THE MODEL UNVEILED

Having exhausted his work-out with the weights and exercise bike, curls and crunches, Jason soothed his thrumming limbs in the shower. What a lovely hunk, he gloated, pursing his lips into a rubbery kiss for the mirror. He pampered his evenly proportioned body with apricot oil till it glistened, pecs and biceps twice over, a cheeky knuckling of his glutes, then slipped into his silky maroon bathrobe and thongs in anticipation.

Aieee! The first bite of the wind from the Detroit River snatched at his breath, dropped his testicles to stone, but he slithered like a stick insect with arthritis over crusts of snow to his third-hand Firebird. Scraping off the ice from the windshield with a few frantic flails, teeth chattering, extremities frozen in minus twenty, he floundered shivering into the front seat. Jesus H.! Against the hum of the heater, his mushed toes pulsating again, he lay back into the snug slipstream of chrome-to-rhinestone bubbledom of Neil Diamond.

It took less than ten minutes to cruise from his cramped, third-storey apartment on downtown Riverside to the parking lot back of the Fine Arts Department. He had merely to step out of his automobile, robe strategically battened at the hem, slap-slap through the display-gallery and down a short corridor before he hit the studio. It was five of nine, so most of the Figure Drawing class were clipping sheets of paper onto boards, transplanting their seven-foot-high easels, settling beakers of coffee, ashtrays, pencils.

‘We’re ready to receive you,’ enthused Dr Furnell, who was the Survey of Art course. Where his élan, or fastidious demands for dates, schools and –isms were alka seltzer to the sluggish first-years, dry bourbon to the matured evening class.

A quickening in the ganglia, which must have lit up like a waffle iron on heat, fingertips trembling, Jason relaxed the sash of his robe. A light-headed, airy sensation swinging free beneath the caressive silk, he felt the luxury of some Moorish sultan lying on cushions beneath a deep midnight blue ceiling of stars listening to a discreet guitar, a giddy dare to stand naked before a dozen artists appraising his handsome features – or form, grace and texture, as Furnell had termed it. Finally, to the two-foot high dais, with slow, languid gestures, unveiling as if his mind were floating into distance.

‘Marvellous! Now I’m going to ask you all to spend this first hour on a pencil drawing,’ the professor invited. ‘We’re blessed to have Jason Fraser with us. The detail of his body is incredible. Here’s a model with a lot of surface structure. Pay particular attention to the musculature. Use chiaroscuro to make your figure volumetric. If you have not drawn a contrapposto figure for three weeks, then change your viewpoint.’

‘How would you like me to pose?’ Jason tilted his chin, more like Cheetah than Johnny Weissmuller, all the better to sleek at the lacquered layers of hair dyed teak-black.

‘Stand with your left leg bent at the knee. Let me see, your left hand on your hip, but distributing your weight on the right leg. Twist round a little more on that right leg. That’s good. Incline your head slightly. Beautiful. Hold it there. I’ll throw the arc lamp onto your back.’

Tedious to a scream, these three-hour sessions, physically demanding, with just two ten-minute breaks. Dashed were his hopes of posing on a cushion – hey, the broads did – sitting or reclining. The fifteen bucks blood money would help pay the rent, eh. The golden rule was to find a point of focus, an object of distraction, so as not to fall foul of corporeal feedback, such as itches about the crotch, lockjaw or scapula spasms. Start thinking about them and you’d be sure to bring on an attack of plague proportions.

What caused his eyebrows to knot was that Dr Furnell himself, by repute an excellent draughtsman, claimed the stool directly in front, practically staring him down, his bangled wrist shuttling and jangling across the paper.

But seated next to the prof, now there was a peach to set his hamstrings a-quiver, with below-waist tresses of flaxen hair you could climb out of windows on that wisped behind her drawing-board. About eighteen, he reckoned, and sheeny as a fresh McIntosh apple. A lemon blouse that clung suggested translucence, but such vulnerability was stiffened by a beige skirt and tan knee-length boots. What style! Several pedestals above the bohemian trendies and ragged jeans set. Jason luxuriated in her earnest concentration, so much so that he strained to offer, or surrender, his planes of firm flesh to her pencil alone.

