So I got to school late, my first day teaching art. It took me ages to find a job, especially a job that I had my heart set on for as long as I remember. Excitement led to nervousness the night before; I got little sleep. I felt restless, unkempt. But it was my first day, I thought I was ready. I ran through the corridors searching for the room. I hadn’t even had an interview; I was just sent a room number and the class title ‘life paintings’. I studied a bit of this at university and spent hours the days before putting together lesson plans. The idea was to use the first lesson to introduce myself to the students and get to know what they could do artistically. It did cross my mind that just being given a room number and the lesson title was a very unorthodox way of starting a new job. Perhaps my references where so good I didn’t need an interview? No time to worry about that now. I had to get to class. I had a rough idea where I was heading to, as it was this school that I spent a great deal of my childhood; learning each of the corridors, the shortcuts to the nearest exits, the hideaways when I knew a teacher had spotted me drawing penises on the walls. Room E13. This school didn’t believe in bad luck and rightly so, as it was my good luck that I finally found this job. Those hours spent at university on those art projects, reading about Monet and why van Gogh cutting off his ear was actually a post-modernist expression of how belittling pictures of potatoes and sunflowers had become. This was my time to shine. I just had to get to the class on time, a product of not being able to sleep properly the night before: excitement, nerves, anticipation and relief. I wonder what my student’s will be like. ‘I hope they are the first year’, they haven’t had a chance to develop an attitude. I feel perspiration, but saw no wet patch. I wore a tweed jacket. It was my dream to be a stereotype. Images of my childhood maths teacher walking between desks with spectacles on the tip of his nose and leather patches on the elbows of a green and brown tweed jacket. The patches always made a high pitched wail when he sat back at his desk and reached across the polished surface to grab the box of calculators to pass round the class. Tweed may not be typical art teacher attire; my art teacher had curly red hair with 20 ear rings in each ear, and who always wore the tightest tank top possible in order to not set a bad example to her students but still excite those who she deemed old enough. Running through those corridors made me question my choice of a tweed jacket- it was heavy, and certainly didn’t help with my perspiration, perhaps the reason I could feel no damp patch was because of the thickness of the tweed? I was certainly sweating. Turn the corridor, seconds away. Turn again, the door is in front. Room E13. The room where as a child I made clay statues of people sitting on a toilet reading, where my tutor hung up images of topless women and justified them as a typicfication of the beauty in the eroticism of the female image. I stop outside the door; my hand hovering over the handle. Thoughts were racing through my mind: of erotic images of women, of sweaty tweed jackets, of potatomen with 20 earrings hung on it’s ears. Deep breath. In… out… in… out… Hand twitching over the door handle. Come on, this is your moment. I can hear a mumbling from inside, they certainly don’t sound like first years. Final years, that’s still fine. My hand is on the door handle. In one swoop I turn the handle and push through.
“Ah, Mr Stevens” says an old man, perhaps in his late 60’s, with a pig belly that his jumper only just cuddles and with a receding hairline that has stretched back to the middle of the back of his head but which has forgotten the snow coloured hair on the side of his head. Thick black spectacles are resting on the end of a vein popped nose, clay dusted hand prints are wiped across his front. “It is Mr Stevens isn’t it?” Looking round the room I see paintings of various body parts on the wall directly in front of me, not gory, and huge paintings of animals in erotic humanlike positions covering the wall to the right. I hadn’t time to study what was to my left as my attention was drawn to the seating arrangements, a class of about 12 people in a semi circle, each with an upright canvas, and in the centre of this semicircle was half a bed with pillows occupying one side and a silk sheet covering the rest. “Mr Stevens?” I could hear these words, words, words, “Mr Stevens?” I couldn’t speak, for some reason I had froze, it felt like hours, but it was probably mini-seconds, but my name continued to be uttered from the pig bellied man by the chalk blackboard with a picture of an eye a pair of hands sticking out of it holding onto what I assume are a pair of eyebrows. “Oh yes, yes, I’m Mr Stevens.” Dread filled me. Speaking didn’t make me feel better. Thoughts spread through my mind ‘does he think I am a student?