Party Bears
Whenever I come out of this one guy’s office at work, I end up face-to-face with this weird-ass painting of a bunch of bears. Actually, I think it’s a reproduction. But still. There are, like, a thousand bears dancing in the forest. The ones who aren’t dancing are serving wine or cooking fish or something. A lot of them are just standing there, watching the dancers and sort of moshing on each other. It’s like a big freaking forest bear rave. The bears are all different colors, too. Black, white, brown.
Every time I see that painting, I have to stare at it for at least five seconds and quietly freak out. Why is this in our office? Granted, our boss has tried to liven up the place a little with some of the less favored antiques and artwork from his personal collection. And our place sure can use livening up. Everything in our office is made of plywood, industrial carpet or beige-painted metal. The antiques are usually incongrous but charming, like fake stuffed swordfish at a fried-popcorn-shrimp restaurant. But this bear painting – it’s just freaking weird. I wonder if my boss brought it in or if it’s just there, like a poltergeist in a split-level ranch house on a Native American burial ground.
One day I finally expressed my bewilderment aloud. The secretary who’s been in our office the longest walked over to discover the cause of my distress. “Oh, that bugs you? I never noticed it,” she said. She figured it was our boss’s, but she didn’t know for sure, either.
“What the hell are they doing?” I wanted to know. “What is this – some kind of cult? Why are there so many of them? And why are some of them white, like polar bears? And why is this one wearing an apron? Are all the other ones supposed to be naked?” The single art history course I’d taken at UT was no help here.
The oldest secretary considered my questions for a moment. Then she explained it all. “They’re there to have sex. They’re having sexual encounters. Look at those two – they’re about to get it on. Look – if you had to be one, which one would you be? I’m that one.” She pointed at one of the dancing bears. “And you’re that one.” She pointed at one of the white bears that was leering down at something unseen in the mob.
“No, I’m not.” I pointed to the most innocuous-looking brown bear I could find in the foreground. “I’m that one.” Then I drew myself up to a very straight posture and walked back to my veal-pen of a desk, never to mention the bear painting again.
Now, every time I see it, I think about how all women in the world should have boyfriends, or at least guys they can booty-call on weekened nights.
Bears just wanna have fun, I guess. As do we all.
Linkelodeon
1. Okay – here’s the bear painting described above and an explanation. It’s about the stock market. Whatever. The damage to my psyche is already done.
2. In looking for the painting linked above, I found a site about art and the other kind of bears.
3. This woman just doesn’t care. She’ll make any old scary kind of doll.
4. I would want this shirt if they had it in a v-neck.
5. “…we resolved that from now on, instead of just driving by the really offensive ones, we’re going to start shouting, ‘Garbage sale!’ or, ‘FAAAAAWCK YOUUU!!!'”
