The Peacock106

 "This sounds interesting" says Carl.  "I don't think you've told me your story."

"Not much to tell.  Around that time I was doing a lot of small abstract drawings using coloured felts.  kind of glorified doodles," Aaron says.  "That all came out of using art therapy in  order to cope with my mother's death from cancer two years before.  But soon, the therapy drawings began to take on a life of their own.  I thought they were pretty good, but nothing to write home about.  Then one day, I bumped into a local artist.  He was also a go-go dancer in the Odyssey, which was a very popular gay club back in the day.  He was best friends with the owner of a local café whom, a year before had him as a feature artist.  One of his paintings seemed almost a visual representation of a poem I had written about the mythical Sphinx of Thebes from Greek mythology, so with the café owner's invitation, I taped up a copy next to the painting.  The artist really liked the juxtapositioning of my poetry with his art.  While we never got to be close friends, we did clearly like and respect each other a lot, and I am happy it went no further, because I really had very little patience with the kind of scene they were all involved in.  

"One day, I bumped into him on Davie Street.  I told him about the drawings.  He asked if he could see one so I pulled it out of my knapsack.  He loved it, and told me to start painting seriously.  I said I didn't feel ready.  He replied in quite a sharp tone that I was ready and it was time to get moving.  I said that he kicked my ass.  So, I went shopping, bought supplies, then I painted, and bought some more supplies, then painted some more, and more, and more, and before I knew it, I couldn't stop.  A lot of false starts and some pretty crappy looking work, but some pieces did seem to shine, so I just kept at it, and at it.

"It was the group compositions of tropical birds that really began to take off.  Around that time, the owners of Melriche´s Café, they had only been around for a year or so, invited me to be their first artist to do a show  That was an honour.  I was a regular there and I had been gently nagging the couple who owned the place to start letting local artists show their work there.  So, I became their first.  It wasn't a week after installing my paintings there when I got a phone call from a young woman who wanted to represent me as my agent.  Turns out it was none other than the girlfriend of the artist who was a go-go boy, the same guy who kicked my ass on Davie Street just a little more than one year earlier..."