The Portrait of Matteo

Seventeen-year-old Manny got off a public bus at a busy intersection in downtown Philadelphia. When the bus released its brakes and passed his narrow view, he checked whether the art museum across the street was still there. He had been visiting it every day that week but wondered for a second the veracity of its presence. Now, the spring sun betrayed its gray highlights, giving it a warm glow.

After checking the periphery of where he stood, he walked balefully toward the museum’s entrance. When he reached it, the sun was swallowed by altocumulus clouds and made Manny’s reflection in the entrance's glass doors look menacing. Manny noticed, again, how diminutive he must seem to the other juniors in his class.

Brushing his hair through his fingers, he grabbed the door’s handle with his other chafed hand. He searched for the nondescript grandfather who normally sold him a ticket. He saw only two middle-aged women. Upon approach, one stopped fussing with the other and asked him what he needed as if he were only there to use their bathroom. He hesitantly paid for the ticket.

He took the elevator to the second floor and got off. Stepping into the gallery, he turned his head and moved his feet like a crab, a pretense he wasn’t there to see the painting again.

“The Portrait of Matteo” hung ashamedly down the corridor, ensconced in a murky light. Manny tapered his thoughts. It seemed to get darker and darker each time he visited.

He had read on the internet that Matteo was painted by a young Austrian woman in 1906, and that Matteo was a lover she met during her early involvement in the Socialist Party. He committed suicide in 1920 for reasons unknown.

Manny now stood his usual five feet directly across from the portrait. Today, Matteo had to have been displaced in time and place. Manny’s eyebrows furrowed. He stopped blinking and peered into Matteo’s drunk, masculine eyes. Manny’s neck tightened. He uneasily moved his gaze to Matteo’s fleshy, sanguine lips and opened his own halfway.

The gallery’s lights seemed to have dimmed, and the space in which Manny stood suddenly garroted him. He coughed and squeezed his toes. His breath quickened and he forced his eyes to close. Matteo was even more beautiful than Manny had ever admitted to himself. An impossible beauty.

Manny reached inside his wispy jacket pockets and clenched a compact, cold piece of steel. Its lightness felt enormously heavy and threatened to put him to his knees. Sensations bit him all over his body, and he fought for his legs.

These feelings were not hard to place. They arose the same way they did that morning.

The school’s quarterback, Guy, dropped a folded piece of paper on his desk in Algebra class. Unfolding it, Manny spied the turncoat slurs and stuffed the note into his jacket’s right pocket like pushing someone's head under water.

Only ten days ago, Guy was caressing Manny’s bare, golden chest. He asked Manny to hand him his shirt. Manny’s eyes turned to ink blots; he didn’t move or speak. The room’s heavy airiness engulfed them both. Guy stood up, dressed, and said, “I’m not gay.” Manny flushed with red.

“No. Please. Don’t go.” But it was too late.

So, by the time Manny came to and started slashing the canvas with his switchblade, a security guard ran toward him. Stricken sounds slowly penetrated Manny’s ears, and he knew the scar on his heart had been forever stamped on his place in a man’s hell.