Tuesday, December 6, 2011

My Almost-Post Post



Ten dollars an hour to sit still was probably the best job I ever had. Sure, people were watching me, and sketching me out, and oh yeah, I was naked. But it was easy money.

Yes friends, I did some nude modeling back in college.

Now I’m not going to play like I have the most glorious body on the face of the earth. Probably the second most glorious body. But in seriousness, the third most glorious body. I was less shapely as I am now, standing around 160 pounds on the scale. I had less of a gut and definitely less fur (does it ever stop growing!?!?!?).

A friend of mine in the art department suggested I give it a shot. I had never really thought of it before, but figured (get it?) it’d be a good way to get over a fear of being naked, a symptom of being self-conscious about my body.  Let’s be honest, fatty, if you grow up in America while being able to see and/or hear, you’ve probably had body-image issues at one point in time.
       
                                 
So I figured (get it?), what the hell. An email landed in my inbox a week or so after I signed up. The director of the program wanted to meet with me. I envisioned her to be quite attractive. She would ask me to disrobe while giving in to her compulsive lip-licking problem, saying something like, “Let’s see what we’re working with here,” and then of course we would bang. I’m thankful the “interview” went a little differently because she wasn’t as beautiful as I had imagined the night before. But she didn’t even want to see me naked? What kind of crap-ass porn shoot is this?

She told me to show up in the art building next Thursday night at 5:50. The session would last two hours and I’d get a brief break in between poses. Twenty bones for waving mine around? Done.

I walked in and was delighted to see a group of around five people. I was nervous but seeing a familiar face, one of my professors, made me even more nervous. He was “teaching” Drawing II, and much like a lot of the art professors at my university, he was good at art, but sucked at teaching.

He liked it silent in the class while we drawed stuff, but didn’t have the guts to tell someone to be quiet. I, not one to be silent, talked with my best friend through the entire semester, while others drawed stuff in silence. We gradually found out that my fellow students despised me for being chatty, jovial, myself, but not a single person said a single word. Ahhh, Minnesota nice. 

Gov. Ventura: "You haven't hunted until you've hunted man."

But I undress —digress! I digress. The first session went well. The poses weren’t too difficult. I didn’t have to hold any fruit or my fruit or stick fruit near my fruit. Fruit. My professor approached me after the session and expressed his surprise that I could sit still that long. I smiled.

The second session was different. It was in a different, brighter room, and there were a few more people. And something else happened: it moved.

Posing technique: you find a position that’s bearable, your eyes lock onto a spot on the wall, you stare at that spot, remain perfectly still, and get lost in your thoughts. If you’re anything like me your thoughts tend to gravitate to women, their bodies, what you’d like to do with those women and to their bodies, writhing, grinding, thrusting, sounds of heavy breathing, sounds of pleasure, the sound of the refrigerator opening, sounds of making and eating a sandwich. You know, the usual thoughts that plague my kind.

What do you mean by “my kind”?

Oh hey random person who often pops into my blahg! “My kind” are the people that—

Who are you talking about when you say “the people”?

I’m racist. Is that what you want me to say?

Yes.

Alright, I’m racist. Can I move on to the rest of the story?

Say it one more time, please.

I’m racist.

Clearly.

Anyway, I’m sitting there, perfectly still except for my penis. For those of you reading this that don’t have a penis, know that it is incredibly hard to stop it from growing once it starts.

“Are you fucking kidding me? This can’t be happening. Not now. No. NO! NO NO NO NO NO! Think of a chair. Chairs. No. Don’t do that. Don’t think of naked women sitting on chairs. Think of just chairs. There we go, chairs. Don’t think of sitting on naked women. Why would you even think of that? That’s ridiculous. Chairs! Hair. Hair down there. No! Think of stone. Stone, yeah, stone. Rocks. Rock hard —NO! Stop being stupid. Oh no, not the stupid woman you met at the bar last night. Don’t think of her naked. No. Bad idea. Bad bad bad idea. Naughty! You deserve to be punished! Nooo! “No” means no. STOP IT!”

Thankfully, I did stop it from reaching a full on, rock hard, sitting-on-naked-women erection. But I admit that I was flying at half-staff, enough that the trained eye would notice a difference.

The thing that you should know about artists is that they’ve been training their eyes for their entire lives. The room that day was filled with trained eyes, all looking at naked me and my me-ness gaining girth and length. 

I was never asked to come back. No calls. No emails. They used me for my body and didn't have the common decency to even call me a cab. My perfect job had come to an end and though I was never told why, it’s easy to imagine the reason.


I was too fat.






Did you enjoy this blahg post about my almost post? Well doesn't that make me feel all warm and —DON'T THINK OF THAT! But hey, do pass this along to all your friends and family that may get a kick out of it.