"Are you sure you want to do this, honey?" This was another variant of the question that Ken had asked for the third time that morning.
Mandy kept a loving tone of voice, calming her growing exasperation with her boyfriend and lover. "Dear, I've watched your models as they posed in your art classes. I've practiced gestures for you to do your gesture drawings before you work on your commissioned projects. You've said I'm good at gestures and posing. Are you now afraid that I won't do a good job?"
"That's not it at all," he replied. "But posing for me in private, and posing in front of an entire art class is quite different."
"That may be true," she thought to herself, still determined to see this through. She countered, "But all that praise we got about my image on the BDSM thing... clamoring for more... and the viewer's messages to the publishers telling them how this fresh new model needs to appear more... remember that?" These things had bolstered Mandy's self confidence and allowed her to ignore the various imperfections about her body that plague most women.
Before he could answer, she continued, "You scheduled me... what would the class think if there's no model?"
"I could have them draw fruit or a collection of my found objects," he mumbled, not meeting her gaze.
"This class is called figure drawing, right?" she pointed out.
"Right," he answered, yielding to her logic. He could tell that Mandy was adamant to do this. He hoped it'd all go well.
"It'll be fine," she promised, almost reading his mind. "And we're almost to your studio classroom," she added. She shifted the small backpack that carried her robe. "Come on, it'll be a breeze," she stated with more bravado than she was actually feeling. He was absolutely correct about posing for him in the privacy of their loft being different from standing naked in front of a group of virtual strangers.
"All right... but after the gestures, the first pose today will be a standing one, so we'll use the braces to help support you and keep you in the pose."
Greeting his students, Ken unlocked the door, and they entered the classroom, with its marvelous northern light that poured softly through the large skylights above. As she'd seen other models do, Mandy went behind the screen, hearing the students scraping their drawing benches around the raised platform where she'd stand. She took off her dress, under which she'd wore not another stitch of clothing. She'd been told by the other models that the elastics in bras and panties often dug into the skin, leaving marks that might take an hour to completely fade away. The room was still a little cool, so she put on the simple robe she'd brought in her backpack and sat on a chair. She knew the room tended to get warm as more students arrived.
Mandy listened to Ken giving instructions for the day's class, and answering questions. As the preliminaries finished, Mandy emerged from behind the screen. She tried to keep her knees from wobbling as she walked between the drawing benches and climbed the step up to the platform. The moment of truth arrived, and with hands that took a lot of her will power to prevent from shaking, she opened her robe and slid it off her shoulders and arms. Fully nude now, she waited for Ken to tell her to begin doing her gestures. For the first time in her life, she was standing naked in front of a roomful of clothed people.
"All right, I think we're ready now. Mandy, if you'd be so kind?" Ken cued her.
Mandy's gesture poses were a little shaky to begin with, since she was a bit nervous moving in the room without her clothes on. But she soon got into the rhythm of it, due to all the practice she'd had with Ken. Her movements became fluid, and her pauses were well timed. Each time she paused, she heard the students' pencils rapidly scribbling across their drawing tablets, trying to capture the essence of the pose in mere seconds. Ken had one eye on her, and one eye on how the students were doing. He was admiring Mandy's poise in front of the group. As her movements smoothed out, she was presenting some great challenges in this group of gestures. The students were settling into the proper focus of letting their eyes communicate to the movements of their hands.