Of all precious experiences I had in my college days in the US, there are quite a few episodes that are very interesting but too offensive or embarrassing to disclose to anyone but very few close friends. For this occasion, though, I tried to pick a relatively benign one among these.
I studied fine arts at the University of North Carolina in the early ‘90’s. North Carolina, as you know, is not exactly an ideal place for studying art; the place is filled with rednecks, farm boys, and religious fanatics. Majority of them would spend their lives without ever knowing where Japan is located, not to mention ever making friends with a Japanese. Imagine -- I was the one and only foreign student there.
It was during a summer course in my first year, there was a girl in my class who was open-minded and able to show understanding of my difficult situation, unlike other students. One day, after we got to know each other a bit, during a casual after-class conversation, she asked me a rather abrupt question. “Hey, Taxxxa. Do you think you could nude-model for me?” It was a well-known fact that she was one of the most dedicated art students, and that she had won student’s awards a couple of times for her paintings and photographs, using her then-boyfriend as a nude model. I also happened to know that she had broken up with him. It was funny she made such a request so casually, but I sensed a touch of defiance in the way she asked it and in her facial expression. To me, it was like, “I know you may not want to do it; you are a shy, modest Asian boy.” I thought about it for a few seconds, and decided that I probably should show that I was not making a big deal out of this proposal at all. So, I kept a straight face and answered, “OK. Why not.” I have to admit that I had never exposed my naked body to anyone since I was a little baby, but that night, I met her in the studio, took off all my clothes, and posed for her. Then, later, she nude-modeled for me in return. And that was that.
As a matter of fact, if you are an art major student, it is a requirement that you take at least two figure-drawing classes to graduate, in which you have nude models to draw. You would have to keep your eyes on her or him for 2 hours, twice a week. This was a kind of secret privilege for all art majors. As for me, my privilege was to begin the following semester.
One day at the beginning of that semester, she, the girl, caught me in the studio. We somehow hit on a subject of the figure study class I was taking for the first time. What she mentioned was that, in the previous year, we had not have a male model and we were not going to have one this semester either. The reason was, she said, all these male students were too embarrassed to pose nude in front of 20 or so classmates. “Don’t you think it’s such a shame?” she asked. I told her that it really was a shame that students were not able to have a precious opportunity to study a male figure because of the guys’ stupid self-consciousness.
The next thing you know, she was asking me if I could model for the class, and I was answering “OK,” without thinking much about what I was in store for. Later that day, she went over to a figure study teacher to inform -- to the teacher’s surprise and bewilderment, I imagine -- that I was going to be a nude model. The following morning, I was already standing on-stage under spotlights stark naked, surrounded by about 20 uneasy American faces.
It was not an easy job for sure, both physically and mentally, but I managed to complete the first two or three modeling classes after a fashion. But soon I was going to have a serious trouble.
One morning, I woke up to model for a morning class. I soon realized something was wrong with my belly. When I went to a bathroom, it turned out to be no-nonsense diarrhea. Despite terrible bellyache and intermittent bowel movements, I managed to show up to the class. As usual, with my bathrobe on, I climbed on to the pedestal. It was probably a few seconds after I removed the bathrobe that I noticed a very strange expression on the face of a girl directly in front of me, which I probably will never forget till my last day -- it was an odd mixture of smile, astonishment and curiosity. Her eyes were transfixed to my private part.
I naturally looked down to see what was going on down there, and discovered that the abdominal pain had caused my penis to shrink to the size and shape of a peanut shell.
As you have to as a nude model, you are supposed to change a posing direction by 90- degree angle every a few minutes. So, each time I did that, I had to put up with muted giggles of the students. It was utterly humiliating.
After this horrible incident, I thought that nothing more embarrassing than this could possibly happen to my modeling career. I was wrong. Another unimaginable ordeal was lying ahead in ambush.
This was also a morning class later that semester. I seemed to have dozed off while posing a reclining position. It was not until I somehow sensed uneasiness and tension in the classroom that I found myself having fallen into a doze. It did not take me very long, though, to find out what was causing the uneasiness. My penis was half-erect. To be precise, it was not just erection. Fluid was oozing out of the tip of the organ, creating a gooey thread. I was not fantasizing anything, I just fell asleep and lost control. It was early morning and I was healthy in my early 20’s. Thanks to my strong willpower and self-control, however, embarrassment was contained in one direction of the classroom this time.
At the end of the long semester, as a rule of the class, about a dozen or so best drawings from the class were chosen and exhibited by the teacher in the hallway. It was such a weird feeling looking at drawings of your nudity in the public space. However, what was even more weird about it was that there was a conspicuous, but curious inconsistency among those drawings -- the size of depicted private parts of mine, raging from that of peanut shell to a ripe banana.