The Universe is Held Together by Tape

            I didn’t sleep that well after going to bed just past midnight on Saturday. That wasn’t good because I had to work Saturday morning and afternoon at Artists 25 and I didn’t want to doze off while posing. I think I’d made a mistake to take a one-hour siesta on Friday evening because it screwed up my sleep when I officially went to bed. So at 9:00 I went to bed for twenty minutes. I actually did go to sleep for a while and got up a little later than I’d planned but there was still plenty of time because I’m always early.

            Only Colin, the Saturday coordinator was there when I arrived. After getting set up for my pose I went to the washroom. When I came out a woman I recognized had just come in who’d drawn me many times. When she saw that I would be the model she exclaimed, “Oh! Wonderful!” It’s nice to be appreciated. Then again, maybe she says that to all the models.

            I had been posing for four minutes when Tom Phillips hobbled in with his cane. I called out to him, “You’re late! We’ll have to dock four minutes off your pay!” Tom countered, “Fifteen brush strokes!”

            On one of my five-minute breaks I looked over and saw Tom struggling with a sheet of plywood. I went over to help him and found he was trying block the southern light that was coming in through the window behind him. I put the sheet over the window and then went back to work.

            They had a pretty good turnout that morning, with seven artists drawing or painting me. At lunchtime I left most of my things, including my laptop, in the studio and rushed home to jump into bed with my boots on and get a bit more sleep to recharge me enough to get through the afternoon session. I managed to nap for almost half an hour, which was enough.

            Tom was napping in his chair when I got back. If he’d been running the studio like he used to he would have gone to bed on the model’s stage. He must have been sleeping with one eye open because as soon as I was back at work, he woke up and started painting.

            At one point his painting fell off his easel and he exclaimed, “Oh, fiddlesticks!”

            Five of the seven morning session members were there for the afternoon. Usually some people just come in to draw in the afternoon but not this time.

            A woman that was standing and painting at an easel was complaining about bursitis in her right shoulder. I suggested an exercise that I learned in physiotherapy and which I do with a bicycle tire tube. I tie each end into a loop and hook one over a doorknob and grip the other in my hand. Then I pull my arm back at an angle that goes into the pain. It’s helped my bursitis tremendously.

            To mark the model’s position Artists 25 has a different coloured tape designated for every session. The prison uniform orange tape is for Saturdays, but they often don’t remove the tape from previous Saturdays or for other sessions and so the stage is often a riot of tape. Not only the stage, but also the floor to mark the position of the light stand; some members’ easels, and even on the walls because some models like to have the spot they’d been staring at marked for next time. I commented to Colin that one of these days the studio might collapse from the weight of all the accumulated tape. He countered that maybe the tape is the only thing holding the studio together.

            As I was getting dressed, Tom was sitting in his chair looking a little flustered. He said he couldn’t find his insulin pen. It was under his chair and so Colin got it for him. He put it in his shirt pocket by it fell out again when he bent over to pick something else up.

            I was surprised that I got paid $100 for the session. The rate had gone up since the last time I was there. That brings the pay rate at Artists 25 closer to par with other places. Artists 25 has been so notorious for being the lowest paying studio that one model remarked that working for them is an act of charity.

            I decided that since I was already at Dundas and Brock that before going home I’d ride over to the No Frills at Dundas and Lansdowne. I bought a couple of bags of grapes, some whole milk yogourt, honey, old cheese and mouthwash.

            I watched the 11^th episode of Star Trek Discovery, which brought me up to date. Since it’s so current, I won’t reveal much of the story, other than to say that a major character turns out to be surgically altered Klingon with a layer of consciousness superimposed to even make him believe he was human. He meets his unaltered counterpart in the parallel universe, where Klingons, though still a fierce warrior race, actually get along with other species in the rebel alliance against the humans.