A Nude

66 FICTION A Nude____________________________ Ali O'Rourke THE OTHER NIGHT I WAS A NUDE MODEL—sitting for two guys I know—one a lover, the other, not. I had to just fling my robe open—it was a scaredness, like of toochilly water when you realize you have to jump in or else forget swimming altogether and go home (I'm not a warm-up-to-it kind of girl). So the music on the radio told me the mood was dark but sexy (the radio belonged to the non-lover), and I just lay there with a little smile, like The Mona Lisa, and thought about all the women who had ever been nudes. I wondered what they felt and how it changed them, if at all, and how many of them had artists for lovers. I watched them both as they drew, looking more at my body than at their drawings, and I didn't mind when their eyes went to my breasts, my hips, my central triangle of fuzz, or my little smile. I worried once that my feet looked funny—with the right half-curled around the left—so I moved one. That was all. We took a break half way through. I smoked most of a cigarette with the non-lover. I ate a popsicle. The lover showed me his finished drawing—it was lovely and of my breasts. He hadn't flattered me, but they looked strangely perfect. Every woman should sit for artists sometime. Even if she never sees the work, because just sitting there while they look at you without judgment is unbelievable—and probably the only time in her life it will ever happen. At least that is what it seemed like to me. After the break, as I found the same position, untying the robe the second time around was much easier—like sex, I guess. Lover did another pastel from a different angle. I watched his face, and this time I could tell he was in love with me and my collar bone. His second drawing wasn't as good as the first—something about the color was less-pleasing. But it was still extremely well done. He said it was good because he loves me, but I told him it was just that he knows the landscape of my body. He shook his head. Non-lover could not seem to get my face—or my little smile. He had changed the music after the break, and my face had probably 67 changed, too. I really didn't mind either way. I figured it wasn't about me at all anyhow—he had just needed a subject, and a naked woman was one of his favorites. He told me he was moving out of his "tormented" phase and into one more seductive (but still dark). He is not a realist, but lover usually is. In all aspects of his life, now that I consider it. As a nude, I was mostly a romantic—I felt I should have a glass of bourbon or some other whiskey with ice, along with my cigarette. I usually don't smoke. I thought of Leonard Cohen and his poems about women, some of them nudes, too. I remembered his gravelly, low voice, rasping out something dark, beautiful and naked. I pretended Leonard had written those things about me, or that another Leonard would. In some art, there is a feeling of longevity. That is one reason I love being a subject of it and a student to it. When those two were drawing me, I thought again of all those women—their bodies and their faces— who died long ago but are still familiar to us because some artist showed their beauty to the world. I can't usually show my beauty myself. That would be vanity. But whenever a drawing of me is viewed, or one of my poems is read, that is somebody noticing. After the sitting, I dressed in the bathroom. Funny none of us minded me being naked for two hours, lying on a short couch, but we all would have been uncomfortable if I'd gotten dressed in...