For the colour of her hair reminded him of newly mown hay and cream gold horses cantering over sand at dusk. Then she dissolved into a Sargent watercolour, languishing in blue taffeta on an ottoman, her sapphire eyes so wistful. Now he was carrying the unconscious damsel into a sylvan retreat of grottoes and retreats. Rossetti, eat your heart out, he smiled inwardly. The fullness and restricted nature of her dress rendered her even more alluring. He tried to imagine her decolletee, yet the more deshabillee she was, the less he felt tantalized by her beauty. This was a strange desire: he wanted to cherish the intimacy of her flesh, but wished to preserve its mystery.

Focus, Jason, focus, for god’s sake. He’d snapped out of his snow cloud dream, suddenly fearful that he might have suffered an erection, if only of modest proportions, with nowhere to hide. He stole an oblique downward glance. Phew! No sign of horn-colic; just a drizzle of sweat on his cleavage.

Besides, Furnell’s straight, black hair and moustache of military bluntness kept bobbing into Jason’s field of vision. He was bottled up behind a wooden horse on which he balanced his board, getting a sense of proportion by measuring off the spans with thumb on pencil. A dynamic runt of a man with whom you would not wish to cross paintbrushes.

Jason felt slightly uneasy as Furnell’s eyes, black with intensity, set him in his sights. For the first time in his brief modelling career, he pondered on the folly of not sporting a loincloth or fig leaf. Then a cold slime oozed down the canal of his lumbar spine. At which he dabbed intermittently. Which must have given rise to the clamminess festering under his armpits. From which launched globules of sweat to dart down and dock at his hips. Jesus H.! Stampede Day in Calgary! He was growing hyper-sensitive to every atom trafficking on his body. Inwardly praying, Jason sought divine intervention to assuage these anatomical hotbeds and breeding grounds, to zoom beyond these microcosmic fields of energy where unsought irritants were at play, if not war. In spite of the frame’s immobility, his entire canvas skin was running amok, a raging universe.

‘We’ll have a ten minute break,’ announced Furnell.

‘Not before time,’ mumbled Jason, letting out a long sigh. ‘The prof’s a mind-reader.’ He quickly glanced down to make sure he was still intactus, then braced his shoulders, rotated his head, stretched his arms, flexed his legs from stiffness. Before donning the robe. As he glided to the refectory, a buoyancy lilted his body once again. Whenever he turned, he flared, almost flounced, the lower half of his robe, just fine and dandy. He juggled his coffee on the tips of steaming pincers to the table at which the blonde had arranged an exposition of lustred thigh.

‘Hi! Mind if I join you?’

‘Be my guest.’

‘Jason Fraser’s the name, Drama Faculty. Yeah, I’ve known the Doc from way back. Audited his History of Art class an’ all.’

‘Janine Marentette.’

Crossing his own crinkle-haired legs in pale but only marginally less modest imitation, he yielded to the parting of the robe, with the hem caressing his knees, slipping over.

In spite of the honeyed delicacy of her features, Janine’s voice was disconcertingly brash; asphalty, to be candid. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this is a scungy space!’

‘Guess it’s functional,’ Jason shrugged, never having wasted a heartbeat on the refectory because he must have brown-bagged it in hundreds similar, with their Canteens of Canada, smokeshop machines, slop-stained round tables and Royal Metal chairs. ‘Leastways someone’s trying to be original,’ he said, thumbing at the twisting antennae of styrofoam beakers above the machines. “Tasse Artisme”. Or how about “Woman 1”?’

Janine didn’t bat a pale blue eyelid or crack a smile.

‘It sticks in my craw that so-called artists tolerate this wall-to-wall pea greenness. In the Fine Arts Faculty, of all places. Gee, academics can be so blinkered. Why can’t they wise up to themselves?’

‘Yeah, pathetic.’ Jason was folding his pouched arms where common courtesy might have prevailed with folds of robe. ‘Probably Administration. Candy?’

‘Yer know, guzzling coffee out of styrofoam and plastic beakers, yuk, while crapping on about truth and beauty. Irony or hypocrisy? Discuss.’

