Model Student 1: Mural

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One

It was only October and college was a bust. My best friend from high school was excited and having a great time—on the other coast. For me, it was depressing. I wasn’t going to last until Thanksgiving.

It was my own fault, I suppose. I could have gone to the University of Nebraska and been an art major. Instead, I was blown away when The Pacific College of the Arts and Design, a small and exclusive college on the West Coast that was my ‘reach’ school, accepted me and I decided to attend. Not only that, but they’d offered me a financial aid package that meant I might escape college only about 30 grand in debt instead of 60. My portfolio was weak, but I’d managed to sell it well enough that the school actively recruited me and I fell for it. Now I was regretting it.

It wasn’t very intellectually challenging. The school didn’t offer a liberal arts BA; I was in a Bachelor of Fine Arts program. I had enjoyed the academic classes in high school and did well in both AP English and AP Math. But my only pseudo-liberal arts course in college was Art History taught by a boring old fossil. It was a three-hour class that met twice a week. We walked into class, he turned off the lights, turned on a slide projector, and everyone went to sleep.

The Fundamentals class was no better. We were ‘taught’ all the menial tasks of studio art. That meant six hours a week of stretching canvases, doing paint-overs, and scrubbing the studio floors. Over and over. Freshmen were pretty much the slaves of everyone else in the department. As far as I could tell there wasn’t even a sophomore who cleaned his own brushes. How I managed to get both Studio Fundamentals and Visual Concepts the same year is beyond me. I guess it’s because I got a pass from taking English Comp because of my high school AP scores, so they moved Concepts up a year.

The one bright spot in my schedule was my three-hour elective lab on Fridays in Figure Drawing. It combined basic anatomy drawing and live model drawing. There was a lot of sketching skeletons in the first three weeks, but then we had our first live model. Don’t get excited. It was the professor’s mother who came in and sat for a portrait sketch. In other words, she sat in a rocking chair and knitted for three hours while we drew her face and hands. The good part was that she had a really interesting face and you could tell she’d done this before because she really did hold a single expression for each of the posing sessions. Of course, she had the same expression on her face during her breaks.

Three weeks into school I had my golden birthday. That’s when your age matches the day you’re born on. I was 19 on September 19th. I had a phone call that night with my folks and about a dozen text messages with my best friend, Beth, out East. Nobody else knew—or cared. Whoopee.

Classes continued to drag on. I built frames, sized canvases, sorted fabric, wood, and metal scraps into bins, helped unload a massive rock from a truck, and burned my elbow on the kiln. Everything was crappy, including the weather. It was dark when I went to my first class and dark when I got back to my dorm room. I hardly ever heard from Beth anymore. Too busy. I called my folks every week, but they kept asking how it was going and I didn’t want to tell them.

The high point of my week was going to a local racquet club to play racquetball. Dad had insisted that I have some physical exercise while I was at college. I was going to an art school. There wasn’t even a gym. Racquetball was the best I could do, and I liked playing. Still, that was only a few hours a week and I was tempted to quit that, too, if it wasn’t for the one hottie that I sometimes got to play against. She was some kind of national champion, so she creamed me on a regular basis, but just watching her work up a sweat was usually good for keeping my spirits and other things up another couple of hours—or until I got back to the dorm.

It wasn’t until late October that we got our first nude model in Figure Drawing. We knew something was up when we came into the studio that Friday and the temperature was about ten degrees higher than normal. Professor McIntyre explained that this was for the comfort of the model. I was sweating. The model was a woman about forty years old, who I recognized from sketches that decorated the walls from years past. She was a little overweight, but I guess attractive enough. Not enough to be beating off to her image that night. I looked around the studio briefly when she had taken her first pose. None of the other students seemed all that enthused about drawing her either.

Of course, all the other students in the class were girls. Five of the twenty of us were freshmen. This model certainly wasn’t showing any of them anything they weren’t already intimately familiar with. We drew and I actually left with a couple pretty decent sketches. There were nineteen other women in the class I’d rather have been looking at naked.

On the way out of class, three of my favorites who I had lunch with on many Fridays fell into step on either side of me. I could tell something was up.

“Well, did you get an eyeful?” Sandra asked.

