When I was in graduate school at Emory University, I was determined to support myself and my fledgling family as a freelance commercial artist. That seemed like a noble plan in theory but turned out to be mostly unpleasant and often humiliating in practice. I ended up taking many jobs that made me feel either foolish or vaguely unethical. For example, I made a lot of money drawing caricatures at corporate events, sometimes garnering large tips by flattering slightly drunk, middle-aged female cubicle workers by giving them svelte cartoon bodies.
The worst job I ever tried to tackle — one that still haunts me with cringing insomnia on some winter nights — was an assignment I took in 1994 to draw personalized messages on men’s boxer shorts for Valentine’s Day at a Macy’s store in downtown Atlanta. When my agent called, I accepted the assignment without really listening to the details; all I heard was "$50 an hour,” and, sadly, that was enough for me.
I realized after hanging up the phone that I was scheduled to give my master’s-thesis defense later on the same day as the Macy’s job. Foolishly, I decided that wouldn’t be a problem.
This is how the fateful day unfolded: Midmorning I was chasing my diapered toddler around the graduate-housing lawn (he was at that drunken-stagger stage), when I realized with a jolt that I had to be at Macy’s in less than 30 minutes. Quickly I handed the kid over to my wife, grabbed a tube of red acrylic paint and a handful of brushes, and headed out the door.
When I arrived at Macy’s in a humid sweat, I was greeted by an immaculately dressed store representative who made me uncomfortable by treating me as an honored guest — offering refreshments, smiling incessantly, and showing me a giant poster with my name and profession advertised in a pretentious script. I was further unsettled when I was shown my working station: a prominent table in the menswear section behind which a bevy of women were already lining up to have their husband’s or boyfriend’s shorts customized by me.
As I positioned myself behind the table, the first person in line — a confident-looking woman in hip corporate attire — spread a pair of blindingly white cotton boxer shorts in front of me and requested in a commanding voice that I write “Love, Chrystal” in a large, flowing script across the front. Staring at the intimates in front of me, I realized in horror that I had no clear idea of how to accomplish that task.
First, I tried to stall for time, slowly removing my materials with shaking hands from a plastic bag. Then, smiling apologetically, I squirted an overlarge blob of blood-red paint onto a scrap of paper. Now I surveyed my brushes and saw that I had carelessly grabbed a handful of my oldest and rattiest tools when leaving the apartment — gummed up, mashed brushes with chronic cases of bed head. Chuckling sheepishly, I dabbed one into the red paint and tentatively applied it to the shorts. More bad news: The paint bled freely into the cotton fabric, creating an indistinct blob.
In retrospect, I should have quit right then — grabbed my cruddy brushes and run for the exit. But I felt trapped with the store representative hovering nearby, all of the people waiting in line, and my brush committed to the boxers that this poor woman had already purchased.
Forging ahead, I tried to create the beginnings of a flowing, cursive “L” and found that the nubbly cloth caused the brush stroke to catch, skid, and miss. Avoiding eye contact with my tensely observant customers, I kept painting in a near catatonic state, not wanting to believe that I was responsible for the aesthetic nightmare unfolding before me. It looked like a first-grade craft project gone seriously awry. People soon began to whisper in distressed tones. One by one they abandoned the line, leaving me alone with my first customer.
Without looking up, my hands shaking, I tentatively pushed the stained pile of cloth toward the lady. She pushed them back and, with barely controlled outrage in her voice, stated, “I don’t think so.” Cringing, I apologized and offered to pay for the shorts. She interrupted me: “You forgot the ‘s’!” Then I saw it. The boxers said, “LOVE, CHRYTAL.”
In a panic, I suggested fixing the error by using a proofreader’s mark to indicate the missing letter. Her incredulous bark of laughter indicated that was not an option. So I stood up, crumpled the shorts in my hands, and backed away, repeating, “It’s OK — I’ll fix this. I’ll fix this.”
My first, irrational impulse was simply to wash all evidence of my crime from the front of the shorts. I rushed to the bathroom, turned on the faucets, and began scrubbing furiously, which caused the crimson paint to splatter everywhere across the white sink and counter — and turned the shorts bright pink. As I held the wet shorts up for inspection, I was devastated to see that “Love, Chrytal” was still as bright and legible as ever.
At that moment, the bathroom door opened. A middle-aged man stood frozen in the doorway, surveying the scene before him. I tried to turn my grimace of pain into a welcoming smile, which seemed to only frighten him more. He slowly backed out of the bathroom, gently nodding his head as if to say, “It’s OK, buddy — nobody saw anything.”
When my wits returned, I stuffed the still-sopping shorts into my front pocket and surreptitiously purchased a $20 package of boxer shorts. Hiding behind a pillar, I repainted the message — equally badly, but with a prominent “s” this time. The store representative spotted me as I lay the shorts out for my only customer. Without thinking clearly, I turned and ran for the door. Realizing midstride that security might think I was a shoplifter, I held up my hands as I neared the exit and yelled something like, “It was all a mistake! You don’t owe me anything!”
I passed my thesis defense that afternoon, but it was a struggle to keep the rising, giggling sob out of my voice as images of my morning’s fiasco invaded my mind. When I returned home that evening, emotionally and physically exhausted, I was met at the door by a perplexed wife who was gingerly holding up something she’d found stuffed into a corner of the entryway closet: a damp pair of pink boxer shorts with a cryptic message scrawled across the front. It didn’t help that she had no knowledge of the nature of my job that morning, or that I hadn’t yet given her a Valentine’s Day gift. I could see in her face that she was hoping desperately that this freaky thing was not it.
Fortunately it took just minutes of explanation to turn her anger into hilarity — a weeping laughter that persisted, without my participation, for much of the evening. In subsequent weeks she liked to pull the shorts out at odd times to give friends, neighbors, and delivery people a good laugh. The sight of the boxers eventually grew too much to bear, and one night, when I was home alone, I performed a ritual burning on our back porch in our miniature hibachi. As the pink fabric smoldered, I silently asked one more time for Chrystal’s forgiveness, and then prayed to that pagan god that must exist somewhere who protects desperate, stupid artists from themselves.
Kerry Soper is an associate professor in the department of humanities, classics, and comparative literature at Brigham Young University.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 55, Issue 23, Page B24
