I\u2019ll admit it\u2014I enjoy displaying my penis. This is the ritual: I shuffle my feet from my slippers, step onto the platform, untie my robe, and, bare and glowing under hot yellow lights, I obey the instructor\u2019s request. Yesterday I stood, my lithe body erect, my wrinkled old sausage arched like Gonzo\u2019s nose over my bulbous balls. Today I\u2019ve been asked to recline. I lean back on my forearms against a duct-taped beanbag. I stretch one leg out in front of me and bend the other up at the knee. My meat flops across my left upper thigh. I tilt my pelvis ever so slightly and my shaft catches the light. Backpacks zip and papers flutter. I roll my neck, crack my toes, and gaze into the middle distance. The show has begun.<\/p>\n
Twenty facsimiles of me are in development. The artists are in orbit, each one devoted to the struggle of replicating every facet of me: beaming out from under the lights and burning my image onto their thin gray newsprint. I am a prism; so much more than a man.<\/p>\n
Each drawing is as much myself as it is a projection of its creator. Later, the students will tack me to the wall and discuss how the angles and folds of me make them feel. How well-rendered, boldly abstracted, or compositionally problematic they deem me to be. Simply, if I \u2018work.\u2019 When class is over the silent static chorus of me\u2019s are left to hang. Mere studies, they will be discarded. Long gone, silver.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never seen a drawing of me. I don\u2019t peek at works in progress and I don\u2019t stay for critiques. The majority of my peers spend time between poses circling solemnly, robes half open and cupping tea, squinting their eyes at drawings in progress. I don\u2019t do that. It is my firm belief that this vainglorious ritual does nothing but impede the creativity of these moldable minds. In physics, it is called \u2018the observer effect;\u2019 the fundamental reciprocity of all interactions. When observed by the model, the artist will subconsciously draw to flatter them. To me, this is theft. An artist should feel free to depict their subject how they see fit. And besides, a professional model is nothing but a still life, no different than a bowl of fruit. Unlike a client, we have not purchased the right to direct, demand, or influence the outcome of the artist’s work in any way. Would Picasso have painted Portrait of Dora Maar the way he did had she had a say? Would Francis Bacon have painted his horrifying tribute to Velasquez\u2019s Pope Innocent X had it been commissioned by the Vatican? Well, maybe. They were both stubborn men and unrepentant iconoclasts. But you take my point.<\/p>\n
No, during breaks I lay flat and stretch my bones. The spotlights blanket me in warm honey. My skin appears youthful, its tautness reducing the contrast between my divots and folds and the flat and convex parts of me. Only if I have to leave the room to urinate or move my bowels do I don my robe, and I do so petulantly.<\/p>\n
The timer snap\/dings. Pencils, charcoal and cont\u00e9 crayons clink clink clink in the troughs of easels. The students leave, save for the dedicated few who stay in order to fine-tune their sketches and compare their work with that of others. The footsteps of the exiting ones reverberate up from the floor through the platform to my body. I close my eyes and ride the buzz.<\/p>\n
Once in a while students will approach me for chit-chat. They do so, I believe, on some sort of internal dare. They so very desperately want this to be normal\u2014 the unashamed old man and the uncertain budding genius, talking about movies, the weekend, the weather. But their voices are too loud, their laughter\u2019s a bit forced, and I see the flush in their cheeks.<\/p>\n
There is, however, one student this semester who delights in my lack of inhibition. Tessa. During breaks and sometimes after class she\u2014and I, quite literally\u2014 hang out.<\/p>\n
Tessa. Dark of hair and pale of eye, gloomy and spritely, ditzy and deep, innocent and broken. This personification of contradiction does not pretend to be oblivious to my nudity. She sits next to me now and as we speak she lowers her head and I watch her glossy bangs fall forward to reveal a silver loop brow ring. Her eyes travel from my toes to my abdomen. She taps her cheek twice as if appraising me before returning her eyes to mine. This occurs in a matter of seconds. It feels like forever.<\/p>\n
She sees me, truly sees me, and while her attention is thrilling, there is nothing sexual here. My penis never puffs in her presence, and innuendo, nervous or sincere, has never crossed her lips. Her presence in class is reliable. She always claims the same easel, and at her request and for our mutual enjoyment, I point my pelvis in her direction as often as I can. She is inspired, she says, by my corporeal artistry, by the brutality of my massive organ, by its \u2018aged wisdom\u2019 (which is, although I\u2019d never say, just like any other\u2014dumb as a post.) Regardless, I burst with purpose under her critical eye. Today as always, to the same degree as I remain still, she moves. She draws with her entire body\u2014arms swoop, knees bend, hips rock. Her eyes burn, fire through sea glass. She forgets herself. Charcoal stains her chin. Spittle falls from her lips.<\/p>\n
