Art shows, in Joe's experience, had always been red flags. Ever since his first one, they signified that he had to partake in something, something he clearly hated, because he needed to scrape together some extra spending money.
For the most part, Joe hated art shows because of all the ringleaders: the bourgeois asshats that were in love with the sound of their own voice. These critics droned on to crowds of yuppies, verbally shitting all over artists' works. It was especially annoying when these people had the gall to bullshit about the "true meaning" of a piece they clearly knew fuck-all about. On top of that, if the said piece was abstract, like, a single line on a canvas of white? Man, that pissed him off. Sure, let's laud the work of a scribble and totally label the beautiful anatomy in so-and-so's painting "boring and unoriginal".
Joe was currently in the position of lingering, somewhat bitterly, near his set of work. He was bored out of his mind. The only thing that was keeping him here (aside from his burning need to sell at least one of his piece-of-crap works) was the free food. If he could grub on champagne grapes, brie, and a flute of sparkling water, then he could tolerate the balding critic who took the liberty of explaining what was "good art" and what wasn't.
Rolling his eyes at a pretentious conversation he could overhear, Joe looked around to see if there were any other loners. He spotted an attractive girl with long hair gazing pensively at a mixed medium work he'd done, part papier-mâché and part painting. Fixing the collar of his button-up, Joe walked over and popped a grape in his mouth.
"Whaddya think," Joe twisted off some more grapes, cupping them in the palm of his hand. He smiled crookedly, but still had an air of shyness. "Regretting your decision yet?"