“That wasn’t your first time seeing a naked woman, was it?” Melody joined in.

“Didn’t she just get you all hot?”

“Did you sprout a woody? You stayed behind your easel the whole class,” Amy asked.

“Oh come on, you guys. She’s a model. Who’s going to get turned on while they’re drawing?”

“Don’t tell me you aren’t interested in women!” Melody sounded shocked.

“All right,” Sandra rejoined, “we’ll have to hold this conversation after we’ve had a male model. It’s no fun teasing someone who won’t get embarrassed.” Actually, at that mention I was embarrassed. I was—shall we say—sexually inexperienced, but I wasn’t gay. All my life, though, people just assumed that if you were a male artist, you must be gay. Granted, I was sensitive, quiet, and a bit shy around girls, but I was definitely interested in them. Melody, especially. She was about 5'2" and nicely shaped. I’d done a few covert sketches of her when I was supposed to be drawing hands or feet of a model. Back in my room, I’d even enhanced a few of them into imagined nudes. I thought about the shape of her breasts and the size of her nipples. It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed when they hardened under her t-shirt. Women don’t seem to have any more control over the headlights than guys have over their cocks.

Talking to her was something altogether different. I was fine as long as we were just palling around the cafeteria or the studio, but I’d never be able to ask her out. The few times I’d been with her without another friend, I hadn’t been able to say two words. Besides, I’d heard she had a big scary boyfriend. I was relieved that Sandra and Amy were always around. The three amigas. I don’t think I could have been alone with Melody and survived.

It took me all of two weeks at school to figure out why I’d been recruited so aggressively by the admissions office. I was the only guy in studio arts who wanted to study painting instead of animation. At first I’d just thought it was weird that I had a Figure Drawing class with nineteen girls and me. It’s the same as when I was in high school. Guy in art? Of course, he must be gay, right?

I didn’t go home over Thanksgiving break. It’s over 1,500 miles and we aren’t rich. I ate turkey loaf in the cafeteria. We still hadn’t seen a male nude in Figure Drawing. It wasn’t like we had a lot of body builders in the art school lining up to model. In high school it was like a big initiation for the jocks to model for the senior art class after they turned eighteen. Pay was never mentioned. School rules said the guys had to wear jockstraps. Girls had to wear bikinis.

The first Friday of December, we were finally expecting this older guy, who’d done one of our portrait sessions, to show up as our first male nude.

Dr. Bychkova, my art history professor stopped me in the hall before class to ask about my progress on some stupid paper I was supposed to write, so I was late walking into the studio.

The semicircle of easels had been pulled a little closer around the posing platform and every single one of my nineteen classmates was in position waiting. Don’t ever believe that women aren’t as curious about the opposite sex as men. They’d been waiting for this day all semester. Even Amy had managed a spot near the center, and she’s definitely gay. I got the last position at the end of the semicircle where, if I was lucky, I’d see a profile of the model’s head and one butt cheek. It would be a great drawing. Ha ha. Professor McIntyre came into the class and walked to the dais. She gave a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Mr. Johnson (yeah that was his real name) called in sick. I just got the word from the office. Since we don’t have a model, we’ll work from a manikin for today.”

“No fair!” The girl who blurted out the sentiments of all the girls in the class was Sandra, and her easel was dead center. She’d probably come in twenty minutes early to get that spot. But she wasn’t the only one grumbling. There was a general dissent in the class.

“What can I do?” Prof asked. “I can’t materialize a model out of thin air. Believe me, this class would be a lot easier to teach if I could.”

“Let Tony model.” I almost swallowed the pencil I had between my teeth as I was fastening paper to my easel. Me? Who made that suggestion? I looked across the easels and saw Melody grinning broadly.

“That suggestion is flawed. Tony hasn’t asked or agreed to model. If he had, it is still inappropriate to expose a classmate. I’d say the same thing if you had suggested a woman. And it would be unfair to Tony to spend three hours posing and not drawing.”

