Off Day

Today’s first session, at a professional art studio, is capped with a round of thank-yous and applause, an act that has become customary, and to which I am still not accustomed. A smile is the best I can ever outwardly manage in way of “you’re welcome”. It seems silly to voice the response, as though I would appear vainglorious in accepting their praise. 

On breaks students from the other class lament their discontent that I was not scheduled to pose for them, and at lunch, as I look around the long communal table, I am filled with the warmth of community and family the studio brings. I think how lucky I am to be sitting for a group of budding artists with so much potential.

Then I head to my evening session, trudging across Center City through ice-cold pelting rain. Wind strong enough to knock me over has knocked the joy right out of me, and by the time I reach the destination of what will be hours nine through fourteen of my day, I am ready for a steaming mug of jo and a paper cup of the spicy carrot soup I have stashed in the teacher’s lounge refrigerator. Although I should go the gym during this break, I can’t muster the oomph to undress and redress and brave a second round of this miserable drizzle. I make a be-line for the door, one mittened hand holding my hood forward in attempt to shield my face, the other tucked deeply into my pocket.

Once inside, a pit stop at HR takes the little remaining wind right out of my sails.

“Are you faculty?”

“Staff,” I reply. “Model.”

“Oh, you’re a model. You’re not considered staff,” she utters with just a hint of a sneer, and enough disdain to make me question my worth as a woman. 

“It says ‘staff’ on my ID…I didn’t know anything different.” I am working so hard to keep the frost from my tone that my reply comes out softer than I intended. My feelings have been hurt, though I can’t put a finger on why.

“You’re not staff,” she repeats, somewhat absently. The words ring with such adamancy that I wonder what she has against having models categorized alongside her own position. I signed six pages of paperwork to get on the payroll. Taxes are taken out of my checks. It really does say “Staff” right on my ID, my department listed as “Education Resources”. The title always cracks me up in its literality. 

Either this woman is mistaken, or she wants to knock me down a peg. Other theories of her motive rise through the steam building between my ears, and I squash them.

As the elevator doors close, and the box lifts me to the eighth floor, I recall the calamity that has been this term: usually compliant professors have been particularly and repeatedly difficult in granting my allotted breaks, once to the point of holding me cramping, limbs tingling, for an hour. 

One young, female student is so arrogantly uncomfortable with the naked form that she only attends class when the model is clothed, nervously chattering under her breath through both class and my concentration, giving me disapproving looks in the elevator, as though my job is not just distasteful, but an outright sin. 

Maintenance has yet to repair the wheel locks on either model stand, despite work orders submitted by two professors and myself. I have thus nearly gone surfing on several occasions, bringing forth visions of my face with a solidly-broken nose. 

Just this evening I am nearly set on fire when a space heater several years past its prime shorts out and spits forth flames not ten inches from my feet.

Most days modeling revives me, focusing muscles into graceful forms clearing my mind of cobwebs and wasteful trinkets clogging my brain matter. Today, I feel inexplicably embarrassed, as though what I do every day should somehow make me ashamed. 

Tonight’s professor thanks me, as he always does, but I don't wait around to chit chat about cowboy boots and the probability of an alien invasion. Tonight I need a glass of wine and a cat in my lap, and a boost to get through it all again tomorrow.