Christ. She is a goddess.<\/p>\n
The timer gives up its final snap\/ding. Class is over. Tessa stays. While she stows her supplies, I lay on my back and fan my limbs. I am Vitruvian Man. My testicles unstick themselves and sing a song of freedom. My flaccid penis curves to the side, the crook-staff paving a smooth tan route over lush white curls. My legs are open in the direction of my platonic paramour. My anus is, perhaps, exposed. Tessa approaches my rude vee and I raise up on my forearms to get a better look at her. The instructor walks past us at a brisk clip, clutching her portfolio tight against her sloping bosom. She looks at me in disgust. The door swings shut behind her.<\/p>\n
Tessa sits next to me on the platform, sinks her bird-boned body into the beanbag, and speaks to me of Italian cinema. She begins, as always, without preamble, as if in the middle of a thought. I roll onto my side and watch her tighten her bootlaces. Despite pulling hard, they remain loose around the ankles. She is still talking. While I am interested in what she has to say, truth be told, there are moments like now when her words fade to white noise. Blanketed by the warmth of her company, I dive inward.<\/p>\n
Though I enjoy my profession thoroughly, there are times the work exhausts my spirit. For here, I am a prop. A tool with a tool, underpaid and replaceable, whose sole function is to aid in the development of the students\u2019 nascent genius. There are times I go home, look in the mirror, and see nothing more deep than skin. I see a beaten down mannequin, sagging at every seam. I see a doll in a china cabinet, on display and starved for touch.<\/p>\n
Bit by bit, every moment I spend with Tessa revives my humanity. She sees all of me. She speaks to me as if I am someone worth speaking to. Specifically, we converse about art, a broad topic in which I am surprisingly well versed. One might think that a person who has spent half their waking hours for the last twenty years on the campus of an art college might have developed an education in matters relating to the purpose and mission of the school, even if that person did happen to display their dick, sack, and crack for a living, but, sadly, a person rarely did.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you\u2014you are absolutely outrageous,\u201d Tessa says, snatching me back from inattention. \u201cNo model has ever posed for me like you do. You\u2019re perfect without trying. You don\u2019t stretch your neck out like a ballerina, you don\u2019t sit with your arm on your knee and your finger out like The Creation of Adam. You don\u2019t manscape, your nails are yellow…sometimes you don\u2019t even bother to brush your hair. What I\u2019m trying to say is, there\u2019s nothing false about you, nothing contrived. Your honesty is clean cool water, and your body is a triumph. You\u2019re a cruelly underappreciated performance artist and I think you belong on a larger stage. In fact, you know what? Your work reminds me of Carolee Schneemann\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tell Tessa that I do not recognize the name.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s famous for standing on stage and pulling a scroll out of her vagina.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silently, I consider this.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr, if we want to speak in terms of quote-unquote fine art, look.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tessa pulls a hardcover book from her backpack and I speak the title aloud. \u201cAuguste Rodin: Erotic Watercolors.\u201d Rodin is a name I know. Tessa nods and scootches closer. I think I should get my robe, but then I feel the rough wool of her skirt skim my naked thigh. I blow the dandelion thought from my mind and it disappears into the ether.<\/p>\n
We pore over the color plates and I marvel at Rodin\u2019s furtive sketches in which dozens of luscious women spread wide their vulvas. Tessa runs her hand over Witch\u2019s Sabbath, a picture of a woman masturbating with a broomstick. \u201cI have a print of this one on my wall,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She continues to flip the pages. Women in loosened garments play piggyback. Two women are entangled, the lips of a blonde grazing the nipple of a brunette\u2019s pert breast. I am surprised to find so many of the pieces depicting two or more women in orgiastic array. However, most are constructs\u2026originally singular portraits cut out and collaged together, most likely non-consensually. Early deepfake porn. My enthusiasm falls. I resent the reminder that people in my profession are so very rarely afforded the dignity of agency. Agency. The only stripping of which we cannot control.<\/p>\n
Tessa seems to enjoy these pieces especially, and not wanting to dampen the mood, I keep my sanctimony to myself. But suddenly I see her smile fall and her clear eyes darken. She is inconstant by nature, however I wonder if her mood has fallen due to my moment of melancholy. I wonder if she is attuned enough to me to have perceived it. I worry a bit that I cannot tell.<\/p>\n
