When I was a senior at college, the guys I lived with thought I was the coolest in our dorm. I wasn’t, but I liked that they thought so. Thirty freshmen lived on my dormitory floor, and I was in charge of introducing them to college life. Which meant that I tried to save them from the worst cases of alcohol poisoning and venereal diseases. AIDS hadn’t been invented yet. They thought I was cool because I took some art courses where we drew pictures of live, nude models. Well, of course they were alive.
“No way, they’re naked, right there in the room?” asked the guy we named Bender. Four or five guys were in my dorm apartment, drinking beer. I was the only one who had an apartment; the freshmen had single rooms, and roommates.
“Yes,” I replied, trying to act like it didn’t matter to me, when I thought it was awesome too.
Bender was impressed. “How does it work? Where does she take her clothes off?”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “We’re all in a big circle with our drawing boards. There’s a little platform in the middle. The girl comes in wearing a robe, stands on the platform and takes off the robe. She does a bunch of poses and we draw her from different angles.”
“Bare nude?” asked Bender, finally getting the concept.
“Bare nude,” I said.
Not satisfied, Bender asked, “Does she bend over and stuff?”
“Yes, sometimes she bends over. I don’t know what ‘and stuff’ means.”
“Why am I taking all these fucking science courses?” asked Bender. He took a long pull on his beer. “When is your next class? I’m going to come with you and see this for myself. Can I just sit there or do I have to draw something?”
“I don’t think so, Bender. What are we going to tell my prof? That you’re not registered for the course, but you thought it would be okay if you hung out and stared at the naked chick?” Some of the guys were giggling.
“Well, I’m taking that course next term,” he said. I didn’t tell him that sometimes we had male models.
My ‘cool’ status among the freshman ratcheted up another notch the next term when I took a painting course. No nude models this time, and the only requirement was that each student complete two large paintings for presentation to the class. I attacked my first painting with vigour, spending countless hours in the studio. Terribly clichéd, it was of a young ballerina at the bar. It was so Degas of me, but it turned out well and my professor seemed to like it. It was the second required painting that caused me some anguish, and hero status with my dorm-mates. I’m not sure how I expected that painting to get finished when I continued to delay its commencement. After I completed the first painting, I didn’t visit the studio once, and the second painting’s white canvas and paint sat in my closet. I justified my delay by focussing on my serious academic courses, the ones I needed to ace to get accepted to law school (If I only knew then what I know now). Despite the reasons for my procrastination, I still had to pass my art course. Every foot-dragging day brought me closer to presenting a completely blank canvas to my expectant classmates. Non-painting weeks turned into non-painting months. The night before the grand unveiling of my painting in class, I had no plan, no ideas, and no paint on my canvas.
Sitting in my apartment with my then-girlfriend (who will remain nameless, since she spectacularly broke my heart years later), I said, “I must find a way to arrange in a pleasing manner the paint in the tubes over there, on this canvas over here.”
“It’s 10 o’clock at night. Don’t you have to do the whole thing tonight and present it tomorrow?” asked the girlfriend who shall remain nameless.
“Yes, that’s actually the problem,” I sighed. “Did I ever tell you that I wrote the Procrastination Handbook in high school?”
“Whatever,” said the girlfriend who shall remain nameless. “The important thing is that you start painting right now.”
And I did. With no scheme or purpose guiding me, I aimlessly splashed paint to and fro. I ended up with a pale pink canvas, a bit swirly in places, nothing more than a background colour. It was as blank and bereft of imagination as my brain.
“This is shit,” I said to the girlfriend who shall remain nameless. “I can’t take this to school tomorrow.” I started to think about the implications of being refused entrance to law school because I could only manage an “F” in art. The fine arts may not be too important for a legal career, but this was still a university course. Those law school admissions department sticklers didn’t like to see any failures on a transcript.
“It’s almost midnight. And it is shit,” the girlfriend who shall remain nameless delicately confirmed. “You’re going to have to do something.”
Desperation, or divine inspiration took over. “Take off your clothes,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant when I said you have to do something,” she said.
“I know, just take off your clothes.” And she did. It was never a problem getting the girlfriend who shall remain nameless to disrobe. As she stood there in her naked glory, a lithe and supple 22-year-old, I considered procrastinating a bit longer.
As I hesitated, the girlfriend who shall remain nameless said, “Well, what are we doing?”
Brought back to the reality of my upcoming “F,” I reached for the blue acrylic paint. As the girlfriend who shall remain nameless giggled and shrieked. I painted the entire front of her body, including one side of her face, in watery, blue paint. The paint was cold, and her skin became all goose-pimply. I was worried about the sharpness of her overly-erect nipples as I carefully lowered her to the pink canvas I had placed on the rug. She lay on her front, one cheek on the canvas. I instructed her not to move, lest she smear the impression. I let her lay there much longer than was necessary as the non-painted side was making its own impression on me. I then slowly pulled her off of the canvas and admired the imprint. I was ecstatic, as was the girlfriend who shall remain nameless. Her normally smallish and pert breasts, two-dimensionally pressed to the canvas, looked bulbous and Little Annie Fanny-esque. Her waist, always thin and perfect, was thinner and more perfect in its blue version. It was a triumph, a flawless print that improved upon the original. I was so excited that I hastily pulled the canvas off the floor to look at it vertically…and watched a long blue drip leave the confines of the vaginal area and bisect the space between the painting’s thighs.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “I’ve wrecked it.” Too much paint had collected in the pubic hair of the girlfriend who shall reman nameless, which was of the typical ‘70s level of bushiness. The excess had pooled in a big blue triangle on the canvas, and I had stupidly tilted my painting before its most personal area was dry.
“I kinda like it like that,” said the girlfriend who shall nameless. “It’s not just a print anymore. It says something else about the model. It’s a bit raunchy.”
“OK, I’ll go with that.”
The next day, my painting stood on an easel in the art studio, covered by a sheet. My classmates and my professor sat in a semicircle. My 23-year-old self thought it was all terribly risqué at the time. I was the new enfant terrible of the art department. I thought I was breaking new ground. Which I wasn’t.
I whipped off the sheet with a flourish, and my classmates said nothing. They sat there, gazing quizzically. I could almost hear the cogs turning in their heads, as they tried to figure out how I had made a picture that looked like I had painted a model’s skin and pressed her naked body to my canvas. But the artist couldn’t have done that!
After a long silence, one guy said, “Uhhhh, how exactly did you, uhhhh, paint that?” I caught my professor smiling at the back.
Wanting to add to the discomfort in the room, I said, “First I painted the canvas pink. Once that was dry, I had my model disrobe. Then I painted her skin blue all over, making sure that I applied excess paint to her vagina. I lay her down on the canvas to make the print, and then carefully pulled her up. This was the crucial part…..I immediately tilted the canvas so that the extra paint deposited by the model’s pubic hair would cause a lone drip between the painting’s legs. This added the level of eroticism and titillation I was shooting for.” There followed a lively discussion about the errant blue drip and the sexual liberation of women through artistic expression.
The guys in my dorm liked when I told them this story, the day after my art professor gave me an ‘A.’
