My Latest Exposé

I was scanning Craigslist a couple weeks ago, sifting through the usual garbage, when I came across a post from a sculptor looking for a nude model. No prior experience necessary, just $15 an hour to sit very still, in the buff. When you've been out of work for several months, there are certain ads you respond to. This was one.

I called the guy and got the job. (It turns out the nude modeling sector of the job market is not very competitive.) We arranged the time and place. "Bring a robe," the sculptor said.

When I arrived at the sculptor's studio, his first words were: "Well, you're scrawnier than I'd hoped." A wealthy collector in Chicago had commissioned him to sculpt his partner, Tommy, and cast the piece in bronze. Since Tommy was six hours' drive away and often traveling, I would sit in for him, so the sculptor could get the anatomy just right. Tommy, I learned from a 10' x 5' poster board of 35 photos at all different angles, seemed to be cast in bronze already; he was fresh-faced and chiseled, as fine a specimen of mankind since Michelangelo's David. Looking at his biceps, which were the size of country hams, I felt scrawny indeed.

The sculptor directed me to a large Lazy Susan balanced on two benches. I stripped to my skivvies ("We'll ease into the nudity slowly," the sculptor told me) and climbed aboard. I had some initial trouble mastering the pose--right elbow perched on right knee, left knee bent and flat, left hand propped at back, chest puffed, face looking into the rising sun of some distant horizon. When I did get the pose, I began to suspect that Tommy and his partner had conspired to cut off the circulation to all my limbs. Within minutes I had lost feeling in my left butt cheek. I lost my left leg next, from the knee down. Then my right kneecap dammed the flow of my right arm's Basilic vein, which in the world of blood is about as critical as the Yangtze River. I was embarrassed to notice that behind me my left hand was slowly turning purple.

The physical discomfort was one thing, the mental anguish was something else entirely. If sitting for long periods of time almost nude in one position is a monastic exercise, I was becoming more enlightened by the minute. The biggest mental challenge came when I faced the clock on the wall. Minutes have never felt longer in all history. Fortunately the sculptor and I had plenty to talk about. No subject was off limits as he sat shaving small shards of clay from his sculpture of Tommy, which was 15 percent larger than life and made me feel punier still. Periodically he would spin me on my Lazy Susan to focus his energies on a different angle. Sometimes, as he smoothed lumps of clay onto Tommy's foot or shoulder, I had the peculiar sensation of receiving a vicarious massage. I grew very familiar with certain objects in his studio over time--I learned the names on paint tins, ladders, and an old hanging furnace (Sterling). By now I count a certain "Hercules" brand file cabinet among my closest friends.

I've worked 36.5 hours at this job so far, mostly in four-hour increments. (Any longer than that and I'm not sure I'd be able to fold myself into the car for the drive home.) It has been a unique mental and physical challenge, and I've learned a great deal about sculpture. I'd even say the job has given me a richer appreciation of art. I have never been to Florence to see the statue David, but when I do, a not-so-small part of me will be wondering how frequently Michelangelo gave his model bathroom breaks.