That's my first nude model.........

That’s my first nude model there painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I call that piece a wonder, now…
Based on Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”

In 1959, when I was seventeen, I entered art school. One of the “perks” I knew was that at some point, I would encounter my first nude model. This was a momentous event for me having never seen a real woman nude. OK, I had seen parts, and I was not a complete prude or nerd, I just had never had the excitement of being able to see at a naked girl without her running out of the room, or my dying of embarrassment.

Our first semester, we did not have life drawing, so this was not to be a problem, I would wait a while and concentrate on death drawing (still life) and clothed portrait models. What I had not taken into account was the fact that at that time there were no actual doors between studios on the upper floors of our building, so no matter what was happening in any classroom, one still could peek into another one.

The most popular model of the day was Rose, a smallish, slightly buxom young woman, who I had seen walking around clothed. She was a girlfriend of an older student named John, and I would see them from time to time together.

I was in an art class one day in the first few weeks of school, passing by another classroom, and out of the corner of my eye while moving forward I spied the nude body of Rose sitting in a chair, posing. I kept moving because of inertia, but my heart had stopped! I made no outward sign of amazement, and I worked my way back to my easel. I started to work on my project while I tried to regain my breath.

My next problem was to work my way undetected back to that space so I could really see what was happening. A waited a few minutes, and then went in that direction to get a drink of water, and when I reached the right spot, I stopped to tie my shoe.

I was dumbfounded! It was real! We really did draw nude women (and men too I soon found out). I hadn’t been this startled since in the ninth grade I discovered we really had high school swimming class in the nude! I will have to write about that bit of perversion later on.

After the session and during the breaks she and John would make out in the class! She was nude under a big terrycloth robe! I was undone!

I finally caught my breath and moved on but still remember that feeling. I’ve seen it since, usually on the face of some businessman I’m touring around some art school and we walk into a class with a nude model. I am not paying attention, and my guest has usually frozen in space! I never had said, “Yes, I know that feeling”.

This story goes on because sometime in the next semester, when we really had nude models, I was standing in the hall with friends talking to one of the models who was dressed, when our friend and teacher, Dick Ireland, called out her name to come and pose. She continued to talk to me and slowly got undressed, one piece of clothing at a time, handing each one to me and asking me to bring them into the room. I was dumbfounded again! No woman had ever before, or probably ever since, handed me their clothing as they undressed!

I still have not recovered!