Speedo

Monday and Wednesday mornings I wake up my sleepy eyes and mosey to Figure Drawing at 8 am. Although I find it slightly cruel to have a drawing class that early, I am really beginning to enjoy it. I was so scared at first. My professor was intense to the tenth power. We couldn't cross our legs, sit against the back of our chairs, listen to music. . . Well, I cross my legs all the time, and I use a stool so no worries there. I also have amazing shuffle experiences with Mr. ipod biweekly while moving my conte over the smooth newsprint surface for three hours. So there! I think he was just employing the classic "scare tactic," but his bark is much worse than his bite. He's never barked at me. We're friends. Man and man's best friend. (Although it's more like: girl and her figure drawing teacher . . .)

We have one male model (and a whole slew of girls) that take turns posing on the rough platform draped in heavy black cloth while we earnestly try to squint our eyes and move our hands in an attempt at accurately transferring what we see onto what we design. The weirdest part about this particular model is that I see him everywhere and it is incredibly awkward. We both know who the other is, but the reason we know each other is weird. It's like I feel like we should say hi (we have spent a lot of time in the same room) but how to do I say hi when all that runs through my mind is, "Hey . . . I've pretty much seen you naked." So we don't say hi, we just make that all-too-frequent, inopportune eye contact. It's also weird to see him dressed. Odd that I find it stranger to see him in clothes than without, but I guess having spent close to 15 hours within 12 feet of his scantily clad body, it makes a little sense. I ran into him twice today and both times fought the urge to blurt, "hey, nice clothes!"

I really wish the models weren't students and that I could get over the fact that it's weird to see him dressed.