- A Work of Art -

Chapter 3

A Work of Art
Not a journal
Third Entry

There’s a lot more to school than gym. I’ll get back to the pool, my predicament and TJ later, but I don’t want to give anyone the impression school is all about sex and that sort of thing. It’s not. We have all kinds of classes. I’m sure people would find it interesting how some of those classes work. Like, for instance, our art class.

Dad has pointed out to me that he feels my interests are basically in the creative arena. I agree; to me, it’s very apparent he got that right. I hadn’t thought about it that way myself, but it is true. Art class is a good example. I am a terrible artist. I tried drawing a cat when I was eight; it ended up looking like a snowman some kid had kicked over onto its side. Now, at 14, I’m not a whole lot better. Looking at it later, I tried drawing the kid kicking it, but that looked like some weird robot tweaking, so I tore it up. But just because I stink at art doesn’t mean I don’t love the subject. I’m taking it as one of the electives we are allowed to choose.

The teacher, Mrs. Darnell, is friendly and open and non-judgmental. She finds what is good in our work no matter how difficult it is to do that—especially with mine. She also teaches us how an artist should think. Her first day’s lecture to us resonated with me. I’ll reproduce it here as factually as I can:

And that’s what she did. She put an object on the viewing stand in front of the room and had us look at it, then draw it. I made a vase look like an unmolded lump of clay. A bowl of different colored fruits, mainly apples, appeared to be misshapen blobs of color in an impossibly shaped thing that was supposed to be a bowl. She asks us all to draw ourselves, and to remember, any picture of a person is better if they’re nude because you get to see their real shape that way and who they are without the camouflage of artificiality brought about by their raiment. Yeah, she talked like that sometimes. So we all did as asked, mostly depicted from the side or with a leg crossed or a small drape that was more figment than real blurring vital areas. My picture . . . well, it’s too embarrassing to say much, but one of the other kids in the class said it looked like a comic-book villain who was melting all except for whatever that gross thing was in the middle.

She worked with me, showed me how to find the focal line of an object and to draw only that, the line that defines the object, and then work from there. I didn’t know objects had focal lines. Now I did, and drawing another vase, it suddenly looked like a vase. Not really an objet d’art, but anyone could see it was a vase. I tried again to draw me and make it look like a boy, but as I didn’t know how to find my focal line, that was why I didn’t do better. It didn’t frustrate me at all. I think it was simply a case of my being too young to have a focal line.

But she affected my perspective, how I looked at things, how I saw them. That’s now different from before I took the class. Amazing.

Mrs. Darnell took us on a field trip to the art museum in town. We saw all sorts of painting styles and what style was prevalent in different eras and countries. I was fascinated by the pointillist paintings. Standing close to them, you see a canvas covered in colored dots and not much else. Move back away from them and suddenly your eyes focus all those dots into shapes and scenes. I thought that was truly wonderful, and it boggled my mind how any person could know how to do that. He’d be painting up close, not ten feet away. I don’t think they had ten-foot brushes, did they?

I liked looking at the portraits, too. They showed figures from previous centuries in the fancy clothes of those eras and also some figures with nothing on but their skin. I studied those, too, very closely while wishing there were more with boys my age rather than so many middle-aged, overweight ladies. Okay, I’m 14. Nude people are nice to look at when you’re 14. Some of them, especially those with naked kids, even evoke short-term physiological changes that you have to be sure no one notices. Good thing I was carrying an 8x10 sketchbook to write thoughts in or to draw something based on the emotions that the various pieces on display made me feel.

I’m not sure I should include this next thing. It’s a little, well, maybe inappropriate. Although after the treatise I wrote about TJ and the pool, I think I now understood that writing a blog has no rules to follow! I did mention that before, but I don’t know that I believed it. I did now, and that’s pretty insightful for a 14-year-old who’s never had much control of anything. Here, I can do what I want. What a powerful feeling! So, here goes.

In class, Mrs. Darnell told us that after studying the paintings we’d seen in the museum, we were now ready to try our hand at painting a model who’d pose for us so we can see what it was like for the artists who did just that. She asked for volunteers. She said she wanted two kids, one petite and one sturdy. She didn’t care if it was two boys or two girls, but they should be the same sex as it was a body comparison she wanted.

