The winters came with the escalation of the protests. For the last of the three months of that year, I tried to distract Bensimon from going to those places that might get him arrested again, I kept drawing the parts of life that Bensimon was giving up by breaking the law. But Bensimon didn’t get it. To him. Everything was blurred together. The only times he wasn’t getting himself arrested, he was either at the free shop doing volunteering work, or in a party room, or hiking or cycling.
I thought I should cheer him up, or at least let him talk about it. Bensimon did not look a least bit remorseful. He looked almost calm, as if he had an other worldly experience that explaining to me would have been futile. He almost looked other worldly in the humming, sterile belly of the MTR. The train’s rhythm was a mechanical lullaby, but our conversation was anything but soothing.
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“Um, if you want to talk about it, I would listen.” I said thoughtfully. “You don’t have to be afraid. I would be here for you.” He paused, and looked around. The greens of the trees were reflected in the blues of the water. He looked as if he was choosing his words carefully. “Seeing you like that, your face reflecting your concerns, made me quite sad. It looks like you saw something like eggs smashed.” I took a deep sigh, worried my face was not poker enough to handle this. “I am deeply concerned. Frankly. I imagined someone going through something like this would not be having an easy time. Not to mention, you are my boyfriend. What didn’t you tell me, you would be going those places. I would have prevented – I would have stopped you – “ I sobbed, I couldn’t help it.
“I knew you would be too concerned. I didn’t want you to be worried.” Bensimon said, gazing into the deep blues and greens.
“Speaking of eggs, I don’t understand. Why are people supposed to stand with eggs? Sometimes we want to stand with hams.” I said, I had no idea what I was talking about.
“You are totally ruining the mood of humanity.” He choked on laughter, and stroked my hair tenderly.
I was choking back on my tears. “I am just saying, why eggs, why not ham. I like ham much more than eggs.”
Bensimon said, “ you are illiterate if you talk like that, even if you can string words together.”
“It’s a fantasy,” I said, my voice cutting through the clatter of wheels on tracks. “The whole idea of the virtuously poor artist with impossibly refined taste. It’s a literary construct, not a life path.”
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Bensimon, whose mind was a labyrinth of quiet considerations, simply tilted his head, prompting me to continue.
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“Think about it,” I pressed. “That level of aesthetic refinement, that innate understanding of Scarlatti or the subtle genius of a Ming vase—that doesn’t spring from a vacuum. It’s cultivated. It requires exposure, education, time. All of which cost money.” I leaned forward, my reflection ghosting in the window behind him. “So, the only way that character exists is if they were rich to begin with. They were raised with all the advantages, cultivated that impeccable taste, and then… fell. They gave it all to charity, or in the old days, gambled it away on a tragic horse or lost it in a shipwreck. But now?” I scoffed, a soft, dry sound. “Now we have trust funds. Financial advisors. Smart, clever schemes to stop that kind of beautiful, tragic downfall from ever happening. We’ve legislated against the poetic ruin.”
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The train slowed into a station, a sigh of hydraulics. The doors slid open, a wave of humid air and the murmur of the crowd washing over us before they sealed shut again, returning us to our capsule.
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“And even if we separate the art from the money,” I continued, the thought evolving as I spoke, “does that refined taste even make you a good person? I know so many people with breathtaking taste. Curators, music professors, my old art history tutor. They can tell you about the emotional resonance of a single brushstroke or the political subtext in a Baroque opera. And they are all… just people. Perfectly average. They go to work, they teach their craft, they get married, they complain about taxes.”
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I felt a heat rising in my chest, a frustration not with them, but with the myth. “They don’t stand up for the elderly on the MTR. I’ve seen them toss a plastic bottle into the bushes during a hike. And I’d bet my entire savings that not one of them would think to call the police if they suspected the old man next door was starving, alone in the dark. Their souls are furnished with beautiful things, but does that beauty leak out into their actions? I don’t think so.”
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I fell silent, my little manifesto complete. The train plunged into a tunnel, and for a moment, we were just two faces illuminated in the stark carriage light, suspended in the roar.
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Bensimon waited for the noise to subside. His gaze was steady, not challenging, but deeply thoughtful. He had a way of making silence feel like a form of speech.
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“Perhaps,” he said, his voice calm and clear, “you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Perhaps the connection isn’t between taste and goodness. Perhaps it is between being poor and being good at making art.” He let the idea hang in the air for a moment. “When you are starved—truly starved in all the ways the world tells you matter—for money, for comfort, for conventional success… that’s when you might become rich in the right ways. Because your soul is the only thing left that is truly, undeniably yours. And it has to learn to speak, to sing, to create its own sustenance. It has no other choice.”
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His words didn’t land like a rebuttal; they landed like a key, sliding into a lock I hadn’t known was there. The frantic, cynical energy that had been propelling my argument vanished, leaving a sudden, hollow quiet inside me. I looked away, out the window at the fleeting darkness of the tunnel wall.
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I thought of my own life, comfortable, curated, safe. My taste was something I’d worked on, yes, but it was a decoration. It was not a necessity. I had never been starved. I had never been forced to rely on the raw, untamed voice of my soul because I had a thousand other voices—the voice of my bank account, my education, my social safety net—to speak for me.
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The train emerged into the fading afternoon light of Kowloon Tong. I saw the familiar, towering apartment blocks, the neon signs beginning to flicker on, the intricate, messy tapestry of a city that never slept. I saw it all, but I was looking inward.
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Bensimon hadn’t defended the virtuously poor artist. He had simply redefined the terms of engagement. He shifted the focus from the consumption of art to its creation, from the cultivation of taste to the desperation of expression. My argument about trust funds and moral failings suddenly felt shallow, a critique of the frame while ignoring the painting.
It didn’t have to be a binary. The artist with the starved soul and the curator with the full but silent one were two different species. One created the light, the other merely arranged it in a gallery. And me? I was just a spectator, commenting on the quality of the beam from a safe, well-lit distance.
The train slowed for our stop. We stood, joining the river of people flowing towards the doors. I didn’t say anything to Bensimon as we walked. The conversation was over, but its echo would remain, a persistent, low hum in the background of my thoughts. I had started by questioning a cliché and ended by questioning the very nourishment of my own spirit. I had a name from a flower, a life of cultivated beauty, but as we melted into the bustling, indifferent crowd, I had never felt so full of everything, and yet, so utterly, profoundly, empty.
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and then Add to home screen.