“I don’t mind.” Was that my voice that just spoke? Geez! What was I doing? Professor McIntyre looked at me. I felt the heat rise in my face and knew I was red. But, shit! Melody had just asked to see me naked. “Um… I mean… I’d rather not draw pictures of a manikin, anyway. I assume that by ‘being exposed,’ you mean my privates and I’ve got a jockstrap in my bag. I could wear that.” I was getting redder the longer I talked. I’d just told a class full of girls that I was carrying a jockstrap!

“You just happen to have an athletic supporter in your bag when you attend this class, Tony?”

“I usually go play racquetball after class on Fridays. It’s my gym bag.”

“And do you have your racquet with you as well?”

“Yes, ma’am.” There was total silence in the room as Professor McIntyre thought about it. You could feel the tension from the girls.

“Are there any students here who would feel uncomfortable having Tony model for the class while wearing an athletic supporter? Anyone at all in any way? Please be absolutely free to speak up. If it would make you embarrassed to have your classmate up here, say so. This is an art class. Art is not necessarily sexuality. The purpose of this class is to study the figure, not to embarrass or titillate. Please say now if this proposition is not okay with you.” I almost raised my hand, but I’d committed. I wasn’t going to back down now. No one in the class said a word. If I had to guess, I’d say they were all holding their breath.

“Okay. Tony, if you are sure you are okay with this, then please step behind the drape and get ready. Bring your racquet out with you. I’d like to see some action poses.”

Action poses. Right.

While I stripped off behind the drape and put on my jock I could hear Professor McIntyre continue to lecture the girls in the class quietly. She made it very clear that if they could not maintain a professional attitude when “the model” was on stage that class would be immediately dismissed.

I’d worked with nude models before. We had a pretty progressive art program in high school and students who were over eighteen years old were invited to a weekly sitting that was technically not on school grounds, but still had ‘club’ status. It was held at the local art store where several art classes were held. The owner brought a model in from Omaha once a week. None of us knew who he or she was and we seldom saw the same person twice. But I knew what needed to be done.

When Prof asked if I was ready, I took a deep breath and croaked out the word “yes.” I walked out onto the dais and kept my eyes focused on Prof, intentionally not looking at anyone else in the class.

“Tony, I presume this is your first time as a model. Keep in mind that you need to make sure you are comfortable in your pose and can hold it for fifteen minutes. We’ll change poses then, and again at half an hour. At forty-five minutes, you get a fifteen-minute break. Don’t do anything that forces you to hold a strenuous pose. No balancing on your toes or one leg or anything. Let’s start with a common racquetball pose. You’re waiting for the serve. Feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, racquet in front held in both hands, facing straight forward.” I had no idea that Prof knew so much about racquetball.

I’m not particularly self-conscious about my body—most of it. It’s not like I’m ripped or anything, but at nineteen, I’m not overweight either. Sometimes I even manage to play racquetball twice in a week if I can escape from homework. So I guess I was in pretty good shape. Posing like I was waiting for the serve was an easy thing to do. The model platform was raised about a foot-and-a-half above the floor so artists could look over their drawing pads and see the model. That meant that if I looked straight ahead, I was looking over the tops of my classmates and didn’t have to make eye contact with any of them. I reminded myself that they were just a roomful of artists and not nineteen sexy female classmates.

I just stood there in the pose Prof had dictated. In my mind’s eye I built the end wall of the court and could almost see where the ball would hit. When her timer went off at fifteen minutes, I found myself in a Zen-like trance. I don’t know where I went while my body posed, but as soon as Prof directed me into a backhand position, I returned there. I held my racquet in my hand in one position and could imagine what it would look like on paper. I could see the strings in their weave and the tension in my own muscles. I knew that if I left the class right now, I could draw the same pose. The class flew by. Before I knew it, Prof told me to go back and get dressed. When I came out five minutes later, the girls all applauded and said thank you. All told, it was pretty cool.

With racquetball after lunch and getting to play against Lissa, the cute champion, I didn’t get depressed again until I woke up Saturday morning.

Two

I packed my whole dorm room up with neatly labeled boxes to ship home. I hadn’t told my folks yet that I wasn’t coming back to PCAD. I hated it.

