Christian Bot is a happily disgruntled writer from Ontario, Canada with a passion for poetry, short fiction, and essays (all while juggling two jobs.) A graduate of the University of Western Ontario’s history program, much of his work contains historical and philosophical themes. He has been published in The London Free Press, southwestern Ontario’s leading daily newspaper, and Areo magazine.
I awoke one morning inexplicably consumed by a rather curious obsession. I desired to become a nude model for art classes at the local university. I paid little attention to the origins of this desire, insofar as there can be said to have been any beyond the vague suggestions of a dream. I cared only to fulfill my new ambition. I craved to bare all in a manifesto of contempt for the tyranny of clothes. I wished only to be free, and openly so, feeling the exhilaration of a lion released from the zoo and left to roam at will. I fantasized the crisp air of the air conditioner breathing on my flesh unhindered by stifling raiment. I longed to return to the state of nature that triumphed before Adam’s fall.
To that end, I snatched my laptop from the jungle of clutter in my bedroom and visited the university’s online job board. I was not yet finished scanning the first page when I struck the coveted gold vein, encountering this listing: “Now hiring: art models, male. For nude posing in undergraduate art classes. Must be willing to shave most body air. Part-time, $35/hour.” My good luck left me euphoric, perhaps more elated than some people will ever be. I began to fill out the application without a picosecond’s hesitation. I scarcely even questioned the demand of a topless photo, presumably to verify the metrics of my anatomy. Several more mundane fields followed, and my application was complete in fifteen breezing minutes. I celebrated with a banana milkshake (enhanced with whey powder, obviously) as I treated my hulking biceps to a tender, Mediterranean kiss and pounded on my pectoralis major with all the vigor of a certain colossal Hollywood ape.
The call for an interview came three days later. I dressed for the occasion in a semi-formal uniform consisting of a white dress shirt, deliberately and unmistakably tight, a tie, and black dress pants. I was met in the inner sanctum of the department of visual arts by a dour-faced gentleman of about sixty. His hair was ghastly white, having long since neutered its last remaining trace of gray, and parted at the middle. His face, hardly less pallid, bore a pair of wide-rimmed glasses. His appearance and demeanor attested to a disgruntled, sexually frustrated bachelor whose last recourse was to the tedium of academia. I found his pessimism a tad intimidating, but I was able to resist the full force of his powers. Externally, at least, my virulent optimism was not dented in the least.
“This way, please,” intoned the professor with a clear motioning gesture. When we were both seated, he began to read from a prearranged list, as if he were stammering through an early rehearsal of a Realist play. “This position involves posing nude. Are you comfortable with that?”
“I find nudity quite liberating,” I confessed, really quite unembarrassed about my distaste for clothes.
“Good,” the professor murmured more or less nonchalantly, so fixated on his formulaic script that he seemed unbothered by my bohemianism. “Now you may have to work with female models, also nude of course. Is this something you can handle?”
“There’s little that I’d find more delightful,” I beamed, still shamelessly risqué in my responses.
“I don’t doubt that,” the professor quipped, jolting his head back up at me and breaking the spell that the script had cast upon him. “But the fact of the matter is that the students deserve to focus on the contours of your shoulders rather than the girth of your erect penis. If you find a dangling pair of breasts so titillating that you can’t focus on your work, there’s no point in having you here.”
I had to suppress a laugh at the professor’s stunning bluntness. More to the point, his honesty filled me with appreciation for him. He was right, of course, but I was not prepared to let his manifest rightness dampen my ambition. As the infant inklings of amusement marked my face, I replied, “I admit it, sir. I’m just as lustful as the last man you’ve interviewed and the ones you’ll interview after me. I’m weak against the allure of naked women, and I won’t bother to deny it. But you see, that’s not why I want this job. I want the liberty of unencumbered skin. I want to feel freer than I’ve ever felt before. It’s emancipation, not copulation that inspires me.”
My words left an indelible impression on the professor. He was frankly startled by my honesty, but still more impressed by the purity of my ambition. It was apparent that he had seldom come across an applicant encouraged not by the allure of money or the pleasures of women, but by the thrill of nudity itself. “That’s something I’d really like to hear more often,” he confessed, and as we stood up to shake hands in parting, he endeavored to conclude the matter quickly and offered me the position on the spot. I accepted unhesitatingly, and was promised shifts beginning in a week. As I departed, I shot the professor a jovial smile, supremely satisfied that my sudden but genuine impulse would soon yield a rewarding harvest.