Posing Naked

            Since I was scheduled on Saturday morning to start the last half of my ten hour pose at Artists 25, and since I didn’t want to doze off during the morning session, I took a twenty minute nap before getting ready to leave. That worked out great because I felt pretty much fully awake until 12:30, when I recharged again with another siesta during my lunch break.

            In the afternoon a young woman came to the studio for the first time and told me she recognized me from when I posed for art classes at her high school ten years ago. I told her that after two girls at Earl Haig complained that they were traumatized by having to see a man take his pants off, I was asked to start wearing a robe. When I refused I didn’t get any work there anymore. Wouldn’t it be more practical for schools to employ therapists rather than to make everybody else alter their behaviour around students with emotional disabilities?

Colin was surprised to hear that they actually had nude models in high school art classes in Toronto. I remembered some high schools in the 80s that made the men wear a jock strap but wanted the female models to be completely naked. She said that after she graduated from Earl Hague she took Fine Arts at U of T and now she works in the arts for a small start up company.

            Tom Phillips was there for the whole day and mentioned that he’d fallen down in his room the night before, bruising his ribs.

            I was in a pretty good mood when the job was done. I rode west two blocks to the No Frills where I bought grapes and oranges; I splurged on some expensive cheese, but then again ‘d gotten some good deals on chicken drumsticks and Black Forest ham. They also had Danone yogourt on sale.

            At the bike stands there was a strange, expensive and light looking bike with very short handlebars that were an almost impossible extent lower than the seat. I wondered if it was meant to be that way or if the rider had simply set it up wrong. I couldn’t imagine it not causing back pain that way.

            I went to the liquor store before going home. There was a panhandler standing in the middle of the sidewalk directly in front of the entrance. They usually stand further back without crowding people. He asked me if I could spare eleven cents. The penny has been out of currency for a couple of years now, so I wondered how he would have felt if everyone he’d asked that question actually gave him eleven cents.

            After buying a couple of cans of Creemore, I was unlocking my bike when some guy asked if I was fixing my chain. I looked at him and he extended his fist for me to bump, and so I did so. He said, “Sorry for bothering you!”

            For dinner I grilled the ribs I’d had in the freezer, made gravy and boiled a potato. I watched two episodes of the Big Bang Theory.