During my college years, I embraced my body in a way I never had before. I was still filled with all kinds of doubt and insecurity, but while I worked to shed that, I also started shedding clothes.
Not, like, all my clothes. Or at least not most of the time. But college is when I started feeling most comfortable walking around (home or the backstage dressing room) pantsless, and years later, this is still sorta my thing. I guess I was trying to fake it ’til I made it. I figured the more I walked around projecting confidence and self-love, the faster my brain would catch up. So I took off my pants, I visited clothing optional hot springs, and I decided to volunteer as a nude model for a figure drawing class on campus.
The first time I posed went well and without a hitch. If I remember correctly, it was right before Spring Break and the professor wanted to do something a little different, so I posed while a video of an artist’s rope installation was projected over me. The resulting drawings looked an awful lot like me taking part in some intense, x-rated bondage, but I had fun and stayed on their list of people to call.
At the start of the following school year, I was a recent grad working (and eating so many breadsticks) at the Olive Garden, trying to save up as much money as possible before moving to New York. An art professor I hadn’t met before called and asked if I’d be able to come in soon, really soon, because apparently their supply of models was running low and the students were getting sick of working with their trusty class skeleton.
It was already a very hot day on the Western Slope of Colorado when I arrived to class. (Foreshadowing.) And unbeknownst to me until later, the air conditioning in the Fine Arts building was on the fritz. (Foreshadowing!!!) I changed in a bathroom and shuffled into the room in my pink fuzzy robe.
Let’s set the scene: In the middle of the room is a large wooden platform about three feet high set up like a thrust stage with art students on three sides. On it is a lone stool. I climb up while the professor explains that since it’s still early in the semester, and students were still working on the fundamentals, we’d be working on short 7-10 minute poses rather than one long pose lasting the entire class. He gives me a long walking stick to incorporate into my movement and I drop my robe.
All I can hear is pencil scratching paper. So far, so good. But I am starting to feel a little warm. I feel something on my back and resist the urge to swat at it and try to stay still until it’s time to switch to another pose. When I do finally reach back to itch, thinking I must I have pesky fly in my midst, I discover that it’s actually beads of sweat dripping down my back. I am profusely sweating. I take note of my soaked arms and must look distracted because the professor asks me if I’m okay.
Me: “Oh..yeah..it’s just…I think it’s a little hot in here.”
Professor: “That’s why I’m wearing shorts!”
Me: “Well, I’m not wearing anything, sooo…”
I move into a second pose. I’m very very warm now and starting to feel unsteady and strange and a little bit outside of my body. Near the end, something in my appearance prompts the professor to ask if I’m okay again right as my vision starts to go fuzzy and dark and I can feel myself sway. I blindly reach for the stool to my side and mumble something about not feeling well as I lean against it and wait for my vision to chill out.
He suggests I sit and brings a chair to the platform. “They haven’t worked on sitting poses yet, so this is just fine,” he reassures me. I move from the stool to the chair and sit down, still holding the walking stick upright in my left hand, and take a deep breath.
This is the last thing I remember until I am being woken up by the professor and a student.
I feel someone shake me and I open my eyes to two heads six inches from my face. I register several things at once:
- I must have fainted. My head is lolling over the back of the chair and my mouth is hanging open.
- I am still holding the walking stick.
- Despite my robe laying less than two feet away, I am still very naked.
- My legs are spread eagle. Spread. Eagle.
- To my left, a student is still drawing, peering at me intently over his sketchpad.
Everything that has been moving in slow motion suddenly snaps back up to speed and I jolt forward, closing my legs and wrapping my arms around myself. The student that had been leaning over me goes to grab my robe and the professor says, “I guess you should probably go home.”
I still feel a little like I’m floating, so I nod numbly and cover myself up. As I make my way out of the classroom, I hear the professor sigh and say, “Well. Back to the skeleton, guys.”
I was completely mortified, but it didn’t take long for me to see the humor in it all and word spread quickly of my misfortune. (Later, when I told an art student coworker of mine what had happened, he started laughing and yelled, “That was YOU?!”)
I still don’t know really what happened that day. I wasn’t hungry, hungover, tired…I must have been coming down with something and the heat threw me over the edge. But even today, years later, just the thought of posing nude for art students makes me feel light headed and woozy.
I would KILL to see those drawings, though.
She Always Has Shit to Say 