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Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain

1
Life as a Digital Native

HIGH SCHOOL was a bust as far as I was concerned. You’d think that in four years I could have gotten laid at least once. My grandfather got more sex as a teen in the ’60s than I did now. My parents, the great Xennials—sort of GenX and sort of Millenial—practically invented the terms ‘hookup’ and ‘FWB’. My generation was likely to die virgins if high school was any indication.

“It’s not that I don’t want to have sex,” Jasmine once told me. “Just not… you know… in person.” Such is life.

So how do we deal with the hornies? Oh, we’ve still got them. My generation is as horny as any of the old toads in my grandparents’ or parents’ generation.

“I got so turned on during the movie,” Jasmine continued. “I’m going straight home and rub one off. You should do the same.”

I did. You see, we have something neither my father or grandfather had. We are digital natives. We have the Internet. Porn flows as freely into my bedroom as gin flows into my grandmother. And if we can’t find a site that has what we want, we have each other.

“We could Skype when we get home if you’d like to watch,” Jasmine whispered. “I’ll put my laptop between my knees if you will.”

Well, hell yeah.

I had nude photos of a dozen of my female classmates on my iPhone. Encrypted and hidden—we’re not dumb. Jasmine was one of my favorites to jack off to. With. Watching her in real time was good for an immense come. For both of us.

Jasmine gave me a deep and passionate kiss when I took her home. My boner was trapped painfully in my jeans as she rubbed against it.

“I’ll be thinking of what your tongue would feel like while you’re watching me pet my snootch,” she breathed just before she closed the door.

I rushed home and headed straight for my bedroom. Skype chimed as soon as I booted my laptop. I connected and saw Jasmine, already naked. She twirled around showing me her bouncing tits and tight ass.

“Like it? Are you still hard?” she asked.

“Yes and yes,” I said, stripping out of my clothes as quickly as I could. “I can practically feel your mouth taking my cock all the way down your throat.” My cock sprang out to greet her as soon as my shorts were down.

“I love your big boner,” she said. “Let’s get in bed and do it. I’m dripping down my thighs.”

We were two miles away from each other, each getting into our own beds with laptops strategically positioned so the camera picked up our genitals. She did have a wet pussy. I had drips of precome beading out my piss hole. I used it to slick my cock and began stroking as I watched her spread her pussy lips and start rubbing her clit.

It didn’t take either of us long.

“Thanks for a great date, Jasmine,” I said as my cock began to wilt.

“Let’s do it again soon,” she responded. “I always get the best comes after we’ve been out.” I closed my laptop and went to sleep.

IF YOU’RE MY GRANDFATHER’S age—or even my father’s—you probably think this is all super frustrating. You’re wrong. In spite of not having put my cock in a girl, I’d had sex with several. I knew Jasmine would be stroking another one off in the morning while she watched Derek’s morning wood. In fact, Dee had told me to call at exactly nine Saturday morning to help ‘get my vibrator started.’ I didn’t think Dee ever actually got wet when she used that thing, but I was sure she got off. I sure did.

And it wasn’t like we were cheating on anyone. We usually went out as a group and only paired up for a little kissy face. We hardly touched otherwise. Dee has huge tits and I did feel her up one night. I couldn’t believe how heavy and squishy they were. But otherwise, you know, no one was actually having sex with anyone else. We had our smartphones and laptops.

WHEN I WAS TWLEVE, I started figuring out how my equipment worked. When I was fifteen, I convinced my dad to let me get a lock on my bedroom door so Mom would quit walking in on me. She caught me masturbating once when I was fourteen and dragged me out of my room to make me go wash my hands with anti-bacterial soap. She’d been doing that for years, whenever she saw me touch something she thought was dirty. That included other people. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever been conceived.

SO, WHAT’S IT MEAN to be a digital native?

The day I got home from the hospital, I was placed in a crib with a digital monitor nearby. Not one of those speaker things that lets a parent in a different room hear the baby cry. This was full video linked to my father’s PC at work and my mother’s laptop in the kitchen. Neither one of them accomplished anything for four weeks after I was born. They just sat and watched my babyness on their computers. Why didn’t they just sit in my room and watch me? They didn’t want to invade my privacy at such a young age.

