We were heathens in that place of pilgrimage
eating tamales so hot our noses ran for miles
down State Road 98.
The hunger for heat, for fire, was stronger than
a desire for dirt, even holy dirt dug
out of the Blood of Christ mountains.
Two dollars fifty bought us a lot of heat and
a lot of surprise, but we practiced playing it
cool, two gringos in the desert.
Votives and ex-votos lit the patio
outside the restrooms where we splashed our faces
and washed the burn from our hands
We left Chimayó--with holy dust on our toes,
the blood of Christ flowing beneath our wheels--
profane pilgrims of Fire.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Boy with a Camera and a Collared Shirt
He's on the phone again. This makes numero dos on the phone calls. Maybe he's a photographer. The first time I saw him, he was photographing the bushes in the pseudo garden behind the art building where I spy him smoking cigs from time to time. He's always wearing a collared shirt: first a red polo, followed by a black one of the same variety, and today he's wearing a long-sleeved button-up. From here it looks like a pale, pale pink polo...but I can't be sure.
He's always smoking a cigarette. But of course; I only see him when he's outside the art building on a smoke break. I watch as he peers into the closest bush. What is it? A bird flies out and he follows its movement: straight out to his right, then back around his head. Too bad his eyes aren't following the bird as it streaks past my window.
He's got a beard and looks like the missing link between Ray LaMontagne and Adam Goldberg. Other art students approach him, shake his hand, but I'll never meet them. I won't meet him either. At least, I haven't yet. I guess there's always a chance I might. But I'll only know it's him by the camera and the collared shirt.
He's always smoking a cigarette. But of course; I only see him when he's outside the art building on a smoke break. I watch as he peers into the closest bush. What is it? A bird flies out and he follows its movement: straight out to his right, then back around his head. Too bad his eyes aren't following the bird as it streaks past my window.
He's got a beard and looks like the missing link between Ray LaMontagne and Adam Goldberg. Other art students approach him, shake his hand, but I'll never meet them. I won't meet him either. At least, I haven't yet. I guess there's always a chance I might. But I'll only know it's him by the camera and the collared shirt.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Ceci n'est pas une vie: Révisé
This is an updated, extended and more realized version of a first draft of this post from last March.
She made a monocle out of the house key ring and stared at him for several minutes, succeeding—but just barely—at suppressing fits of gleeful, childlike laughter while waiting for him to look up at her, having felt the pull of her gaze, but he never did. He had moved his work out into the dining room earlier that week, finding that the long mahogany table was better suited to his blueprints than to dinner parties with four other couples. His gaze was intense and steady; steely gray eyes scanned the pages, never once giving a thought to the woman at the other end of the table. When she realized he wasn’t interested in her game, she pretended to engage in his. Taking a pen from the front pocket of her apron, she sketched a five-sided house the size of a half dollar on a corner of the nearest page of blueprint paper, and on the inside of the little house she drew a heart, incessantly retracing the two lines, leftsiderightsideleftsiderightside, until the rhythm of it all had created a hum in her brain.
Pausing, with her pen anchored to the bottom point of the heart, she looked along the length of the table.
“Y’ever think maybe…that maybe it’s getting to be a good time…I mean, it’s been two years now and you’re doing well at work…and most married people by now, you know…” He had yet to look up, but she could tell from the quickening pace of the puffs of smoke issuing from his pipe that now wasn’t the time to bring it up. She wasn’t even convinced she wanted what she was trying to sell him. She only knew that she was supposed to want children at this time in her life and marriage, that this was what all women her age were doing, and that they were happy about it. She merely assumed it was something she had to mention because, well, it concerned him too.
She let the silence cloud her eyes and instead pictured a scene from five years before when she had first met him, standing outside the university library, smoking a cigarette and wearing a lightweight trench coat in the mid-February freeze. She’d assumed then that he was some kind of artist, too poor to afford adequate outerwear and such the thinking-man as to transcend the temperature, to find warmth among the sunlight of his musings. Enchanted, she’d asked him for a cigarette, which he lit for her with a match plucked from a matchbook bearing the name of a nearby literary café. She didn’t realize then that he was the one who was supposed to be enchanted by her, nor did it ever occur to her that he was actually quite cold—painfully in fact—standing there in a trench coat or that his favorite book was No Time for Sergeants, with Stone’s Love Is Eternal a close second.
