like I’ve come to the right place, I guess.
So I smile back
and tip my real hat to him.
The Old Guy Clears His Throat
And says, “I’m Professor Kolsnikovashian.
Say it with me now, people:
Kols - ni - ko -…
Oh, never mind.
Just call me Felix.”
Then he asks us
to introduce ourselves to each other,
starting with the girl who’s sitting next to me,
the one who quoted Jim Morrison
on the way in.
She tells us her name is Tallahassee,
but that we can call her Tessa.
The guy next to Tessa
introduces himself as Harrison.
But says he likes to be called Honk.
Then comes Susannah,
who asks us to call her Suze.
And Kennedy, who prefers Ned.
Then Jeremiah, who wants us to call him Jake.
And Katherine, who’d like to be known as Kat.
The girl next to Kat is Evelina,
but she goes by Eve.
And the girl next to Eve says, “My name’s Al.
But you can call me Alexandria.”
Which makes everyone laugh.
And we crack up again when the guy next to her,
who must be at least six foot four,
says, “My name’s Richard.
And I don’t care what you call me,
as long as you don’t call me
Big Dick.”
As the Laughing Dies Down
It dawns on me
that it’s my turn to introduce myself.
And that everyone in the room is staring at me,
waiting for me to say something clever.
My stomach does a somersault,
but then I find myself turning to Richard,
asking, “So just to clarify, then.
Is it, like, okay if we call you … Little Dick?”
And everyone cracks up—
even Richard.
A whole roomful of people
is laughing with me for once,
instead of at me.
Then, with a strange new power
surging all through me,
I say, “Oh, and my name’s Robin.
But you can call me … Robin.”
Which cracks everyone up again.
And I’m just sitting here,
feeling how amazing this feels,
when the door to the studio swings open
and a woman rushes in—
a woman so incredibly hot
that my heart starts bouncing
off the walls of my chest
like a puck in an air hockey game.
Felix Hurries Over to Greet Her
“Ah! Chelsea!” he says,
helping her off with her coat.
“Sorry I’m late, Felix.”
“On the contrary, my dear.
Your timing is exquisite.”
And that’s not the only thing that’s exquisite.
Now that Chelsea’s coat is off,
I can see that she’s wearing
a tight-fitting pale pink sweater
and jeans that cling to her like shrink-wrap.
Felix leads her over to a raised wooden platform
directly in front of my easel,
and she steps up onto it.
There’s nothing on the platform but an old couch,
a moth-eaten rug, and a space heater.
She sits down on the couch,
and starts to remove her boots.
“Chelsea will be our model today,” Felix says,
“And we’re lucky to have her—
she’s one of the very best.”
Our model…?
Now she pulls off her socks,
revealing feet that are as flawless as the rest of her.
Oh, I get it.
We’re gonna draw Chelsea’s feet…
But then—she slips out of her jeans
and pulls her sweater off over her head
and she isn’t wearing any underwear
and it all happens so fast that I feel like
I’ve been struck by a bolt of lightning
right between the legs.
Yikes!
My first impulse
is to avert my eyes.
My second
is to stare.
But after following
my first impulse for a while,
I decide it would be much more interesting
to follow my second one.
So I stop studying my feet,
and start studying Chelsea—
in all of her buck-naked glory …
I’m trying to pay attention
to what Felix is saying about discovering
the beauty of the human form.
I really am.
But I’m just a wee bit
distracted right now—
discovering the beauty of
Chelsea’s human form!
Felix Gives Each of Us a Stick of Charcoal
Then he asks Chelsea to begin
with five two-minute poses.
She swivels her hips,
reaches toward me with both arms,
then looks off sharply to the left.
Felix tells us to dive right in.
“Try to create the illusion,” he says,
“of movement and three-dimensionality.”
But it’s Chelsea’s third dimension
that’s getting to me,
that’s making it impossible for me
to even think about drawing right now.
So when the two-minute timer beeps,
my paper’s still as blank as the face of a liar.
Chelsea takes a new pose,
raising her arms over her head,
turning to gaze at a spot just past my right ear.
Felix wanders from easel to easel.