She purses her lips and cocks her head. \u201cOn second thought, perhaps these watercolors only seem outrageous because we are not used to seeing work like this from Rodin, don\u2019t you agree? Rodin never intended for these to be displayed, he had no intention of pushing boundaries in a public forum. They reek of cowardice, quite frankly. Yes, perhaps they are beautifully drawn, but the poses of these models are milquetoast compared with what I know you are capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tessa raises her head to the ceiling and runs her nails down the sides of her neck. Pink lines appear against the pale. She lets loose a guttural groan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Frankenstein\u2019s monster\u2014I need electricity to live and these give me no charge.\u201d<\/p>\n
She flings the book and takes my hand. She massages it softly, from my wrist to my fingertips. Her nails are filed into points and the polish is chipped and black. They look like obsidian arrowheads, and I think they may just run me through.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlas, the pendulum does swing,\u201d she continues. \u201cThe art of now is just as prudish. We must reach back decades to consider the visceral beauty of Mapplethorpe. Or Lynda Benglis. Are you familiar with her self-portrait? The color photograph that fucked up the patriarchal art world beyond repair? She\u2019s naked and slicked up with baby oil and she\u2019s holding a huge double-headed dildo against her vulva. Her hip\u2019s cocked up, she\u2019s sneering, she\u2019s got on dark shades, she\u2019s got tan lines\u2014it\u2019s all so deliciously cheap! A ballsy woman with a ball-less cock. A castration on so many levels. The scandal was transformative. That is what I crave. Tell me you understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
I am transfixed by her manner of speaking\u2014poetic, stilted, breathless yet measured. Her Transatlantic accent, entirely contrived, seems an odd choice for someone so obsessed with authenticity. Her self-inventions remind me that she is, comparatively, so very young, and I am happy to be reminded, for I have no desire to manipulate her. It is clear that she is highly impressionable\u2026it only took one classic film class to extract this accent. She is clay on a lathe; spinning, morphing, expanding, far from hardening fire and even farther from mortal shatter. I can find no reason on Earth to interrupt this marvel, this green shooting sprout, this half-grown Katharine Hepburn. I am an observer. I ride shotgun in her world.<\/p>\n
Tessa drops my hand and grabs my shoulders.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, you could do that. Not with a dildo, of course, yours is built-in. But you could hold it. Hold it up and out. You\u2019d be subverting Lynda\u2019s subversion! Oh, the postmodernity! May I?\u201d<\/p>\n
I think she\u2019s going for my hog but she only moves to stand. My \u2018no\u2019 stops short at my uvula. I cross my legs and face her.<\/p>\n
The spotlights gild my idol and glint off of her goth cross necklace. Tessa, sacrilegious and delicious, mimes holding a dick. Two stacked claws hold her phantom phallus. Hers is girthy and long, and I feel stupid admitting it but I cannot help but feel inadequate in its presence. I wonder if hers is circumcised\u2026if, in her Skinemax land of make-believe, she\u2019s thought to include the balls. What is its color? Is there hair, and is it as black and as shiny as hers? I have so many questions. Before I can ask, she bends at the waist and lumbers forward, stomping her boots and swinging her pendulous appendage to and fro. She looks like an elephant.<\/p>\n
She turns her head to look at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo this pose tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
What pose, I think. This elephant walk is a performance; an improv exercise, not a pose. Am I to bend at the waist with my cock in my hand, frozen mid-swing? Does she really believe I\u2019d assault those poor students with my erection? Shall I pull a scroll from my ass, too?<\/p>\n
I am not yes\/anding this. I half sigh, half laugh, and implore her with my eyes. Hers are dark below her forward-fallen bangs. Her jaw is set. She is not asking; she has given me a command, and as if shaken from sleep I at once realize that this relationship is inappropriate. I am uncomfortable. And Tessa is out of her mind. My hand on my genitals for any reason other than to discreetly adjust them for comfort\u2026I\u2019d never work again.<\/p>\n
She seems to understand that she\u2019s gone too far. Her facial muscles relax and her lips part and bow, and once again I see the Tessa for whom I fell so deeply. It takes so little to be swept into her sea. Perhaps there is a way I can please her without causing offense\u2026and without being fired. I can stand up straight with my back arched, a hand on my hip like Lynda, and subtly cradle myself from below. I can tuck my hand in the crease where my thigh meets my pubis and push my fingers up underneath by balls, causing everything to lift ever so slightly. I won\u2019t be hard. Surely she can imagine that part.<\/p>\n