… no, no, I am being paid for this, why would I be paid to be a student?… ah I know he must have just been waiting for me so he could introduce me to the class’. I felt better; he must have just been waiting to introduce me. I head over to shake his hand. “Hi, yes, sorry, I am Mr Stevens, I hope I am not late?”, “Ah no problem Mr Stevens, you are not late at all.” The pig bellied man turned to the students in the room, “class, this is Mr Stevens, he has kindly agreed to model for us.” Silence. My mind stopped. Model? “Mr Stevens, if you could just head into my office to unchange, I’ll get the class prepared and you come out when you are ready.” Unchange? Model? Then it struck me. The bed, the pillows, the silk sheets, ‘life paintings’, no interview. I was meant to be a nude model. I turned bright red. I was a nude model wearing a tweed jacket. Unchange? I couldn’t turn back now. I need the money. I couldn’t say I was not Mr Stevens, I’ve already said yes and shook his hand. I had to do it. It would be a story. I don’t know any of these people. I’ll never see them again. I’ll do it. It would be funny when I tell my mates down t’pub. The pot bellied man ushered me to his office on the left. I walk passed the silk bed and literately stepped into his office. He closed the door behind me. I put my bag on the floor and rubbed my face. Am I going to do this? I am going to do this. I have to do this. Think of the money. Think of the story. I take off my tweed jacket. That’s my teaching dream gone. I saw my shirt, dark sweat patches. Really attractive. I unbuttoned my top, my sweaty hairy chest popping out between the gaps. My shoes, socks, trousers. I’m just in my pants. They have got to come off. I haven’t shaved! It’s natural, it’s natural. It doesn’t reassure me. But they have to come off, down they go. I’m naked. I turn round to the door, there is no bathrobe. I remember staling before I walked into this classroom, I shouldn’t hesitate this time. Pull the knob and go in.
The room looked round at me, all with straight faces, no expressions. This is eerie. For the first time in my life I am naked and the people in the room with me are not making faces. I walk towards the bed; the pot bellied man came over to me and uttered two instructions: get comfortable and don’t move. I choose an angle that allowed me to spy on those who were going to be painting me at my most vulnerable. I lay on my back twisting to the left towards the group, but with my left leg up slightly to try and hide my male passport. The pot bellied teacher reached for my left leg, pushed it down and pulled up my right. “Hope you are still comfy”, “Oh yes, fine”. My member was now laying on my left thigh, pointing and eyeing up the group.
“You may start, you have 20 minutes.”
Twenty minutes lying here, shouldn’t be too hard. Think of the money. Think of the story.
With just the movement of my eyes I started spying the group. I could only see the four people directly in front of me, the others were lost to the temporary paralysis of my head. The first man I saw was older than the teacher. He must be on his last legs. His wrinkles where deep set and looked like a Borrower’s Cheddar Gorge. He had glasses as big as his forehead pushed right back to the top of his nose making his eyes look like pool balls. His hair was thin, and when he lifted up his paintbrush his body hid behind it. The old man put his paintbrush down and this time lifted up his hands. Like his nose and his ears, his hands where well oversized, as if they did not belong on this small man. The only way in which you could link these hands with the man where the wrinkles that acted like supports, connecting his hands to his torso. The old man put his hands together, making an artist’s square out of the thumbs and fingers of each hand. Instead of starting at my feet or my head, the old man went directly for my groin. I was staring straight at an old man who was in turn looking through the square his hands made at my penis. He put his hands down, picked up his paintbrush and started scratching away at his canvas.
I turned to the next man. Perhaps in his midlife, it was difficult to tell. The years have been bad to him, perhaps he smoked, perhaps he drank, but he certainly ate. His belly was hanging well over his trousers making it difficult for him to sit close enough to his canvas. He had to stretch out to make the paintbrush reach, and each time he went to collect more paint he had to wheeze to force his arm to reach and keep it at the canvas. I saw him look down at his belly, I saw him look up at mine, I saw him look down at his body, I saw him look up at mine, I saw him look down at his body, I saw him scratch his groin, I saw him grab his right chest, his moob, I saw him look at my body, I saw him look at his moob. It was about halfway through the 20 minutes, I moved my eyes to the next person.
