Bowl of Fruit

Abstract

Bowl of Fruit Shannon McLeod (bio) It’s ten after seven at Thursday night life drawing, and I’m the only one to show up. Besides the model: a man, probably mid-sixties, wearing a brown robe and a knee brace. Many of the students have already left campus for winter break. There was a snowstorm last night, and they haven’t finished clearing the roads yet. I’m frantically texting my friend, the real artist, who invited me here, “Where are you?” I’ve done life drawing and painting several times before, but the model has always been a woman. I didn’t know there were men willing to volunteer this level of vulnerability. “Welp, I guess we’ll get started,” the model says. He sounds like the middle management type who likes to make friends with his employees. Like he wants to be relatable but also for you to notice his car is way better than yours. I think, how has a guy like this ended up in a robe with a stranger who doesn’t plan to sleep with him on a Thursday night? And then he’s naked. I wriggle down in my chair, hiding behind my easel, and open my box of drawing utensils. I begin with pencil. His first pose is with one foot on the seat of a chair and one hand on his waist. I make wide stokes for the most prominent lines, as my drawing teacher instructed me years ago. But then my eyes go where I feel they shouldn’t. Suddenly my pencil is too fine-tipped, insisting on too much detail. I switch to charcoal. Clear my throat. “So, um, what happened to your knee?” There’s nothing else for me to go off of in terms of a conversation starter besides his knee brace. He begins talking about tennis. He lifts his arm and motions with his hand. “Oh,” and puts it back down. “I’d better not talk tennis or I’ll gesticulate.” “Excuse me?” I squeak. The door opens and it’s Christine. We whisper for some reason as she tells me her usual parking space has been used as a place to pile snow. I cut our conversation short, feeling it [End Page 167] rude. Then I remember how easily I’d drawn the last model as though she’d been a bowl of fruit. I smudge the charcoal around his crotch and notice his pubic hair is graying. A moment from a ’90s Adam Sandler movie pops into my head, when Adam Sandler is saying “old balls” in a comical voice. I move up to his face, switch back to pencil and work on his eyes, but now Adam Sandler won’t get out of my head, and he keeps repeating, “old balls,” “old balls,” “old balls.” ________ I remember the first life drawing session I attended my freshman year. The model stood beside a platform and we encircled her with our sketch pads. She held the posture of someone who hadn’t done this before. My professor brought a chair on the platform and set it with its back to me. A group of eighteen-year-old boys lined up in front of the chair where the model would sit. The professor sat on the chair to demonstrate the pose she should hold first. He spread his Wrangler legs and held his face to one side. The model climbed the platform naked and mimicked him. When she spread her legs I saw, over her shoulder, the boys’ eyes widen and then quickly squint. I’d previously liked my professor, who asked us to call him Bill. Then I wasn’t so sure. ________ I glance at Christine. Her eyes flick back and forth between his body and the paper. She holds her charcoal like a dart. The image on her paper is starting to look like him. I return my focus to my own sketch pad and fill in the scenery—ceiling tiles, the crumpled cloth on the floor, the bolts that hold the plastic seat to the metal legs of the chair. No one else shows up. After class, the man dresses...