That night with Cooper, when he drove me to his surprise, I didn't know it, but I was about to get one step closer to unwrapping that big mystery: sex. Not the full meal deal, but one little step, and it all happened inside a community center classroom.
He parked at the community center, and I wondered if we were going to a cooking class or maybe a book club.
We went inside, and as we walked through hallways, past colorful murals of spring leaves made from construction paper, I was enthralled by the mystery.
“Tai Chi class?” I guessed.
“Nope.”
“Introduction to Mandarin?”
“Nope.”
We stopped by a closed door and he knocked. A woman's voice from inside yelled, “Come on in, nobody's naked!”
Cooper gave me a wink and opened the door.
“Why would someone be naked?” I asked.
He nodded for me to follow him in.
I stepped into the room, which must have been used as a daycare or playschool during the day, because all the tables were knee height and the stacking chairs were tiny to match.
About twenty people, ranging from my age to wizened, sat in a circle on folding chairs, adult-sized. All of them had easels and either stretched canvases or big sheets of paper on spiral sketchbooks.
The eldest, a man with white hair tied back with a piece of leather, made a dour expression when he saw me. “Not enough curves on this one. I want voluptuous. I paid my twelve dollars. Nobody ever listens to me.”
A woman with wavy salt and pepper hair parted down the middle stood and offered me her hand. “You're a bit late, so let's get you disrobed. There's a screen you can use in the corner.”
“Hang on now,” I said. “My name's Perry, and I think you should at least buy a girl a drink before you ask her to disrobe.”
Cooper laughed. “She's not the model, she's my friend, and she's an artist.”
The old man, his voice rising in volume, said, “Somebody better get their clothes off. We're running out of time. I paid my twelve dollars. Nobody listens to me. I said we should meet half an hour earlier to get this chit-chat out of the way.”
The wavy-haired woman sighed and said to Cooper. “Honey, would you mind? I don't think that new girl is going to show.”
“Sure, Mom,” he said. “If it's okay with Perry.” He pulled me over to a corner of the room, where a ratty-looking bath robe lay folded over a standing screen.
“This is quite the surprise,” I said.
He bit his lower lip. “I'm sorry. I thought we'd be able to draw together. We can go if you're not comfortable.”
“Why wouldn't I be comfortable?”
“Because I'll be naked.”
I'd been trying so hard to play it cool that the reality hadn't quite sunk in until he'd put it so plainly. I said, “I'm going to see your ding-ding, aren't I?”
He snorted with laughter and looked to the side. “Don't say such sexy things, or I'm going to have a problem maintaining my composure up there.”
“Quite the surprise, indeed,” I said, my brain still sorting out exactly what was happening. “I don't have any art supplies.”
“My mother will get you something. But listen, we don't have to do this. We can go get some ice cream instead. We had a middle-aged curvy woman booked for tonight, but I guess she chickened out. Aw, this was a bad idea.”
“I've always wanted to sketch a nude model,” I said. “Why not?”
He patted me on my shoulder. “You're a good sport. Now go sit down, you can't watch me get undressed.”
“Right. Because
that
would be weird. As opposed to everything else.”
“It would be,” he said.
“This is weird.”
“Don't laugh when you see me naked,” he said.
A wave of horror washed over me. What if I got the giggles?
In a daze, I walked back over to the group, who had reconfigured to make a space in the circle for me. In the center was one of the low kids' tables, draped in a sheet.
“Nice of Chris to bring a friend,” Mrs. Cooper said, calling her son by his first name. She handed me some paper and pieces of charcoal from her own tray.
“Do I pay you now?” I asked, thinking of the twelve dollars the older gentleman had mentioned.
“I'll put it on your tab,” she said, and then she gave me a really intense look-over, from head to toe and back again. She smiled and nodded to herself, as if to say,
oh, yes, I like my new future daughter-in-law
.
I peered down at the black lace on my shirt. I didn't look nearly as trampy as I'd hoped, apparently.
All that approval felt uncomfortable, because I was used to new friends' parents being more wary. Maybe it was the lack of dreadlocks. Shouldn't the eyebrow piercing have given her some pause? Perhaps she hadn't noticed it, and I'd have to acquire a bigger one, all the better to put parents on edge.