When he had first seen her, with those bright eyes and straight teeth, he’d immediately pictured her assimilating nicely within the designs he had laid out. She had great potential, just like a vacant lot between Spring Garden and South Streets. Her demeanor implied that she was full of stories, a great conversationalist, which would come in handy at promotion time, when the boss would need to be plied by perfectly planned five-course meals. She was stately, and only a little wild: the box pleats on her skirt were perpendicular to her patent-leather belt, which he could only see because she had forgotten—or neglected—to button her winter coat, an oversight that had given her the likeness of a bird in flight as she ascended the stairs to the library. Her hands were slender and white, and she waved them around while she spoke, as though directing a dance of imaginary moths. He could barely suppress the flutter of surprise that came into his voice when she perched next to him and asked for a cigarette.
Through the smoke screen between them she could tell he was dazed and seemed to be a little annoyed. “You remind me exactly of my father,” she said, a glimmer of amusement entering her voice. “He never had much to say either.” He wasn’t sure what to make of such a comment so he kept quiet, pondering the weeds coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk.
She let out a lengthy stream of smoke. “He’s actually why I started smoking in the first place. But he smoked a pipe. I wanted to smoke a pipe too, but every time my mother caught me fiddling with one she would hand me a cigarette from this really ornate cigarette case she always kept in her evening clutch. She didn’t even smoke. Huh.” She paused, remembering, realizing. “I guess I really started smoking because of my mother. Cigarettes, anyway.” Seeing no reaction either way from her new companion, she continued. “But that damn pipe of my father’s… I stayed by his side every evening while he smoked it, waiting for him to impart some golden advice or wisdom, y’know? I really believed in what that pipe was supposed to mean. A man smoking a pipe was clearly a cultured man. But he just sat there, like it didn’t matter.” She had forgotten her audience, the cigarette between her fingers turning to ash.
“Stodgy. Your father must have been a bit stodgy.”
Her eyes suddenly sparkled in ecstasy, and she let out a quick laugh. “Stodgy! That’s him exactly. Brilliant…”
He had switched over to smoking a pipe shortly after their wedding, about a month after they’d moved here from Philadelphia. She had dropped out of college when they’d married—which was fine because she’d assumed she would have more time to paint independently—and he’d taken up smoking a pipe. In a daze, she watched him puffing in and out until his image had become a watercolor, and she thought of that painting. This is not a pipe, it said to her, poking her in the ribs like something was supposed to be funny, a joke. But it is a pipe, right? She knew that it was a pipe. Anyone would agree to that. It may have been a painting of a pipe, but why should that strip the image of its name? It was her stubbornness that kept her from giving in to the artist’s meaning. She wanted to believe that images could speak truths, that people were who they pretended to be and that each mother pushing a baby in Central Park really did have everything her smile implied.
When he set the pipe down to get a better look at his work, she went over to the coat tree, sending random thoughts his direction as she walked through the apartment. “Did you know the human heart will continue to beat even after it’s been separated from the body? Granted, it has to have an oxygen supply, but just think: it doesn’t need us! How about those Cubans? Do you think they’re full of it or are we all going to self-destruct?” He never replied, and she began to wonder if she’d said anything at all. “I’d like to go to Cuba, I think. Drink rum and smoke cigars…” she whispered to herself as she thumbed the collar of her husband’s trench coat.
She took the coat from the tree, trading it for her apron. In pen she inscribed her cigarette pack with the line, This is not a cigarette, leaving them there in exchange for the pouch of pipe tobacco she would be leaving with. On her hand she wrote, This is not a life, laughing at the double meaning of it. And foregoing the necessary umbrella, she slipped out of the apartment wearing only the lightweight trench coat. Turning the corner where their building stood, she stepped into the oncoming traffic, blurred out between the drops of rain.
If he heard her leaving, he made no movements, instead focusing on the task in front of him, looking up only when he smelled the casserole burning in the oven.
