ok so this is going to be a very bold statement, but i believe it to be true. checking off #2 on my list was right up there with the hardest things i’ve ever had to do in my life.
there have been a few guesses as to what #2 actually was, and i’ve mentioned it here briefly, but up until now i wasn’t totally comfortable sharing it publicly. mostly because i wasn’t sure that i’d be able to go through with it! well here it is officially…. (drumroll, please!)
#2 – pose nude for an art class
5pm – got off from my regular job and went home to get changed for my “night job” for the evening
5:15pm – the first of many mini-meltdowns when i realized i had no robe or anything appropriate for being able to give me some comfort in between nakedness… i eventually settled on a comfortable dress i could slip on and off quickly.
6pm – cracked open a bottle of crappy rose wine (what am i doing with rose wine anyway? this really must be an emergency…)
6:02pm – realized my glass was empty, time for another. my heart is pounding already and i’m starting to break out in a sweat!
6:30pm – convince my boyfriend to drive me to the class. poor thing, he can’t understand why i’d subject myself to such torture! by this point, i’m gripping the car seat till my knuckles are white, trying to breathe deeply so that i don’t have a heart attack.
6:50pm – we pull up to the curb and i can see up through the window to the room where the drawing classes are held. i turn to my boyfriend and the look of concern (and amusement?) in his eyes makes me want to cry! i phone kimi, hoping she’ll have words of wisdom to keep me from losing it. but instead, i burst out in tears as soon as she starts to reassure me. i think it was just all the nerves building up, but crying was actually the only thing that gave me (a little bit of) relief.
6:55pm – kiss matt goodbye, and walk in with kimi, still shaking. thought about turning around and saying i couldn’t do it, but then mark (the artist who leads the group) started walking in towards us with a friendly smile on his face. “are you ready?” he asked, and laughed when i said “no”. “hey, i’ve done it too, and i was just as nervous. you’ll be fine!” he said, and both he and kimi gave me encouraging smiles. by this point i told myself there was no turning back already….
7:00pm – it’s showtime! somehow i made it this far, so there’s no turning back…
the rest of the night passed in a blur. when it was time for me to get on the stage, i told myself “it doesn’t matter how nervous you are, you just have to do this.” it was absolutely terrifying, and i still wanted to cry. actually, my greatest fear (even more than the normal things dealing with public nudity) was that i’d burst out in tears again. my face was on fire, and i’m sure that i was bright red. (actually, i’m positive because laarni told me so. haha!) i remember that before the class i was worried i’d be cold, but once i got up there i was actually really hot because they have a single spotlight that shines on you to give better angles and light/shadow for the artists to draw. i tried to find something to zone out at and settled on a spot on the floor, but then got distracted by a bead of sweat rolling down my arm…
the class starts with a series of 2 minute poses (also called “gestures”), and this was probably my favorite part of the class, looking back on it. at the time, i was still really nervous, and i’d asked if i could keep my hair down as a last chance at holding on to some kind of “cover up”… i tried a few poses where i got to stretch out my arms and a couple of twisting poses, and after a while i found that it actually felt good to stretch like that. we switched to 5 minute, then 10 minute poses, and eventually i pulled my hair up because i was getting hot and i was getting more used to being up on the stage.
i think it was actually harder to be the focus of everyone’s attention than it was to be naked. or maybe the combination of both… but after awhile it was amusing to kind of zone out and to watch the artists heads bobbing up and down as they glanced from me to the sketch pads. i watched them out of the corner of my eye as i waited for the minutes to pass by…
the last hour of the class was the hardest. 20 minutes in any one position, clothed or not, is pretty hard to hold. for my first 20 minute pose, i sat on a bench and tried to lean back to rest my arm over the bench. that minutes seemed to go by so slowly! before this, i think the marathon was probably the hardest thing i’ve had to do, and i think it actually helped me in getting through the 20 minute poses. when you’re running for 5, 6, even 7 hours, you find little tricks to distract your mind, and i applied some of those to help me pass the 20 minutes without feeling quite so naked.
when it was all over, i enjoyed looking at the paintings and drawings some of the artists did, and kimi even gave me a few of hers. the woman next to her was using charcoal (?) on a HUGE sketchpad so mostly she was doing large-scale portraits, so there would be like 5′ x 5′ sketch of just my face. so interesting! everyone was really friendly and encouraging and told me i’d done a good job, and i must say that the $100 cash i walked out with didn’t hurt either. not to say that i’d do it again, but at least i know that now i COULD. it was challenging, to say the least, but thanks to my friends supporting me, i got through it. this one feels REALLY good to check off my list!
30 things i want to do before i turn 30 
