“No flexing. Got it.” There’s a ghost of a smile on his face as he puts his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers. He pauses and his eyes flash to mine; the smile is gone. “Yeah?”
“Um. Sure?”
His brows come down and his hands slide back up to his hips. “Roz.” He waits until I make eye contact.
“Yeah?” he says again. He’s asking me what I want.
“Oh, what the heck?” I toss my arms up. “Whip it out.”
He laughs and shakes his head, but his boxers slide to the floor and he bends down after them, picking them up, neatly folding them, and setting them aside. I don’t look directly at him, but I can tell he’s frowning, hands back on his hips, and looking down at the coffee table.
“I was picturing doing a sitting pose, but…”
“Having second thoughts?”
“Standing here bare-assed…”
I laugh a little hysterically.
“I varnished this coffee table by hand,” he says. “It just seems wrong.”
I’m swallowing my laugh and trying to get in the zone because, yes, he’s my husband, and yes, I’ve seen him naked hundreds, if not thousands, of times, but, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from drawing class, it’s that this kind of nudity is a rare and valuable gift.
I quickly walk to the linen closet and bring him a towel, handing it over as a peace offering.
“I’ll set the timer. Do whatever pose makes you feel comfortable. Seriously.”
“Two minutes?” He spreads the towel out on the floor.
“Yup. Four two-minute poses.”
“Okay.” And then he lies on his back on the towel and stares at the ceiling.
I click the timer, set up my paper, and then, finally, let my eyes actually fall to him. All of him.
He’s bigger than he used to be. There are more shadows,more muscle, a soft layer over the top. He looks like he could lift a Buick if your bouncy ball rolled under there.
There he is. Lying there naked. My husband. No! Right now, he’s the model. It almost helps a little that he looks different.
I shake my head and reach into the satchel for a pencil. Any pencil. I won’t get in my head about this. Except…a lying-down pose is actually really hard. Everything is foreshortened and there aren’t really any angles to draw. The human body becomes mostly a straight line with just a few squiggly bumps that if you don’t draw them in the exact right place, your drawing ends up looking like calligraphy gone bad.
The timer goes off.
Oh! New pose already. Okay. I’d barely done one shoulder and half a rib cage of the last one.
I’m surprised when he sits right up. I’d kind of thought all his poses would be lying-down poses. They’re the easiest for the model and probably the least vulnerable. I’ve got his profile now, his elbows resting on his drawn-up knees. His back is a curve, his feet bent at an angle I can’t make believable before the timer dings again.
And now he’s on his feet. I’ve still got his side. I think he might be feeling shy about giving me the full show. At the last second, one of his hands comes up and his forehead inches down to meet the palm. This…is a sad pose. I lose twenty seconds to blinking and therefore only get one leg from the hip down before the timer is off again.
And now, finally, the butt. His scar is a stark purple line down his back and I make myself focus on absolutely everything else. He faces away from me, hands on hips and his head dropped back to look at the ceiling. Another sad pose. No, not sad. Exasperated? Or maybe…distraught? Hard to say. Thistime I’m determined to get something from each hemisphere of his body on the page at the very least, so his head is too egg-shaped and too low against his shoulders and his spine goes a little too much to one side and his legs are too long, even for leggy Vin, but the feet come out looking weirdly, serendipitously perfect. And I do, in fact, get a whole human on this page.
When the timer dings, he immediately starts swinging his arms at the shoulders. “Fifteen minutes, you said?”
“Fifteen minutes is really long…” I warn him. “You’ll be dying by the end.”
“Let’s give it a shot. Anything in particular you want me to do? Or not do?”
I hesitate.
