The Great Train Robbery

The exhibit was called What I shouldn't do for love and it was Jacques Renard's first. I hadn't seen my friend since art school and was shocked to see that he now had only one leg instead of his usual two.

When we were young, he would sleep with a new woman almost daily. Contemporary dancers, polyamorous vegans, film actresses, long distance runners, sous chefs, stage actresses, poets, teaching assistants, sommeliers, somnambulists. He met a woman who had been studying at the Sorbonne and was in Montreal for a few months writing a thesis on art and humanism in Florence during the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici. They fell in love and he left with her to France.

Jacques and I were fierce competitors throughout our academic years and I was crippled with jealousy when first i learned of his vernissage. For years I have been rejected by a myriad of foundations, councils, museums and galleries, all reluctant to show my work. Apparently there isn't any room or appreciation for my post-awesome interpretation of the AIDS virus using dilapidated apple printers and ground coriander.

As I walked through the halls admiring my old friend's work, I noticed a crowd had gathered at the other end where Jacques was. He stood under his own leg which had been crudely tacked onto the wall behind him. It was a shocking, hideous piece of work but it was brilliant and captivating and brutal and so perfect. Jacques had removed his own leg, a horrific and blunt act of self-mutilation in the name of art.

He told me later that night over a cold whiskey how he lost his leg.

"Anna and I were having a picnic and were involved in a heated argument. She ran away and I foolishly chased after her. She is faster than me and I lost her. I searched and searched and had it no been for her vicious screams in the distance I might have lost her forever. She was stuck in the train tracks you see, and only I could save her. The train was coming fast and hard. I dislodged her in the nick of time and saved her life. My leg however, was removed by the train and now hangs on that gallery wall for all to see. But I saved my Anna's life."

"Was it worth it?" I asked, dumbfounded by his tale.

" No. It wasn't." he said, while sipping his drink. " I dumped her 3 weeks later. She got fat."