Studying The Garden of Earthly Delights in Art Class

Art Teacher slides a transparency on the overhead projector as the projector’s fan whirls in the darkened high school art classroom. Upon the screen, three paintings are jammed together into one, each filled with bright colors, tightly drawn humans, most of them naked, tan sprawling fields, dark forests, and things, or shapes, or creatures, beyond comprehension.  

Art Teacher talks about this painter, whose first name, the juniors and seniors can barely pronounce. Hieronymus, Art Teacher says, repeating it so the students might remember it, Hieronymus. 

Art Teacher lectures, Bosch was born five hundred years before you, lectures, He was an Early Netherlandish painter, lectures, Bosch painted about human’s darkest fears and primal desires, tells the students, This might be on the final, tells the students, Write this down in your notes. Art Teacher asks the students to Study this triptych. It’s called “The Garden of Earthly Delight.” Study Bosch’s intent. Art Teacher asks, Who has a guess? What was his intent?

College Bound Girl argues, It’s a warning against earthly delights. She dreams of her first semester at Clarion University, joining the Honor’s Program. 

Before she can elaborate, Quarterback caws, It’s a painting about my Friday night, and he dreams only as far as Friday night or earliest Saturday morning. 

Punk Kid scoffs in the corner, mumbles, It’s a moral warning about where we are headed in this era of Bush, as he dreams of a Dukakis presidency. 

Wrestler is too tired for guesses or dreams. Tired from months of wrestling practices, months of starving, purging, all to make 103 pounds. Tired of laxatives, of sweating off the weight, match after match. Then, once he’s made weight, binging all the weight he’s lost away by eating tomato pie and pasties and his mom’s lasagna until he’s here, bloated at 109 pounds, even though he hasn’t eaten or drank in fifteen and a half hours. Where to find six pounds to lose when Wrestler can barely lift his pencil to take notes? Just to feel how skinny he is, Wrestler curls his fingers under his ribs, feels almost inside himself.

Art Teacher tells the students, No one knows. The secret’s lost to Bosch, who we know little about. But even this fatigued, Wrestler knows exactly what “The Garden of Earthly Delights” is about. If he weren’t so tired, Wrestler would tell Art Teacher and College Bound Girl and Quarterback and Punk Kid that they’re all wrong. All he has to do is what Art Teacher teaches the students to do—read these paintings, left to right. 

If Wrestler weren’t so hungry, he’d stand, go to the board, borrow Art Teacher’s pointer and say, Bosch must have been a wrestler. 

Wrestler would explain: That left panel is Bosch, emaciated, after earning his Danish championship, medal dangling from neck, girlfriend holding his hand. Wrestler would ask, Do you see? It’s so clear. Wrestler would think it is as clear as the meal he envisions for after his match against Pen Argyl: kielbasa and perogies with sauteed onions.

Wrestler would continue, The center panel is hedonic moments of blueberries, strawberries, and grapes dangled into a ravenous mouth. An orgy of food. What else could it be? How could it be any other thing? Wrestler dreams of stepping onto the scale, watching it float at 103-pounds, stepping off into the embrace of an Italian hoagie. 

The right panel, Wrestler would say, is about a belly so full that the stomach’s skin wrenches and aches. Or it is a season’s worth of nightmares of starvation, nightmares of death by dehydration. Or it is Bosch’s darkness of hunger, the worry of stepping onto the scale tomorrow morning, watching it hover not at 103 but at 105 or 107. Or worse, that nightmare of losing another six pounds of flesh and muscle to make weight.

Then Wrestler would stop talking. In the darkness, he’d step into the projector’s light. Let it illuminate him. Wrestler would remove his shirt. He’d show the class the artwork of a starved body: ribs like sharpened ridges, chest sunken, skin stretched so tightly against hips, knobby knees. He’d ask College Girl to study starvation with him, Quarterback to lust after peas and lettuce like Quarterback lusts after girls, Punk Kid to eat in anarchy with tomato pie, French fries, ice cream, and, most beautifully, water guzzled. Then Wrestler would pull his shirt back on and slump, exhausted, into his seat. 

Instead, Wrestler doesn’t say a word. He just stares at the center panel of Bosch’s painting, at one specific man who is painted emaciated like Wrestler. This man reaches upward into an apple tree to grab a hanging and fat apple. Though it’s only a painting, though it’s hundreds of years old, Wrestler can feel his fingers grip and pull that apple. Wrestler can taste the earthly delights on his tongue.