My Great Foray into the Art World

The other evening at the Salvation Army, which I was striking it rich on the trousers and blouses departments, I walked past a very large painting. I stopped and looked at it again. It was muddy-colored and just giving it a quick glance, thought to myself that it was painted in oils. There was a bronzed plaque on the bottom that read "Olvera Street", and another "J. Laycox." It was $50. It was too 1960s for me. And the muddiness made me sad. I didn't know if it needed a good cleaning, but I was in a rush, so forgot about it until the next day.

It turns out that William "Jack" Laycox was a well-known watercolorist, born and raised in California. Despite his travels around the world, he was best known for his watercolors of California scenes.

And one of his big paintings sold for nearly $2,000.

My heart beat fast. I was able to find all kinds of Laycox auctions that had brought very nice prices, but nowhere did I find any reference to "Olvera Street".

The next day I went back to the thrift store. The painting was still in the window and it suddenly struck me that this was likely not a painting. I got it out of the window. I cringed that it was in the window, getting the heat and sun all day. I laid the painting flat and saw yes, that what had seemed to be blobs of paint were in fact raised spots in the heavy paper. I took off my glasses and leaned in. Yep. It was a lithograph. A dirty lithograph with a couple of scratches across it.

I put it back.

But I'm still thinking about the fact that nowhere in Maitre Laycox's oeuvre is there mention of Olvera Street.

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Oh. And just to add a non-sequiter "isn't it weird" thing to this, I found my grandfather's photography on sale on line for prices that made me gasp.

I have mixed emotions about this.

Part of me says that the work of the child molester and destroyer of lives should be gathered up and burned, along with the negatives.

Another part of me says that he's been dead for nearly twenty years. Destroying the photographs won't un-destroy those lives.

I've finally been able to shrug about it and mostly move on. There's just still one tiny part of me that thinks it's not a good thing that his work is still out there. And selling for nearly as much as a J. Laycox watercolor.

The Weight of a Secret

How much does a secret weigh? Can you measure it by how it holds you down, or presses your shoulders, or creates a lock on your tongue, just above the adam's apple? Or can you only measure it when it doesn't matter anymore?

Is a secret a lie?

What's the penalty for going along with the secret - enjoying it, in fact?

Anonymous Boyfriend had a secret. Honestly, I didn't think it was such a big deal, but the more I got to know him, the more I saw the enormity of it in his life. In fact, it had been with him almost his entire life. Most of the time, it was a very heavy burden to him. The remainder of the time, it brought him a great deal of pleasure.

(Stop guessing. I'm not going to tell you. And honestly, you couldn't possibly guess correctly.)

I hadn't realized that I had taken on this secret, too.

Every relationship had all kinds of contracts associated with it. Mine with Xman was that I would hate work and the people there as much as he did. We not only worked in the same profession, we worked for the same company. A promise that I silently made to him was that I would not rise above his position at work. A promise that he silently made to me - likely under silent duress - was that he would take care of me in an almost parental way. Of course it was a very f*cked up relationship.

My promise to Anon Boy was that I would aid and abet his secret, while revealing it to no one.

I don't have to worry about it now. I have no intention of ever revealing it, but I am tremendously relieved at not having to actively carry it around with me every single day.

This kind of freedom is very good. I could get used to it.

Oddly, funnily, one secret I keep at work is my birthday. I absolutely want none of the attention it would bring - or, what I think I'm secretly afraid of, that it would bring no attention at all. So when people at work ask me when my birthday is, I say I don't have one, that I sprang full grown from the head of Zeus during the Eisenhower administration. And then they leave me and my secret alone.