The man had an incredibly nice voice,
like someone who was a big fan of my art. He told me he got my number from a
name I didn’t recognize, and he needed an art teacher for a group of one
hundred people. Teaching one hundred students at a time didn’t seem too
daunting, as I have taught some large groups and I like people. I got the
feeling that this group may be full of adults who have never painted before,
but that’s not a big deal either. He asked what kind of projects I could teach
and sounded super enthusiastic the more I talked to him.
He asked me if I can teach people
to paint caricatures (I gave him the word) of the person they sat next to. He
then asked if I could paint a figure but abstract a face.
He asked how long that would take.
For a sketch with an abstracted face, I said a half-hour,
which is pushing it a bit, but I aim to please, often to a fault. He said he
would make sure there were enough people signed up to make it worth the hour
drive to Sugarhouse, UT, and that I could get $100 for each sketch. All of it
would add up to $200/hr, which is definitely more than I’ve made before.
My first thought was of all the
groceries I could buy. Since moving out of my parents' house almost eight years
ago, I’ve never had quite enough income to feed myself as much as I would like,
plus I was talking to him on the phone when I usually ate dinner. And although
I have been living on my own for almost a decade, there have been times where I worried that I might have to move back in with my parents. With this much
money coming in each weekend I wouldn’t have to worry about food or rent, and I
could start saving money the way I did before I moved out.
Despite this momentary elation,
there was some restraint in my voice. Instead of saying, “Yes, I’d love to do
that,” I’d say, “I should be able to do that.”
It was about twenty minutes into
the phone call that he asked me if I’d ever been to a swingers/couples group.
At this point he had already established rapport with me and I didn’t want to
come across as judgmental. I thought, well, I know that’s not for me but I can
just teach the class and be on my way. Except for the paintings of course. He
told me that a lot of husbands will give their wives a woman as a “present” and
want to see photos of them together, but the rules forbid photographs. So an
abstracted painting bypasses that. I have sketched nude figures before in art
classes, and I tried to tell myself this could be an artistic challenge.
Then he started asking me if I had
any interest in their group. He said, “You know you don’t have to do this for
the job—but I can tell you'd really like it." I
thought, “I don’t think I really would,” yet he kept repeating this
over and over, saying how he “could tell” I was interested. He said he was going to send me photos of people and that I needed to send something
back that was “at least” topless or their feelings would be hurt. I told him in
that case, he better not send me anything, because I wasn’t going to send him
anything back.
It didn’t stop him from insisting
that he “could tell” I was so interested in this, but oh, no pressure, the job
is yours regardless, but yes, I can tell you’re interested. One thing about
Utah is people can use your religious past against you and insinuate that
there's something wrong with you and you’re still being “controlled” by your
religion if you aren’t sleeping with random people. At one point I started to
feel really uneasy, and despite how much he claimed to know my feelings, he
didn’t know I was starting cry as I sat on my couch. His tone had gone from
“Wow, you amazing woman,” to “Child, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
When he first called, he told me that he couldn’t talk long
because his phone was about to die, but I looked down at my phone and saw we’d been talking for over an hour. He
asked me an incredibly personal question, and finally I politely but directly
said, “I don’t really feel comfortable sharing that over the phone with someone
I don’t know. You know?”
Once I said that, he wasn’t on the
phone with me for much longer. He said he would email me details about the job
and wished me a good night.
As soon as I got off the phone I
knew I wasn’t going to do it. I don’t need the new experience; I have plenty
under my belt. I don’t need the artistic challenge and I don’t need the
company.
And no matter how much money I may
have made, I can’t buy my values back. It is easy to say, “I’ll just work there 'til I make x amount of money,” but by then I would be used to the easy
money, I would be desensitized to the group, and I would be comfortable with my
nice groceries. Plus he was clearly trying to rope me in to that lifestyle, and
even though I am not at all interested in any swinging outside of a playground,
it’s easy to become influenced by people if you spend enough time around them,
especially when those people are super friendly and super manipulative.
It
took some courage to turn down $200/hr when I was still struggling. The
interesting thing is later that same week, after I became inspired to create a
portrait as a gift, I gained six portrait commissions. Not only that, but
in the past two months, I’ve gained five new art students. A student’s
sister started, a student’s friend started, and so on. I just had the latest
request this afternoon. I realized
with my new students, I am no longer in the poverty demographic, something
that has taken me a long time to overcome, but I have done it. Being able to live as an artist and art teacher without compromise is something I can truly take pride in.
