"Call me Phyllis, please." She answered warmly with a lopsided smile, "We try not to stand on ceremony around here. Now then, just as I said the other day when we last met, because this is your first time doing this I shall put you in a fairly simple series of poses that are easy to maintain. And the easier to maintain it is, the more likelier it is that you'll be more relaxed. And the more relaxed you are, the less likely you are to... well, y'know... have any unwanted episodes of... ahem, sudden rushes of blood to your..."
"I think I get the picture!" I said with a nervous laugh.
"Yes, of course." Phyllis replied with a slight blush, "I expect you've thought of little else since agreeing to do this."
"You could say that." I answered, "But I'm not going to wimp out of this. I said I'd pose nude for your class and I'm damned well going to do it!"
"That's the spirit!" Phyllis beamed, "Now, did you bring a robe with you?"
"Yup!" I replied, patting the plastic bag I'd brought along with me containing my dressing gown.
"Excellent! Well, the students will be along in a couple of minutes so I suppose that all there is for you to do now is to go ahead and get undressed."
She nodded across toward a curtained-off area next to the store room.
"Just pop in there and take all your clothes off and then put on your robe - I'll come and fetch you as soon as the students are all in and settled." Phyllis said as she guided me across to the changing area, "And above all, relax. Do you want me to inform the students that this is your first time doing this?"
"Umm... no, that's alright." I replied - I wasn't sure if I wanted her students to know that this was the first time I'd ever posed in the nude. Well, technically it was the first time I'd ever posed for anything, apart from a family photo when I was a kid, and on that occasion I was most definitely not naked.
I entered the small changing room - it was little more than a curtained-off alcove barely bigger than one of the fitting rooms in the department store that Beth worked in - and I set down my rucksack on the floor. It took me several moments to compose myself before, my heart racing like a pile driver in my chest, I began to take off my clothes. Perhaps in a subconscious effort to delay the inevitable, I took greater care than usual to neatly fold every single item of clothing that I removed - I even folded my pants, something I never did at home. By the time I had finished undressing and stood there naked, the stack of neatly folded clothes would not have looked out of place at the foot of a bunk in a Royal Marines training barracks. As I took my dressing gown from the plastic bag I had brought with me I could hear the sound of Phyllis's students arriving. I hastily put the dressing gown on, tied the cord around my waist and then sat and waited.
"Okay everyone!" I heard Phyllis call her class to order, "Now, in previous sessions we've been getting to grips with the basics of life drawing - studying the interplay of light and shadow on the human form. Up to now we've been using photographs and studying classic nudes by various European artists from the old masters up to the impressionists, but it is now time to take what we have learned so far and apply it to a live model for the first time. Now, in a moment I'll be introducing you to our model for today, but first I'd like to quickly outline what I would like you all to achieve during this session."
I could do nothing else but sit there and listen as Phyllis talked her students through the next couple of hours. It was to be a series of five poses, each one lasting no more than twenty minutes. The students had to complete a sketch of me in each pose before deciding on a single sketch to work on further during the last twenty minutes of the session entirely from memory. At least that meant that I wouldn't have to be nude for the last twenty minutes of the class, but an hour and forty minutes of total nudity in front of a group of fully clothed students was plenty long enough for me!
"Right then, without further ado let us meet our model for today." Phyllis said brightly as she swished back the curtain, "Everyone, this is Tommy.
I was taken aback to discover that of the twenty or so students that had set up their sketch pads and pencils, only three of them were male. The entire rest of the class were women. I suddenly felt a lump in my throat - it was like that very first time back on the Îlle Solharvre back in the summer, or the very first meeting of the University's naturist club I attended. But I could not back out now, especially when Phyllis guided me onto the stage and then asked me to disrobe. I took a deep breath as I untied my bath robe - this was it. I shrugged off my robe to leave me stood naked before the class. There were one or two slight murmurs as the group took in the sight of my nude form, but apart from that they all seemed to be pretty much professionally detached from the notion of having a naked and quite nervous young man stood before them. In no time at all, Phyllis took my bath robe and deposited it out of the way on a nearby stool and instructed me to recline on the chaise-longue.