I learned my ABCs watching YouTube videos on my computer. By the age of ten, I had my own iPhone. And I saw Kelly O’Rourke’s bare breast on webcam the day she turned fifteen. All my homework through high school has been emailed to my teacher. My parents own a huge collection of music CDs. They have a clunky old player they put them in when they want to listen. All my music is in the cloud. I don’t buy ten songs I’m not interested in for one song I like. I plug earbuds in when I want to listen and don’t bother anyone else when I choose what I want to hear. I’ve got a laptop computer on my desk at home, but most of the time just use my iPad. It’s smaller and lighter and I can type 50 words a minute. With my thumbs.

Sometimes, my friends and I get together on the weekend to play a game. We all log in and choose up sides. If we need another player, we can usually find one pretty quickly online. I’ve got more online friends than IRL friends. I’ve got about 50,000 photos and videos in my library and I post hundreds of them online for my friends. I send and receive over 15,000 text messages a month.

Digital native.

SO, IT ALWAYS SURPRISES my friends when I log onto a chat session or answer a Skype and I’m standing there in my underwear with a brush full of paint in my hand and an easel beside me.

“Yuck, man! Why aren’t you doing that on a computer?” Rick asked.

“Your mom will kill you if you get any of that on the floor!” Charmaine laughs. She knows my mom. I have to stop and point the camera down at the newspaper I’ve got spread all over the floor.

“I’ll give you twenty dollars for your tightie-whities if you’ll paint them while you’re wearing them,” Kelly adds. She is one twisted girl. I put a red swirl on my right butt cheek. I buy jockey shorts at K-Mart for painting in. None of them ever see the washing machine. My mom…

I like paint. I guess in some ways it is my way of rebelling. Even if I’m chatting with my friends, I’m doing something non-digital. Like Rick should talk. He actually goes outside and plays baseball. Damn good at it, too. Jasmine has her Barbie dolls. Charmaine collects Pokemon. The cards, not the virtual game, though she does that, too. Kelly collects my painted underwear. Go figure.

The first time I picked up a pencil in pre-school, there was something magical about it. There was a physical response to a physical action. I could hold my primitive drawing in my hands. There was nothing to click to close it. If I wanted to get rid of the paper, I had to find a recycling bin.

So, I suppose you’re wondering where I get newspaper to spread under my easel. Grandpa, my father’s father, gets one delivered every day. Once a week, I go by and collect the bundle. I asked him why he didn’t just read the news on the computer. He grinned and asked me why I didn’t paint pictures on the computer. Touché. Grandma rolled her eyes and he poured her another gin and tonic.

I collect his newspapers and spread them out under my easel. As soon as I finish painting, I hang my underpants in an empty part of my closet and clean my room. I make sure all the papers are picked up, folded neatly, and taken to the recycling bins. I take a shower and make sure I’ve scrubbed all the paint off my body. Sometimes the red I used on my underwear bleeds through the fabric. I shampoo, rinse, and repeat.

My mom still thinks that everything I paint should be displayed for the public, preferably at MMoCA, or lacking that on the refrigerator. Everything she gets her hands on, she scans and turns into a screensaver. It’s cleaner that way. Most of my paintings I hide from her. My drawings are in a box under my bed. When Grandpa comes to visit, he pours Grandma a gin and tonic and then comes to my room to visit. I show him my drawings and paintings. He’s not an artist, but it’s like something he understands and we can share. The only thing he does with his computer is email and reading.

But he likes my art. So does Granddad—my mother’s father.

“You’ve got a dark side,” Granddad said about a painting I did of Mom. I like to visit him on the farm a few miles out of town. “Don’t let it get you down, but don’t show this one to your mom, okay? I don’t think she could take it. And you really aren’t cruel.” I wouldn’t show her anyway. But I was kind of proud of that picture.

It would only be a few months until I was out of the house and off at college. For a while.

EVERYBODY WHO HAS completed a high school education in America has heard of the Mona Lisa. I can’t speak for the education of other countries because I don’t know shit about it. Here, though, the Mona Lisa is the most studied portrait in history. Everyone debates whether she is happy or sad. There are technical discussions about how Da Vinci created the subtle blurring effects. There was an old movie starring Julia Roberts called Mona Lisa Smile. Granddad, who still listens to vinyl record albums on a scratchy turntable, has both the original Nat King Cole version of the song Mona Lisa and the one his daughter, Natalie, recorded forty years later.

As far as I’m concerned, all the debate misses the point.

Leonardo Da Vinci paints a portrait. Presumably, he has a young woman pose for the portrait. Like all his work, it’s a technical masterpiece, but it captures something that perhaps no one else had seen.

