Jackass

Today, my art teacher decided to hold me hostage. She's been quite obssesively working to convince me that I can, in fact, do something artistic, depsite my multitude of brain disorders. (I can't. Someone hasn't been doing their homework.) Somehow, (I suspect money changed hands), she has me slated to miss the entire afternoon so that I can make an awkward trek with her to the art musuem. She wants me to be inspired, she tells me in the car. She ruffles my hair. "You're just so...astronomically brilliant," she says. Uh-huh. We pull up to the main entrance. So this is Paris. For the past year, everyone has been raving about just what an amazing hunk of architecture this place is. I bet the heating and air conditioning were a bitch to install. She makes an insane number of sweepy gestures, then closes her hand around my wrist and leads me to the modern art floor. She babbles about mixed media, showing me sculptures which are admittedly cool, but not terribly "inspiring." She leads me to a wall of hubcaps and asks what I see. "A wall of hubcaps," I deadpan. I know that's not the correct answer. I don't feel like projecting my bullshit theories onto someone else's work. If art were a human being it would be raped everyday; anyone can make it do what they want it to do, say what they want it to say. Whatever happened to, "Hey, this looks cool. I'd like to share it with you." My fifth grade teacher once had a poster that said, "Keep the ability to see beauty and you will never grow old." Beauty, not "anguish" or "torment" or "the universe". The lines of hubcaps have a cloying, austere beauty. That's all that matters. We come to a mounting of a red neon sign that simply reads, "Pleasures." My art teacher purses her lips. There is a blatantly visible DO NOT TOUCH sign placed too close to the display.
"These museum curators...always liability over aesthetics." The irony of the placement does not escape me. I turn to her.
"I think this is the most considerate musuem curator around," I pipe up.
She waggles her eyebrows at me. "Now we're getting somewhere!"
We pass a tiny display of Day of the Dead paraphernalia. Mostly skeleton figurines. They are festooned with bright colors and wear kindly, amused expressions. All the skeletons are dressed up importantly or ridiculously, a happy, bustling little town of purposeful deaths following purposeful lives. I am an atheist, but at that moment, I hope I become one of those skeletons when I die. We come to a wall that asks, "What is art?" Nearby are endless supplies of sticky notes and a bare brick wall to provide your answer. Someone who undoubtedly thinks he's brilliant wrote, ART IS LIFE. Next to it, in a childish scrawl, is a sheet that reads, "Art is panting and things like that." This girl will get straight As all of her life, and she'll have lots of boring friends. Perhaps someday she will be required to do something besides regurgitate the bullshit society has fed her, and she will be well and truly fucked. Or maybe, she'll spend her whole life in the American dream she has been force-fed, and someday, in her old age, she will visit this art museum again. Or maybe she'll go on some giddy school trip to the Louvre during her junior year. And then she will realize that, for her whole life, she has been a robot. She never acted on any urges, denied herself neccesary pleasures. And she'll die a broken woman. My teacher hands me a sticky note shaped like a speech balloon, and a purple pen.
"What have you learned, dear?"
I click the pencil back and forth a few times, as though it were a lighter and I was one of those faux anarchists who undermine authority by not bathing. I write in methodical little rows:

Art is beauty
Beauty is symmetry
Not quite sure what symmetry is yet

She claps her hands like a walrus. "Good girl! How do you feel?" I make up something that sounds uplifting. The truth is, dizzy. This "amazing" piece of architecture is laid out to make you feel like you're the only inhabitant of a deserted city. You can also feel its crookedness on the upper floors. It seems to list to one side as you look over your shoulder. When we're back at school, the feeling is still there. When I've completed my usual RTD ride to the park near my house, I still feel the building leaning. As I walk through the park, I get an idiotic urge. I sit down on the swings and kick idly at the gravel. Only teenagers do this. It is referred to in some circles as "chilling." It disgusts me, but I can't help myself. As I continue to rock back and forth on my assbone, the "Pleasures" sign appears in the back of my mind. It flickers and dies. That's the wake-up call I need. I remember being able to outswing everyone in my elementary school days. Long legs are the closest things to wings you can have, and I decide to use them, for old time's sake. I hear the voice of my grandmother, over now, over now, up you go, up you go. No granddaughter of hers is going to ask someone else to push her. No, this family pushes itself. I find myself wishing she were alive to say that to me in person. Together, she and I could be funny, eccentric little skeletons. Is there a better way to die than jumping from a high place, I ask myself. No, there isn't, because the last thing you do before your bones shatter into oblivion, is only thing humans really want to do. For a few seconds, you can fly. I let go of the swing...and I've learned nothing from Saturday. I land perfectly on my feet, like an Olympic gymnast. Half a second later, I wobble. My knees, then my whole body, drag and scrape across the gravel. I laugh at myself once again. One of these days, I'll need to reread Don Quixote and A Confederacy of Dunces. I could have my own Jackass show. I lay on my back and howl with laughter for a few minutes. I stand up and dust myself off, slightly ashamed that I relish the sting of my new, tiny scrapes. I thrust both arms up high, throw back my head, and bellow to everyone and no one,

"I AM THE SWINGING JACKASS!"

Suddenly, I'm no longer dizzy and the "Pleasures" sign flickers back on.