She made a monocle out of the house key ring and stared at him for several minutes, succeeding—but just barely—at suppressing fits of gleeful, childlike laughter while waiting for him to look up at her, having felt the pull of her gaze, but he never did. He had moved his work out into the dining room earlier that week, finding that the long mahogany table was better suited to his blueprints than to dinner parties with four other couples. His gaze was intense and steady; steely gray eyes scanned the pages, never once giving a thought to the woman at the other end of the table. When she realized he wasn’t interested in her game, she pretended to engage in his. Taking a pen from the front pocket of her apron, she sketched a five-sided house the size of a half dollar on a corner of the nearest page of blueprint paper, and on the inside of the little house she drew a heart, incessantly retracing the two lines, leftsiderightsideleftsiderightside, until the rhythm of it all had created a hum in her brain.
Pausing, with her pen anchored to the bottom point of the heart, she looked along the length of the table.
“Y’ever think maybe…that maybe it’s getting to be a good time…I mean, it’s been two years now and you’re doing well at work…and most married people by now, you know…” He had yet to look up, but she could tell from the quickening pace of the puffs of smoke issuing from his pipe that now wasn’t the time to bring it up. She wasn’t even convinced she wanted what she was trying to sell him. She only knew that she was supposed to want children at this time in her life and marriage, that this was what all women her age were doing, and that they were happy about it. She merely assumed it was something she had to mention because, well, it concerned him too.
She let the silence cloud her eyes and instead pictured a scene from five years before when she had first met him, standing outside the university library, smoking a cigarette and wearing a lightweight trench coat in the mid-February freeze. She’d assumed then that he was some kind of artist, too poor to afford adequate outerwear and such the thinking-man as to transcend the temperature, to find warmth among the sunlight of his musings. Enchanted, she’d asked him for a cigarette, which he lit for her with a match plucked from a matchbook bearing the name of a nearby literary café. She didn’t realize then that he was the one who was supposed to be enchanted by her, nor did it ever occur to her that he was actually quite cold—painfully in fact—standing there in a trench coat or that his favorite book was No Time for Sergeants, with Stone’s Love Is Eternal a close second.
When he had first seen her, with those bright eyes and straight teeth, he’d immediately pictured her assimilating nicely within the designs he had laid out. She had great potential, just like a vacant lot between Spring Garden and South Streets. Her demeanor implied that she was full of stories, a great conversationalist, which would come in handy at promotion time, when the boss would need to be plied by perfectly planned five-course meals. She was stately, and only a little wild: the box pleats on her skirt were perpendicular to her patent-leather belt, which he could only see because she had forgotten—or neglected—to button her winter coat, an oversight that had given her the likeness of a bird in flight as she ascended the stairs to the library. Her hands were slender and white, and she waved them around while she spoke, as though directing a dance of imaginary moths. He could barely suppress the flutter of surprise that came into his voice when she perched next to him and asked for a cigarette.
Through the smoke screen between them she could tell he was dazed and seemed to be a little annoyed. “You remind me exactly of my father,” she said, a glimmer of amusement entering her voice. “He never had much to say either.” He wasn’t sure what to make of such a comment so he kept quiet, pondering the weeds coming up through the cracks in the sidewalk.
She let out a lengthy stream of smoke. “He’s actually why I started smoking in the first place. But he smoked a pipe. I wanted to smoke a pipe too, but every time my mother caught me fiddling with one she would hand me a cigarette from this really ornate cigarette case she always kept in her evening clutch. She didn’t even smoke. Huh.” She paused, remembering, realizing. “I guess I really started smoking because of my mother. Cigarettes, anyway.” Seeing no reaction either way from her new companion, she continued. “But that damn pipe of my father’s… I stayed by his side every evening while he smoked it, waiting for him to impart some golden advice or wisdom, y’know? I really believed in what that pipe was supposed to mean. A man smoking a pipe was clearly a cultured man. But he just sat there, like it didn’t matter.” She had forgotten her audience, the cigarette between her fingers turning to ash.
“Stodgy. Your father must have been a bit stodgy.”
Her eyes suddenly sparkled in ecstasy, and she let out a quick laugh. “Stodgy! That’s him exactly. Brilliant…”
He had switched over to smoking a pipe shortly after their wedding, about a month after they’d moved here from Philadelphia. She had dropped out of college when they’d married—which was fine because she’d assumed she would have more time to paint independently—and he’d taken up smoking a pipe. In a daze, she watched him puffing in and out until his image had become a watercolor, and she thought of that painting. This is not a pipe, it said to her, poking her in the ribs like something was supposed to be funny, a joke. But it is a pipe, right? She knew that it was a pipe. Anyone would agree to that. It may have been a painting of a pipe, but why should that strip the image of its name? It was her stubbornness that kept her from giving in to the artist’s meaning. She wanted to believe that images could speak truths, that people were who they pretended to be and that each mother pushing a baby in Central Park really did have everything her smile implied.
