Three Hundred Dollars

"Three hundred dollars?"

"Yes, three hundred."

I sipped at my coffee and looked again at Jen.

"Is that a lot of money or... I don't know. What do you think?"

"It's fifty dollars a night. Six nights. Three hundred. I really don't have any further information."

"Don't they usually have someone who does these things?"

"Yes they do but whoever it was has left. They need someone for the class."

The idea of posing nude for Jen's art classes had come out of left field. It was not something I had ever imagined myself doing.

"Three hundred. All in hand. Six lovely fifties." Jen shrugged her shoulders.

"How did you find out about this?"

"Our instructor told us last week. Said she needed someone urgently. Asked us to pass the word around."

"Nude?"

"Well maybe the briefest of briefs, but you'd have to get your top off. Take it or leave hon. It doesn't matter to me. I'd love the three hundred but then I'm in the class. I can't pose and sketch myself at the same time."

"What about a self portrait?"

"Ha ha funny. By the way have you downloaded those photos we took in Bali?"

Jen's reminder about our recent trip to Bali may have been deliberate or simply coincidental. Bali is one of those places where anonymity provides opportunities we didn't have in my little town. I had no problem going topless on their beaches. It almost seemed compulsory. But here, where I lived, it was different.

But when I went home that day I probably knew I would take the three hundred but I tried to find everyone reason not to. One good reason was my partner Terry. We'd been living together for over ten years. And although we weren't married we were as good as. But after Terry my reasons went downhill pretty fast. What had Jen said? Six sessions of one hour, every Wednesday night for the next six weeks. I would have to make a decision fairly quickly. At the bottom of it though I didn't need that three hundred. I didn't need it all. It was something else.

Ziggy Trimmer was the instructor for Jen's Art Class. I knew about her, knew what she looked like, but I'd never spoken with her.

"I'm glad you've volunteered Cheryl. Have you done any modelling before?"

"No nothing like it all."

"That doesn't matter really. The idea is to be totally natural, totally normal. We don't need bathing beauties."

I didn't know if she meant that I had passed the use by date in terms of women's bodies. In my late thirties I was neither short, tall, fat or skinny. I didn't have boobs like Dolly Parton. I was probably very very average. No one would have written home about me.

"So why do you want to pose? Any reason, you know, apart from the money."

"No real reason. I guess it is just an opportunity."

Ziggy nodded.

"OK here's the deal. Simple really. Think it over. Personally I don't care if you pose nude or want to wear undies. No bra though and definitely no swim suits. The class is small, less than a dozen and you can expect to either sit or stand for an hour. Minimal movement. Some of them will come up and look at you. You know, look more closely at the freckles on your shoulders. That sort of thing. Any questions."

When I told Jen she filled me in on who was in the class. Two men, the rest were women. One of the men was old, older than anyone in the class. One was young, younger than any anyone in the class.

"Interesting bookends."

"Yes. The old guy Bob is quite an artist. Great detail in everything he does, boring as all get out though. And he'll talk the leg off an iron pot if you give him a chance."

"The younger guy?"

"Still can't work him out. He must be barely out of high school. Confused, shy. I don't know what Benjamin is. Got a tongue piercing."

"Tongue piercing. Oh God. Calls himself Benjamin?"

"He's definitely a Benjamin, certainly not a Ben or Benny."

I made up my mind not to tell Terry. Simply tell him I was catching up with Jen for an hour or so. He was hardly likely to miss me on a Wednesday night between 7.30 and 8.30. The biggest problem I had was deciding whether I would pose in underwear or not. I went through my knickers draw looking for something, finally settling on a pair of off white nondescript bikini briefs. I didn't think they'd set the world on fire. It occurred to me I was dressing, or was it undressing, for boring Bob and baby Benjamin. The women in the class I was sure had seen everything before.

I can't say it was easy to sit there in the tech school art room. At the last moment I had decided to bare it all. No knickers, everything up for scrutiny. A little cellulite on my legs, an arse that was starting to sag, breasts that had a mind of their own. Halfway through the session my nipples grew erect. There was hardly a murmur in the room. Every now and then Ziggy gave some general advice but mainly she walked around quietly looking at her student's work. Hushed conversations that couldn't be overheard.

When I went home that night Terry was surprised.

"Thought you'd be home later. Usually when you're with Jen you talk for hours."

"Well we might next week, we're going to catch up again."

He gave a non committal shrug. I wondered what he'd think if he knew that beneath my denim jeans and my loose fitting blouse I was naked as the day was long. I was as horny as all hell and badly wanted a fuck. I'd enjoyed being seen by Bob and Benjamin, the terrible twins I had silently dubbed them.

"I'm going to bed Tez. Be nice to have you join me."

But Terry wasn't interested, he was absorbed by some drama on Netflix. When I woke the next morning I was already looking forward to next Wednesday night.

#

I wondered when I'd get a chance to look at the sketches everyone was doing.

"They'll all be massively different Cheryl. I'm mainly doing a head and shoulders with just a hint of your breasts. I'm stopping there."

Mostly though I wanted to see what Bob and Benjamin had done. I shared my nickname for them with Jen.

"Terrible twins. Yes that's good. You know you're probably the only woman Bob's seen naked for years. Although I suppose he might be on the internet all day googling porn."

"And Benjamin?"

"Hard to read. I don't talk to him really. Might have had a girlfriend at school. Who knows?"

"Might have used that tongue stud on her."

"Huh?"

"Yep I hear it helps. Stimulates when you have oral sex."

