Most of the models, Dave added, were Bunnies at that new Playboy Club downtown.
He got a letter from his friend Dave every few weeks.
Unlike Dave, who had started at the commercial art academy in the fall semester, he would attend in the spring after his hitch in the service was over.
There was one thing Dave mentioned every time he wrote. Nude figure drawing classes (as in NUDE figure drawing classes) were held Monday and Wednesday mornings and most of the models, Dave added, were Bunnies at that new Playboy Club downtown.
During long nights of guard duty, the young soldier took to imagining those morning sessions. He had never seen a naked woman (a NAKED woman). His 12 years of parochial schools treated the human body, especially those with a surplus of estrogen, as if it didn’t exist.
Time dragged through December and it froze solid during January but finally he was discharged. He flew home and reported to school.
The students circled the model’s platform facing each other. Dave had saved the drawing board behind his own in the back of the room so his friend would be less self-conscious during his first encounter with nudity. (His regulation haircut had already made him a target of stares.)
She entered through the side door, walked to the platform, took off her robe and folded it neatly, Virge asked her to start with the usual series of 15-second, warm-up poses. The model’s name was Pearl. Pearl was somewhere between 50 and 100 years old and had never heard of the Playboy Club.
The group drew in silence. Then came a moment, perfectly timed, when Dave produced a loud, well-modulated belch. It was a thing of beauty. Dave turned around with a look of disgust on his face and stared at his friend sitting behind him. Welcome home, guy.
The young man would go on learn every bump, crease and indentation of the human anatomy. He wasn’t particularly gifted but his training did give him a kind of x-ray vision that allowed him to imagine the naked bodies underneath peoples’ clothes. That was both a blessing and a curse as he and Dave and their circle of friends began to age.