‘Eh? Oh. So you reckon art should serve some sort of civic purpose?’

‘I just wish we didn’t have to rave on about art as something divorced from the everyday quality of life. Our gear has no style, our junk food has no taste, all those eyesores across the rail tracks where we shack up, it’s all a sight ugly. Ugliness is part and parcel of the human condition, but this ugliness is born out of apathy and sloth, not out of protest and penury. Nowadays John Q. Public only considers art seriously if ‘l’objet d’art’ – she made the quotation sign about her ears, cutesy ones at that – is enshrined in some Gothic mausoleum of national stature.’

‘I don’t know beans about it. So what exactly is your scene, your theme or style?’ He could only slurp nervously at what purported to be coffee.

‘Me? I just respond to the vibes, try to crack what’s real inside at a given moment. But all artists have a different lingo, right? With me, it’s emotional, eh. Going along with a mood or idea or something within that you’re busting to express just right that words can’t, without it being too cute. Colour, texture, design.’ Her shrug was couldn’t-care-less. ‘But so much that passes for art today is stroking the egomaniac or jumping-the-bandwagon con or in-your-face shockism. Or trying to buddy up with your prof to gratify his whims, right?’

‘That’s what makes drama cool as toast. There’s give and take between us thespians and the audience and between you and your team of actors. You get this fantastic high in being at one with every man jack and his dresser when a production takes off.’

‘Yeah, I can buy that. But me, I just circle the wagons. My thing is this stubborn streak that burns to get a handle on how it really is from my own perspective, eh. None of this pseudo experimental shit, trying to create a movement before it exists.’

‘Likewise. Right on. That photog, Maplethorne. Up himself, literally. With a bullwhip, for chrissakes,’ he grinned.

‘Robert Mapplethorpe’s no sleazo, no way,’ she cracked back. ‘You only have to open your iris at the range of his work, beyond the buff gay nudies shot in black and white, so ultra-cool, or provocative self-photies that shock the shit-eaters so, or where he morphs a nipple into a mountain on another plane by extra close-up, graininess, aperture, angle. He has the sensitivity to tease out the inner spirit of celebs, capture their secreted emotion in the shooting space. Philip Glass, eh, that wary, edgy, ultra-defensive pose with arms folded, legs crossed, practically hugging himself. A sight more aesthetically satisfying than watching gorillas popping their nuts, thanks.’

The professor was hovering over the threshold. ‘So our illustrious model is paying court at the salon of Mlle. de Marentette. Allons-y, mes enfants.’

‘Already? This modelling stunt is sweated labour.’

‘Not if it’s a trip you get off on, surely?’ Furnell framed his small, even rodent teeth in a rectangular smile.

‘Now I know what gave Lawrence of Arabia a buzz.’

‘For the apparel oft proclaims the man,’ waxed the academic, adjusting his green, polka-dotted bow-tie. ‘I’ve occasionally speculated on the extent to which Lawrence’s inter-personal relationships improved when, how shall I say, his inclinations were counter-pointed in his dress.’

Jason was floundering, therefore dismissive, except of the lemon scent that hardly mollified the grit on Janine’s tongue.

During the second stanza the students pored over their paintings. There was a little to-and-fro as they squeezed tubes of lurid goo on to their palettes and mixed tentatively, then stood at vantage-points with skewed heads to absorb him. Jason simpered knowingly at Janine, but she would frown back. Why was he made to feel excluded from the process of creation? Dehorned, he regarded his own nakedness as an expression of frankness and honesty. He was giving of himself freely in that same way he experienced acting, except that on the stage existed that strange chemistry. Who was it, Rodin? whose inspiration fairly gushed from falling in love with his models?

Jason’s billowing silk had been slightly tucked by Janine’s forthrightness during recess, but the fact that she was both a knockout and arty with it meant more to him than her soap-box. She, however, remained wedged tight against her own easel.

If only he possessed the talent to capture her on canvas. He would have to invite her to Happy Hour at The Holiday Inn, check out over a pina colada what made her tick and turned her on. After all, he didn’t model solely for the financial crumbs; he also nurtured ambitions to play, if only rarely plough, the field. Now that Janine had witnessed what he was made of, so to speak, it shouldn’t be a hassle to get this relationship on the road, though not necessarily into the fast lane, alas.