When he set the pipe down to get a better look at his work, she went over to the coat tree, sending random thoughts his direction as she walked through the apartment. “Did you know the human heart will continue to beat even after it’s been separated from the body? Granted, it has to have an oxygen supply, but just think: it doesn’t need us! How about those Cubans? Do you think they’re full of it or are we all going to self-destruct?” He never replied, and she began to wonder if she’d said anything at all. “I’d like to go to Cuba, I think. Drink rum and smoke cigars…” she whispered to herself as she thumbed the collar of her husband’s trench coat.
She took the coat from the tree, trading it for her apron. In pen she inscribed her cigarette pack with the line, This is not a cigarette, leaving them there in exchange for the pouch of pipe tobacco she would be leaving with. On her hand she wrote, This is not a life, laughing at the double meaning of it. And foregoing the necessary umbrella, she slipped out of the apartment wearing only the lightweight trench coat. Turning the corner where their building stood, she stepped into the oncoming traffic, blurred out between the drops of rain.
If he heard her leaving, he made no movements, instead focusing on the task in front of him, looking up only when he smelled the casserole burning in the oven.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Warthogs & Plumroots
Daddy's eating waffles in the dining room--one diamond-shaped waffle and one strip of bacon. "Daddy, that will not do, there are supposed to be two." So back to the kitchen I must go, in search of his second strip. I find Kurtis in the kitchen--which has suddenly become an office--instead of in the sink (his weekend post). I pretend I'm not searching for the lost bacon, instead gravitating to the odd bush in the middle of the room. It looks just like an inverted purple ginger plant, and I yank off a chunk, peeling it like a potato. Imagine my surprise: the tuber tastes just like a plum, juices running down my arm. I follow the drips with my eye and notice the warthog at my ankles. It's sucking at my skin (I can feel its nostrils like little suction cups), insatiably hungry for my scent. His tusks press gently on my calves, nostrils trying to grab hold, but it's not enough; that's as close as he can get. I walk away. He follows, snout pressed to my skin; I have a warthog for a friend. Back in the dining room I offer the strange new fruit root (root fruit?) I discovered while looking for the bacon. ...Or has the bacon been looking for me?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Helplessness Blues
When I hear Fleet Foxes I see medieval knights in chainmail, ethereal. Now I see the men in an orchard, picking apples off the ground, until the spring rain comes and rusts their second skin...
I'll be trapped in this daydream, gratefully, from now to May 3. And on indefinitely, after that.
I'll be trapped in this daydream, gratefully, from now to May 3. And on indefinitely, after that.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Model Behaviour
Quitting coffee blows. Don't try it. Or maybe, don't get hooked on the stuff in the first place. At its "height," my caffeine consumption was limited to two cups--or 12 ounces--with breakfast. I don't drink soda or caffeinated tea later in the day, so this shouldn't have been a problem, right? Well, turns out it was becoming a problem, the happy high coffee used to give me replaced by paranoia and the shakes. Add to that hypoglycemia two hours after breakfast, and it just wasn't worth it anymore. I don't know about you, but I hate that a morning where I don't almost pass out is an exceptionally good start to the day.
I've been cutting back for the last month or so--first it was one cup of coffee + black tea, then I was down to just tea--and it really has made a difference. I no longer have to eat an entire second breakfast by nine o'clock and I can walk around without feeling like I'm going to fall over. Then again, I can no longer communicate effectively, a pulsing headache being only partly to blame for that. It reminds me of the David Letterman quote that's painted on the wall at my favorite Columbia coffee shop: "If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever." Terribly sad but true.
So how did I get started down this slippery slope of dependence? Modeling of course! How else do these things happen? But seriously.
I took a handful of odd jobs my freshman year of college, and one of them was with the office of disability services. Twice a week, I attended a Drawing III class with a girl who shared my first name. Oh and she also happened to be a quadriplegic. My job was to help her with her desk and in arranging her supplies. If you're wondering how she actually drew in this class, she did so with a special mouthpiece stick that had a pencil at the end of it. I helped her with that too. The whole situation turned out to be a fantastic experience for me; I got valuable drawing lessons without having to do the homework, and she was something of a mentor to me, as she was only a semester away from graduation and I was just starting out. That and I made seven something an hour.
