When Tim asked Ellen for her urine, Ellen squatted above a lasagna dish and peed and peed and peed. Tim does not tell this story at the opening of his gallery show. He has gutted the narrative down to the strength and color of the urine. The urine becomes his. It is the subject of the show. Ellen hangs behind Tim as he talks about artistic sense of self. Throughout the evening, Tim’s stories center in he understands Tim’s artistic sense of self. The whole show depends upon it. The whole show is thirteen commonplace containers containing various shades of Tim’s urine, secretly Ellen’s. Tim works art-wise in an abject space between himself and his non-self, as in the provocative overlap is finally pinned and unpacked in urine (Tim insists, not pee, not piss). Truthfully, Tim doesn’t understand why he makes what he does. Nothing comes to him. But he is often impressed with himself and how he can talk to others about his work. The emptiness behind everything he does becomes so full. He believes himself when he discusses craft. He believes in himself more than anything he has ever created.
Tim stands before the lasagna dish brimmed with weak-tea-tinted urine and talks about inspiration. Tim tells everyone about the time he urinated in his jeans accidentally and outside on a busy street. He was trying to make it home to use the bathroom. He didn’t make it. He spends a great deal of time describing the way the crowded sidewalk suddenly parted against him in a split of shame. The crowd’s discomfort with a bodily function reflects Tim’s discomfort with himself. This part of the story is key to grasping the overall message of Tim’s work. Tim wants gallery-goers to know how he sees his imperfections, his ugliness, his repulsiveness reflected back at him in his urine, both self and not self. This final part of the story falls flat as Tim is aggressively good-looking.
***
Ellen doesn’t talk during Tim’s stories. She can’t—Ellen thirsts all evening. She keeps a cup of water in her hand but never drinks—her piss is for Tim. No, her urine is for Tim. Lips, tongue, throat all drought as evidence of her appetent leers to her, bottled and backlit. A plastic party cup: Tim wanted drunk urine, the kind that comes out like a dream. A vase of violent smelling urine: Tim fed her asparagus and legumes gone soft in butter and salt. Gallon jugs of softly-lemon urine: Tim made her sit after sex and hold pee and bacteria both inside herself. When the bathroom became anguish he took from her bowl after bowl after bowl. Nobody knows. She despairs at the salt of herself.
She wishes Tim would want to draw her again, form for form, like he did in their early days of dating. Ellen would pose for Tim on his gritty living room floor and he would spend hours just looking, just tracking where her body began and how it settled into space. She really misses this time in their relationship. She felt so filled up with herself. But then he started using only bits of her body for real-life renderings. Tim wasn’t very interested in her face, but painted several stills of Ellen’s fingers, of Ellen’s feet. Ellen’s body chopped-out on the floor. And Ellen’s fingers and feet again but from his memory this time, then Tim’s expectations for Ellen’s body and then portraits of what bits of Ellen angered Tim most in their relationship.
And now Ellen as piss. Urine. The gallery room is packed-with-people hot. It smells of shame and, to Ellen, something deeply familiar. Briefly, this scent riles Ellen to understand herself as center. She thinks the crowd can sense it. She thinks they watch her as she moves from piss to piss. They must see it, how Ellen reaches out towards the containers, how the piss strains right back. Maybe Tim can see it too. Ellen always wants to be supportive because she pities Tim because he isn’t very good at art. Not technically speaking, but emotionally—Ellen thinks Tim has no idea what he wants to say, no idea of what he sees or how to capture it on canvas. Really, Tim has nothing to say. Perhaps Tim has nothing to say because Tim refuses giving. This is why Ellen thinks he couldn’t piss himself for his art. His Ellen, His art, His Body.
Ellen stands before the suspended pair of pants that Tim supposedly wet and remembers when she decided, after spending hours on the living room floor, getting sketched, getting scratched out, to let her bladder fill and give. And how Tim couldn’t draw her again until she was dry and tidy. Until he was once again in charge of making her body a mess.
Ellen raises her water glass and thinks, tonight, she will swill and swallow and fill herself silly. And then—she’ll piss where she wants. Maybe in the middle of the gallery. Maybe in the passenger seat on the drive home. Maybe in bed, with Tim’s back to her own, them no longer touching at night, them no longer sure of how to fit themselves into one another. Maybe her unruly piss will bring something back to her and Tim. And maybe not. Maybe, Ellen thinks, maybe she is ready for everything that accompanies a decisive, final mess.
A gallery goer bumps into Ellen as she moves to drink and the glass, the water, all goes to the ground. Ellen is drenched in the illusion of fulfillment.
***
The gallery goers are mostly comprised of Tim’s art school friends. The term “friend” is used to Tim’s face and that’s about it. Tim was never quite committed in the classroom and gave really shitty critiques, so no one is particularly happy he’s having sudden, inexplicable career success. Initially, everyone was excited to come see Tim try to explain art into brown sludgy piss collected in a lasagna dish, but his critical reception is fine and now everyone has to pretend they get what he’s doing. Ultimately, they don’t. They don’t care about Tim’s piss-portrait art or Tim’s girlfriend who they pity and forget quickly or Tim himself. They joke about the take-down of the gallery show which is scheduled in less than a week. They want to draw up the image of Tim and Tim’s girlfriend pouring his piss out into the street. They imagine Tim and his girlfriend baking a lasagna later that night, in the piss dish, and licking the whole thing clean.