At second hour’s dead end, Furnell gave thumbs up and Jason breathed again. Stiffness was nagging his supraspinatus, particularly a spasm in the nape. Who’d have thought after all this pumping iron, I’d not be fit enough to become a statuary model? He draped the robe about him to contemplate Furnell’s drawing. Wow, fantastic! Though he could scarcely credit himself with that much dignity and elegance and . . . Well, on second thoughts . . .

‘Notice how I’ve articulated the sculptural quality of your body,’ the little master was indicating. ‘Forget the scumbling.’

‘Isn’t it a kind of classical treatment?’ Jason purred.

‘Oh, quite. I simply have to add a straw tricorne with amaranth leaves and stick a sword into your right hand, et voila, Donatello’s David.’

Jason was tongue-tied. He had not fully appreciated that he came over so lean, lithe and lissom, or indeed as smoochy as the portrait hinted.

‘Isn’t the victor going to declaim something?’ teased Furnell.

‘Cool,’ conceded Jason, shaking his head. Bubbling so much, he had to sniff, then minced cock-a-hoop to Janine’s canvas.

O horror, horror, horror! A deformed face that leered back (whose, for chrissake?) was prehensile. Massy forehead jutted, enlarged eye sockets purpled, nose twisted into one black nostril, thick white slash tapering downwards as mouth sealed by bandage, jawbone elongated one side.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Jason blew through his teeth.

Janine’s washroom glow glowered. ‘You mean you don’t approve?’

‘I look like a bloody mandrill out of Francis Bacon.’

‘Hey, listen. Don’t take it so personally. That’s just my feelings out in the open, right? Don’t flip your lid about it. Just let it wash over you, eh. The bottom line is who you are and how you see things. It’s all about individual perception, not blind acceptance of stereotypes. Or the mere flaunting of form for form’s sake. It will be a tragic day for Gaia if testosterone rules.’

‘But . . . I mean . . . such a gorgeous chick. How can you have such a creepy imagination? It stinks.’

‘Say, bud, what makes you think you can lay that macho trip on women? Or make us feel guilty having radical ideas? Don’t they teach you to challenge broad-brush assumptions in your course? Never again are we sisters going to allow ourselves to be contaminated by powerful corporations loused up by men, right? Sliced and diced as she was, Karen Silkwood did not die in vain.’

For answer, Jason’s fingers sought refuge in dank armpits. ‘Oh, I see now. I’m supposed to be both a cancer victim of Three Mile Island and one of its murderous perpetrators. Jesus, oh Jesus!’

Backing away into the corridor, he was affronted by - what the hell! Another male model strutting about turbo-charged like Mr Olympic – stark naked! With a clump of pink-sprayed hair! Flashing his crown jewels an’ all! But that’s ludicrous, vile, an insult to our profession! What, silver glitter for crows feet! The guy’s a loony, loopy. Chatting up a flock of birds with no shame, as if he were a bloody supernova. And they’re all over him like a rash. Hasn’t even shaved off that revolting thatch of primal chest hair.

Jason ducked through smoke-rings cooed through puckered lips. Or was it the wreaths of resentment for this spoiler’s naked ostentation or those bulging biceps? Brittle as an unswept sidewalk of compacted snow, he sensed himself over-dressed in his robe, then turned crimson from hairline to lumpy Adam’s apple, for his own mandrill body might not be worth displaying, after all.

Thoroughly in the pits now, Jason haphazardly splashed water on to his face, gasping for breath, before daring to explore himself in the mirror. Was there some give-away clue in his physiognomy that signalled his baser emotions and perverse ideas to the public at large? Was there a prima facie case for cosmetic surgery? Had that girl with the wintry heart, what’s-her-name, Janine, penetrated the darker underbelly of whatever soul he might possess? His face really was quite handsome, wasn’t it? wasn’t it? Devoid of any cynical slackness or smile wrinkles. For all that, he trundled his beefcake to the dais and took up a wooden stance under a shelter of meekness.

