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In the middle of the room, there is a raised platform of painted plywood. It is about two feet tall. It’s painted light gray. There are indentations from the screws, and the edges are rough with splinters and bits of uneven wood. An art student probably made this, maybe years ago. It’s worn along the top edges.
A single stair lines one side, with the paint chipped off in the middle. It’s just a simple platform. Somebody probably got a grade for constructing it for one of their class projects. It is sturdy. I had to sit on it once when the model didn’t show up.
That’s a lot harder to do than it sounds. It’s difficult to sit in one place for twenty or forty minutes, especially when you know you can’t move. I probably sit that long when I’m watching Netflix, but up on the model stand it’s a different thing altogether.
I’ve sat in for the model a couple of times. Once here, and once at my former school. Every art student does it. Models cancel at the last minute with some regularity. The teacher will look around for a volunteer and one of us will eventually agree to do it (fully clothed, of course).
I thought it would be easy, but in the middle of figure-drawing class with all my classmates staring at me, it turns out that it’s really hard. It made my palms sweat. It made my right butt cheek fall asleep almost immediately.
I felt like I was going to fall over or pass out in the chair, even though I wasn’t doing anything strenuous. It really gave me some perspective on what the model goes through so that we can sit here and do mediocre to semi-decent drawings of them, in the name of our art training.
Our model today is Diego. He is quite unusual in the stable of art models. He’s on the football team. He’s practically riddled with muscles. His hair is shiny and wavy, moving just a little with each breath.
A single, glossy curl drapes down over his dark, sardonic eyebrow as he leans, as still as a statue, against the short pedestal on the corner of the podium. But for the slow expansion of his belly when he breathes, he hardly looks real.
We don’t usually get Diego. For some reason the third-year sculpture students are always allowed to monopolize him, while the painting and drawing students get Matilda, the sweet grandma who brings us stale sweet rolls, and Bernie, the seventy-year-old fry cook.
Matilda has been modeling since long before she was a grandma, and her yoga poses are exceptional. Bernie just has a natural talent for not moving for long stretches of time. He’s a nice man but he is noDiego.
It doesn’t make any sense. Don’t we need to see this kind of human excellence too?
I mean, don’t we?
Even though he’s facing me, professional student standards dictate that our eyes do not meet. I am able to stare right at him, to practically scrutinize every square centimeter of his naked body, without anybody having anything to say about it. In fact, it is considered extremely rude to even acknowledge that he is nude.
The word “nude” is used only once, in the course description. After that, nobody says it out loud again. He might as well be a bowl of fruit.
That kind of works out for me, because if this were anything like regular life, I definitely would not feel comfortable just sitting here in a chair, rubbing a piece of charcoal between my thumb and forefinger while I just stare and stare and stare at Diego’s perfect, naked body.
I mean, if we were at a party, I would probably run away. If we were at a party and his shirt happened to fall open, and then his pants slid off and his underwear—assuming he wears any? I mean, does he?—just rolled off right after, and he was sitting in the middle of a party completely nude like he is now, surrounded by art majors and the occasional adult continuing-education student… Well, I wouldn’t just be staring at him.
It would be pretty difficult to stare at him as I was running away at light speed like my head was on fire. That is just the kind of thing I do.
Somehow, our classes are different. This is a safe space. Diego is guaranteed a certain amount of discretion, and no obviously leering expressions or anything. We all pretend to be very professional and completely unmoved, while at the same time channeling our inner artistic geniuses to really convey the beauty that he is currently displaying at a rather impressive rate.
A bit of a contradiction, if you ask me. Like, do we see the beauty, or not see the beauty? Are we pretending to see it? Are we just a bunch of phonies? Or do we really see it, but just don’t show it except through our drawing hand? How are we supposed to do that?
Because honestly, if I weren’t the kind of person who would run away screaming at that party I was just imagining, I would probably show Diego some enthusiasm. At the very least. I mean, he’s amazing. He’s perfect. And when someone is amazing or perfect at anything, you should really show some respect.
The pose that he chose for our session today is a classic art school presentation. There is a short, three-foot-tall plaster column in the corner, and he just leans one corner of his butt against it. The heels of his hands grip the far side of the pedestal, so that his upper body is twisted, with both of his arms in front of him.
This way we can see the whole, long line of his entire form, from the top of his head, across his shoulder, all the way down his ribs to the girdle of muscles at his waist. Then the long, knitted muscles of his thighs, his knees, his calves. Even down to the separation of his long, sexy toes.Everything. Right there in front of me.
But my drawing is stalled. I faithfully documented every curve of the outer contour I can see, but then hesitated. My gut instinct is to continue representing him in a classical, serious way. But somehow, that is exactly the wrong thing to do here.
I want to see him as delicate charcoal lines and forms, folding over each other. My fingers itch to describe every ripple of his abdomen as it tucks around his subtle, taut navel. I want to show how anatomically perfect he is by faithfully demonstrating, to the best of my skills, a real sense of the mass and heft of his flesh.
But I have been warned that if I continue to use my “old-fashioned and outdated ideas about art” I will fail this class.
Again.
So I don’t know what to do. I stare at the single, long, undulating line that slips diagonally across the newsprint, appreciating its weight and meandering beauty as though I am appreciating Diego personally. Like I am dragging a finger from the top of his head all the way down to his curled, small toe. As though with my fingernail I am tracing his outline, making him shiver, making him mine…
Yeah, I should control myself, but I don’t know how else to do this.
Mr. Pecker clears his throat softly on the other side of the room. Diego shifts, just moving his weight a little bit. It’s enough to break the spell. He has come back to life.
As he breaks the pose, he lifts his chin and looks right at me, offering me a half formed, gentle smirk. His nostrils flare slightly as he looks at me, challenging me to continue to stare at him the way that I have been.
