My New Coat

The apartment was sparkling.

There wasn’t a speck of dust on a surface, or a dirty hand print on a door frame. There were none of Gerards half-finished-and-never-to-be-completed [Frank could tell the difference between those to be finished, and those not] pictures on the coffee table, no empty tubes of paint in Gerards studio and no condom wrappers abandoned under the bed...or anywhere else in the house as it were.

And where of Frank now?

In the kitchen, preparing some dinner for his boyfriends return, like ‘a good little housewife’ as his friends would joke. Frank had been fired about four weeks ago now, from his job in a music store. Frank would maintain that listening to unpaid for CDs that weren’t even on sale in the store yet was in no way a fireable offence, but apparently his manager saw it differently when it happened for the eighth time. But anyway, because of this, Frank had nothing else to do but stay home and clean and cook and mend.

There were just no jobs available at the minute, at least none that Frank would do. There were fast food places that always seemed to have job vacancies, but Frank would always argue that he didn’t eat meat, therefore he wasn’t going to cook it and slap in on a bread bun for someone else to eat.

His ears perked up at the click of the lock on the front door, which was followed not long after by an angry slam. Frank was used to dramatic entrances like this, but knew that something was really wrong when Gerard sat at the table and stared dejectedly into the conveniently placed cup of coffee as opposed to greeting Frank with a kiss on the lips and a long drawn out hug as he groaned into the crook of his neck about how awful his day had been.

Cautiously, Frank sat down in the chair around the corner on the table from Gerard, watching him for a moment.

“You know,” He started in attempt to lighten to mood. “A staring contest with something that doesn’t have eyes is a lost cause,”

Gerard cracked the smallest smile, but it disappeared quickly, and he exhaled deeply through his nose preparing to explain why he was in such a foul mood. “It’s Darren,” he whimpered. “He got that account I wanted,”

Now it was Franks turn to sigh, reaching forward clasping Gerards hand in his own. Gerard worked for a New York based advertising company, in the art department. When clients came to the company with a new account, they’d go to the art department to choose one, maybe two of the artists to work with on advertising their product. Because of this, it was a very competitive atmosphere in Gerard’s workplace, but especially between him and one of his co-workers Darren. They’d gone to the same art school, and on Franks few meetings with Darren, he could back up Gerard’s opinion of him being smug, rude and cocky.

“Gerard, you know you can’t get all of the accounts you want,”

“But you don’t get it Frankie,” Gerard whined. Frank could only cock his head to the side and wait for his boyfriend to explain. “You know how...how you can always identify a writer by the way that they write, it’s like they have their own style of writing, right? Well...it’s the same with artists. Everyone has a style that defines them from everyone else,”

Frank nodded to show that he was listening, but got up to add some sauce to the pasta that was boiling in the sauce pan.

“Well, I told you last week about how Mr Corwin was briefing us on this new account, and he told me that I was the exact style that the client was looking for so had a huge chance of being the one for the job...and that means good things Frankie, it means pay rise like...real money which we haven’t seen much of recently,” he paused, realising he was warbling off on a tangent. “Well, Darren turns up today with an entirely new portfolio, all of the work looking surprisingly similar to mine. You should have seen the clients face Frank. They saw Darren’s and fucking...they looked amazed, and then they looked at mine, and had such accusing looks on their faces, like I was the one doing the copying!”

Frank paused and braced himself on the kitchen work surface, looking over his shoulder at Gerard. “You’re not serious?” When Gerard nodded, he felt an anger towards Darren that he’d never felt, even when he cracked the gay jokes at the company Christmas party, or when Gerard informed him of the time that Darren had purposely not held the doors to the elevator open to make sure that Gerard was late for a meeting that he was supposed to attend. When he was late, he lost half of his pay for that week.

“Well, you know what to do,”

“Tie him to a chair in a warehouse and blowtorch his face like they do that girl in Hostel?” Gerard suggested, his mood lightening with the idea of causing pain to his biggest rival.

“I was thinking something a little less violent, Gee. Listen...imagine you had a...” he paused and looked around the spotless apartment, his eyes landing on Gerards leather jacket strewn across the back of the sofa, ruining the clean image. “Imagine you had a coat...or better yet, imagine you’d designed and made this coat...”

“A coat, Frankie? Seriously?”

“Shut up and listen. So, you’d made this coat, it’s totally unique, and no-one else in the world has one like it. It’s totally yours. But then, someone like – oh, I don’t know – Darren comes along, and steals the designs, and makes the coat for himself. What do you do?”

“Blowtorch the motherfucker,”

“Gerard!” Frank whined, playfully hitting the back of his head with the back of his fingers. “I’m being serious here,”

“So am I!”

“Gerard, seriously, someone steals your coat, what do you do?”

“Well, assuming it’s as cold as it is now and I’d be without a coat, I’d have to get a new one,”

“Exactly,” Frank smirked. “Someone takes your coat, so you make a new one,”

“So basically, you’re saying that I should just get a new art style?”

“A better one,”

“It’s not that easy Frank,”

“Darren managed it, I’m sure you can too,”

“Darren copied a style; he didn’t completely change and create a new one,”

“Well, you always say you love a challenge,”

“I say that when you tell me you’re not in ‘the mood,”

“Yeah well,” Frank smirked. “It can apply to this too,”

* * *

Gerard started working on some more paintings and some more drawings and even some graphic design, and over time he altered things and changed them in a way that made it less of the old him; the new Darren, and more into the new Gerard.

He didn’t get the next client, or the one after that or even the next four after that. And Darren must have had about eleven clients in a row that weren’t even remotely interested in Gerards work, but it didn’t really matter, because slowly but surely, Gerard was starting to outdo himself. It had gotten to a point where he would spend all evening in his studio, creating and changing and tweaking.

And then, one warm day in June, the current client turned his nose up at Darren’s work, he told him that it was too common and that he’d seen a lot of it around, and he then moved on to Gerards portfolio.

“This isn’t perfect,” he’d said, smiling softly as Gerards face fell. “But I love it; it’s so raw and passionate,”

He then proceeded to give Gerard details of a briefing about the product he wanted advertising. It all went uphill from there, more and more clients coming to the firm and requesting Gerard without even looking at the other artists work.

The pay was good, and Frank and Gerard even managed to move out of their tiny little tin can apartment, and move into a more upscale place in a nicer part of the city where they didn’t have people knocking on their door at 2am to ask if this was where the coke was sold, or where Lisa the hooker lived.

And always, the clients would ask how Gerard had created such a unique style for himself, and always Gerard would answer: “It’s my new coat.”