If anything, Christmas break was even more depressing than my first semester had been. My best friend didn’t come home. Apparently her parents had arranged to have Christmas in Hawaii and she flew straight back to the East Coast. I hung out with a couple of guys from high school, but all I could see was how much we had become different. I guess that’s one thing about high school; no matter how individual you are, you all share twelve years of common experiences. Suddenly, you’ve all gone to college or to jobs and your paths diverge. I was a little envious of them because they all talked like they loved what they were doing.

Dad and I played racquetball at the YMCA a couple times. That had always been something we did as father and son. I really enjoyed it and Dad told me he thought I was really improving. I guess I did mention that Lissa kept me sharp so I wouldn’t embarrass myself.

The UPS truck brought my boxes the day after Christmas. Great. I was having a Boxing Day. Mom asked me about them, but I just said that I didn’t need this stuff at school. I don’t know why I kept avoiding telling them I wasn’t going back. I spent my time in my room writing personal essays for my transfer application to UNeb. It sucked that they don’t let anyone know until June or July. By that time, I could be in the Navy. Navy sounded like a safe bet since there wasn’t any water around Omaha.

I wandered, too. It was cold and there was a foot of snow on the fields. I trudged out to some of my favorite places to draw and did my best to capture the cold, desolate feeling while keeping my gloves on and mopping my constantly running nose on my sleeve. I realized my eyes were running a lot, too, but I blamed that on the cold wind.

I was supposed to be at PCAD to become an artist. I unpacked my drawings from first semester to show my appreciative parents, but as I looked at them I saw what was happening to me. The technique was good. I was learning a lot about how to control shading and contour. In fact, compared to my earlier drawings and paintings, they were far superior. But they lacked any sense of emotion. When I looked at them I thought a computer could have drawn it just as well.

Winter break was showing me something else. I didn’t want to live at home. I’d missed my parents so much while I was in Seattle, but now that we were together all day every day, I was going stir crazy. I’d never make it till spring if I stayed here. Two days before my flight was scheduled to return me to Seattle, I packed up my boxes and took them to the UPS office. I didn’t ship as many back as I’d brought in the fall. I needed clothes, art supplies, and my racquetball equipment. Two boxes, plus the suitcase I’d carry on with me. Yeah. I’d decided that even another semester at Hell U would be better than staying holed up in Nebraska for the rest of the winter.

Grades came out and I hadn’t done badly, even in the class I thought I was failing. After the break, I thought I was ready for another term. “Never make a life-changing decision before you go on vacation,” my dad had said when I was trying to choose a college in the first place. It seemed like good advice and I was almost looking forward to the challenges of the next semester.

It took almost two weeks before I was thinking about quitting and heading back to Nebraska again. I didn’t fit in this city. It was constantly gray and drizzling rain. I couldn’t imagine ever being warm and dry again. Even though Nebraska was colder, it was bright and sunny and there would be a fire in the fireplace at night.

I had no friends to speak of. I didn’t want to spend my time hanging out with the stoners in the dorm, so I was spending most of my time alone. Or in the gym. I saw a lot of my classmates with their noses up against their iPhones or playing on some game machine. I wanted to beat on something and a racquetball was pretty safe. Most of the time it didn’t beat back.

Sure there were people I saw every day. There were even a few that I had lunch with regularly. Melody, Sandra, and Amy seemed to catch up with me in the cafeteria more frequently than just our Friday class together. I didn’t really hang out with anyone, though. Back in high school, at least there were a few people I considered close friends. Here at art school, we were all outcaste. Even from each other. I never saw anyone smile.

The second semester studio class was Figure Painting. The old guy, Mr. Johnson, came in twice to model. Maybe it gave the girls a thrill to stare at a real live cock dangling in front of a guy. God, he was hung. I fervently hoped the girls didn’t think that was how guys were supposed to look. They’d be really disappointed someday. I played racquetball at least three times a week now and just battered the hell out of the ball in the one session I where I practiced alone.

We were told the last half of our Figure Painting class would be spent primarily working on a final project. When we got the assignment, our lunch table was buzzing with brainstorms.

“I know what you’re doing,” Melody taunted me. “Something with drapes. Probably watercolor.”

“Don’t forget the nude and the dog,” I said. “It is Figure Painting. But, yeah. There will be drapes.”