"Just lie back in whatever position feels comfortable to begin with." She said to me quietly, "And then I'll make a few adjustments to get it just right. You can keep your eyes closed if you like or you can focus your eyes on a random spot on the wall or something. Try not to look the students in the eye, just try and ignore them and you'll find it makes things a lot easier."
I simply nodded in reply and sat down on the chaise lounge. I laid myself on the thing, with my left foot on the floor and my right leg stretched out while I rested my left arm across my belly and my right arm resting along the top edge of the chaise. I followed Phyllis's advice and found a picture on the wall to focus my eyes upon.
"Excellent." Phyllis enthused, "Now, just bear with me for a moment here while I adjust you a little."
Phyllis then adjusted the angle of my left leg and my foot on the floor, and how my left arm was draped across my belly before taking a step back.
"Just right." She commented before turning to face her class, "Okay everyone, you have twenty minutes with this first pose. Begin whenever you're ready."
Almost instantly, the sound of pencils on sketch paper filled my ears as though my sense of hearing was heightened somehow by my being in the nude. As I laid there I wondered if because when we are naked we can often feel very vulnerable, that heightened senses are some form of instinctual defence mechanism. Scientists often tell us that we only use a small portion of our brain's true potential - perhaps the same can be said of our senses. After all, it is our brain that interprets the information our senses gather from our eyes and ears and the rest of our nervous system, I guess it's perfectly feasible that our brain only interprets the information it needs to get by day-to-day, but can raise its game whenever we feel threatened or in danger.
Focusing on the painting on the wall, a copy of Claude Monet's famous painting of water lilies and a Japanese style bridge that I recognised from a poster my dad had on his study wall back home, really did help me to remain calm and relaxed. As I laid there I did feel my penis begin to swell involuntarily on a couple of occasions, especially when I briefly allowed my mind to wander to the memory of Beth brushing her hair earlier that morning as she sat naked at her dressing table. The softness of her figure, the reflection of her breasts and the gentle curve of her buttocks as she sat on the velour padded stool before her mirror. Thankfully I managed to immediately take my mind elsewhere as soon as I felt the tell-tale twitch in my loins that usually foretold of an impending erection.
The initial twenty minute pose passed by in what felt like an hour - Phyllis had been right, posing was a lot harder than it looked. Whoever would've known that simply trying to remain as still as possible could actually be such hard work! But I managed to get through that first pose without any real problems, and as Phyllis guided me into a second pose I felt a sense of optimism course through my veins. I can do this, it thought to myself, and I'm actually beginning to enjoy it.
One hour and forty minutes, and four different poses later Phyllis handed me back my robe and informed the group that they now had the remaining twenty minutes of the session to pick one of the five sketches they had done and then develop it further. I gratefully put my robe back on, more because I was beginning to feel a little cold than anything else. After all, it was early November and the weather outside was very autumnal indeed - the studio didn't have any windows, but it did have a number of skylights in the roof above and one could clearly hear the rain outside beating on the opaque glass above.
I returned to the changing area to put my clothes back on. As I dressed, I thought back on my very first experience of posing nude before a group of fully clothed people. To say it wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be was an understatement - I felt a bizarre sense of achievement and a distinct sense of empowerment. Posing nude like that before that mainly female group of people made me feel sort of hyper-aware of my masculinity, and I felt like more of a man than I had ever felt before.
I knew right there and then that it certainly wouldn't be the last time I would pose nude. Fully dressed once more, I came back out of the little changing space to see Phyllis diligently assisting one of her students. With a smile she beckoned me over to join her.
The young woman she was assisting was busily working on developing her chosen sketch - because she had to work from memory, she had deliberately chosen to develop the final pose that I did. I was facing away from the students, my naked behind on full show to the group. I had one knee on the chaise lounge and my right foot planted firmly on the floor, my chest rested against the back of the chaise-longue with my arms simply draped languidly across the thing. To say her sketch captured me in what I considered was amazing detail would be the understatement of the year, even though it had only taken her around half an hour it was like looking at a black and white photo of myself. This young lady was seriously talented.
"Strange is it?" Phyllis asked me as her young student worked away adding some additional shading to my left thigh, "Seeing yourself like this - through the eyes of someone else?"
"I guess." I replied, "But in a good way."
