Art School Chronicles

Naturally I do.

So now we have a crown made out of Mario underwear that the winner of every game has to wear. You're welcome.

So here's the scene, I'm walking down the hall with my buddy, and he's telling me about this ridiculous Russian movie he's seen. At this point we're stopped right outside my dorm room. And here comes Anabelle.

She stops and stands for a second, as though she's been in the conversation the whole time. She then promptly interrupts my very male friend with a sentence that begins "don't you hate it when guys," I don't even remember the rest I just remember being kinda dumbfounded. She spouts off some crap about her ex, yes, the one who's nudes she showed me, and I'm kinda looking over the audience. There's me, a, then single, never before had a relationship, asexual, and a heterosexual man. No, we do not "hate it when guys..." we really don't.

She then changes subject faster than someone trying to catch a left turn arrow and says she can't believe none of us are celebrating this Hindu holiday that she was. Now, she knows my religion, and my buddy is very white. (Not that you can't be Hindu just that it wouldn't be expected) I kind of let the silence speak for itself, but then she hits a button. A big, red, button.

She starts going off about gun control, how she doesn't believe in it, and how dumb it is. At this point I break my passive politeness and snap back at her. For context, my high school was nearly shot up when I was a senior. The police caught the guy before he did anything, but I could've lost everything. I basically told her that she shouldn't talk to me about gun control if that was her position, to which she responded, and I quote, "I believe in arming women and minorities." I had to inform her that what she wanted was a French Revolution.

So, Anabelle and I were in a drawing class together. She always grabbed the spot right next to me. We were beginning our final projects for the class and had free reign over what we did. Her and I were talking about what we wanted to do and she asks if I'm okay with nudity, like, seeing it. I say that it depends. We're in art school, you're gonna see a lot of naked people, but i dont particularly enjoy that aspect of it. She then flashes me an image of her ex boyfriend's nudes. This is what she was drawing for her final initially. She would later change her idea, but at this point her plan was to draw her ex boyfriend in shibari (rope bondage, not always sexualized but generally so). This is what she was going to draw, show off to our entire class, and turn in as a final project.

I mentioned in my last post that Anabelle lived in the same dorm as me, same hall too, actually. This particular night our hall was watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in the dorm lobby. Up to now I'd tried to be friendly to Anabelle, as I knew she was neuro divergent and that was probably why she behaved the way she did. I was uncomfortable around her, but being a sufferer of anxiety myself, I didn't want to pass too harsh of judgement.

So here's the setting: my roommate and I are sitting next to each other on a couch. She gets up and leaves for a second, and here comes Anabelle. She walks up to me and moves to sit next to me. I let her know that my roommate is sitting there and she ignores me. Mkay, little weird but I'm not very assertive so I didn't do anything.

My next fun surprise was that, despite having a whole ass couch, she's practically sitting on me.

At some point I'm turned around on the couch talking to someone behind me. It's a lighthearted moment up until Anabelle says "I really wanna slap your ass right now."

Yikes

Big no

We're gonna call this girl Anabelle because well, she kinda scares me.

I first met Anabelle early in the school year by mistake. I thought she was a friend of mine, only to realize after approaching and speaking to her that I was wrong. We wound up hanging out at a football game. I was kinda forced to go by my parents, and saw Anabelle, who I knew was an art major and lived in my dorm, sitting in the student section. We sat together at the game and talked for a bit, as I couldn't possibly have cared less about what was going on around me. I don't remember a whole lot of what we talked about, but I know I told her I was asexual, and she told me she was bi.

Flash forward to the creepy bits, she's touchy, really touchy. Now, I don't care if my friends touch me, but I didn't even know this girl's name at this point and she's got her hand on my upper thigh. I'd also briefly mentioned that I'd been sexually harassed before so I feel like that makes it a lot worse??

Another short and sweet one, but probably my favorite story because of how utterly ridiculous it was.

So, the way our class worked is that everyone has their stuff set up in kind of a circle around the room with the model in the middle. The teacher walks around the room making suggestions and offering help. She gets to this girl and says "smaller strokes" while continuing to walk around the circle. Before she gets away this girl literally stops and yells "I'm doing what makes me feel right!"

Now, this is ridiculous to start with, but this girl was also the oldest person in the class at 22. Something else about art: if it feels right, it probably isn't. This was a life drawing class, so yeah, you kinda have to throw what you're used to out the window.