About halfway through the semester, the teacher brought in nude models. That was definitely new for me. It wasn't the nakedness that made me squeamish, but rather, the possibility that there was some sort of nude model etiquette/code that I was going to screw up because nobody had informed me about it beforehand. Sure, everybody else would be staring at and analyzing each and every naked angle of these girls (the teacher--a hot-to-trot young grad student with curly hair, bright turquoise eyes and a deviated septum--never did bring in any dudes), but that's what they were there for. My presence, on the other hand, was relatively unnecessary except at the beginning and end of class. I knew it would be unnatural to look the "other way" for all three hours of the class, but I didn't know what the appropriate amount of observation would be (again with the model etiquette). Somehow I knew, though, to completely avoid eye contact. I shouldn't have been so prudish, though; I was practically invisible to the ten other people in the room anyway. But I did make sure to have a book to read on the days they had a nude model, to be safe.
Around the end of the semester, however, the professor started bringing in models for portrait drawings. The girls (again...) only had to sit there for 30 minute stretches, just staring straight ahead. They didn't have to smile, frown, hold their hand to their foreheads in a dramatic, forlorn expression; they just sat there and stared. Thinking out loud, I said something to Rebecca about where they came up with these girls. Was it a job they could get hired to do, and did they have to be nude models to be portrait models? Turns out they didn't; that next semester I added "art model" to my growing list of odd jobs.
My first assignment was for a different drawing class. It was in the afternoon, and, afraid that I would be late, I was high-tailin' it across campus. This was my first mistake. Not only was I nervous, but now I was hot under all those layers of warmth, and I could tell I was sweating profusely. I had made it in time--early even--so I went to the bathroom to powder my nose. I cooled down eventually, but my second mistake was worse. I had worn contacts, thinking that glasses would be too inorganic for an art class. Well, maybe it's because I have unnaturally dry eyes, but when I stare at one spot on the wall for more than, say, 40 seconds, my contacts start to harden on my eyeballs. And I know what you're thinking, but I was allowed to blink and it does not help.
My next modeling gig was actually a handful of sessions with the same painting class that lasted two weeks, every Wednesday and Friday from 8:00 in the morning to 11. This was before my internal clock set its alarm for 6 AM, but it was worth it for the money. (If I remember correctly, I was being paid 11-something an hour, which was great for someone who'd never had a job before college.)
The first morning of class, I hung around the classroom door, nervously observing the art students running around, setting up their easels and preparing brushes, wondering where the teacher could be. I spotted him, then, watching everyone like I was. He was an impish looking fellow, older than most grad students, but probably younger than 40, with glasses, a goatee, ponytail and receding hairline. He noticed me eyeing him and came over. "Are you the other model?" Say what?? Right around the time I was figuring out that this guy was not in fact the art professor, a tall older gentleman with distinguished white hair and glasses came in with some books under his arm. I turned back to the man who had just addressed me, suddenly unnerved by that, "other model."
I started having terrifying visions of me and this slick dude posing together. What if we had to pose as though we were part of some scene, gazing into each others eyes? No. That would have been way too much for me to handle, especially at that hour of the day. Fortunately, I didn't have too long to wonder. The professor spotted us right away, and set us on a daïs in the center of a circle of easels, on two chairs, back to back, separated by a red sheet hung from the ceiling.
Things started out well enough. I had made sure to wear glasses that day, which I took off when it was time to get to work; visually, the classroom was extremely stimulating, and I would let my fixed gaze wander ever so slightly--when I could tell all the students were behind their easels--enjoying the artwork hung on the walls or specialty papers rolled up on shelves on the back wall (even if I couldn't see too well); the teacher did wonders for my self esteem, paying me glowing compliments on the undertones in my skin (as if I had any part in that), which my pink shirt "really brought out." The gig was good. By about 8:30, though, my butt hurt and my eyelids were getting heavy. I vowed that the next day would be different.
On Friday I added a cup of black coffee to my usual dining hall breakfast, whispering fervent requests over the steam, imploring it to make it easier to sit in a chair and stare at the wall for three hours (minus breaks). OK, I wasn't really talking to my coffee, but I gulped it down feverishly, relying on its abilities. And, well, that morning at breakfast, my life was forever changed.
