Authentic

I didn't plan to cut work the day after my 40th birthday.

I love my work and I've been a workaholic all my life. I've never understood people who spend their lives doing something they hate. I suppose 40 is a sort milestone of sorts, but even if I hated my job, a birthday is certainly no reason to skip work. In fact, I'd celebrated my 40th birthday way I'd celebrated the 20 or so that had come immediately before; I ignored it. I'm no recluse; I like to party, drink, fuck, maybe even light a spliff from time to time. But what kind of responsible adult does that on a Tuesday. So, responsibly, I was on my way to work, when she came exited through the turnstile at the Grand Army Plaza station just as I was about to swipe my Metrocard to enter.

I watched her walk by. She was tall, shoulder length hair, slim. She wore black leggings and was wrapped in a long black sweater, which utterly failed to hide the curves of her hips and legs. She turned past me, a bright lavender scarf flapping behind, and headed up the steps closest to Prospect Park. I considered how much of my day couldn't be put off till tomorrow, then followed I turned and followed.

Prospect Park occupies almost 600 acres of Northwest Brooklyn. Back then, it was an oasis where Jewish, West Indian, East Indian, and Polish communities intersected. Before Brooklyn became fashionable, it was Central Park stripped of tourists and stockbrokers. Even today is no better place in the 5 boroughs to spend a bright fall morning. There is certainly no better place to people watch.

I trailed behind her and watched as she picked a sunny spot on a bench beside an empty playground. She pulled a large book - perhaps a text book - from her bag and started to read. I walked past her, swept away a handful of leaves and settled in a sunny spot on another bench some 15 feet away. From my angle, just off to her left I could see her eyes and observe the common New Yorker mask of watchful detachment melt away as she lost herself in her book.

Half unconsciously, I began memorizing the light and shadows and color hovering over her. In my defense, I'm not a stalker; I'm a sculptor. An "urban sculptor," if you believe the Village Voice. I work with the stone, wood and metal the city spits out. I build my art from the rebar, cinder blocks, and wooden beams the city sheds like old snake skin. I reanimate them, give them new life and motion and purpose.

Life and motion and purpose. Even in her stillness she had these. She looked to be in late 30s, clearly brown skin. She'd dressed that morning with the intention of spending the day in the autumn air but the early morning sun had pushed the chill to the shady spaces of the park. Too warm, my unintentional model shed the first layer of her outwear and turned, putting her legs on the bench and giving me her complete profile as she resettled into her reading.

I leaned back, taking in the feel of the park and the yellow, orange and red curtain that the trees spread around her. At the same time, I made no effort to hide my interest, even when she looked up and found my eyes on her.

Under her bulky sweater, now draped over the bench, she was wearing a red, long-sleeve thermal top. The impressions caused by her nipples were obvious. Suddenly, something she was reading made her smile, pulling back the corners of her mouth and making her cheekbones even more prominent. It was like seeing the human body for the first time. I continued to watch as one hand absent mindedly fiddled with a strand of hair. She quickly glanced up and around, and seeing me, the only other person in the park, tilted her head and smiled before returning to her book. Moments passed. She suddenly moved with a new urgency, as if some decision had been made, sitting up and placed her book on her bag beside the bench. Then slowly, her right hand moved over her breasts, delicately, but with purpose. For endless minutes this continued, the caresses interrupted with increasing frequency by a pinch of her nipples through her shirt.

Despite the eroticism of the moment, I forced myself to turn away and pulled out a cigarette. I wondered if this was why she came to the park. Was this something she did all the time? The roll of tobacco sparked to life and the thought of her as a serial exhibitionist made her display seem less interesting. It also didn't seem to fit her. I turned back before the first puff of smoke had dissipated. I watched her hand slide over her stomach and beneath her shirt. I saw the outline of her fingers come together over her nipple and a shiver went through me as she turned and we made eye contact.

