1. That the first naked guy I ever saw was a total stranger.
2
Okay, I’ve seen them before. Naked guys, I mean. On TV. In New York, when I go there for UN stuff, there’s a whole public access channel devoted to naked guys.
And of course I’ve seen pictures of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Not to mention all the classical art at the National Gallery, which is, you know. Mostly nudes.
And of course I’ve seen my dad naked. But only by accident, on the various occasions he’s had to hop around, swearing, after getting out of the shower to find that Lucy has used up all the towels to dry her cashmere sweaters on, or whatever.
But the first naked guy not related to me that I ever saw live and up close? I totally didn’t expect it to be someone I hadn’t even known five minutes before.
To tell you the truth, I thought the first naked guy I’d ever see up close and personal like that would be my boyfriend, David.
Or so I’d been hoping. Boy, had that not worked out according to plan.
I looked around to see if anybody else was as surprised as I was to see Terry in the raw.
But everyone else was busily drawing away. Even David. Even Rob.
Excuse me, but what was up with that? Was I the only sane person in the room? Why was I the only one going, “Um, hello? Does anybody else notice the naked guy here? Or is it just me?”
Um, apparently so. No one else so much as blinked an eye. Just picked up their pencils and started sketching.
Okay, clearly I missed something somewhere.
Not knowing what else to do, I pretended to drop my eraser, then, when I was bending over to grab it, stole a quick peek at their drawing pads. David’s and Rob’s, I mean. I just wanted to see if they were…you know. Going to draw all of Terry. Or if maybe they were going to leave a polite blank space around his you-know-what. Because maybe that’s what you were supposed to do. I didn’t know. I mean, I couldn’t even say it. How was I supposed to draw it?
I saw, however, that while they weren’t making Terry’s you-know-what the focal point of their drawings, both David and Rob had definitely roughed it in.
So, obviously, they didn’t have a problem with drawing some naked dude.
Still, I have to admit, I was pretty weirded out by the whole thing. How come no one else was? Maybe it’s easier to draw it if you actually own it. You know. The equipment.
And how did Terry even qualify to be the resident naked guy, anyway? He wasn’t even good-looking. He was sort of skinny and had no muscle tone to speak of. He even had a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it on his left bicep. He looked a lot like Jesus, actually, with his long blond hair and scruffy beard.
Only I haven’t seen too many pictures of Jesus naked.
“Sam?”
Susan was speaking really softly—she tries to keep conversation to a murmur during class, making her voice lower than the radio, which was tuned to a soothing classical music station.
Still, softly as Susan had spoken, I jumped. Because classical music wasn’t enough to soothe me, in my current state of hyper–naked guy awareness.
“WHAT?” I asked. For no reason at all, I started turning red. This is, of course, part of the curse of being redheaded. The tendency to blush for, like, no reason at all. I could feel my cheeks getting hotter and hotter. I wondered if, with my new black hair, my blush would be as noticeable as it used to be, back when my cheeks turned the same color as my bangs. I figured probably it was even more noticeable. The contrast, you know, of the black against the pink. Plus, you know, my eyebrows were still red. Although I had put black mascara on my eyelashes.
“Is there a problem? You’re not drawing,” was what Susan said softly, as she squatted next to my drawing bench.
“No problem,” I said quickly. Maybe too quickly, since I spoke a little too loud, and David glanced my way, smiled briefly, then turned back to his drawing.
“Are you sure?” Susan glanced at Terry. “You’ve got a wonderful angle here.” She picked up a piece of charcoal from the Baggie in front of me and sketched out a rough outline of Terry on my drawing pad. “You can really make out his inguinal ligament from here. That’s the line from his hipbone to his groin. Terry’s is quite defined….”
“Um,” I whispered uncomfortably. I had to say something. I had to. “Yeah. That’s just it. I wasn’t really expecting to see his inguinal ligament.”
Susan looked away from her drawing and up toward me. She must have noticed something about my expression, since her eyes widened, and she said, “Oh. OH.”
She got it. About Terry, I mean.
“But…what did you think I meant, Sam,” she whispered, “when I asked if you’d be interested in joining my life drawing class?”
“That I’d be drawing from life,” I whispered back. “Not a naked guy.”
“But that’s what life drawing means,” Susan said, looking as if she were trying not to smile. “It’s important for all artists to be able to draw the human form, and you can’t do that if you can’t see the muscle and skeletal structure beneath the skin because it’s hidden under clothes. Life drawing has always meant nude models.”
“Well, I realize that now,” I whispered.
“Oh, dear,” Susan said, not looking as if she wanted to smile anymore. “I just assumed…I mean, I really thought you knew.”
I noticed that David was glancing our way. I didn’t want him thinking there was anything wrong. I mean, the last thing I need is for my boyfriend to think I am freaked out by the sight of a naked guy.
“It’s cool,” I said, picking up my pencil and willing Susan to go away and leave me to blush in peace. “I get it now. It’s all good.”
Susan Boone didn’t look as if she believed me, though.
“Are you sure?” she wanted to know. “You’re all right?”
“I’m peachy,” I said.
Oh my God. I can’t believe I said peachy. I don’t know what possessed me. The sight of a naked guy, and all I can think of to say is “I’m peachy”?
I don’t know how I got through the rest of the class. I tried to concentrate on drawing what I saw, not what I knew, the way Susan had taught me to during our first lessons together. I still knew I was drawing a naked guy, but it helped when all I saw was a line going this way, and another line going that, and a shadow here, and another one there, and so on. By breaking Terry down into so many planes and valleys, I was able to render a fairly realistic and even kind of good (if I do say so myself) drawing of him.
When, at the end of the class, Susan asked us to put our drawing pads on the windowsill so we could critique each other’s work, I saw that mine wasn’t any better or worse than anybody else’s. You couldn’t, for instance, tell from mine that it was my first drawing of a naked guy.
Susan did say, though, that I hadn’t done a very good job of fixing the subject of my drawing to the page. Which basically meant that my drawing was just of Terry, floating around, with no background to support him.
“What you’ve drawn here, Sam,” Susan said, “is a fine representation of the parts. But you need to think of the drawing as a whole.”
But I didn’t take Susan’s criticism about the parts versus the whole to heart, because I knew that it was a miracle I’d been able to draw anything at all, given my great naked guy–induced shock.
To make matters worse, later, as we were getting ready to go, Terry came up to me and was all, “Hey, I liked your drawing. Aren’t you that chick who saved the president?”
Fortunately, he had put his jeans back on by then, so I was able to look him in the eye and go, “Yeah.”
He nodded and said, “Cool. Thought so. That was, you know, brave. But, uh…what’d you do to your hair?”
“Just wanted a change,” I said brightly.