The same could not be said for my modeling buddy on the other side of the curtain. (His name was Neal, by the way, and I saw him once, with his hippie wife and their baby, getting ice cream at Sparky's, and it felt like I was running into an old friend. I use that word not because we were super chummy but because, when you know intimate details about someone, referring to him as "friend" makes it feel more normal to be in possession of said details. Anyway, we acknowledged each other warmly, just like old friends.)
Things were going well. I was fully caffeinated, and I was really feeling it, mostly in my eyelids. I was still sleepy as hell, but like magic, my eyes were wide open. I could've stared a hole in the back wall if I'd wanted to! Fantastic, I thought. But somewhere between admiring the artwork displayed around the room and making awkward eye-contact with the students as they emerged from behind their easels to take a look at me while I was taking a look at them, I felt something hard and solid hitting the back of my head. Sometimes it was just a gentle tap, at others it was an aggressive smack. When the solid, round object rested itself at the back of my head and even pushed me forward slightly, I realized it was Neal behind me, falling asleep on my head. No fucking way.
When the professor gave us a break so he could lecture, Neal and I went out into the hall, unlike the class before when I at least had stayed by the door, reading and rereading the flyers pinned to the bulletin board, pretending to be thoroughly engrossed and not wanting to be bothered. Neal took off right away, looking for a Coke-induced fix. I whipped out a book right away--Ivanhoe--hoping it might serve as a polite repellent. It didn't. It was actually a conversation starter.
"So you a big reader? Yeah, I never was into books much. My wife is, though. What are you studying here?"
"Journalism."
"Oh nice. Yeah, see, you're smart and you like to read and write. That's good, that's really good. I have a niece that's kind of like you. ...So how'd you get into art modeling?"
"Oh, I was a classroom assistant for a girl in a drawing class that always had a lot of models. It seemed like a pretty easy way to make some money. You know."
"Yeah, yeah. I started modeling when my wife was in grad school 'cuz it was the only job I could do on heavy drugs. You know, just sit there and zone out. Now I just do it 'cuz I like it. But you know where the real money is, is the weekend modeling. Yeah, they pay cash. The teacher just passes around a hat at the end of class and that's your pay. It's great. All nude modeling, though. I can give you the guy's number if you're interested. It's not set up through the office downstairs."
"Oh, OK. Sure, that'd be great." That's what I said, but what I was really thinking was something more like, I'm sure it's great money, Neal, but no amount of money is worth having you fall asleep on my head while both of us are naked and being ogled at by old hippies...
He never did give me the number of "the guy," nor did the topic of his hammering on the back of my head ever come up. But it kept happening, and I could almost tell what time it was by how soon I felt the blow to the back of my head.
During another modeling break, during another modeling assignment, I was wandering the halls of the art building, admiring the student work. In one of the stairwells, a floor to ceiling sketch caught my eye. It was a drawing of two nude models, but their images had been drawn many times over, in different poses, overlapping themselves in some places. I thought the composition was fantastic. But then I looked a little closer. My eyes about popped out of my head when I noticed that the male model had a goatee, ponytail and a receding hairline. I suddenly felt really dirty for looking at naked Neal and scampered off to wash out my eyes.
A couple years after my foray into art modeling, I considered getting in on the weekend community art class, the one Neal had so highly recommended. I had grown more adventurous in the intermittent semesters, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to stand in the middle of a classroom and toss off my robe as though no one were there to witness it, just to see if I could do it. But one Saturday morning, I spotted an older gent with a portfolio under his arm walking behind the art building and decided that maybe I didn't want a bunch of senior citizens immortalizing the curves of my thighs on a canvas their grandchildren might find stashed in the basement...
(Fun fact: I wrote this while high on coffee. It was the only way.)
I've been cutting back for the last month or so--first it was one cup of coffee + black tea, then I was down to just tea--and it really has made a difference. I no longer have to eat an entire second breakfast by nine o'clock and I can walk around without feeling like I'm going to fall over. Then again, I can no longer communicate effectively, a pulsing headache being only partly to blame for that. It reminds me of the David Letterman quote that's painted on the wall at my favorite Columbia coffee shop: "If it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever." Terribly sad but true.