I share my ideas along with my reservations. My voice is tender and understanding so I am surprised when she whips up like a switchblade. She shakes her head and a barrette snaps; tendrils fly and I turn to stone. This is no goddess before me. It\u2019s Medusa.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou absolute fucking coward.\u201d<\/p>\n
She throws her arms wide. \u201cMichaelangelo, Bronzino, Klimt, Rodin, Mapplethorpe, Benglis, you, me, everyone in the world who has fucked at least once in order for us to be alive\u2026to have the privilege of paying tribute to their wild lust, their Catholic duty, their tearful struggles for or against insemination. The continuum is sacred, prehistoric, pre-human! When our species discovered art, what did they do? They covered cave walls with buffalo-hunting stick figures running around with erect penises. They carved fertility talismans, gourd-shaped women with batwing pussy lips flying out of fat vulvas. Everything we now venerate is nothing more than locker room scrawl. Humans are perverts and we always have been. Sex is life, and it\u2019s supposed to hurt, it\u2019s supposed to be uncomfortable, it\u2019s supposed to be worth losing everything for!\u201d<\/p>\n
Wild-eyed and spinning, she doesn\u2019t notice me putting on my robe.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have any idea what I have to do in order to make my art? In order to express myself, in order to fulfill my destiny? I copy photographs from porn mags and I rent tapes and press pause. The man working the counter at Pleasures knows my name. I only go there in the daytime but I still have to carry mace\u2014you know that part of town. It. Is. Hell! Orpheus shit from my car to the door and back. Used condoms stick to my shoes, the fryer grease smell from the KFC next door sticks to my hair\u2026I have to take my clothes off with gloves and wash myself with bleach and lye. I resent it, every part of it. They drill it into us here, that nothing compares to drawing from life. So why shouldn\u2019t students have a say in how our models pose? I\u2019m paying tens of thousands of dollars to go to this dump, only for those washed up failures they call teachers to strangle my voice. And you. Just one more set of hands around my throat.\u201d<\/p>\n
She screams \u201cfuck, fuck, fuck\u201d on her way to the door, which she pushes open with her ass before screaming one last \u201cfuck,\u201d the shrillest \u201cfuck\u201d I\u2019ve ever heard in my life.<\/p>\n
I flick off the lights on my way to the changing area. Sapped of strength in the dim, my body goes gray. I stand behind the dressing screen, and after a million years I reach for my pants.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After a long night of thin sleep I arrive on campus and walk to human resources. I tell the receptionist that I\u2019ll be needing the week off due to illness and ask her to kindly notify the instructor and call in a replacement. She squints, puts on her glasses, and leans forward. She asks me who I am. I tell her my name and she asks what\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cDiarrhea.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is the one ailment that is never questioned. Besides, my pride has run dry. Smacking gum, she waves me off. Who am I indeed. I walk back to the parking lot none the wiser.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turn around; it is Tessa. Tessa, sour of face and evil of eye, bitter of tongue and acid of tone, betrayer of friends and maker of foes. But a foot from my body, she fingers the sleeve of my muslin shirt and remarks on the crime of my clothes. She has forgotten her accent. In the white light of the Florida sun, she gives up all mystery. If I had any tears left, they\u2019d have disappeared into the clouds before they could fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe I caught you. It must be meant to be. Since you\u2019re here I suppose I should tell you\u2026I\u2019m leaving this place. Dropping out. I can\u2019t take one more day. Well, I won\u2019t be needing these. Here, take them. They\u2019re all pictures of you anyway.\u201d She shoves a stack of drawing pads at my chest and I struggle to grasp them. Several fall to the ground, and through lips painted green, she spits. She means disrespect but I see DNA. In spit is a stamp that can clone or convict you. I suppose that an artist\u2019s work, to its maker, does both. I can understand the desire for distance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made me clean out my locker. Give them to your friends for Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
She brushes past me like a stranger on a crowded street. I do not turn to watch her leave.<\/p>\n
I am too weakened emotionally to be as angry as perhaps I should. I can only muster a quiet resentment for the ease with which she\u2019d abandoned me. What she did here was juvenile and performative, yet, it hurt. I wish I did have diarrhea so I could use her drawings to wipe my ass.<\/p>\n