Diane, a girl in class who seemed never to have a governor on her mouth but sorely needed one, called out, “Make it boys. They have more parts to paint than girls.” The kids in the class laughed, and Mrs. Darnell rolled her eyes.

No one was brave enough to raise a hand, so somehow me and Saul got volunteered. Saul is an athlete, but a special kind. He’s a gymnast—and a senior. He was accustomed to performing in front of an audience wearing almost nothing: just brief athletic shorts and probably a jock underneath. I wasn’t used to being in front of an audience at all, dressed or not. But the two of us certainly provided a contrast. He was incredibly muscled, incredibly fit as gymnasts have to be to perform on the rings and horse and bars and such. I was not incredibly muscled. In fact, I didn’t think I had any at all. Flutes don’t weigh much.

I expected my non-muscularity not to matter as I was sure I’d just go up and sit on the viewing platform on a chair. I learned differently. That wasn’t her idea at all. She wanted the kids in class to see and draw our bodies, our musculatures, not what we put on when we got out of bed that morning. To do what she wanted, we had to be undressed.

“I’d love to have nude models,” she told the class, “and I do have those for the night classes I teach at the college. I understand this school is working this year to desensitize some of the male student population about unnecessary modesty, so I asked about using some of them as nude models, but I was shot down. They said it wasn’t appropriate for a high-school setting, at least not this year, but hopefully some day. In any case, Artie isn’t old enough anyway. But I’ll do what I can.”

What she could do and did was take us into her office and have us strip down to our underwear, then gave us small towels to drape over our underwear when posing so we’d appear to be totally bare except for the towel.

My problem was seeing Saul in just his small briefs. His body was astounding. He knew it, too. He didn’t make any quick move to cover anything up when he was just brief-clad. The briefs were small and tight and quite full. I could easily see the outline of what was underneath. I’m sure Mrs. Darnell could, too. Saul didn’t mind at all. He watched me look at him, all of him, and smiled a very contented cat-with-cream smile and didn’t bother to hold his towel in front of him, just letting it hang at his side.

I was like I am: scrawny, somewhat bony, and a scarecrow to his Adonis. Mrs. Darnell saw the expression on my face. I was wearing loose-fitting boxers, so nothing showed at all down there, perhaps suggesting there wasn’t much there to hide, just like the rest of me. I wasn’t much to look at.

“This is art, Artie,” she said, trying to dismiss my concerns, or at least show the folly in them. “Artists don’t see the model; they see the lines and surfaces and the play of light on them. They won’t be thinking, ‘Look at that; one’s structurally larger and more beautiful, and one’s but skin and bones.’ No, they’ll see how the light enhances the two structures differently. They won’t be denigrating your build at all. They’ll be too busy trying to capture the essence of it, and they’ll find it very interesting. They may well work harder on your pose than Saul’s.”

Saul looked at me while she was talking, and I saw his thoughts, which were highlighted in his eyes. While I couldn’t read precisely what they were, I was pretty sure what direction they were going, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t judging me negatively. He was pensive, and his eyes kept roaming over my body, and maybe, just maybe, his briefs got a little fuller. Made me wonder. What was he thinking? Was it about me? Really?

Mrs. Darnell fussed with my boxers before we went back out to face the class. She rolled the elastic band on top down and under and rolled up the bottoms of the two legs, making the size of my boxers about the same as Saul’s briefs. It felt weird and kinky having her fingers touching my legs very near my crotch and my stomach very near my pubes. If she hadn’t been so matter-of-fact about everything, I might have wondered the same things about her I was wondering about Saul. But while she was folding and tucking, she told me she wanted the towel that covered me to suggest I was naked under it, and if my boxers could be seen, it would ruin the effect.

We walked out into the classroom, each with our towel covering our loins, doing what Mrs. Darnell wanted. I didn’t hear any sniggers. I did hear a couple of gasps and had no problem knowing to whom they were directed. I may well have gasped myself while he was disrobing.

She set us both in poses on stools so that we’d be able to hold still. Comfortable poses. She reached under the top of my towel to further adjust the elastic on my boxers. She wasn’t too careful with her fingers and I felt myself start to wake up and take notice. With the towel now only covering about six or eight inches of my middle part, this could be disastrous. I was lucky she was old enough to be my mother, and even more, a woman.