One of the other women in the drawing circle had thick, red dreadlocks, accented by several gold bands.
That must take hours to dry
, I thought, and I gave her the secret dreadlocks nod. In my mind, I was still a club member, but without my own dreads, I must have seemed suspiciously friendly, because for the rest of the night, she avoided eye contact.
I was so nervous about being near Cooper's mother, on top of not being able to sketch with charcoal, that I forgot Cooper was about to walk out naked. When I saw the pink blur of his nude body out of the edge of my vision, a super-embarrassing case of The Awkward Giggles threatened to erupt from my throat, but I managed to overcome them, clamping down with sheer terror.
I'd never seen a full-grown man naked, not in real life, let alone a man I was interested in romantically.
Every one of the cells in my body waved their little cell arms over their heads and ran around like lunatics, yelling
naked, naked, naked!
Cooper
stepped up on the low-table platform, keeping his back and his (OMG!) nice-looking butt cheeks toward me. I kept my head down and pushed back the cuticles on every one of my fingernails while surreptitiously watching Cooper out of the edge of my vision.
You could describe the feeling I was having as
surreal
. Also appropriate: exciting, titillating, hyper-aware, and—the ever-popular-catch-all-description—awkward.
Seated to my left, Mrs. Cooper—his mother!—gave us a quick rundown on nude sketching etiquette, for the benefit of “the new artists.” Everybody turned to look pointedly at me, except dreadlocks girl, who was eating up Cooper with her hungry eyes.
Mrs. Cooper explained how nudity in the context of art was a beautiful gift from the Creator, and that the art studio was a sacred place. She jumped up and rushed over to lock the classroom's door to make sure nobody barged in, or perhaps to slow my escape.
Cooper took his first pose, a dynamic one with one bicep flexed.
Mrs. Cooper said, “The model will hold a series of poses for one minute each, while we do quick sketches to loosen up.” She clapped her hands. “Quick, quick everyone, fifty seconds remaining!”
Everyone else was already sketching the first pose, but between my repressed giggles and the hand-sweat making the charcoal squirt out from between my fingers, I didn't get more than a little smudge on my paper for the first pose.
The minute ended and he changed poses, or so I surmised from the motion at the edge of my vision.
Mrs. Cooper reached over and lifted my chin up with her finger. “You have to see before you can create.”
Without moving, our nude model said, “Mom!”
The white-haired man said, “If I looked like this guy, I'd never wear clothes.”
“Enough commentary, Mr. Stryker,” Mrs. Cooper said. She leaned in to me and whispered, “Just start where you can. Or why don't you try the forearm or the calf, on its own.”
“I can do that?”
“Of course you can. You don't have to draw everything,” she said. “It's like life. Start somewhere, but start.”
Her quiet reassurance emboldened me enough to start drawing his calf muscle, and I'd gotten to the knee when Mrs. Cooper called out for the next change.
“Don't worry about detail,” she said, peeking over at my paper. “Try to capture the overall gesture, the sense of motion.”
For the next pose, I concentrated so hard, actual beads of sweat popped out on my forehead.
When the next pose happened, and he rotated to present me with his front, the irony—that I'd been thinking about getting to second base with the guy—was not lost on me. I didn't know what base nude modeling counted as, but we were there, and it was looking right at me with its one eye.
Trying to not look directly at the penis, I sketched the shape of his shoulder and arm. On my paper, the arm looked like a very aggressive penis. I stifled a scream of horror and flipped my sheet over to a fresh one.
Someone mentioned the room was awfully warm, and Mrs. Cooper said it was for the comfort of the model. What about me? With all the sweat coming out, I worried about fainting from dehydration.
Cooper, on the other hand, handled the situation like a professional, his face cool and calm. Jealously, I wondered exactly how many girls had seen him naked. I looked through him, to the girl with the dreadlocks, wondering what her sketches looked like, and if they were as adoring as her face as she gazed happily up at his nice buttocks and higher, at those little button-shaped dimples.