I collect the drawing pads, a semester\u2019s worth of me, and sit with them under the shade of an ancient banyan tree. I brace my heart, for I\u2019m about to see so much more than my body. I\u2019m about to see my soul. And I am about to experience what unconditional love looks like through the lens of its rejection.<\/p>\n
Charcoal dust stains the covers of the drawing pads and streaks my muslin gray, but the state of my clothes is the last thing on my mind. I tenderly open the first pad and furiously flip through the rest. I look through them again; perhaps there is something I\u2019d missed. But no.<\/p>\n
They are books of scribbles. Every single one, every single page. I squint my eyes and attempt to keep an open mind. I try to convince myself they are clever nods to Twombly. I try to see my body in the spirals, curly-cues and zig-zags. I look for my penis in vertical crayon waves. I search for my balls inside glitter pen-rendered Spirograph webs. Perhaps the S<\/em>\u2014that one with the points that middle schoolers etch into desks \u2014perhaps it is meant to be a deconstructed imagining of our unrealized embrace.<\/p>\n I recall her physicality behind the easel as I flip through pages where she\u2019d applied her pencil so aggressively that it ripped through the pages beneath. I skim through pages filled with tiny dots made with the lightest dab of an HB pencil. Everything is devoid of harmony\u2026there is no thought given to composition, no variety in the linework, no sense of command of the medium, zero wit. Hours of class time, hours of my attention, my devotion, was wasted on this. My aching joints, my vulnerability, precious minutes of my life spent cleaning my crack so I could open it for her unashamedly. All of me, stolen and upchucked. Churned into this inelegant garbage.<\/p>\n There is no other way to put it. She sucks.<\/p>\n The sky groans and the papers darken as storm clouds roll in. My scrotum begins to ache. I curse the worthless jewels, shift, and adjust. Queasiness overtakes me as I realize that I was ready to risk my entire career by following through on her insane demand that I pose with my big honking dick lifted up in a facsimile of an erection. That would have been the end of me. That nut job could have destroyed my life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Months after our final interaction, peace remained elusive. Needing answers, I took up yoga, and after devoting myself to a rigorous practice of meditation I eventually came to the conclusion that my contempt for Tessa had been misguided. I was in love with my body, and she was in love with her masks. I denied her and she shattered. She humiliated me and I fell. From the very beginning, we both were lost.<\/p>\n Things are better now. Yoga has given me new ways\u2014healthier ways\u2014to connect with my body. I\u2019ve realized I can appreciate it as a vessel, a delicate ferry carrying my consciousness through torment and calm\u2026through any kind of sea. Vanity goes overboard lest I sink. I\u2019ve discovered new poses, elegant and serene, that have earned my way back into the instructor\u2019s good graces. There are days I feel reborn.<\/p>\n And there are days I struggle. At the beginning of each semester, as the students file in, a soft longing pulses in my heart\u2014the impotent hope that Tessa will walk through the door. That she will take to her easel, this time with maturity and intention. That this time, her spirals will form me.<\/p>\n Today is the first day of the Fall session. New students settle in, and as always, I sense their unease as I assume my position. My bones ache. A splinter bothers my instep. My proud soldier hangs. I take them in, these fledgling souls, and I wonder what they see while they use me. Standing here in the center of the room, nude as Adam but by no means as innocent, I wonder, am I to them as I\u2019d once imagined, a nurturing sun to planets in orbit. Or have I always been much, much less. A carcass in the bullseye of a halo of vultures.<\/p>\n They are lost in their own reality and rarely look up from their easels. But I don\u2019t judge. Tessa wolfed me down, never took her eyes off of me. Yet she never tried to grasp me. She never meant to keep me. The truth is, there is no telling what is on the other side of that paper.<\/p>\n Tessa\u2026to have erased me would have been a kindness.<\/p>\n I look down at my body, warmed by the light that always seems to find me. In the rays of the glow dance glittering specks of dust, the humblest of star stuff. At one with this dead slough, every part of me host to miniscule bits of decay whose fate is to rise, form, and birth a new world, I finally see. I see who I am. Just a naked old man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" She spits through lips painted green. She means disrespect but I see DNA. In spit is a stamp that can clone or convict you. I suppose that an artist\u2019s work, to its maker, does both. I can understand the desire for distance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-kelli-dianne-rule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22552,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21996\/revisions\/22552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}