Sinning by Default

Alex was bored. Grounded. Once again. He thought about sneaking out but he knew that he would get caught because Joshua would tell. His foster brother was very reliable. He thought he might have been able to like the older boy if only he'd had a few bad habits, some imperfections, but there never seemed to be any. A good athlete. An excellent student. Charming. Social. Sickening. Alex preferred Marc then, a spoiled brat, sure, but with no snobbery, no pretense.

Alex sat in his room, he was supposed to study, but naturally, he did not. He was sketching. Men’s bodies, naked bodies. Pictures of bodies he had touched, kissed, seen or merely dreamed filled the pages of his sketchbook. Art had always been the only subject he was any good at.

How utterly useless.

Yet drawing was often the only thing that could give him comfort. He had three different sketchbooks. The red one in his hands filled with naked flesh. The white one he always brought with him was filled with ordinary things; old men on park benches, children playing, a tree, a bridge, a building, anything he saw. The black book was hidden underneath his bed. His own book of nightmares. The broken body of his mother, the picture that was etched onto his memory so hard that it did not matter how many times he put it outside on paper. It would never fade.

But no blood today. Just sweat, sweat, sweat. He imagined the pen in his hand touching alive human flesh, tracing well-sculptured muscles, erect cocks, feather-light, touch, touch, touch. And oh god how he wanted something more than his own hand. Three weeks was a long time. Especially if you were sixteen.


Jack couldn’t help smiling. He had thought it would be the most horrible day of his life. He had thought he would lose his daughters. But she had changed her mind. Melissa had changed her mind. As he arrived at the courthouse he had been met by Melissa, accompanied by both their lawyers. She said that she wanted them to solve this between themselves, she said that Lucy and Angelica did not deserve to have their parents tearing each other apart. Thank god. He knew he would have lost this final day, if Melissa had wanted to, because today, she could have told, she could have shown everybody the reason of the divorce. And she would have had every right to do it. He hoped her life would be good without him. He had never deserved her.

He still remembered the day when he came home from that trip to Paris, finding his wife since twelve years in his studio, crying on the floor amongst his oil paintings. But she did not cry over the paintings of stormy landscapes, dark haunted houses, and beautiful portraits, she cried over the paintings that should be at the bottom of his closet, the paintings of Samuel -their neighbor. The beautiful young man on the paintings so obviously aroused, the heat in his eyes obviously directed at the painter. There had been no use in denying, and he could not lie to her.

The months that had passed had been the worst of his life, but now it seemed things were actually going to be okay. Melissa loved their children more than she hated him. And he also had a new job, a different one. Mary-Ann, a very old friend from his bohemian youth was an rt teacher and she was going on maternity leave and had asked him to fill in, since she did not want some too pedagogic idiot to ruin her good students. He had never been a teacher, and was really far too famous a painter to teach teenagers, as his manager had said. But Mary-Ann was one of his closest friends, and it maybe it would even prove to be interesting.


Dinner time. The whole family gathered around the table. David and Joshua discussed politics, well, not much of a discussion since both were conservatives by heart. To Alex politics was meaningless; both sides seemed equally rotten. Nancy was trying to get Marc to eat his vegetables. Alex sighed. Too loudly, obviously, since he interrupted the polite politics discussion as everybody looked at him.

“Is something wrong Alex?” Nancy asked.

“No.”

“You know why you are grounded.”

“Yes, but…” He knew he had to formulate this exactly the right way , “In art class, Ms Johnson talked about this exhibition called “Nightmares” opening tonight. It’s supposed to be really good and she encouraged everybody to go even though it’s not obligatory.”

“We wouldn’t mind you going to an exhibition Alex,” David said, “but I don’t know if we can trust you right now to come directly home. And neither your mother nor I have the time to come with you this evening.”

“I promise I will.”

“No Alex, you need to learn that there will be consequences if you don’t follow the rules. However…” David looked thoughtfully at his oldest son, “if Joshua could accompany you…”

“But dad,” Joshua complained, “I have better things to do than to baby sit.”

“And I don’t need a baby sitter. I’m sixteen!” Alex exclaimed angrily. “He’s only one year older than me.”

“Not that anybody would believe that,” Joshua said sarcastically, “you behave like you’re twelve or something.”

“Boys!” Nancy really hated when her ‘children’ argued, which happened quite often nowadays. “I think it would be good for you to spend some time together. You really should try to get along better.”

“Mum!” “Nancy!”

“No arguments. Be home at ten.”


“Thank you for forcing me into this.” Joshua glared at Alex as they entered the gallery where the exhibition took place. He looked around. “Well, this looks depressing enough, I’m sure you’ll like it. I’ll go have some wine. Meet me at the door half past nine.” And he was gone. Good, now Alex had almost two hours to wander around and look at art. It might not be as fun as having sex but it was infinitely better than sitting in his room with nothing to do. There were art of many different artists here; sculptures as well as paintings but all under the theme ‘nightmares- horrors of the subconscious’. Most of the paintings were dark and imposing, the sculptures were mostly abstracts; twisted forms.

He wandered around slowly, inspecting every piece of art very closely, studying the techniques and the motives. Some of the pieces he found inspiring but some he thought was just pointless crap. Suddenly he found himself in front of a painting that was much lighter than the rest. It was a rather huge portrait of a girl with pale skin and black hair curling around a pretty face. Her mouth was formed into a forced smile, but a single tear had escaped from her left eye. He leaned closer and in both the eyes he could see the same vague reflection; a man and a woman, their stances rigid, as if they were angry, arguing. Wow, the details were exceptional, and the idea original. Whoever had done this painted exactly as Alex wished he could. He looked at the list in his hand and found it.

43. In the mind’s eye Oil Painting J. Winter

J. Winter? He thought he might recognize the name. He wasn’t very good with the names of artists and even though he truly appreciated going to all kinds of expositions he did not really follow the happenings in contemporary art. He must look up this artist though, he decided.


Jack was actually a bit nervous this morning. Ridiculous, as if he had any reason to be afraid to face teenagers. Oh Jesus, teenagers! He suddenly remembered his own adolescence and realized that there was nothing worse than teenagers. They would be loud mouthed. They would ignore him. Half of them would be here with no interest of art at all. How the hell had he been tricked into this? Mary-Ann, that devious, cunning… she had said that most of the students were good kids and that some of them had real talent. She said she would trust no one but him to help develop this talent. He had fallen for flattery. How common. He shuffled the papers on his desk again, looked at the blackboard and decided against writing his name on it.

He looked up as the door opened and a group of one, two… seven teenagers walked in, chatting, completely ignoring him. They sat down on some chairs and continued chatting. He looked at his watch. Well, two minutes left until class started. Soon the door opened again and four girls walked in. They sat down close to his desk, gazing expectantly at him. He wondered if they did it to unnerve him.

“Well, then…” he started and to his surprise the chatting died down. “My name is Jack Winter and I’m going fill in for Ms Johnson during her maternity leave.” He glanced sideways as the door opened once again to admit only one boy this time. A boy that seemed to stop dead in his track, staring at Jack.

And Jack stared right back, at the pale face, the long red hair and the black clothes. He stared into very green eyes and he remembered an all too recent night.