Figure Drawing At Its Hardest

I can’t tell you exactly what it was about the experience that made me respond the way I did, but something about it just worked.

Was it the physical formation of his body, his musculature beneath naked skin holding a pose? I don’t think so. Not exactly. (Though no doubt it was a contributing factor.)

Was it the knowledge that all of us in the room — clothed in turtlenecks and jeans, sweaters and boots — were slightly chilled despite the layers and that he, the model — wearing only alabaster skin — had no such protection from the cool air within the cavernous room? Perhaps. (I am not unduly mean, but once in a while I enjoy a man’s discomfort.) Though you wouldn’t know he felt the cold; there was not a single goosebump on his body.

There were goosebumps on my body though. Specifically in the region of my nipples.

And as he stood posed in front of us all, his exposed genitals were anything but cold. (Unless he was oppositely-wired for temperature response?) I’d say, from the way his at-rest penis slowly stretched to attention in front of our eyes, that he was getting quite warm.

Though why viewing this should make *me* warm remains a mystery to this day. (Because I am NOT a visual-stimulus person.) While I find my spouse’s anatomical changes fascinating, any arousal I feel from that display of blood-rush (and subsequent loss thereof) has everything to do with my feelings for him as a person and his usefulness to me in such a condition; it is not, and has never been, about the mere swelling and receding of flesh. And it was definitely not about *that* with this would-be mannequin.

But it was about something.

When it came to my responses that day — goosebumps, though not from the coolness of the air — it was not {only} about the body of the model or {particularly} about how that body was responding in front of 20 pairs of watching eyes.

Though one of the responses was a bit like a shiny red bow on a beautifully wrapped surprise package.

Because while I observed his held pose and noted — in charcoal, with rapid strokes — his changing state of arousal, there began a light pink blush *just* above his curled thatch of pubic hair, and it spread s l o o o o owly — causing his muscles to quiver as it went — up his abdomen and across his shoulders, eventually kissing its way up his neck and ending in a barely-there flush on his cheeks.

I never had much difficulty with the forms taught in that art class.

But while I cannot say anything about the lesson that day was *difficult*, I will always think of that hour of figure drawing as one of the hardest I’ve ever experienced.

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