‘Some of you are not watching your negative space,’ advised Furnell, who was threatening to circulate. He stood almost on tiptoe with hands on hips two or three feet behind each student, casting sage nods at the model and canvas by turns. Then he wound forward with expansive, circling gestures, his voice subdued. ‘Use your palette knife to make the background less competitive.’

Jason heard a snigger. Out of the corner of his left eye he caught the only girl in a smock pointing at him - any anatomical feature in particular? - while her conspirator, some pigeon-chested weed in patchworked jeans and hay-mown hair, had the nerve to smirk. Asshole!

Again he felt terribly undressed, exposed. What if his doodle was visibly shrinking like the fluke of a concertina? Before everyone’s gaze. There was sure to be a spontaneous eruption of laughter en masse at any moment. He couldn’t even sense the offending appendage and daren’t look down, especially since Furnell’s gimlet eyes seemed to be boring into his genitalia with disapproval. Scarcely durst he glance at Janine, for the shuddering reminder of those primitive impressions with which she had so mistakenly tarred his character sickened him at first, then started to ravage. His fretting to quit the studio made him even more conscious of the absurdity of it all. Fancy flunking Modelling 101, prostituting himself before a coven of freaks!

The third hour dragged weight down to his calves, before Furnell roped him out. ‘You’re a superb model, Jason. Many thanks for the treat. Would you like to join me for an aperitif and modest repast a deux?’

‘Like this?’

‘Why not? Furnell glinted through teeth as well as eyes. ‘Resplendent in the throes of dandyism.’ And half-embraced his crestfallen Adonis.

Jason clasped the lapels of his robe and swished for home. To fade into some tatty cast-offs.


Two o’clock that same fall afternoon. Which brought a sting to your blenched nostrils, cauterized you earlobes, squeezed tears from your eyes. So that it felt mighty good to be swallowed up again in the university theatre. Although the house lights had not been switched on and the auditorium was gloomy, Jason licked his chapped lips. The familiar faces of ten fourth-year diehards would soon be putting themselves through the routines.

He stripped off his jeans, sweater and sneakers by the front row that was cluttered with clothes and boxes of carpenters’ tools. Must’ve been a male stripper in a former life, he muttered. Usually, he did the warm-ups in ballet slippers, red athlete’s singlet and shorts. After three relentless hours of statuary mime, it was less an exploration than an unleashing to stretch one’s legs along the wall bar, to make an arch for Laura to lay her back over and gently lift her, even to jog up and down for the resuscitation of frigid viscera.

‘Who hasn’t lead for a while?’ invited Laura, a large-boned girl in bottle-green tights and black vest.

‘I’ll take it,’ volunteered Jason. ‘Let’s make a big circle, kids. This is the plaster chunks warm-up.’ He started bouncing on the spot for thirty seconds, then stopped. ‘Toes and knees: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now shiver, floppy hands. Let yourself go loose. Swing round and bend your knees: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.’

Jason could feel the benefit of pumping all that ill-feeling and stiffness out of his system. Back in his own element, he was revelling in flexing neck and shoulders, straining upwards with deep inhalations. When they lay on their backs in spoke formation with their heads in the centre, eyes closed, practising vocals, it was as if his whole body were revolving through space, a starship of loving links. Until the soft sighs rose to plaintive groans to vehement cries, such that sensations in his body alerted him to the promise of renewal.

Jason switched on the record-player for their disco routine. And flipped. Metal electrifying jangled crashing; chunks of vibration searing wavering ing ing ng ng g; improv jiving jolted bent galvanized static mindful e-go-go-go.

Laura bounced towards him. They inclined their torsos and belly-bumped in mid-air. Her teeth gleamed as she bounded towards him again, her tights eliciting the green tones in her skin. ‘Aaah!’ he expelled the air from the pit of his six-pack. Next he goose-stepped around the stage growling.

‘Keep your chest open, Jason!’ The instructor, Warren McKay, had just waddled in from the Caboose Diner on a well caponed belly. He liked to give the ensemble half an hour to warm up by themselves, a predilection rumoured to be a strand of bona-fide philosophy. ‘It helps if you have a beat.’ His clapping to the rhythm of music fortunately drowned his own plumbing. Everyone was dancing freely, clapping or snapping fingers and whooping.

