People call me BC. Big Cat. A nickname I've had since I was a boy. However, during my years at art college I was known as 'Fluffer'. These are the stories of that time. Fluffer's tales.
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My college put on a series of fundraising events, one of which was a chance to do a life-drawing class with the college's star, a French artist called Madame Jolie. Obviously, this wasn't her real name, none of us could remember that, so even she started referring to herself as Madame Jolie. The nickname was supposed to be ironic because she always dressed in dour, antique Victorian funeral clothing. Apparently she was: "Mourning ze death of ze individual since ze industrial revolution". However, being in her late twenties and shapely, with thick white mascara, heavy black eyeliner and trussed up bleached-blonde hair, she looked more Monroe than Morticia. More Madame than Mortician.
Mme Jolie had been let down by their life model, who selfishly had to go and give birth, so needed at very short notice, a nude. Don't ask me how she talked me into volunteering. Work it out for yourself from these two facts: a) I was still nursing a crush on Fleur so Mme Jolie's accent was irresistible, and b) Madame was the mentor of my best friend (not a typo), Sara.
So one bright, cold, Saturday morning I found myself under the spotlight in the school's grandest studio, dressed only in a woman's silk robe in front of a crowd of - predominantly female - strangers.
As part of my architecture course I had attended plenty of life-drawing classes on the other side of the easel, so I knew what to expect. A blast of 5-minute warm-up poses then 2 or 3 longer, 20-minute ones. There was a great big clock on the wall, which I imagined would be my only friend over the next 90 minutes. The wall of mirrors behind the students certainly wouldn't be. The reflection already tortured me with a view of this alarming tranny-hulk. Sweating and on the verge of tears.
Mme Jolie clapped her hands, jerked a nod at me, and I dutifully closed my eyes and unfastened the robe. In a rustle of black silk she was at my side to remove it and asked me to sit on a stool. "Tres Bien! Tres Bien!" she clucked as her eyes skipped all over my trembling gooseflesh.
"OK everybody we have a lot of detail here, lots of bumps and dips and veins on this body. Very good, monsieur. Five minutes. Allez!"
First pose, no problem, sitting with my hands in my lap. No-one could see the jewels. Clap. Second pose stood facing away from them. A little more difficult as they gawped at my bare arse, but I couldn't see them, so fuck it. Clap. Third pose. Bollocks. No I mean it. Bollocks. Full frontal, hands-on-head. Some tittering from a couple of girls and Mme Jolie just chucked them out, immediately, no second chances.
"You don't know how to really see! As artists see! You are still children! Get out!" She chucked charcoal after them.
I relaxed, with Mme Jolie on my side this might not be so bad. I cruised through the other short-poses, recognising the looks on the "artists" faces. They were focussed on shape, shade, and proportion. No one was concerned with the fact there was a guy in the room with his very real cock out.
Except maybe... her. A feline girl with an open, good-humoured face and a dark tumble of curls piled messily on top of her head.
Typical. You tell yourself something, convince yourself it is true, and then your mind simply has to find the exception. And no sooner had I found the twinkle in this cheeky cat-girl's eye when she smiled a complicit little secret smile back at me.
Seed of doubt sown. As the short poses ended, I remembered with a jolt of horror, that these weren't art students. These were ordinary civilians out for a distraction on Saturday morning and - with the exception of one middle-aged bloke - all female. What's more, it seemed the cat-girl was getting more and more "distracted" by the minute.
I told myself this was just wilful arrogance on my part. My puffed-up pride forcing me to see things that weren't there. Like: No one, surely, could look at this body, this member, without becoming aroused!
First long pose. No place to hide. Reclined, all out there. "Everybody look at my package!" for 20 long minutes. My brightly lit reflection, silhouetting my audience, was the dullest peepshow on the planet.
Halfway through, Mme Jolie picked up this silver-haired woman's sketch. "Tres Bien! Everybody look! Look at this! This woman is an artist! She has drawn a lion! Ready to spring!"
"Actually, it's a jaguar."
"Oui! C'est magnifique! My dear why did you chose to draw this animal and not our helpful model over there?"
"Ah... he just looks like a jaguar."
"Oui! And monsieur." She turned to me. "You ARE like a coiled animal, too tensed. Loosen up. We are here to draw you, not admire your physique."