“I’m going to develop that sketch I did of the hippy chick model in highlights against a dark background,” Sandra said.

“She was cool,” said Amy. “I might do one of her. In fact, I’d love to do her.” She got a dreamy look on her face and we all stared at her. Yeah, lesbians get lovesick, too. She realized we were all staring. “I just don’t know what positi… which pose to do. What about you, Melody?”

“Uh… I was thinking something classical. Like maybe an oil of The Discus Thrower or something.”

“Who’s going to model?”

“I’ll probably just go to the museum and find a sculpture,” Melody sighed. I was sure she had blushed. Well, old man Johnson was sure no model for that kind of painting. Maybe The Dick Thrower. We all had different places to be after lunch and I grabbed my gym bag to go play racquetball. I was suddenly aware that Melody hadn’t gone with the others. She was still standing beside me.

“Is it hard to play racquetball?” she asked.

“Um… Not really—at least not the basics.” Why was it so hard to talk to her without everyone else around? “If you get to competitive levels, there’s as many nuances as there are in tennis. Anybody can play, but there are really only a few that reach Wimbledon.”

“Do you compete?”

“Every match is a competition. When you play at a gym, sometimes you are playing with guys—or gals—who are a lot better than you are. Sometimes, you’re the better one. You learn from masters and teach novices. To answer your question fairly, I was in a few YMCA tournaments back in high school, but haven’t done anything but gym tournaments and individual matches since I got here. I do it for fun.”

“Would you mind if I watched sometime?”

“No. Just let me know and I’ll get you a club pass.”

“Today?” I jerked around to look at her. Like always, her auburn hair and strikingly lavender eyes just took my breath away. Had she really just invited herself along with me to the gym?

“Sure. If you want to.”

“Great! Tell me what the basic rules are while we walk over so I can understand what’s going on.”

I told her all about the game rules. Racquetball uses all six surfaces of an enclosed room. That meant people who watched the game only saw the match through the back glass wall. I also told her that if she got bored she was free to go—she didn’t have to wait for me. I went to change and showed up at the court at my appointed time.

I’d forgotten that my opponent today was Lissa, a nice lady and a fierce competitor. Okay. Not just a nice lady. A gorgeous lady. An object-of-my-fantasies lady. A sooo-far-out-of-my-league lady. What a day to have Melody watching. I was going to get my ass handed to me on a silver platter. I was a little self-conscious about having someone I knew watching me—especially someone as cute and nice as Melody—but when Lissa’s first serve went sailing past me, I got focused fast. It didn’t take long before I was fighting for my life on the court and forgot all about my spectator.

“Wow! That was something else,” Melody said as we exited through the low door from the court.

“Oh! You’re still here.”

“Who’s your friend, Tony?”

“Lissa, this is my classmate Melody. Melody, this is Lissa. She’s a champion.”

“That was really amazing. Tony didn’t mention that he was playing a woman. A really beautiful woman.”

“Thank you. It’s nice to meet you, too, Melody. Tony, you’re showering here, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I like to get a steam and a hot tub after a match. You?”

“Yes. I thought maybe your date would like a steam and soak, too. It’s better than waiting out here alone for you.”

“We’re not…” I began.

“Thanks but I didn’t bring a towel or anything,” Melody jumped in.

“No problem,” Lissa said. “We’ll get you a guest pass. Everything you need is in the locker room.” It was pretty clear that Lissa wasn’t taking no for an answer and as I headed for the showers, Lissa and Melody headed for the ladies’ locker room. That made showering a little embarrassing. Every time I thought about the two of them lounging around the women’s steam room or spa, I started to get hard. Getting hard is not something I wanted to do in the men’s locker room. I sought shelter in the dense steam until I regained control of myself, then took a cold shower, and rushed to my locker to get dressed.

I needn’t have hurried. I was the one waiting outside the locker room when Melody and Lissa finally exited. They were laughing like old friends and Lissa gave Melody a hug before she left. I stood there staring at Melody. She was wearing the same clothes she had at school, but apparently Lissa had helped apply a little makeup after their shower. The woman I was looking at was heart-stoppingly beautiful.

“She is so cool!” Melody laughed. “She told me all about competing and her home and her two kids. Did you know she’s a model? I mean a professional model!”