My question is, ‘What was Lisa Gherardini’s response when she saw the painting of herself?’ Did she roll her eyes? Did she lean over and kiss the old man softly on the lips. Did she slap his face and scream at him? Did she just turn her back and walk away? Did she simply hold out her hand to be paid her modeling fee? Did she make some inane comment like, ‘That’s nice’? Did she become a better person because she saw herself through his eyes?

Maybe I’m just inventing oddball concepts, but I can’t help but imagine that seeing herself captured on the canvas had some profound effect on her.

I’D HAVE NEVER THOUGHT about that seriously if it hadn’t been for Jasmine. And my portfolio submission to UW. A portfolio submission isn’t required for admittance, but it’s recommended. I thought it might improve my chances of getting a scholarship because there was no way I could afford the $26,000 a year to attend. My parents’ philosophy was that they weren’t going to destroy their ability to live in our home to send me to college. Especially since they considered an art degree to be a waste of time. They wanted me to go into engineering or computer science so I could earn a living. I could get away with living at home and save fourteen grand on room and board, but Mom and Dad had fixed the value of my room and board at home at a thousand a month that I needed to come up with. I was screwed either way.

Besides, I wanted out of the house and to get a taste of living on my own.

BUT GETTING BACK to Jasmine…

I had selected three drawings and three paintings to photograph and submit for review. The paintings included the one of Mom that Granddad suggested I not show her. I was supposed to show my range in the portfolio and I had an abstract painting, a landscape, and a portrait. The drawings were pretty good, too, but something was just missing.

I knew what it was.

I could do a figure drawing from a photo—maybe one of the nudes my friends had sent. But to paint a figure… I really needed a model.

“You want me to go to a motel with you, take off all my clothes, and lie on the bed for four hours while you paint me? Right.” Jasmine was skeptical, but she hadn’t hit me.

“I was trying to find a place where one of our parents wouldn’t constantly be walking in,” I explained, as if the motel part of the proposition was the problem.

“I can just imagine that. My mother would rush me to a hospital and demand a rape kit and your mother would drag you to the bathroom to scrub your hands with disinfectant.” We both laughed about the very accurate description of our moms. My mother would want to scrub and disinfect my jail cell when Jasmine’s mother got me arrested.

It’s not like we weren’t both eighteen. Just our mothers… You’ve probably heard about helicopter parents who hover around their children all the time. I overheard Mr. Phelps talking to Ms. Boyer in school one day when he described Ford’s mother as a ‘Curling Mother’. She shoves a dumb rock down the ice and screams and yells at everyone to clear the way. Could describe any one of our parents. Except we’re not really dumb rocks. We just live in a different world.

“Okay,” Jasmine said. “But you can’t tell anyone. If anyone asks about the painting, you tell them you did it over Skype.”

“Great. Yeah, that will work. Saturday afternoon. I’ll load the Mini and we’ll go to the Super 8 out on the highway.”

“God! That sounds so sleazy. I love it.”

THE MINI. It’s almost as old as I am. MamMam loved that car.

About the same time I was born, MamMam, that’s my mother’s mom, was having her first go at fighting cancer. That freaked Mom out. But MamMam whipped it. To celebrate, she bought a brand-new car—a 2000 Mini Cooper. Granddad was all for it and called it her ‘Mini-Beemer’ because they couldn’t afford a real BMW. It was a classic hardtop hatchback. MamMam drove it for sixteen years before the next round of cancer beat her. I heard someone mention that they thought she should be buried in it.

“I took the car down to the dealer and had them go over it with a fine-tooth comb,” Granddad said. “It’s relatively low-mileage since, as much as she loved driving it, your MamMam only really drove around town for groceries, hair appointments, and church. It’s the cliché of being owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday,” he laughed. “But she wanted you to have it, Jett. When the pain and the meds didn’t have her down, we’d sit and talk about how she loved to drive you to school in it, or to the movies on your MamMam dates. She said that when she was gone, you should have her Mini-Beemer for as long as it would last you.” MamMam had taken me to the DMV for my driving test in that car. That was less than a year before she died.

So that’s how I came to have a car. I didn’t drive it much because I had to pay for the insurance and gas. That took nearly everything I earned from doing graphics for websites. I got an allowance, but by the time I was eighteen it was only $50 a week and Dad had already told me it would stop on my twenty-first birthday.

I handled all my other income through PayPal or Bitcoin. That’s how I prepaid my motel room—through a website with PayPal. They didn’t even bat an eye when I registered. I guess they get a lot of University students who book a room for Saturday night.

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