I watched her tease herself and me. She concentrated on her breasts but, every now and again she moved a hand down to draw lazy circles on the inner thigh of her leggings

Her physique and cheekbones aside, I was aroused by the poetry in her movements. The way she touched herself in this open space in front of a stranger... I couldn't believe this was planned or usual for her...the air of spontaneity was too complete.

Still holding my eyes, she arched her back slightly and slid the hand that wasn't in her shirt under the elastic waistband of her leggings. I watched as the back of her fingers bulged the black woolen crotch. Her hand moved slowly, lazily, between her legs. In the quiet I realized I was hard.

Gradually I recognized a steady, easy rhythm. I pulled on my cigarette, found it burned almost to the filter, and wondered if she would she carry this to its obvious conclusion. Through it all, her eyes never left mine, but then, at last, she gently bit her lower lip, arched her back and shivered into orgasm. At the final moment, she closed her eyes, breaking the connection between us.

When it was over, her body relaxed. Then, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, she sat up, placed her book in her bag and headed out of the park. She was alone once more and suddenly, so I was I.

Still hard, I turned and walked back toward the subway.

I went to work after all.

*****

For the past 7 years, I've worked out of the top floor of a converted Brooklyn warehouse just under the Manhattan Bridge. I bought the space long before anyone thought the area was a good place for Wi-Fi wired coffee houses and crepe shops. For most of those years I was the only tenant in the building and didn't mind that the elevator opened directly into my large cement cube. One day perhaps I'll do something about that, but until then I'm unwilling to sacrifice the impressive initial view offered by the wall of windows opposite the elevator. My view is spectacular. Great investment, even after the real estate crash. Just because I'm artist doesn't mean I'm stupid.

Back in the studio, again and again I saw her lips purse and eyes close. I had planned to begin work on a piece commissioned for a new commercial building in SoHo. Instead, my erection still throbbing in my pants, I turned toward the repainted wall I use to sketch larger pieces and began to draw an empty park bench. Most of my pieces start as pencil sketches on a pad, others charcoal on the wall. But now I used pastels, carving bright strokes into the whiteness.

It was obvious from the beginning what was missing. The chaotic swirls of colors called for something to anchor them and give them order. As the chaos grew, I refused to give in and reveled in the self-denial. I lost track of time. An hour? Two. Finally, I stepped back to take in my work and I almost jumped out of my skin.

"It's beautiful."

She was standing at was at my shoulder.

"I'm so sorry. Uh, there was no door to knock and then I got caught up watching you."

She must have followed me here from the park. I'd assumed she'd simply gone about her day after she left. Apparently I was wrong. She looked slightly flustered, but also very determined.

"Yeah, I've been meaning to put a door up but I love the open space. And other than the odd lost stranger looking for the architect below me, I don't have many unexpected visits."

"Oh" she said.

"So, who are you and how can I help you?"

My question seemed to give her a chance to regain her composure. With a deep breath she turned to the wall and asked, "Were you going to draw me?"

"I don't know. Probably. Eventually."

"I want you to draw me."

Normally, I'm very strict about visitors to my studio. Commissioning a work does not entitle you to come to my studio, so most of my clients didn't. I do sleep here from time to time, but only alone. I work very hard to have my work reflect my vision, but ironically, that requires keeping the my vision and my work separate. It's hard to keep out the grimy mundane cloud that hangs over so much of life in New York. It isn't exactly the Bat Cave or a Fortress of Solitude, but it's close.

However, for some reason, her presence wasn't setting off the usual alarms. She seemed to almost fit there. I was curious.

"Draw you? Is that why you followed me? To have me draw you?" It seemed strange. While my work is mildly well-known, I'm certainly not. I don't crave notice or notoriety. I'm not that kind of ambitious.

"No. That's not why." She looked at the red hat she held in her hands, then straightened her back and looked up at me.

"So why?"

"I've seen you in the park. All summer, in fact. Sitting in the park. Different days, different times. Just people watching. May I sit down?"

I directed her toward the leathered bench toward the center of the room.