“Wait. Lissa has kids?”

“Don’t you know anything? Yeah. Damon is six and Drew is four. She sure is in great shape for a mom, don’t you think?”

“No kidding.”

“You know what else? I asked her if she’d model for our class.”

“No way!”

“She said yes! I’m going to give her number to Professor McIntyre.”

“I’ll die in that class. Lissa? Really?” I said. I was feeling cramped in my pants already.

“Let’s get dinner at Dixie’s,” Melody said. I looked my question at her. She had the good grace to blush. “Sorry. I suppose you’ve got a date. Never mind.”

“No! I mean… It’s Friday night. Don’t you have a date?”

“Duh! If I had a date, I wouldn’t have asked you out.”

“You asked me out?”

“What? I need to be more formal? Tony, would you go out to dinner with me tonight? I know this nice barbecue joint called Dixie’s. It’s nothing fancy, but if you’re not busy I’d love to go out with you. There. Is that better?” Melody was turning bright pink, and so was I.

“No. I mean, no, you didn’t have to be formal. Yes, I’d love to go to dinner with you. It just surprised me. I didn’t… Wow! I thought you had a serious boyfriend.”

“Vicious rumor. Besides, I just want to talk to you… you know… about our final project.” Oh. So that was it. It wasn’t really a going out type date. It was kind of a study date. Oh well. I could live with that. I just needed to keep the images of Melody and Lissa in the hot tub out of my head.

We didn’t bother going back to our dorms first. We just changed directions and walked the six blocks over to Dixie’s. We were early enough that it wasn’t too crowded yet and we split a full rack of ribs that was to die for. I was so caught off guard that I didn’t have time to worry about whether I could talk to Melody. It just happened. We had barbecue sauce up to our elbows and were laughing so much that I didn’t realize until we were leaving that we hadn’t talked about the final project at all.

“Uh, did you want to talk about the final project?” I asked when we were still a couple blocks from the dorms.

“Oh yeah. I almost forgot.” Melody was quiet for a long time and I decided that maybe the project was just an excuse to go have a good time together after all. When she finally spoke it was in a rush and it almost blew me away. “Would you be my model? I want to develop one of the sketches of you playing racquetball into my final project and I’d like you to pose for me.”

“You mean…?” I made a vague gesture at my clothes.

“Yeah. Nude,” she said. She was definitely blushing now. “Oh god. This is so dumb. We never had male models in my high school art program. Mr. Johnson is the only naked male I’ve ever seen. This is so difficult. It’s just to pose.”

“Yeah, well, I mean… You might not like what you see any better.” Like I said, I’m not particularly self-conscious about my body… except for one thing. I’m hung like a hamster. Everything is functional, and according to the books I’ve read, I’m completely average when I’m erect. But when I’m just carrying it around, it shrivels up like a prune. The whole time I was posing for the class last semester, I scarcely created a bulge in my jock. And there was no way that Melody wouldn’t be comparing me to Johnson’s johnson. “I’d like to, but…”

“I’ll trade,” she squeaked. “I’ll model for you with all your drapery hanging around if you’ll model for me.”

“Sure… um… Wow! That’s… really fair. Um… I don’t think Professor McIntyre will let us do that in the studio, though,” I said. Who was I kidding? If Melody Anderson was willing to get naked for me, I’d rent a room somewhere if I needed to. “We’ll just have to find our own makeshift studio. You’d really do it?”

“I’ve had it in mind ever since the day you posed for the class. I hope you don’t think I’m stalking or something. It’s just for the art… uh… you know.”

“Yeah. Just for the art.”

Three

I left the planning to Melody. She said she had an idea and would let me know when we could work. In the meantime, true to her word, Lissa showed up in our studio the first Friday morning in February.

Sweet Jesus! I had never seen anything so incredible in my life. The woman who regularly beat me to a pulp playing racquetball at least once a week was there in front of me stark naked and looking like a goddess come to life. Lissa is about five-ten, the same as me. She’s a real athlete with an amazing rack that just plain doesn’t move, even without her sports bra. She’s blonde up top and there was no way to tell about below because she was shaved smooth. When she was introduced, Prof said something about a real atelier model in our midst.

