moment before holding it up to our sculpture's face. "Hmm..." he mused.
I was ready for him to say "No, it still doesn't work" but he didn't say anything for quite some time.
Finally after a minute or so he turned to me and asked why we didn't use the faces.
"I...I dunno..." I quickly looked over at Rachel for help.
"We thought it looked amateurish if we'd kept the faces." she said, picking up my slack.
"We?" Matt asked. "Or you?"
The class all exchanged anxious looks.
"We. As a group." she said firmly.
"Is that true Anne Marie?" he asked.
"I...I guess I would have liked them to be put on." I looked down, not wanting to confirm what I suspected to be a look of hatred on Rachel's face.
"So why didn't you leave them on?" he asked.
"Rachel said, well, you heard her...amateurish." God, I wanted to be dead.
"Rachel," he said, turning to our sculpture again, "doesn't know shit."
I heard the sound of twenty students holding breath.
"This face, it's...I...have you ever done this before?" he looked at me.
"No...I ju-just sort of tried...and I dunno, I've never tried to make a realistic face before, I know it sucks bu-"
He cut me off. "DON'T YOU SAY THAT. DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT. THIS IS BEAUTY. THIS IS THE FACE OF THE MADONNA. I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T INCLUDE THIS ON YOUR PIECE. IN FACT," he suddenly turned and dropped kicked the sculpture, sending it hurtling to the ground where it landed with a sickening crack and slumped to the side, "YOU COULD HAVE TURNED THIS IN AND ONLY THIS AND I WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU AN A. NO, I TAKE THAT BACK, THIS DESERVES MORE THAN AN A. COME ON, WE'RE TAKING THIS TO NEW YORK CITY!"
With that, he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the room, leaving the class to shuffle about aimlessly, and Rachel silently weeping over the broken figure.
We made it to New York by nightfall and with a couple of phone calls we were whisked to a small trendy gallery where people with non prescription glasses mulled over my sculpey face.
"Brilliant!" raved one beret sporting man, while his friend, a man with a salt and pepper goatee photographed my work.
"Stand close to it" he said as he focused his camera. I did so, albeit sheepishly. "Come on, smile!" he said, "You've only just created one of the great modern pieces of art!" He laughed so I laughed too.
By the next day my name and face were in all the art magazines and newspaper columns in the city. The word genius among others was used, although a bit too liberally for my tastes.
What can I say? I'm modest.
ratherbored at 15:44