“Just do your thing, man. It’s all yours,” he bellowed, dramatically gesticulating towards one empty white wall of his new condo’s dining room. It wasn’t furnished, yet. In fact, the place looked like it needed a lot of work. The wall-to-wall carpeting spanned the living and dining rooms, decorated with insolent stains and holes. The bedroom and bathroom to the side seemed limp, like paralyzed limbs dangling from their sockets.

I am still uneasy in my pretense. I am supposed to be an artist. Or some sort of person versed in visual creativity. It seems my visual creativity for most of my life may have consisted mostly of imagining the circumference of a random woman’s areola. Of course, that has its merits, too. Just not for a friend’s dining room mural.

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