“Try to capture that complex mix
of skin, muscle, bone, and spirit …”
But I’m having a real hard time
just getting past skin—
the creamy, smooth, shimmery skin
that’s covering all three
of Chelsea’s delicious dimensions.
I Am One Sick Dude
I mean, this is supposed to be about art.
This is not supposed to be
about sex.
This is supposed to be
about discovering the beauty
of the human form.
Not about me sitting here
fantasizing sneaking off into the supply closet
with the model.
This is supposed to be about tracing
the contours of her body with my charcoal,
not with my fingers.
Besides.
I’ve got a girlfriend.
An unbelievably wonderful girlfriend.
I shouldn’t be having these kinds of thoughts
about another woman.
That’s not what this is supposed to be about.
When the Two-Minute Timer Beeps Again
Chelsea weaves her hands
into the tumble of blonde waves
clipped up at the nape of her neck,
and juts a perfectly curved hip
in my direction.
Suddenly, Felix is standing right next to me.
“This line here …” he says,
sketching a vertical mark
onto my embarrassingly blank paper,
“this line dividing the breasts is the sternum.”
Then he crosses that first mark
with a horizontal one.
“And this line here is the clavicle,” he says.
“Now, see how Chelsea’s left breast
looks higher than her right one from this angle?”
“Sure …” I say, even though I don?
??t.
Because I’m way too busy
staring at Chelsea’s breasts
to bother noticing if one of them
looks higher than the other.
Felix glances over at me.
“Do you ever lie about anything, Robin?”
“I… uh … I…” I stammer.
“Is that a trick question?”
Felix chuckles.
Then he says, “When you notice one breast
is higher than the other—
lie, and make it even higher.
Human beings tend to be conservative,
so if you lie, you’ll probably be closer to the truth.”
“I see what you mean,” I say.
And what’s weird is, I sort of do.
“Now, just relax and get started, Robin.
Coax the images onto the page.
And, whatever you do—
don’t think.”
Don’t Think?
Okay, then.
I won’t think …
I won’t think …
I won’t think …
I’ll just press my charcoal to the page, like this,
and begin by drawing Chelsea’s …
by drawing Chelsea’s … arm!
Yeah. I’ll start with her arm.
And I won’t think about the fact
that she’s totally naked.
Totally naked
and standing just a few feet away from me.
I won’t think about how good she smells.
Or about how full her lips are.
Or about how it would feel
to run my hands all over her naked body.
And I won’t think about Sophie.
Or about how it would feel to run my hands
all over her naked body.
Or about what she’d look like with no clothes on.
Or about what she’ll say
when she sees the picture
that I’m drawing of Chelsea
right now!
Is My Nose Growing?
Sophie’s
eyebrows do a high jump.
“Whoa!” she says. “You told me
she was naked, but I didn’t know she was
this naked!” I laugh nervously. “Neither did
I,” I say. “I was pretty shocked when she took
off all her clothes.” Sophie studies the drawing.
Then asks to see the next one. And then the next.
“These are good, Robin. Really good. And what’s so
neat is that you got better and better with each drawing
you did.” There are lots of sketches to show Sophie
because after the two-minute poses, Felix had Chelsea do a bunch of longer
ones. “So, how did it feel to draw a nude model?” Sophie asks. “Oh, you know,”
I say. “It felt… artistic. Like it wasn’t sexual or anything.”
Suddenly, I hear Felix’s voice in my
head: “Do you ever lie about
anything, Robin?” And that’s when
my cheeks start sizzling. Sophie
folds her arms across her chest;
then she grins at me
and says, “You are
soooooooooo busted.”
I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Tired of This:
Of letting
my fingers
swirl across the silky skin
on Sophie’s hands
while she swirls hers
across mine,
lacing
and unlacing,
in this kind of floaty,
fingertip dance …
both of us practically
in a trance.
At School on Wednesday Morning
I’m just
cruising along,
thinking about Sophie
and about how much I love her
and about how awesome it is
that she loves me …
thinking about my drawing class
and about how great Chelsea’s body is
and about how I can hardly wait to draw it again …
just cruising along,
thinking that my life might actually
be looking up …
when I walk into the boys’ bathroom
and find all these real sick things
scrawled across every flat surface—
things about Sophie
and what she supposedly likes to do to me,
and to all the boys at school.