I didn’t quite have a six pack, but Lissa did. Not the gross bodybuilder kind, but the kind that was so flat and firm that you could see her muscles ripple beneath her skin. I knew from playing racquetball that she was graceful, but as a nude model in front of our class, she was like a panther stalking and then freezing with her muscles quivering, ready to pounce.

Yeah, I acted all professional and everything, but as soon as class was over and she stepped behind the curtain, I looked at what I’d drawn and sprouted an instant boner. When I looked at some of the girls, they looked a little glassy-eyed, too. After class, Lissa stopped to talk to Melody and when I caught up she turned and smiled at me.

“We’re still on for this afternoon, right?” she asked.

“Huh?” Oh my god! We’re going to play racquetball this afternoon. “Yeah. See you later.”

“See you later? Don’t tell me you have a date with that… that… that goddess!” Amy squealed as we walked into the cafeteria.

“We play racquetball every week,” I said meekly.

“Yeah, sure. She bats your balls around, I’ll bet,” Sandra smirked.

“Really.”

“Yeah, really. I’ll be there to chaperone,” Melody said. I looked at her with my mouth open. She was coming to watch us play again? Since the last time she came to the club and we went out to dinner, we hadn’t managed to get together once. What can I say? Stupid school. As boring as most of my classes were, it was still a ton of work. Fundamentals class had advanced from hours of stretching canvases to hours of prepping a huge mural wall that the instructor was doing for the school. It was listed as lab, but it was just grunt work.

I bet that when Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, it was probably him and about thirty freshman students who mixed paint, plaster, and ran errands for him. If he was working, they were working. That’s how the fundamentals professor was. We’d spent most of the past four weekends working or on call for hours to do the grunt work. It’s the only other class I have with Melody, but I didn’t see her once when I was working.

Melody and I got to the club and she had a guest pass waiting for her. She headed straight for the ladies’ locker room. I went to change and headed for the court. When I got there, Lissa was already showing Melody the proper stance for receiving a serve. She had her arms wrapped around Melody’s waist to reach her hands on the racquet. It was sexy as hell.

“Tony, serve a couple of lobs for Melody. Don’t go crazy. I promised I’d show her the fundamentals of play today and then we’ll have our game.”

“I don’t mind,” I answered truthfully. Melody was dressed in a tank top over a sports bra and a pair of short shorts that showed the lower crease of her butt. And every time I looked at Lissa, I still saw her naked in my mind’s eye with her perfect breasts and bullet-like nipples and her smoothly shaved pussy. Of course, they were both behind me when I served, but I quickly backpedaled to give Melody and Lissa room to return the ball. I was still watching the two follow through when the ball hit me in the chest. Melody screeched and asked if I was all right. Lissa just rolled her eyes at me and threw me the ball to serve again.

We worked like that for about fifteen or twenty minutes and then Lissa said it was time for her to get my attention back on the ball, so a very winded Melody left the court to watch as Lissa worked my ass off chasing her serves from one side of the court to the other. I was amazed that I actually managed to score a few points; she really took me to school.

“Mercy!” I finally yelled, falling on my knees after the last point. “I’m no match for you today.”

“You are never a match for me,” Lissa laughed. “That’s for having your head in a different room this afternoon. Seriously, Tony, you’re the only real competition I have here so I need you to have your head in the game.” She gave me one of the most evil looks I have ever seen as we turned to the low door. “Now I’m going to take your girlfriend to the showers and get naked with her,” she whispered in my ear. “Think about that for a while.”

“She’s not my…”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Melody and Lissa left me standing outside the racquetball court, already getting hard.

“Next weekend,” Melody said out of the blue as we were eating that night. I’d done my best imitation of her formal invite and she’d accompanied me to The Twister, a retro café with a lot of 60s paraphernalia hanging on the walls. I looked at her blankly, not comprehending the non sequitur.

“Next weekend is when we work on our final project. We’ll have all weekend, so plan to skip racquetball that Friday and not get back until Sunday night. Pack your sketch supplies and paints and the canvas or watercolor paper you intend to use. I’ve made arrangements to borrow two easels from the studio so we won’t have to dismantle one piece in order to work on the other. Don’t bother packing much in the way of clothes. I expect we’ll be naked most of the weekend.”

