Art: Road by Oksana Reznik
Congrats & Prayers
Because it’s my birthday, I pour another Maker’s Mark. Two fingers, though one’s sympathetic to the eczema blister on my middle knuckle, the whiskey aligned with the peak of that stress-induced hump, gaining me at least an added swallow.
The Maker’s was a gift from the other girls in Accounting. Sam, whose religion forbids alcohol, waited until the bottle was bought then passed her ten dollars to Sherry with a Post-It note suggesting she tithe the money. I learned this from Sherry—with the addendum that she spent the cash on cigarettes and a losing scratch-off—and from Sam herself—via a note in my musical birthday card, so detailed a documentation of her piety it read like she was prepping me as a character witness for her final judgement at heaven’s gate.
My other birthday gifts were a twenty-five dollar check from my grandmother mailed loose in an envelope, its Memo line reading, “Familial Obligations,” and an emailed coupon from the dealer who sold me my Versa five years ago with the subject line: Happy Birthday, Esme! Has it really been five years?
I trap a sip of Maker’s with my tongue, warming it, then raise my chin so it trickles down my throat. I stare at the ceiling awhile, wondering what it’s like to be religious like Sam. It would be handy, I think, to have a friend in Jesus. Like knowing Andy Warhol in the seventies. A name you could drop to get you into the club and whose cult of friends accept you for only the fact of your knowing him—but, like with any guy friend, there would be stings attached. Not the pressure for sexual benefits, maybe, but something just as bad: that constant bargaining and guilt and self-restriction that makes someone like Sam someone like Sam.
As I start to nod off, the sweat from my tumbler bleeds onto my thigh. It tickles when it runs down my skin. I blink awake. Across the room there’s a poster of Janis Joplin, twenty-seven forever, just like I turned today. We toast: “To two drunk ladies.”
A sound begins, quiet enough that I mistake it for a hum inside my head, specifically the vibrations of Social Media ESP, a gift I know I don’t have but that still continues to trick me into thinking I can feel when my social network is posting about me. My tumbler chimes on the coffee table when I abandon it for my phone.
No unread texts. Congrats & prayers, but none of them new.
Crestfallen, I think that’s the right word. That super-hollowed-out disappointed feeling that social media’s so adept at.
But now I hear the sound again. Coming from the actual front door. The gentle smacking of a palm. “Bullshit,” I say, like the door manufactured the sound to mock me.
It’s eleven fifty-one. My birthday still, for nine minutes.
“Esme,” a voice whispers.
“Starling?”
It’s embarrassing, how fast I get to the door. I feel suddenly like the Maker’s has melted away, like if I turn I’ll find the half-bottle is full again, the whiskey drained from my blood and restored up to the stopper.
When I pull the door open, it isn’t Starling. It’s Steve, or whatever her name is when she’s not onstage.
“Happy birthday, girl,” Starling says, drawing out the words. “Am I too late?”
“Starling? How did you know where I live?”
“Did I miss the party?” She—or he, I guess—walks in, scans my untidy living room. Tall, even without heels.
“No party. Just me. Why are you here?”
Out of hair and makeup, there’s something off about him, like those pictures of Abraham Lincoln without his beard. No indication of Starling’s goddess beauty. “You invited me,” he frowns.
The thing is, at Starling’s last performance, I maybe got wasted. But their troop only plays in town a few times a year, so why hold back?
I remember fawning, telling her she’s my feminine idol, everything I want to be in life. All true.
But I—god, I did! Blubbered about my birthday. Gave her my address. Promised her…promised him…what exactly if he came by?
“Yikes,” Starling says of my Janis poster, the bulging shelves of vinyl, and the sound system beneath it. “Is this, like, your kid brother’s corner?”
“No,” I say, squeaky, “mine. Girl’s like music too.”
“Mm,” he hums in judgement.
God! I think, my drag queen crush—from whom I may have drunkenly begged birthday sex—thinks I’m a nerd.
It’s rare, let’s say, for my home to have visitors. For sex or not. So Starling’s being here makes me antsy. Like if I fantasized about owning a lion I saw at a zoo, then came home to find it in the living room, roaming and indiscriminately hungry.
“Do you want a drink?” I say, hoping he declines.
“It’s late. Better I just take what I came for.”
I don’t feel threatened physically by this, but my thinking is: I am about to be straight-up murdered. “And…what exactly would that be?”
Starling’s face crinkles. “Luther Vandross,” he shouts, like I’ve rescinded a promise. “‘Never Too Much.’ First-press LP. For my Pops’ retirement gift. You said you’d hook me up with it.”
Relief falls like a heavy coat from my shoulders to the floor. “Oh, thank god! I thought I might have said I’d blow you.”
The gross-out face he makes is insulting, but whatever. I remove the vinyl from the shelf and dust it with my arm and hand it over.
Starling thanks me and leaves quickly like he too was afraid that my dingy house would be the scene of his murder.
Locked in again, I play on my phone, take a selfie of me and Janis, our drinks in hand, post it and make sure to tag Sam. I go to Starling’s drag troop’s profile, then take a sip and post a comment: Congrats on your Pop’s retirement, Star. Congrats & prayers.
In the artist’s words:
Oksana Reznik
Lviv, Ukraine
In my artworks, I explore human presence in the environment and the trail that remains, combining my own feelings, memories, and imagination with a certain place or situation.
Education: 2013 – PhD, Lviv National Academy of Arts
Exhibitions:
2020 – “What to Wear” – 16 April – 9 June, 2020, online exclusive on ARTSY.com; Curator, bG Gallery, Santa Monica, California
2020 – Publication in the Flora Fiction Literary Magazine, Spring 2020: Volume 1, Issue 1
2018 – International Painting Triennial of Carpathian Region – Silver Quadrangle 2108.
2017 – Featured in Spring 2017: Vol. 1 Best Artworks printed catalog issued by Saatchi Online Art Gallery (USA)
2016 – Personal exhibition: “Land” – 29 March – 17 April 2016, ICONART Contemporary Sacred Art Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine.
2014 – “Credibility Theory” – Modern Art Research Institute of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine
2011 – “Intersections” – 18 – 28 May, 2011, Gallery of Lights, DUCTAC, Dubai Arts Center, UAE. Curator, ARTISLA Gallery, Berlin, Germany)
2010 – “Painting 2010” 20 August -5 September, 2010, IV Ukranian Trienniale, Kyiv, Ukraine. Organizer, Ukrainian National Union of Artists.
http://oksanareznik.com/
https://www.saatchiart.com/OksanaR
