"Phoebe" (part 1 of 2)
honest, more real than most

In early 1993 I moved to a small town in southern Indiana to take a job
teaching English at a small community college. It wasn't the best job in the
world, and certainly didn't pay much, but employment opportunities for
English majors were pathetically slim that year. In any case, I found the
idea of small town life attractive; I had grown up in a huge, bloated
metropolis filled with freeways and strip malls, and the serenity and
solitude of small town life was irresistable. Perhaps I would even find
female companionship, or even love; certainly I had had no success with the
rather brutal singles scene in my home city, and the opportunities to meet
women in graduate school were virtually nonexistent.

I had been living in town for several months and had seen the intense
Indiana winter dwindle away to a tentative spring. I had a small apartment
in the southern part of town; actually it was just a few rooms of an old
house that had been crudely partitioned off to create an apartment. I walked
to work each day and returned home in the evening; the cold weather
precluded any other exploration of my environment. Other than a few other
English instructors, I had no friends to speak of; the social interaction I
sought was seemingly nowhere to be found. My salary was too sparse to
accomodate trips to Indianapolis or Louisville for cultural activity or
night life (even if I could face that again), and my meager savings had not
recovered from the expenses of moving.

Lack of money was on my mind one sunny Saturday morning as I finished my
weekly shopping and pushed my cart of frozen dinners and Spaghetti-O's
through the vestibule leading to the parking lot.

There was a bulletin board mounted there which I had never paid any
attention to; however, starved for some evidence of human social activity,
and vaguely imagining some possibility for moonlighting, I stopped and
glanced over the notices and cards posted there. There were the usual
things: garage sales, solicitations for babysitters, a poster for a
production of "The Music Man" at the local high school. I was about to
continue to the parking lot when a small index card at the lower corner of
the board caught my eye. "Model (male or female OK) needed by local artist.
Call Phoebe, 392-1750."

I mulled over this for a few moments. I didn't really think of myself as a
model, per se, but I wasn't completely unfamiliar with the idea. My younger
sister had majored in art, and a few times I had posed for her watercolors.
There was nothing particularly difficult about it; I had simply slouched in
a chair for a couple of hours while she worked. Once I fell asleep; another
time I watched a movie on videocassette. The idea of being paid to sit still
seemed rather appealing to me in my rather despairing mood; I took out a pen
from my pants pocket and wrote the number on one of the paper grocery bags.

I called the number from my apartment that afternoon. "Hi, it's Phoebe,"
answered a contralto voice that suggested a middle-aged woman.

"I'm . . . calling about your advertisement for a model," I said somewhat
haltingly.

The voice immediately brightened. "Oh, wonderful! I've had that silly card
up there for weeks now; you're the first person to call.

Have you ever done this before?" I started to stammer out something about my
sister's watercolors, but she interrupted. "No, don't answer. I'm so
desperate for a model that I can't be picky. Can you come over this
afternoon? Say about three?"

"Sure. Three is fine. Where do you live?"

She gave me directions to a house about half a mile south of town.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shortly before three o'clock, I rolled my bicycle into the gravel driveway
of Phoebe's house. It was a big, somewhat shabby two- story frame house; its
white paint was peeling in several places and the lawn needed mowing. Huge
shade trees surrounded it, and I had a strange feeling of isolation; the
nearest neighbor was hundreds of yards down the road. I parked my bike next
to one of the trees, ascended the vast front porch and knocked. There was
total silence for a few moments, and I listened to the locusts droning in
the huge trees that sheltered the house. Then I heard footsteps approaching
and the door swung open.

A woman who appeared to be in her mid-forties stood before me, smiling
beatifically. She was my height (about five-ten) and was impressively wide;
I guessed about 200 pounds, though I've always had trouble estimating
quantities like these (I'd be hopeless trying to describe a crime suspect).
She had shoulder-length straight dark hair streaked with gray and was
wearing an oversized white T-shirt smeared with bright colors of paint in
several places; cutoff denim shorts peeked out under the shirt's hem. She
wore huge round wire-rimmed glasses and her face was only slightly lined
with age.

"The model finally arrives! Come in!" She unhooked the screen door and swung
it toward me, holding open with one plump arm. I grabbed the door and
attempted to pull it completely open, but some kind of spring door-closer
kept it from opening more than about forty-five degrees. I turned sideways
and squeezed past Phoebe, and for a moment I brushed against her pliant
breasts and abdomen. Much to my surprise I found this sensation appealing; I
hadn't considered older, heavier women to be "my type." The momentary
titillation subsided as I entered the house.

Phoebe led me into a huge living room that was almost devoid of furniture;
drawings and paintings in a quasi-Impressionistic style hung everywhere.
Abruptly I noted with some alarm that many of them were nudes, and it dawned
on me that I might be asked to pose unclothed. My stomach seemed to drop
through the floor as I considered this prospect. Why hadn't I thought about
this before calling her? I had visualized the modeling in terms of my
sister's watercolors--which, of course, involved no nudity.

"I didn't even ask you your name! What's wrong with me?" Phoebe said as she
led me through a short hallway toward the back of the house.

"Scott," I answered.

"Scott! A beautiful name . . . here's the studio." We were in another large
room devoid of decoration; it contained only an easel, a small table covered
with art supplies (oil paints, palettes, pencils, charcoal), what appeared
to be a stack of wooden crates partially covered with a sheet, an old
wingback chair with fraying upholstery, and a Chinese screen standing in the
corner. A row of windows along the back wall provided natural light; sheer
white curtains moved slightly in the fresh spring breeze.