Seeing my name written
on the bathroom wall
is nothing new.
But seeing Sophie’s name up there
makes me feel like there’s a writhing mass of eels
churning in my stomach.
On My Way to Lunch
I catch sight of her
heading into the girls’ bathroom,
so I walk over to the water fountain to wait for her.
But a couple of seconds later,
I see Rachel and Grace rushing out of the bathroom,
their faces so white they could pass for mimes.
I duck out of sight around the corner
before they notice me,
but I can still hear everything:
“God,” Rachel says.
“Who could have written all that stuff?”
“How the heck am I supposed to know?” Grace says.
“Did you see the look on Fee’s face
when she saw it?” Rachel says.
“I wanted to say something to her, but…”
“I wanted to say something to her, too,” Grace says.
“Like: ’What did you expect, girl?
Date a loser, turn into a loser.’”
“Oh, come on,” Rachel says. “Fee’s not a loser.
It’s just that… just that her brain’s been …
it’s been temporarily taken over by … by aliens!”
“Take. Me. To. Your. Loser,” Grace says,
in a space-creature-monotone voice.
And both of them crack up.
When Sophie Finally Comes Out of the Bathroom
Her eyes are all puffy
I tell her that I heard Rachel and Grace talking—
that I’m sure they weren’t the ones who did it.
But it doesn’t seem to do much
to improve her mood.
And when I ask her if maybe she’d like
to skip the cafeteria today,
maybe try eating outside in the bleachers instead,
where we can have some privacy,
she doesn’t tell me not to be ridiculous.
She doesn’t shout, “Outlaws rule!”
She just nods,
without saying anything.
And my heart grinds to a halt.
Lunch in the Bleachers Is Okay, I Guess
Cold enough to freeze a person’s butt off.
But okay.
Even though we’re both feeling darker
than the sky scowling overhead.
Still, it’s a relief to be together
when no one else is around.
We joke a little.
Eat a little.
Even kiss a little.
But these kisses are different.
They’re sad, somehow.
Like echoes of kisses.
We hold hands a little.
And talk a little.
But it’s like we’re having
one conversation with our mouths
and an entirely different conversation
with our eyes.
As Soon as School Gets Out
Sophie runs up to me at the goalpost.
And when we kiss,
her lips on mine are like CPR—
breathing the life right back into me …
When we finally pull apart,
Sophie says, “We can’t let them beat us, Robin.
They’ll get tired
of it, tired of us.
And then they’ll stop.”
“What makes you so sure?” I ask.
But before she even has a chance to answer,
I say, “Wait. Let me guess—
sometimes you just know things, right?”
Sophie grins at me and punches my arm.
“Exactly,” she says.
“Well,” I say, “You’re not the only one
who knows things sometimes.”
“Oh yeah?” she says. “What do you know?”
“I know what I like …” I say,
pulling her to me
for another kiss.
Then We Head Straight Over to My House
Because both my parents
will still be at work.
As soon as we get inside the front door,
we’re all over each other.
This is what I’ve been waiting for the whole day.
This is what kept me going.
This is why I could stand all that sick stuff
that happened at school—
because I knew
that this was coming.
And now that it’s finally here,
everything else disappears.
There’s nothing but
Sophie’s lips locked to mine …
Sophie’s arms around my waist …
Sophie’s hips pressing …
Nothing but
Sophie … Sophie … Sophie …
Then All of a Sudden
We hear the faint sound of my parents
singing along with Mick Jagger to “Satisfaction,”
blaring on the car radio.
Oh, no!
They’re home early from Happy Time,
the preschool that they run.
Which means Sophie and I
have to put an untimely end
to our own happy time.
We dash into the living room, switch on the TV,
and fling ourselves down
onto opposite ends of the couch,
trying to look all innocent and un-mussed-up
and like our hearts aren’t thumping
faster than jackhammers.
And a second later,
when Mom and Dad walk into the room,
Sophie and I appear to be riveted
to an episode of Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Here’s What I’d Like to Know
How come whenever
I’m watching TV with Sophie,
and my parents
happen to walk into the room,