As I shaded the darkened part of his torso beneath his arm, smudging the charcoal with my fingertips the way some of the other artists were, the paper beneath my hand became his smooth, hot skin.
My left hand kept flying up to my mouth, caressing my lips, my knuckle becoming his lower lip as we kissed.
To my surprise, despite my wandering mind, my right hand continued to sketch. I wouldn't say the drawings were
great
, but for my first-ever nudes, they weren't bad.
After the warmup, Mrs. Cooper explained the model would take poses that were less dynamic, including some seated ones, that he could hold for longer periods.
Mrs. Cooper handed him a stool and a piece of paper towel to put on top as a barrier. He took a seat and did a longer pose, staying in the same position for a good twenty minutes while we all sketched.
The initial shock of his nudity had passed, and the whole situation started to feel normal. Someone got up to turn off a leaking tap in the kitchenette counter along one side of the classroom. I surveyed my surroundings and thought briefly about something other than Cooper's naked body. Was this a music room? Along the opposite wall was a collection of ukeleles and tambourines.
We took a short break, and Cooper put on a loosely-tied robe for the duration, which made him seem even more naked, if you can imagine.
As he was getting a glass of water, I went up to him and said, “You're so brave to do this.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Bleh, water. I could really use some sugar.”
“I'll go get you some,” I said, backing away. “Didn't we see a vending machine on the way in?”
He waved. “Bye? I'll get a grape soda.”
“Like they'll have grape!” I said as I ran out the door.
Out in the hallway, I breathed a sigh of relief. Seeing him in that robe, knowing he was naked underneath, had almost made my brain explode.
I located a vending machine, and—to my delight—it had grape Fanta soda, so I got one for each of us.
Mr. Stryker had followed me out and grumbled about the price of the things in the machine.
“Dude, that's kind of a cliché,” I said.
His face took on a charming look of surprise and new-found respect for me. “You're right. I shouldn't be such a curmudgeon.”
“I think curmudgeon is a totally valid personality type. But you should mix it up a little, throw in some surprises.”
“Young lady,” he said slowly. “Would you like to smoke some medical marijuana with me?”
“There you go,” I said, laughing and pointing at him with my free hand as I backed away with the cold cans in the other. “Just like that!”
He muttered, “But I wasn't joking.”
When I got back inside the classroom, I wanted to tell Cooper what Mr. Stryker had said, but he was talking to some of the other artists, so I slipped in, handed him the can of grape soda and returned to my seat.
Mrs. Cooper called the group together and we all got back to work.
She asked me, “Do you mind if I sketch your face? While you're drawing?”
I told her she could, and then regretted it, because I had to be careful to hold my head up so as not to get a double-chin from the side angle. I'm so vain!
At the end of the class, or session, or whatever it was, Mrs. Cooper gave me the charcoal drawing of my profile to keep. It was so lovely, I almost cried. Instead, she held her arms out and I gave her a big hug. I felt like we'd just been through something together.
Cooper disappeared to put his clothes on, covering all of his nice body. I don't want to sound shallow, but I had enjoyed looking at him, from his sparse, golden chest hair to his muscular calves, and everything in between. Remember how he'd alluded to a private-area piercing when we'd had dinner? That had been a joke, after all. I'd seen
everything
, and there were no piercings.
“Thanks for the refreshments,” he said as we walked out of the community center into the chilly night air.
“Thanks for the show!”
I expected him to say something cheeky to me on the way out to his car, but he was unusually quiet.
“Your mother seems nice,” I said.
“She's pretty cool,” he said. “She's self-taught, no formal schooling.”
We got in his car and I relaxed, enjoying the electric seat warmer. I held all my drawings on my lap, careful to not crinkle them.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“I'm fine,” he said.
When we pulled up to my house, he got out of the car and walked me to my front door. When he turned to leave, I said, “You're not coming in?”
“I'm tired.”
“But … you came over to see my art. My new Forgotten Creature.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and remained about four feet away from me. “Kinda late.”
“Anything else?”
He cleared his throat and said, “The other night ...”
“When I kissed you? I'm so sorry. That was so embarrassing. Total mistake. Not appropriate at all.” I pretended to shoot myself in my head with my finger as a gun.