I blew Coke out my nose.

“Where are we going?”

“I’ve got it all arranged. I’ve even got a car for the weekend to transport our stuff. Don’t worry about it. Just be ready to go after class.”

It was a damn fine day. Lissa even called to tell me she was out of town and had to cancel our court time.

True to her word, Melody dragged me away from class without so much as stopping for lunch with our friends. We lugged two easels downstairs to where a Mazda SUV was sitting and loaded them in the back. Then Melody drove us to the dorms to load anything else we needed and in twenty minutes we were on the road. It wasn’t a long drive. We drove up Queen Anne, weaving around dead ends where the street couldn’t make the grade and finally winding around to the west side of the hill. I assumed we must be headed to Melody’s home, as confidently as she was driving, but the place we stopped at was nothing less than stunning. The house was in a nice neighborhood and looked elegant from the front, but when she led me through to the back of the house, I was speechless. From the back deck there was an absolutely spectacular view of the water. The early afternoon sun was sparkling off the surface.

“This place is beautiful!” I said. “Is this where you live?”

“No. I borrowed it for the weekend. We’ll be working downstairs. Let’s get our stuff.” We unloaded the car and this time Melody led me down the front stairs into a walkout basement. The view was almost as good here as it was from upstairs, but only from the sliding glass doors. The rest of the room had been cleared of everything but the essentials. At one end of the room was a twin sleigh bed stacked with linens, pillows, and fabric. At the other end of the room, easily thirty feet long, was a hardwood floor. It looked like a dance floor… or a racquetball court. The ceiling was nowhere near high enough, but it didn’t take much imagination to see it as a sports court setting. I was pretty sure Melody wasn’t planning to draw the ceiling.

“This is so cool! We can set your scene up at this end and mine at that end.”

“You figured it out. I was afraid I was going to have to explain.”

“I may be slow, but I’m not stopped. I don’t know how you managed to arrange this but you are brilliant. But there’s like… um… one thing… You might not like everything you see and… um…”

“Look, just set up your scene and I’ll set up mine. We can flip a coin to see who goes first.” With that she started setting up her easel and sketchbook while I started working on the drapery the way I imagined it.

“This bed is perfect. How did you manage this?”

“That Watteau painting you said you liked when we were talking about drapery—The Toilet. And the picture you showed me by Boucher—Resting Maiden. This reminded me of those. I just figured you could alter the headboard and fabrics when you paint.”

“You put a lot of thought into this, Melody. Thank you. This just happened to be here?”

“Pretty much.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was so excited about setting the scene that I didn’t investigate any further. Behind the bed, there was an adjustable coat rack to hang the drapes over. I made up the bed with pillows and hung my tricot drapes. When I framed the image between my hands, the drapes looked like they were suspended from skyhooks. I had a few props that I’d brought with me, as well. I positioned the ewer and bowl that I found in the theater props closet on a small table at the end of the bed. I went up to the kitchen and washed the purple grapes that I’d bought that morning at the market and brought them down in a bowl. I positioned candles strategically around the scene. I knew exactly what I wanted and where. When I was finished, I turned toward Melody at the other end of the room. She didn’t have much in the way of props, but she’d thought to bring two flood lights with diffusion screens with her to create a bright corner of the room without casting shadows.

Melody looked at my setup and nodded. I looked at hers and wandered around under the lights checking for shadows as well. We met back in the middle.

“Should we…?”

“You want a Coke?” We spoke at about the same time and laughed at our own nervousness.

“There’s no rush,” Melody said. “Why don’t we go upstairs and have a little lunch before we get started? My stomach’s growling.” I’d been so focused on getting set up that I forgot about food, but as soon as she mentioned it I became acutely aware of my own hunger pangs.

“Great idea. Should we go get burgers?”

“Our… um… host left us food in the fridge.”

“Is our host coming back while we’re here?” I asked as I followed her up the stairs.

“Out of town. Oh. We have the bedroom on the left down the hall.”

That was a preview of Model Student 1: Mural. To read the rest purchase the book.

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