She turned to me and smiled nervously. "Is ten dollars an hour okay? That's
what I paid my last model . . . admittedly that was over a year ago, so if
that's not okay . . ."

"Oh, that's . . . that's great," I said.

"Would you like to rest for a few moments before we start? Some tea,
perhaps?"

"No, that's okay. I'm fine." Actually I wasn't fine; I was almost fainting
from nervousness, but that's all I could manage to say.

"Okay, then." She picked up the sheet from the stack of crates. "I'd like
you to undress and and drape the sheet over your shoulder, and sit in the
chair. You can undress behind the screen." She handed me the sheet, then
turned to the table and began opening tubes of paint. I stood rooted to the
floor for a few moments.

Phoebe realized I hadn't moved. "Is something wrong?" she asked, frowning
with concern.

"N-no," I said. "Just a little nervous." Before she could respond I quickly
walked behind the screen.

I stood motionless for a short time, listening to the quiet sounds of Phoebe
getting her materials ready, while I wondered what to do.

I was marginally relieved that I would at least have the protection of the
sheet, but still . . . I suppressed a momentary impulse to run out the door.
It occurred to me to simply explain to Phoebe that I didn't realize that
nudity was required; but the thought of her disappointed expression . . .
no, I couldn't do that. I answered the advertisement; I was here. I had to
go through with this. I began undressing, placing my clothes on the wooden
chair I found behind the screen.

"Ready, Scott?" Phoebe called out.

I draped the sheet over my right shoulder, taking care to insure that it
covered most of my body, and warily stepped out from behind the screen.
Phoebe was standing near the wingback chair. She directed me to sit lazily
in the chair with my left leg over the arm. I managed to do so while keeping
the sheet over me. Phoebe then adjusted the sheet so it covered only my
right hip and the left side of my torso; I was momentarily terrified that
she might expose me, but she didn't. She stepped back and instructed me to
lean my head against the wing of the chair and look down at the left leg of
the easel.

She stepped back and surveyed the arrangement. "Okay, fine," she said in a
businesslike tone, and moved behind the easel.

The strangeness of sitting partially naked in front of a woman I had only
known for ten minutes quickly passed. Phoebe worked in silence, examining me
dispassionately, as if I were simply a conglomeration of light and shadow.
The only sound was the soft, sibilant noise of her brush against the canvas.

The minutes crawled by. Out of sheer tedium I allowed my eyes to stray from
the spot where Phoebe had told me to look. My gaze slowly moved up Phoebe's
thick, achingly smooth legs to her torso. As she worked I could see her
breasts, which appeared to be almost football-sized, swaying gently under
the T-shirt. At one point she stepped back from the canvas a moment, and in
the slanting light of the late afternoon it looked as if she wore no bra.

I stared at Phoebe's breasts as if hypnotized. Then she turned slightly to
work on a spot near the top of the canvas, and as she lifted her arm I could
see down her sleeve for a moment. It was true; she wore nothing under the
T-shirt. I saw the fold of skin where her breast intersected the area under
her arm. For a few seconds I felt dizzy.

I felt a slight stretching sensation in my groin and panic raced through my
body. I was getting an erection. I swallowed, gritted my teeth and resumed
staring at the leg of the easel, but my penis refused to shrink. I silently
hoped that it would at least stay at a size that would keep it from poking
up into the sheet, but my anxiety seemed to have the opposite effect. In a
depressingly short time my penis was fully erect and almost perpendicular to
my body, creating a noticeable peak in the cloth.

Phoebe concentrated on her canvas for a time, oblivious to me. Then she
turned back to me to reestablish her mental image. She glanced briefly below
my waist and continued to work without pause or comment.

I felt a small shred of relief as I realized that, though she undoubtedly
noticed my protruding penis, Phoebe did not intend to make an issue of it.
Still, my face burned with shame. The minutes continued to crawl by, but my
erection refused to subside.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity (but was probably only an hour),
Phoebe put down her brush as the sun's rays through the window began to dim
and turn orange. "All right, I think that's enough for today."

I practically ran behind the screen, dropped the sheet, and grabbed my
pants. Then Phoebe's voice floated toward me. "Scott, how about staying for
some tea? I feel a bit guilty that I can only pay you ten an hour . . . I
can't just let you run out like this."

I paused, momentarily confused.

"Scott?"

"Sure, thanks. I'd like that," I said, standing there with my underwear in
my hands.

"Great! While you're dressing I'll clean up."

I stood stupidly, wondering what I had gotten myself into, as her footsteps
receded down the hall.

I noted sardonically that my penis finally, slowly began returning to its
normal size. "Jeez," I murmured to myself, shaking my head.

What a day.

I was about to resume dressing when I heard the sound of a shower running;
it was faint, as if muffled by a closed door. Idly curious, I leaned around
the screen. At the end of a short hallway, I could see what was evidently
the bathroom door; it seemed to be slightly ajar, and light was visible
around its edges.

I thought nothing of this; I had lived in old houses and knew that their
doors often obstinately refused to fit into their age- distorted frames.

I heard the gentle swish of the trees in the yard moving in a gust of wind.
The curtains billowed inward and I felt air moving around my naked body.
Suddenly, the sound of the shower became inordinately loud. I peeked around
the edge of the screen and my jaw dropped in shock.