‘All right,’ rasped McKay, for the crackling from the canard a l’orange had repeated in his gullet. ‘Is the first group ready to present?’

‘As ready as we’ll ever be,’ said Jason, tugging off his singlet. He was perspiring, not disagreeably, out of eagerness. ‘Can we have five minutes to concentrate our energies?’

‘Sure can.’

Jason and Laura disappeared into the wings. They stood three feet apart, staring at each other, breathing more deeply in unison, arms hanging loose. The physical exercises had facilitated his metamorphosis: from drama student to metaphysical god. He relaxed into mass and weight. Then slowly he straightened his spine, elongating gradually, reaching for largeness of life. No longer was he aware of Laura’s personality, arch features or green tights. She was the fiery spirit he had to tame.

He clubbed his fist three times on a wooden table to notify. ‘Stand by, everyone!’ called McKay from the second row, where the students clustered. Jason strode solemnly to centre-stage, faced the auditorium and folded his arms. Always to the accompaniment of thumping palpitation to dominate the boards, control a darkling dome of space and project oneself into the beyond of diminutive palefaces.

Laura circled him with cautious steps, flowing with the refined eloquence of a ballerina. She quickened pace to wheel towards him, then away beyond, emitting a whooshing sound from upstage.

‘This is an ancient prophecy about a contest,’ Jason declared with emphasis.

‘This is a contest, contest, contest,’ whispered Laura, as she circumscribed once more, the sibillants echoing across the footlights.

The spirit sidled up to the stolidness that shielded the god. She seized his hands and initiated gyrating gestures. ‘This is a contest,’ she snarled. Then insinuated herself behind him and began raking at his chest with both claws.

Precisely then, the sinew binding the wilful edifice snapped. A down-to-earth student actor was peering at the dark. But enlightening form of a young girl looming down the aisle. With sketch pad. She had the temerity to advance to row ten on which the director’s wooden console table was resting. She shook herself free of a fur-trimmed coat and nestled into the sketch pad that balanced against the console. Her eyes searched up from under her long, blonde hair.

‘Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,’ muttered Jason, ‘if it isn’t that Marentette broad.’

‘This is a contest,’ swirled into his eardrum, warmly. Standing limp, he was quite unable to retaliate, as if too convincingly method-acting a block of stone.

‘Hold it!’ cried McKay. ‘You’ve lost the rhythm. Jason, you were fine when you made your entrance, but towards the end your body was too small.’

‘No, I wasn’t it at all,’ he muttered with disappointment. ‘That was a real mess,’ he added, more loudly in case Janine had condescended to listen in. But her eyes were skittering the stage unconcernedly. So that he was nettled by the insensitive way she was imposing. Or highlighting his inability to lose himself in the role assigned.

‘Tell me about it,’ said McKay, who climbed up on to the stage none too steadily, yet succeeded in containing his flatulence.

‘I guess I haven’t found an outlet for my tension.’

‘What’s your objective in this scene?’

‘Well, it’s like I’m the dominant character, a pillar of strength, but . . . er . . . I don’t feel I’m completely in control of my space. I need to feel sure of that to withstand Laura’s threats. Can I move around more?’

‘See where it takes you. But remember that you can control space through interaction with Laura or through gestures or through the right mental attitude. If there’s no genuine interaction, though, you’re bound to feel reified.’

‘Okay.’

‘Laura, don’t repeat the word ad nauseam unless you experience it.’ McKay put his arm around her waist to communicate more intimately. Laura placed a hand on his pregnant midriff that insisted on rumbling in spite of reassurance. ‘Tune into the beat of the words or cut them out altogether.’

‘Are my movements okie doke?’

‘Just go with them. It’s the words that sound artificially forced.’

‘I guess I’m thinking too much,’

‘Let’s have another run-through.’

In the wings Jason concentrated on his own space and worked at feeling the channels that Laura was flowing through. His draughts of deep breathing solidified him against her challenge. She emanated all angularity to him now. Her eyebrows slanted downwards, her compressed lips held grimness, her arms described tearing arcs at his flesh as she seethed at him.