Short n sweet this time folks, we've got the phone story:

So, as I mentioned in my last post about this, we aren't allowed to have phones out in class. This is to protect the model's privacy. Now, annoying girl has had some "issues" following the phone policy. I'm talking with a friend in the class, and said friend pulls out her phone to send a text. The teacher calls her out and she apologizes, as the policy had slipped her mind.

So, my dudes and I took a trip to walmart one fateful evening. That trip yielded what would prove to be both a treasure and a curse of unspeakable magnitude.

The puzzle.

It was innocent enough, 500 pieces with a rainbow candy pattern. We were vastly unprepared for the 7 hours it took the 6 of us to finish it. The best way to describe the atmosphere would be to liken it to playing monopoly at 4 am. There was screaming, fighting, crying, and Shrek movies.

At long last, the puzzle had been completed. The problem was, no one wanted to lay eyes on the thing ever again, but we also didn't want out 7 hours going to waste.

So we taped it together.

And put it in our dorm's study lounge.

Where it stayed all year, through paint jobs, maintenance, meetings, and the innocent passerby. No one knew where the puzzle had come from, or who had conceived it.

So this girl just kept giving me content honestly. I'm gonna take some main themes and lump them together.

My figure drawing teacher was a pretty chill person, though she expected a lot from us. Her main rule was no cellphones. Now, she was a little less concerned with this on days when we didn't have a live model, but when we did they weren't allowed at all to protect the model's privacy. No cellphones meant no music, which kind of sucked given it was a 3 hour class. To combat the boredom, our teacher would let one student per class pick a band/album/genre and she'd play it out loud.

As soon as she says this, one particular girl pipes up. She picks a band no one's ever heard of (for good reason) and we're made to listen to it for 3 hours. Now listen, I don't care what kind of music anybody else likes, but I'm a punk rock girl, so this heavily synthetic, generic sounding indie music isn't really my style.

Yeah you read that right.

So, this fine evening (midnight) my roommate and I are in one of the art building's computer rooms scanning some work. She had a project that required it and I knew how to use the scanner.

We're just getting started, so I open up the scanner, only to find some papers in it. Now, in order to scan something, it has to be face down, so I couldn't tell what it was. I pick up the first paper, intending to just set it aside so that if whoever left it comes back, they'll be able to find it. Looking at it, it's pretty harmless, just some geometric patterns. My unsuspecting self then grabs the second paper. It was less harmless.

I have found myself staring at a piece of hand drawn, hardcore gay porn. Someone had drawn gay bdsm, gone to scan it, and left it in the scanner in their school's art building.

So, before we get into the wild stories, I thought I'd tell you all a little about me and my situation!

I go to a relatively large university with a pretty big art school. I'm also in a program where I stay in a dorm right next to the art building with a bunch of other art students. Essentially, there's no escape.

I was alone on the front counter and it was pretty late at night, when an old man and a younger man walk in together. The old man is trying to order but he's having a hard time relaying what he wants, which we got a lot as our menu was pretty confusing. I tried my best to help him out, but he wasn't making it easy. I ask him what side he wants, and he goes to look over the food. He points at something and says "what's that?" So I tell him what it is and explain that we don't offer it as a side, but rather a main course. I ask if he'd like to try it and he says yes, so I put a bite in a cup and pass it over the counter. He looks at it and grunts "more" at me. I tell him it's just a sample but that I can give him more if he'd like to order it. He just repeats himself.

This is where it hit the fan.

Exhibit A:

Me: wow you guys got screwed over, I can't believe they put three new people on front and no one else.

This chick: well I've been here for four days and I already know everything so I think we're fine. (Direct quote btw)

Exhibit B:

Me: hey just to let you know, don't put the pans in the window when we're closing. You have to run them back to the sink.

This chick (quite snappy might I add): I didn't do that.

Me (It was my second to last day and I was over it): well I don't really care who put them there. Just make sure someone takes them back.

So that wasn't too aggressive right? Well this girl stared at me, mouth hanging open for a solid thirty seconds and I felt alive.

Exhibit C:

This chick: If we don't get out of here by 11 I'm going to be so mad

Me: that's probably not going to happen, we usually don't get out until at least 11:30

This chick: well I got us out at 10:30 last night.

To make this particular statement funnier/worse she sat down in the dining room literally the whole time we were closing complaining that her ankle hurt. (Most of us have worked through illness and relatively severe injury) She also called her husband during this time and got mad that he'd gone to sleep.

See all this would have been bearable, it was too funny to get worked up about on its own. The problem was, that on top of all this she sucked at her job, like, bad. I've had a lot of terrible coworkers, but none that brought out such intense feelings of rage.