This person was the total opposite to the old man, the pig bellied man and the moob grabber, not least because they were thin and young, but more noticeably, they were a She. And what a She. She wore the tightest of jeans with the tightest of tops that stopped an inch before the jeans and which allowed a inch high band of golden brown skin to slightly bulge just above the jean line. Her hair came down to the middle of her top and was a highlighted blonde with chocolate brown bursting through the surface. The skin on her face was as golden as the band above her jeans and as smooth as the silk on my bed. She had a petite nose with lips that smacked of lip gloss. She wasn’t a she I would go for, but after looking at a man with moobs scratch his groin and an old man stare at my penis, She was a welcome distraction. I started imagining what She would be like, take her for a drink, have a dance, would She be a tease? Would She insist on starting in the taxi home? Would She demand twice in a night, She deserved a least a second go. What about again in the morning? Would it be a case of do the busy and go, would She cuddle? She looked like a goer. A huge sigh went round the room. I had lost myself in my thoughts. I forgot where I was. Tutting sounds carried around the room. I saw the old man take some white paint from their brush to his canvas. I remember where I was. I jumped back into reality. Then I realised. My member wasn’t pointing to the class anymore but towards my forehead; it was as if it had eyed a weird mole in the middle of my head. I went red. I saw the she giggle.
My mind blanked out, I mentally left the room, my body stayed on the bed. I went to my happy place. This wasn’t happening to me.
As soon as the pig bellied man called time I jumped up off my bed and headed straight for the office, for my tweed jacket, my tweed jacket was safe, my tweed jacket was my aspiration, my hope, my dreams, my future, a happy place, my childhood, my maths teacher in a squeaky leather outfit…
I walked out of the office, hoping for a speedy exit. “Ah Mr Stevens, thank you for your effort. Come and see some of these expressions of your body.” I just wanted to go. Outside the classroom it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t lose control of my body in front of she again, not in front of those moobs, the old man or the pig belly. “I insist, come and look.” Twelve paintings, look at each, smile, nod, leave. Simple.
I walk to the first. It was a stack of boxes, somewhat resembling the shape of a man. There was a small rectangular box between what looked like my boxed legs. I turn next to the painting that the old man drew. There were deep heavy shades all around my body, with dot’s representing the colour of my skin. So I was a stack of boxes and some coloured dots. I moved swiftly onto the next painting. I was smiling. I look again, I had a smile on my face. I look at the rest of the painting. I don’t remember smiling. Not with that much of a grin on my face. I see it. I see a huge exaggerated erection looping over my belly button, and I was smiling. I was surprised this painting didn’t have my hand around it at the same time. I didn’t smile at all. But my erection went noticed. I went red. I felt two foot tall. I wanted to get out. It even detailed the veins, albeit in an inflated sense. Nine paintings left. I shifted speedily along the following paintings, seeing images of me as a horse, with my legs coming out of my head, seeing a painting where I am not in it at all apart from my eye, no eyebrows. Apart from the picture of my eye, they all had my erection painted hastily in, the picture of the eye would had had it if it weren’t for its proximity. The erection had probably only lasted a minute, but they all saw. How could they not? Then I came to the painting the man with moobs did. He painted me the size of Jupiter. With my belly hanging well over my legs, but with stress marks around my groin area, obviously representing what must have been my erection. He drew his moobs as my moobs, hanging down to the left, one covering most of my thigh thick arm and the other hanging into the space left by the former. This was how I felt after a hefty dinner. I felt ill. I’ll move on. It was the She, what had She painted I wondered? A quick glance. It all looked normal. There must be something weird about it. But the face looked right, I wasn’t fat, wasn’t a load of dots or squares. She must like me. She looked at me and saw me. Should I try? I must not have put her off. Then I saw it. No wonder I hadn’t noticed it. At first I could argue She drew it before the incident. But on closer inspection I saw it was pointing at my head. It was comparable to the size of my little finger. She giggled. I died a little inside. One painting left then I could leave. I moved on. I looked at the painting. I looked at the painter. It was my mum.
by Matt Blackall
