2 Not yet

Quang. How do I describe Quang?

Most people say he is a weird artist. He is a painter. He paints invisible paintings. He paints invisible paintings of all the things people do not like about art in museums.

For example:

One day, a short, thin woman in a simple black dress with a soft, white scarf is talking to the middle of her very tall husband in the middle of the art museum in the middle of downtown. “Oh, Henry,” she says thinly. “I don’t like this one. I don’t like this one at all. There’s too much fruit! It makes me hungry!” Quang hears this. He rushes to his studio across the river and immediately creates five paintings. In the middle of each picture is a different piece of fruit.

I don’t tell Quang this, but when I look at Quang’s invisible paintings of fruit, I imagine they belong in a doctor’s office for children.

Here’s another example from another museum in another part of town:

“Galina, my dear,” says a cranky man with a crooked back shaped like a sideways letter W and a moustache almost as long as his two canes. “That painting is too red!” Back in his studio, Quang doesn’t have much red paint, so this time he makes only one picture—a very small picture—but red as can be. It is still invisible, of course, but it is red—very red—very cherry, almost raspberry red.

Cherry or raspberry?! I want to ask because I can never remember which word is which fruit in English, but I’ve learned not to ask too many questions. I see what I see, and that’s what it is, but I make a mental note to look online for more information about cherries and raspberries.

This is Quang.

Artist? Yes.

Weird? Maybe.

Boring? Never.

Quang and I have a friend who is a poet. His name is Stig. He is a dog and lives now in Paris, but that’s not important. What is important is that Stig is a poet. He knows words. He writes about what he knows. And he knows Quang. And when he writes about the unusual things that Quang does, Stig always asks the readers, “Is that weird? Or is that wonderful?”

I think that it’s wonderful. I think Quang is wonderful. He has the ability to take an idea that is very complicated and make it simple. “His sense of clarity is almost clairvoyant,” says Stig, playing with the similar sounds of the words. But it’s true. The world is confusing, but Quang makes sense. He sees what others cannot see.

To be truthful, Quang and I are dating. In fact, we have been dating for 10 years. We met right here at this coffee shop. He was hanging his paintings for his first art show. They were, believe it or not, paintings of pies: fruit or cream; one crust or two; apple, banana, blueberry, chocolate, coconut, key lime, lemon-lime, peach, pumpkin, and strawberry.

When I think about it, I guess our meeting was a clear coincidence. Or was it destiny?

There was a party on the first night of Quang’s art show. I brought small, individual pies from the bakery where I worked, and Mel, the owner of the coffeeshop, passed around drinks. But instead of tiny cups of espresso, Mel poured very tall glasses of champagne—you know, the wine with tiny bubbles. Stig read a funny poem that he wrote about Quang. And Stig’s upstairs neighbor Lorena tap-danced … loudly—while Stig’s cousin Abdi played the drums … loudly.

Again … Is that weird? Or is that wonderful?

Quang saw my ukulele, and he asked me to play. This was before I started writing my own songs. In fact, I didn’t know many songs at all. My lips pinched, my nose scrunched, and my eyes squinted. I took another sip of the champagne and smiled. I knew the perfect song!

Plink, plink, plink, plunk!

That was just me getting ready: “My dog has fleas!”  Stig (a dog) gave me the side-eye.

Plink, plink, plink, plunk!

I took a deep breath. I looked at Quang. I smiled. I played my ukulele and sang:

Tiny bubbles 
In the wine 
Make me happy ,
Make me feel fine .

Tiny bubbles 
Make me warm all over
With a feeling that I’m gonna
Love you till the end of time.

Quang smiled. Stig closed his eyes. I think that he was happy that I was, at least, in tune. Mel started to sing along with me. He knew the song. It was very popular when he was younger. We sang together. Everyone laughed.

Later Quang asked me, “Do you know who wrote that song?”

“Ho wrote that song,” I said.

“That’s what I want to know. Who wrote that song?”

“Do you know Don Ho?”

“Don who?”

“No, not Don Who. Don Ho. “

“Who now?”

“Ho. Ho! HO!”

“Ha!”

“What?”

“Now you sound like Santa Claus!”

Indeed, “Ho, ho, ho!” is what Santa Claus says. I don’t know much about American holidays, but that much I had learned very quickly. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn until much later that Leon Pober wrote that song, not Don Ho.

“Do you write songs, too?” he asked me.

I nodded and smiled again, even though it wasn’t true (well, not yet).

“How do you know what to write about?” he asked me.

Again I pinched my lips. I scrunched my nose. I squinted my eyes.

Quang raised an eyebrow. I learned quickly that he does this often when he is curious.

“I follow the advice of my teachers: I write what I know.”

Fast forward to today, and Quang and I have been dating for 10 years now. During that time, I have written a song about cats. I have written a song about a sunny, warm day at a beach in Hawaii. But I have not written a song about Quang.

Not yet.