I didn’t have to worry about feeling sexy and becoming aroused by sitting like I was in front of a class that was mostly girls. A class full of boys, that would have been different; I probably would have had a serious problem. But girls? Our class had only a few boys, and I was the youngest. I didn’t find older boys nearly as sexy as ones my age. Maybe that was why I didn’t feel sexy sitting on that stool. What I felt was exposed. No one was gasping at me, either. Saul, with his small towel and the suggested bulge under it from the way he’d draped that towel, did look risqué to me. I didn’t suppose that was an adjective that would ever be applied to me.

The students, high-school kids, were silent as they set to drawing, looking at us and then their work, back and forth. After about twenty minutes, one of the girls, the one named Diane whom we’ve already met, who had a reputation of being fast and loose—those are terms my mother uses for girls like Diane (the boys at school have different words)—spoke to Mrs. Darnell. “This is like drawing a picture of a marketplace from a position across the street and beyond the railroad tracks that run behind it, and then having a train pass by obscuring things even more. That means there’d be a huge obstruction blocking much of what the scene should be. I can’t seem to do Saul justice like this. You wouldn’t have us draw a still life of a bowl of fruit but leave the fruit out. No. The fruit needs to be there, front and center, ripe and juicy. The fruit needs to be part of picture, front and center. That towel needs to go.”

Some of the girls giggled, and all the boys smiled and looked at each other, silently loving her audacity and envying the boys who’d dated her. For me, I wondered if some of the boys would enjoy seeing that towel removed, too.

Diane had spoken very soberly with no underlying humor at all; she’d sounded completely serious. Like she had a valid complaint that deserved some discussion. Mrs. Darnell was all about art. Maybe she even agreed with Diane‘s point.

What she said, though, showed she was very aware. “Diane, if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep my job. If you need to draw what you can’t see, draw what’s in your imagination, or what your personal knowledge suggests is covered.”

That brought unconcealed laughter to the room. I was sure it would cause Diane to blush, but she laughed, too, and said “That’ll work. Good idea. I can do that, Mrs. D. Thanks!”

Mrs. Darnell wasn’t through, though. She had a twinkle in her eye when she said, “I have to leave for a short time to get some supplies for my next class. Of course, I expect everyone here to act properly while I’m away when I won’t be able to control anyone’s—” and she paused to look at Saul when she said that “—behavior. I’ll be gone at least ten minutes.”

She winked at Diane and left the room. There was dead silence for a moment, and then Diane said, “We’re waiting,” in a very provocative voice, her eyes meeting Saul’s.

And, unbelievably, Saul removed his towel! And then his briefs, too. Then he resumed his pose, one that gave the class an excellent view of just what everyone wanted to see.

Saul was very well endowed. He stayed posed, letting everyone admire the view for at least five minutes, during which time he looked at me and winked. Then, taking his time, he casually stood and re-briefed and re-toweled himself. He even adjusted himself inside his briefs, taking his time and getting it just right, before adding the towel.

These were amateur art students. Young. Most of their vases still resembled my lumps of clay, their bowls of apples looking like melting scoops of different flavors of ice cream. That was probably why Mrs. Darnell never said a thing about the drawings they made of Saul and me that showed me as little more than a stick figure afterthought who was mostly covered by a towel, and Saul to be naked with what everyone hoped was the artists’ personal thoughts of how male teenage genitals looked. None of the drawings looked like what the model had displayed. Was that what was meant by artistic license? No, I think it was simply immature craftsmanship. But Diane’s drawing? It was a pretty good representation of the real thing. You could tell for sure she’d studied it and drawn what it looked like, even getting the circumcision scar correctly placed. You could tell she was very familiar with what she’d drawn. As the expression goes, it was a case of having been up close and personal.

I wasn’t sure why she’d drawn it larger than what was there on the model. He was quite big enough without the need for artistic enhancement. Also, I never did find out if Mrs. Darnell left the room like she did, telling us how long she’d be gone, as encouragement for what happened. But I’ll always think that’s why she did it.

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