I consider myself a pretty creative person. I mean, on some days. On good days.
On most days, I work a 9-5 in a small, claustrophobic office, worried about laws and best practices and policies and mitigating risk. I work across the way and down the hall from “the creatives,” making sure they get their pay and benefits and that no one trips on anything or sets anything on fire.
On most days, I also write a post or two of original content and sometimes I even think that stuff is good.
Still, on some days, I bumble around my own creativity, like it is my hands in the middle of a conversation and I (still) don’t know what to do with them.
On days that are not those days, I sometimes read something I wrote and laugh.
It still stands, however, that on all days, I can’t draw for shit.
That was my second thought when Penny forwarded me a Groupon for one of those group-painting-with-a-bunch-of-other-adults things. My first thought was, “OKAY.”
Leading up to our 7:30 on a Thursday night class (look at us getting wild on a school night!), Penny and I lightly argued about whose painting would be more embarrassing. In the end, we both at least agreed not to laugh at each other.
All bets were off when we saw we would be painting elephants in profile.
Things started shakily. The instructor told us to put some yellow paint more than half-way up the canvas and right away the self-doubt started to creep in. Is this more than half-way? Is this less? Did I go too far? Is my painting ruined?
By the time we got to the next layer of color (orange) most of the other class attendees had broken out their own bottles of wine. This was a BYOB event. (Penny and I weren’t drinking. We had stocked up on candy, though, and by this time, I was one chocolate bar and one Nerds Rope deep.)
At about this point, the instructor warned us: we’re going to start using the black paint. You can’t erase black.
A murmur of fear worked its way through the crowd as everyone who had managed to blend four colors together cowered in the face of black paint. Our instructor realized and tried to amend: but don’t worry if you mess up! Everything can be fixed.
While I was trying to figure out the shape of my elephant’s trunk, the woman sitting to my right began to cry. It was a sound that caught me off guard, I was so focused on my own, small canvas. I both wanted to figure out what was happening and wished I could close my ears as the woman, the crying woman, whispered to her friend that she was sexually assaulted and had told no one.
Her friend was speechless and I found I was too. I was supposed to be, though. I was supposed to keep (badly) painting an elephant as the woman next to me cried about a man she agreed to go out on a date with who then sexually assaulted her.
“Sexually assaulted” were her words, and all the rest I heard, no longer worried about messing up with black paint, was that it was a “close call” and that she “gave in” at one point because she was scared for her life. I don’t know what that means. Her friend still didn’t know what to say as she confessed she’d started to consider carrying a weapon.
She cried as she kept saying, “what’s that statistic again? 1 in 3 women in America. 1 in 3? I’m one of them. I’m one of them.”
In our class of 15 girls, that would represent 5 girls. Five girls eating chips and drinking cheap wine and laughing at their own bad blending skills and hoping that smudges in black really can be fixed.
“That’s what happens when you mix wine and art,” she said for the benefit of anyone who had noticed her tears. She laughed a little too loudly and used her sleeve to dry her face.
I wanted to hug her, but instead I kept painting my elephants. What else could I do?
It all came out better than I thought they would. I mean, I messed up pretty bad on the tusks, but I’m not really an artistic person.
(On some days.)