The numbness starts in my toes and creeps up the length of my foot. Somewhere in my upper thigh or lower buttock, the weight of my body is pressing on and constricting the major veins and arteries carrying blood to and from my foot. But I don't move my leg or any other body part. My job is to stay still. I glance up from the base of the easel that I have been staring at for what has to have been twenty minutes by now, letting my eyes move around the room. The twenty-one students, fifteen girls and six guys, are all busy drawing me with their sticks of charcoal. The ones that I see looking at me are looking at something besides my face, so I feel free to let my eyes wander, without moving my head. I look at my toes and try to wiggle them. The big toe moves slightly, but the smaller ones are motionless. Losing feeling is one thing; losing mobility is worse. Jenny had better call for a break soon, or I might have to ask for one. And I don't want to ask for one. I have a reputation as the art department's best model. I have never been late, and I take and hold interesting poses. At least, that's what all the teachers have told me.
Jenny is walking around the room, looking at the students' drawings and giving pointers to a few of them. She reaches the end of the semi-circle and approaches the model stand.
"How are you doing Dan?" Jenny asks me.
"I could use a break," I tell her.
"OK," she says. "Let's mark you though, because I think I want to keep this pose for the rest of the class. They're really getting some good drawings."
Great, I think, as Jenny grabs some masking tape and uses it to mark where my feet rest and the position of my butt on the chair.
"OK," she says and turns to the class. "Dan is going to take a short break, but I want you to keep working on these. I want you to think about composition, how the figure fits into his environment."
I slip off the chair, but I know that I can't put any weight on my right leg. I sit on the edge of the platform and stretch that leg out to my side, keeping it parallel to the platform. I know that if I stand up, the blood will rush into my foot causing a painful pin pricking sensation. I rub the muscles of my thigh as the blood gradually returns and start wiggling my toes as the students continue to draw. When I finally feel like I have full sensation in my foot, I stand and turn to get my robe but quickly realize that I had sat on it for the pose. There are now multiple pieces of tape on it as it rests on the chair. I look over to Jenny, but she is talking with a student about a sketchbook assignment. I look down at myself, nude, legs shaved, pubic hair trimmed, penis and scrotum hanging low in the warm room. The students have been studying my body for an hour already, and I don't need to leave the studio to go to the bathroom. I figure that I can just go without a robe.
I almost always wear the robe for each break, so this sensation is new to me. Still, I don't want to make any of the students uncomfortable, so I stay by the platform rather than walking around the room looking at the drawings like I usually do. I look at the clock and note the time, 11:56, and resolve that at 12:01, I am going to get back in the pose. Most of the other art models stretch their breaks out as long as they can before the instructor asks them to resume posing. I don't want to be most models; I want to be the best. I love this job too much, in spite of the tedious poses, sore muscles, and lack of circulation, and I want as many hours as I can get.
I've just about got my foot feeling back to normal when 12:01 arrives. Without waiting for Jenny to tell me, I climb up onto the platform and get back into position. When it feels like it did earlier, I say, "How's this?"
Jenny looks up from one of her student's drawings and looks surprised to see me back on the platform.
"Oh," she says. She looks at the drawing and back at me. "That looks right from here. Anybody else?"There is a smattering of "Good's," and Jenny nods and says, "OK. This is it then."
The students resume drawing, and I think about whatever comes to mind, the movie I watched the night before, the book I'm reading, and the story I'm writing now. My head is turned so that I can't see the clock. When my foot starts losing feeling again, I start counting, to both mark the time and to see how long I can go from there. I've done this enough times to know by heart that 300 seconds is five minutes. When I get to six hundred, I begin to wonder how much time had passed before I started counting. I do know that in the last ten minutes, I have lost all feeling in my foot.
Just before I get to seven hundred in my count, a bell rings throughout the building in three short bursts.
"Oh, what is this?" Jenny moans.
The students stop drawing and look at each other.
"I think it's the fire alarm," a girl says.
Jenny strides to the door and says, "Stay here while I go see if we have to leave."
I start to ask her if it's OK for me to take a break, but before I can speak, she slips out the door, closing it behind her. Some of the students have resumed drawing while others talk to each other. Jenny returns less than a minute later.
"We all have to go outside," she says, and I can detect the irritation in her voice. "So let's go."
The students all put their charcoal down and start heading toward the door. A couple of them stop at the sink in the studio to wash their hands; others just go as they are. I stand up out of my pose, doing my best not to disturb my robe as it sits on the chair. When I step down off the platform, I almost fall over. I can't feel my foot, nor can I put any weight on it. Thanks to gravity, the blood rushes back into it, which hurts. It feels like thousands of pins piercing the skin on the sole. I sit down on the edge of the platform and put my foot up, trying to slow the rush of blood down. But it's too late, so I sit and wait for the agony to pass.
Jenny and the students are all gone by the time I can stand again. I still can't put all of my weight on my foot, so I limp over to the door of the studio and stick my head out. The model's dressing room is around the corner at the end of the hall. I could make a mad dash down to it, get my clothes on, and get outside. I don't want to move my robe since that would ruin the pose. Just before I am about to leave, a woman carrying a walkie talkie rounds the corner, heading toward me.
"You need to get outside," she says when she sees my head sticking out of the door.