Jason knocked three times. He strode to centre-stage once more. Then he thundered his words to Janine to snare her attention, to extend a cord across the orchestra pit to tow her in. ‘This is an ancient prophecy about a contest.’ Even so, the blonde tresses continued screening details of the sketch pad.

It was no good. Jason was accustomed to strangers attending rehearsals; indeed welcomed playing to them, particularly if he was performing in a comedy and could spark some laughter. Now, however, he became convinced that this brazen hussy was ridiculing him with her grotesque drawings, abusing the privilege of having witnessed him utterly starkers and defenceless. He clamped his eyes to the projection box, his ears perked to hear the weevilling of pencil on paper.

Suddenly, Laura had closed on him, seething, ‘This is a contest.’

‘Hold it!’ said McKay. ‘It’s not working. Go away, the two of you, and try choreographing it differently. You’re still too literal.’

‘Okay,’ said Jason. ‘Sorry, Laura.’

She grasped his hand and smiled sympathetically. ‘I just didn’t know where you were coming from.’

‘Look, give me a few minutes, will you? I want to say hi to an old buddy.’

‘Right. See you in the foyer.’

‘Is the second group ready?’ called McKay.

Jason put on his singlet and moseyed along the ninth row towards Janine. He must have cut a ridiculous figure in his ballet-slippers and sports gear that suddenly shot a rank smell up his nostrils. How on earth would this outsider, this intruder have conceived him attempting to play one of the deities? Probably compiling a folio of witheringly satirical cartoons. Like, whose pornography had Furnell whisked him into his study to show? That guy Rowlandson. Thomas Rowlandson. Gross, paunchy, leering dummies rollicking in ugly postures.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘We meet again. What ill wind blows you in here?’

‘Since the welcoming committee is so damned uptight . . . I’m making some prelims for a theatrical painting. Shades of Degas. I sure dig that guy. Allowed his female models to have control over their own bodies. With dignity, a lack of self-consciousness. Serenely cool, right? For this assignment, thought I’d get a burst of inspiration in Fraser County. With so much glare, though, yours as well as the lights, I can’t work at my spectral refraction.’

‘Look, your presence has fazed me. Go get your inspiration some place else!’

‘My, we are picky. Don’t actors crave to be adored or at least seek attention? Aren’t you turned on by an audience?’

‘Usually, yeah.’ Jason’s face turned pasty with what might have seemed rouge in a real performance. ‘To be blunt, you’ve fucked me up.’

‘Well, screw you, crepe hanger! Never rat out a sister! If you feel that crabby, I’ll leave you to it. Sorry I interfered with what you’d got going there. O what the heck, do you think this sketch is too tacky?’

Very leery, he accepted the pad with reluctance. ‘Jesus!’

‘Did you call?’ enquired McKay. ‘No? Well, keep quiet back there! Stand by, everyone!’

Jason twisted onto a seat. That he might know the worst more equably balanced. Instead, the representation of a youthful, godlike figure with classically muscled body and majestic bearing stood up to his beady suspicion. Apart from the curls of short hair and the spiritual remoteness of the eyes, he acknowledged, albeit begrudgingly, then with a rush of relief, a recognizable likeness of himself. Quite good, he had to admit, though still teasing out his darker shades. Or rather those of the mythical being he had been struggling to create.

‘Up on the stage you weren’t so phoney,’ she murmured, in such a way that the asphalt was carpeted with flesh flocks of snow. ‘More tuned in to your inner resources an’ all that, rather than twenty kilos of bad road. Remember Thoreau, walking beyond the woods of Concord? “The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him”.’

Janine leant forward to retrieve the pad.

When Jason craned round in bemusement, a dry whistle on his lips, she was already tiptoeing beyond the gloom of the stalls. Why was the confounded girl so sassy, so nosey? So evasive!

Whenever he sought to airbrush the cascade of blonde hair tumbling over creamy breasts, even down long legs that flowed on and on, that incongruous, grating voice would unribbon. And laugh, laugh, laugh his dreams to scorn.

                                                                                                                                 Michael Small
April, 1980

published: Her Natural Life and Other Stories, Tamarillo, 1988