Jen was rarely lost for words but my last comment, something I'd found on line, momentarily silenced her. When she spoke again our conversation had moved on.

"Did you get that new kettle? The one you said you wanted with the disgusting name."

"The SMEG? No not yet. I might use some of the three hundred dollars on it."

She gave a wry smile. Money well earned.

#

Week Two was a more relaxed version of Week One. I was still considerably nervous, but there was enough familiarity, nodding of heads and smiles when I walked in and disrobed. Same outfit as last week, jeans no knickers, blouse no bra. And the hour seemed to fly. As it turned out some of the students, mainly middle aged women, were just as nervous as me, somewhat tentative in getting too close to the 'live model'. Bob and Benjamin kept their distance too. I was disappointed that they weren't more interested.

#

"No we'll have a male model in the second half of the class. He comes in when you finish."

I had been under the impression that it was all one way traffic. That live nudes were the exclusive domain of the female of the species.

"Cheryl where have you been? What about that statue of David and there's another one of Hercules. Historical stuff I know, but plenty of men from recent times if you go looking for them"

I wasn't about to go looking for them.

#

Week Three I spiced things up a little by turning up in a loose fitting dress. Dropping it to the floor I resumed the position I'd had for the first two weeks on the raised stool at the front of the class room.

Perhaps I was giving the impression that this was how I always dressed. By now I was aware that Bob was working on my legs. Feet with veins, ankle bones, shins extending upwards to knees. Benjamin meanwhile according to Jen was concentrating on my lady bits.

"Yes your lady bits. I mean he can't see much down there, but he's got a good handle on your girls, your peaches."

"Really?"

"Yes really. Probably wants to run that tongue stud of his all over them."

I laughed in denial while considering the possibility.

#

Week Four over half way home. Sketches taking some real shape, although by then I knew that some portraits take months to complete. But this was an amateur class, nothing expected except a drawing at the end of six weeks. A drawing that if I wanted I would get a chance to see. I'm relaxed by this time. Terry is non the wiser and I have bought the SMEG kettle. At work everyone goes about their business not knowing that the woman on the front desk is happy to show off everything every Wednesday night. I walk home past a hotel. Skimpy tonight. I walk in, a half deserted bar with a woman serving. Topless, bottomless, everything on display. Everything. I look around wondering if Bob or Benjamin know. They could come here to study, but I suppose they wouldn't be allowed to sketch. She's a young woman, I guess early twenties. There are a couple of television screens on the wall. Horse racing from somewhere. Minimal interest. I pull out a stool, much the same style as I sit on at the Tech School. No one pays me any attention. All eyes are for the girl pulling beers. I ask for an ale and she puts it down in front of me.

"How much do they pay you for doing this?"

She gives me a strange look, like I might be some sort of spy or a person from the tax office.

"Sorry just interested."

I don't know why I tell but I find myself saying that I get fifty dollars a night at the Tech School for sitting there. She smiles and turns to another customer. But before I have finished my beer she returns to where I sit.

"Some nights. Good nights. Hundreds. Over a thousand sometimes."

She turns away again. The customers are thirsty for Sophie Snow. I know it isn't her real name. She keeps on pouring beers. A champagne bucket is handed around which men stuff ten, twenty and fifty dollar bills in. Ziggy Trimmer's words come back to me. "It's tax free. You don't have to declare it."

On the street outside the pub it's quiet. All the revelry is inside. As I head home I wonder if Terry has ever been down to see the skimpies. By the time I get home I know it is a question I won't ask.

#

Week 5 and I feel like I have just begun. As I sit there, my thighs perhaps a little wider apart than I have previously allowed I think about Sophie Snow. A beautiful young creature who let men adore her for money. Does she allow them to do anything else? I've done the maths. Let's say six hundred dollars a night for five nights, that's three thousand dollars a week. Three times what? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? I let the thought go. It is much too puzzling.

Jen surprises me later that week by turning up with Benjamin. He stands shyly off to the side as we discuss the mundanities of the world like where to have coffee next Sunday morning. And when Sunday arrives it is all I can do to stop myself asking why she brought Benjamin around to my house.

"He needed a lift. That's all. Nothing happening. So how's it feel?"

"How does what feel?"

"Well the whole naked thing. Will you do it again next year?"

I tell her all about Sophie Snow and the money she makes. Three hundred seems like a pittance.

"Honey, what are you, thirty eight, thirty nine? You're gorgeous, but those men just want to fantasise. They wouldn't want her for longer than a day."

#

Week Six. I can't believe in an hour that it will all be over. That what I have put myself through for the last six weeks will be at an end. Really I don't want it to end. I want Bob and Benjamin to go on looking at me like those men looked at Sophie Snow the skimpy bar maid. A sense of finality as I drop out of my dress and assume the position. My hopes that Bob and Benjamin might see in me the availability of what those men saw at the pub. My vulnerability has come to the surface. At the end of the night I walk naked around the easels feigning interest in everyone's efforts to capture me. I linger a moment or two longer in front of Bob's work.

Jen was right. Bob was magic with every detail. A few days later I find out that he can talk the leg off an iron pot. But it's not an iron pot that he's interested in. I let him take my dress off to touch me. To feel me there, to kiss my hard nipples and run his fingers through my closely shaven bush. I wanted it to be Benjamin. I wanted to feel that tongue stud on my clit before we fucked. Instead it is Bob who slides his very hard cock into me. He may be old but Christ he's good. I spread my legs further apart and pull his face down to mine as his brings me to sweet orgasm.