Adam Ellis - Books of Adam: The Blunder Years

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Copyright 2013 by Adam Ellis

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

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First ebook edition: July 2013

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ISBN 978-1-4555-1699-5

For Kristin and Trevor:

I couldnt choose just one, and I hope this inspires you both to fight for my approval.

I wasnt paying attention when Zoe started explaining her project to the class. It was mid-April and the weather was strangely warm for Boston. School was the last thing on my mind, especially since I was set to graduate in a few weeks. The students were gathered in one of the stuffy ground-floor art rooms, fidgety and restless as each person presented their final undertakings. Over the past hour the quality of the work had been steadily declining, since the kids with the most impressive projects had all volunteered to go first. Prior to Zoe, a moody guy with floppy hair covering half his face had discussed his work: several pieces of dirty cardboard that hed pinned to the wall.

The signs and his subsequent explanation received a warm enough response from the professor and the class, but by the time he was finished Id mostly checked out, content instead to stare out the window and watch a bag lady with a single giant dreadlock rummage through a trash can. Shes probably looking for her cardboard sign, I thought.

When Id arrived at college, I couldnt wait to join a community bursting at the seams with artists like myself. But four years in art school had inspired a degree of apathy in me, at least regarding certain facets of the art world. Perhaps Id simply grown tired of my professors responding so positively to what I deemed to be total bullshit. Several weeks before, a student had spilled paint on a white sheet, then ridden his skateboard back and forth through the mess, and the response from the schools faculty had been alarmingly favorable. Id overheard one teacher in the hall saying, This is going to be huge. Theyll be knocking down his door after this piece goes public. I didnt know who they were, but by that point Id accepted the possibility that maybe I just didnt have my finger on the pulse of the art world. While Id always received positive feedback on my own work, my stuff was more illustrative and usually humorous, and even if my professors never said so outright, the general attitude toward illustration and cartooning at my school seemed to be that it was a lesser art. This was disheartening, if not outright insulting, as Id always taken my work seriously, even when it was silly or absurd.

The kid with the signs unpinned them from the wall, crammed them into his messenger bag, and Zoe was called on to present her final piece for critique. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed her set something on a rickety metal stool. Her explanation was brief and matter-of-fact, and at first I wasnt sure Id heard her right.

I put a condom on the Virgin Mary, she said flatly.

Her words took a moment to sink in. I turned my attention toward the front of the room. Sitting on the stool next to Zoe was, in fact, a cheap plastic figurine of the Virgin Marythe kind youd find at a dollar storeand it was sheathed in a latex condom. I wasnt sure if she was serious or if it was just a prank. It seemed shed spent all of forty seconds slapping it together. I glanced at her face for a sign that she was joking, but found none.

Nobody spoke. I assumed it was because everyone was as baffled as I, but I couldnt be sure, as everyones face held a similarly blank expression. The professor kindly asked Zoe to explain the piece.

Well, like, its meant to be a criticism of the Virgin myth and a commentary on the absurdity of divine impregnation. Zoe shifted her weight a bit and cocked her head, as if she didnt quite believe herself. I sort of got the idea, and mightve even put some stock in the concept, but what it boiled down to was that Zoe had crammed a tacky figurine into a condom and called it a day. Id seen this kind of thing a hundred times before. Freshman year, the kid across the hall from me had made a mural out of Cheerios and Froot Loops, and we were all pretty sure hed forgotten about the project entirely and scrambled to make something from materials in his dorm room in the hour before class. That sort of behavior was understandable for a new student, but this was supposed to be the culmination of a semesters worth of work by a senior. It was supposed to have taken a week to complete at the very least. I expected the professor to tear Zoe a new one for wasting everyones time, but instead she clutched her chunky stone necklace and gushed about it.

Tampon in a teacup I whispered to myself, though apparently louder than Id realized, because it caught the attention of the professor.

Adam, do you have anything you want to add about Zoes piece?

Oh, uh, no, I stammered, I was just saying, uh theres this movie, and a girl puts a tampon in a teacup as a commentary about the expectations society places on women, or something. This just, uh, reminded me of that. I guess. The movie I was referring to was Ghost World, and the tampon-in-a-teacup sculpture is meant to be ridiculous and pretentious. I was sure I was about to be outed as the class jerk, but nobody seemed to get the reference.