So how did I get started down this slippery slope of dependence? Modeling of course! How else do these things happen? But seriously.
I took a handful of odd jobs my freshman year of college, and one of them was with the office of disability services. Twice a week, I attended a Drawing III class with a girl who shared my first name. Oh and she also happened to be a quadriplegic. My job was to help her with her desk and in arranging her supplies. If you're wondering how she actually drew in this class, she did so with a special mouthpiece stick that had a pencil at the end of it. I helped her with that too. The whole situation turned out to be a fantastic experience for me; I got valuable drawing lessons without having to do the homework, and she was something of a mentor to me, as she was only a semester away from graduation and I was just starting out. That and I made seven something an hour.
About halfway through the semester, the teacher brought in nude models. That was definitely new for me. It wasn't the nakedness that made me squeamish, but rather, the possibility that there was some sort of nude model etiquette/code that I was going to screw up because nobody had informed me about it beforehand. Sure, everybody else would be staring at and analyzing each and every naked angle of these girls (the teacher--a hot-to-trot young grad student with curly hair, bright turquoise eyes and a deviated septum--never did bring in any dudes), but that's what they were there for. My presence, on the other hand, was relatively unnecessary except at the beginning and end of class. I knew it would be unnatural to look the "other way" for all three hours of the class, but I didn't know what the appropriate amount of observation would be (again with the model etiquette). Somehow I knew, though, to completely avoid eye contact. I shouldn't have been so prudish, though; I was practically invisible to the ten other people in the room anyway. But I did make sure to have a book to read on the days they had a nude model, to be safe.
Around the end of the semester, however, the professor started bringing in models for portrait drawings. The girls (again...) only had to sit there for 30 minute stretches, just staring straight ahead. They didn't have to smile, frown, hold their hand to their foreheads in a dramatic, forlorn expression; they just sat there and stared. Thinking out loud, I said something to Rebecca about where they came up with these girls. Was it a job they could get hired to do, and did they have to be nude models to be portrait models? Turns out they didn't; that next semester I added "art model" to my growing list of odd jobs.
My first assignment was for a different drawing class. It was in the afternoon, and, afraid that I would be late, I was high-tailin' it across campus. This was my first mistake. Not only was I nervous, but now I was hot under all those layers of warmth, and I could tell I was sweating profusely. I had made it in time--early even--so I went to the bathroom to powder my nose. I cooled down eventually, but my second mistake was worse. I had worn contacts, thinking that glasses would be too inorganic for an art class. Well, maybe it's because I have unnaturally dry eyes, but when I stare at one spot on the wall for more than, say, 40 seconds, my contacts start to harden on my eyeballs. And I know what you're thinking, but I was allowed to blink and it does not help.
My next modeling gig was actually a handful of sessions with the same painting class that lasted two weeks, every Wednesday and Friday from 8:00 in the morning to 11. This was before my internal clock set its alarm for 6 AM, but it was worth it for the money. (If I remember correctly, I was being paid 11-something an hour, which was great for someone who'd never had a job before college.)
The first morning of class, I hung around the classroom door, nervously observing the art students running around, setting up their easels and preparing brushes, wondering where the teacher could be. I spotted him, then, watching everyone like I was. He was an impish looking fellow, older than most grad students, but probably younger than 40, with glasses, a goatee, ponytail and receding hairline. He noticed me eyeing him and came over. "Are you the other model?" Say what?? Right around the time I was figuring out that this guy was not in fact the art professor, a tall older gentleman with distinguished white hair and glasses came in with some books under his arm. I turned back to the man who had just addressed me, suddenly unnerved by that, "other model."
I started having terrifying visions of me and this slick dude posing together. What if we had to pose as though we were part of some scene, gazing into each others eyes? No. That would have been way too much for me to handle, especially at that hour of the day. Fortunately, I didn't have too long to wonder. The professor spotted us right away, and set us on a daïs in the center of a circle of easels, on two chairs, back to back, separated by a red sheet hung from the ceiling.
Things started out well enough. I had made sure to wear glasses that day, which I took off when it was time to get to work; visually, the classroom was extremely stimulating, and I would let my fixed gaze wander ever so slightly--when I could tell all the students were behind their easels--enjoying the artwork hung on the walls or specialty papers rolled up on shelves on the back wall (even if I couldn't see too well); the teacher did wonders for my self esteem, paying me glowing compliments on the undertones in my skin (as if I had any part in that), which my pink shirt "really brought out." The gig was good. By about 8:30, though, my butt hurt and my eyelids were getting heavy. I vowed that the next day would be different.
