Author: Treacy PurpleSage
Title: The Picasso Summer
Feedback: pretty please! treacysworld2000@yahoo.com 
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: none
Summary: Clark relates art and communication...
Challenge: Clark and Lex' first kiss - and only a kiss (Jezebel)
Part of the ClexFest at: http://www.kardasi.com/Lexclusive/ClexFest
Beta: Pat (aka Lillian)
Author's Note: I wrote this for the Bradbury title fic, but never felt okay with it. I just decided that I needed to let it go...

The Picasso Summer
By Treacy PurpleSage

Hypnotizing chickens is not difficult, but most people do not know how. I learned during a particular disjointed summer, like a Picasso portrait. My left side facing forward, my right side a profile.

I kept facing forward in terms of my regular friends. We met at the Talon, drank coffee, talked about the foolish things that are important in your youth; movies, girls, teachers, and since it is Smallville, there were plenty of meteor inspired freaks, killers and victims. My guilt had a small field day, but it was all good.

I was in profile with Lex. Never looking anything straight on. Our conversations always had many different patterns and textures that were outside of the scope of nearly everyone in town. I think my father hated Lex so much because he did not understand him.

It was like Picasso. My father hates Picasso too. He can't understand what he was trying to convey, how the portrait is telling more than one story, how it is showing multiple emotions, and states of existence, just like all of us.

We are not Rembrandts, we are Picassos.

Confusing, disjointed.

Different faces to different people. I am super strong help to my father. Dorky friend to Pete. Oblivious hunk to Chloe. They all only see one aspect, trying to define with one dimension, one view.

But with Lex I can be a Picasso. We are both Picassos.

I envy his ability to change faces for the situation, for the person he is interacting with. But at the same time I know that he is not happy with this way of life. For he is not really changing to suit his own moods and purposes, but those of others. His father especially. But I don't like to talk about Lionel.

Profiles are deceptive. We feel we can tell what a person looks like in profile, but really we are completely different to that which we ourselves or anyone else is used to. It reminded me of this exercise in second grade where our teacher traced our profile (she called it a silhouette), using an overhead projector, and then we made black cutouts and put them anonymously around the room. On open house night, when our parents came to school to meet our teachers and talk about us, they were supposed to figure out whose profile was whose. Aside from a few that had major distinguishing characteristics, most of them had a hard time determining which was us.

My parents mistook me for Eric. It seems funny now in retrospect. Cosmic shadows, profiles.

In profile I know what Lex is talking about, I understand his overtures for what they are. I know that he thinks about me in ways he shouldn't. I know that he probably wishes he met me in some club in Metropolis and not at the end of bridge in Smallville. But I also know that a part of him is very happy he met me exactly where he did.

I see his profile too. I know him, and it's not the obvious distinguishing characteristics I'm talking about. I can see him, past his many faces and his multiple aspects. I see the image through, with, in, by and for the Picasso.

I wanted to tell him that summer, to tell him that I understood what he was trying so hard not to say and tell him it was okay. I could hear him and I wanted to have that conversation straight on, or at least a little less obliquely. That is where the chickens came in.

Chloe made Pete and I watch "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" where Rain Phoenix hypnotizes a dozen chickens for her love Uma Thurman. Lays them out in two straight lines a monument to her love (and peyote I'm sure). I had never tried it, but knew that old man Parker down the road could hypnotize chickens. So one afternoon when everyone was busy, my chores were done and my parents thought I was in the loft, I went to find out how to hypnotize a chicken. Maybe it sounds like a ridiculous plan now, but I assure you it made perfect sense at the time.

Three afternoons a week for nearly a month, and I could hypnotize a chicken in under a minute. I intended to use this as a metaphor for how Lex and I could move past our profiles and face each other directly. I found a reason to get Lex alone at a nearby farm (since we don't have chickens) and showed him my ability. He was going to laugh at me at first, but I'm pretty sure he had seen "Cowgirls" cause he got the most interesting smile on his face. I tried to tell him about Picasso and profiles and aspects and then I kissed him.

I'm not sure he ever totally understood exactly what I was trying to say, but he got the point and kissed me back.

Picasso is a famous artist because he saw the world in a different way and was not afraid to show the world. What most people don't know was that he got his ideas and images from African art. Because I remember everything I ever read, I know that in 1905 a painter named André Derain showed an African mask to Picasso and he was greatly affected by it. Picasso collected many pieces over the years.

Centuries old paintings, masks and spiritual artifacts designed to emote and communicate with other worlds and Picasso took them, copied them and transformed them. A new form of art that was really a whole different culture, revealed to the "civilized world".

My identity is not known, not to me, nor to anyone, so I feel no qualm in hiding it from everyone. I can not tell another that which is not undiscovered by me. One day I may know who I am and why I am here and I may need to reveal that my ideas and my identity are stolen from a centuries old tradition of which the world is unaware.

But for now I will enjoy my summer. Facing forward with Lex, and profile to everyone else.

END