On Friday I added a cup of black coffee to my usual dining hall breakfast, whispering fervent requests over the steam, imploring it to make it easier to sit in a chair and stare at the wall for three hours (minus breaks). OK, I wasn't really talking to my coffee, but I gulped it down feverishly, relying on its abilities. And, well, that morning at breakfast, my life was forever changed.
The same could not be said for my modeling buddy on the other side of the curtain. (His name was Neal, by the way, and I saw him once, with his hippie wife and their baby, getting ice cream at Sparky's, and it felt like I was running into an old friend. I use that word not because we were super chummy but because, when you know intimate details about someone, referring to him as "friend" makes it feel more normal to be in possession of said details. Anyway, we acknowledged each other warmly, just like old friends.)
Things were going well. I was fully caffeinated, and I was really feeling it, mostly in my eyelids. I was still sleepy as hell, but like magic, my eyes were wide open. I could've stared a hole in the back wall if I'd wanted to! Fantastic, I thought. But somewhere between admiring the artwork displayed around the room and making awkward eye-contact with the students as they emerged from behind their easels to take a look at me while I was taking a look at them, I felt something hard and solid hitting the back of my head. Sometimes it was just a gentle tap, at others it was an aggressive smack. When the solid, round object rested itself at the back of my head and even pushed me forward slightly, I realized it was Neal behind me, falling asleep on my head. No fucking way.
When the professor gave us a break so he could lecture, Neal and I went out into the hall, unlike the class before when I at least had stayed by the door, reading and rereading the flyers pinned to the bulletin board, pretending to be thoroughly engrossed and not wanting to be bothered. Neal took off right away, looking for a Coke-induced fix. I whipped out a book right away--Ivanhoe--hoping it might serve as a polite repellent. It didn't. It was actually a conversation starter.
"So you a big reader? Yeah, I never was into books much. My wife is, though. What are you studying here?"
"Journalism."
"Oh nice. Yeah, see, you're smart and you like to read and write. That's good, that's really good. I have a niece that's kind of like you. ...So how'd you get into art modeling?"
"Oh, I was a classroom assistant for a girl in a drawing class that always had a lot of models. It seemed like a pretty easy way to make some money. You know."
"Yeah, yeah. I started modeling when my wife was in grad school 'cuz it was the only job I could do on heavy drugs. You know, just sit there and zone out. Now I just do it 'cuz I like it. But you know where the real money is, is the weekend modeling. Yeah, they pay cash. The teacher just passes around a hat at the end of class and that's your pay. It's great. All nude modeling, though. I can give you the guy's number if you're interested. It's not set up through the office downstairs."
"Oh, OK. Sure, that'd be great." That's what I said, but what I was really thinking was something more like, I'm sure it's great money, Neal, but no amount of money is worth having you fall asleep on my head while both of us are naked and being ogled at by old hippies...
He never did give me the number of "the guy," nor did the topic of his hammering on the back of my head ever come up. But it kept happening, and I could almost tell what time it was by how soon I felt the blow to the back of my head.
During another modeling break, during another modeling assignment, I was wandering the halls of the art building, admiring the student work. In one of the stairwells, a floor to ceiling sketch caught my eye. It was a drawing of two nude models, but their images had been drawn many times over, in different poses, overlapping themselves in some places. I thought the composition was fantastic. But then I looked a little closer. My eyes about popped out of my head when I noticed that the male model had a goatee, ponytail and a receding hairline. I suddenly felt really dirty for looking at naked Neal and scampered off to wash out my eyes.
A couple years after my foray into art modeling, I considered getting in on the weekend community art class, the one Neal had so highly recommended. I had grown more adventurous in the intermittent semesters, and I thought it would be a fun challenge to stand in the middle of a classroom and toss off my robe as though no one were there to witness it, just to see if I could do it. But one Saturday morning, I spotted an older gent with a portfolio under his arm walking behind the art building and decided that maybe I didn't want a bunch of senior citizens immortalizing the curves of my thighs on a canvas their grandchildren might find stashed in the basement...
(Fun fact: I wrote this while high on coffee. It was the only way.)
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