"Thanks. Ok. I'm sorry. I know this seems crazy. I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Nicole. Baker . And, no, I'm not crazy. I'm respectable."

She laughed at that and handed me her business card.

Nicole D. Baker, Founder & President, The Expectations Project.

I'd heard of the Expectations Project, "zip code isn't destiny" or something like that. The nonprofit had an office on 6th Avenue in Manhattan.

"I'm E., I mean Eric Christopher. Everyone just calls me E."

She nodded, but seemed to be so focused on saying what she came to say that she didn't want to veer from it. I let her talk.

"Draw me. We can talk while you work."

Surreal. I picked up my sketch pad and a pencil, sat on the window sill and began to draw.

"Not on the wall?"

"No, I want to get the details here before I put up there. So, you were saying?"

She was sitting formally with her lower legs crossed and with her hands in her lap but she was far too stiff.

"You need to relax a little. Be more natural."

She adjusted her pose but she still looked like she was in a business meeting. Without thinking, I walked over and moved her leg slightly to even the tension in her pose.

"I have a good job. A great job. I have a wonderful husband, wonderful friends. Today in the park. I've never done anything like that before. It's just that...It's just that despite everything being good, I feel like I'm invisible. I have a job, I have duties, roles to play. And that's all anyone ever sees."

"You're shortening your neck...move your left shoulder back. No, not so much. Right there"

She held the new pose and continued.

"Like I said, I've seen you in the park. I've seen you look at people and trees and the lake. There was something about the way you were looking at them. Intense, but like you were looking at something the rest of us weren't seeing. It didn't matter how many people were around. Every time you looked at something or someone one, it was like they existed for you in a way they didn't exist for anyone else."

She turned a few degrees and I suppose she caught my frown and quickly turned back.

"At first I was curious, I wanted to see what it was you were seeing. But by the end of the summer, what I wanted was for you to see me...like that. To see in me what everyone else wasn't seeing. I know, it sounds corny."

I stopped drawing and looked up at her. I've had lawyer and teacher friends tell me that their job is 80% psychiatry, whether they want it to be or not. There are some professions that seem to encourage disclosure on a personal level. I never really understood that till then. We connected in a way that didn't make any sense and I wanted her to open up.

She returned my gaze, her eyes far more self-assured than the words she had just spoken.

"So, I'd been thinking about that for weeks. And today, when I passed you outside the subway, I wanted to go back and talk to you, ask you what it was you were seeing when you went to the park. But I didn't. And I was kicking myself about it when I suddenly there you were."

In front of me, the lines on the paper grew denser, the shadows surrounding her taking shape and flight. She was truly beautiful and I said so.

I looked up and caught her eye. We remained frozen there for a couple of seconds and I could not shake the feeling that I was being weighed up. She seemed so self-possessed that I had trouble reconciling the words with the woman.

"I don't really know why I did what I did. I've never done anything like that. I suppose at first I just wanted to make sure you kept looking. But then, I felt so...sexy. Not competent, not cute, not good little Miss "she's got it all together." Sexy."

"Did it excite you? Me watching you?"

"Yes."

As she said it she said it, I began to feel myself harden and shifted on the window ledge. That movement seemed to break her self-imposed trance. Suddenly, the confidence that had been in her posture, if not her words, drained from her.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I've got to go. I'm sorry."

Without another word she gathered herself and hurried toward the elevator. She didn't look back as she waited for the elevator or as she stepped into it and waited for the doors to close.

I spent the night in the studio. The next morning I considered returning to the park, but didn't. For the rest of that day I worked on transferring the image from my pad to the wall and put my pencils down only when I was completely drained.

I still had work to do on the SoHo piece, but no motivation. No inspiration. By 9 pm, I'd given up and reconciled myself to the need to call Nicole. I found her business card on my table and for the first time noticed something written on the back...another number.

She answered on the third ring.

"Hello."

"Nicole, this is Eric."

There was a long silence.

"I'd forgotten I'd written my home number on the card. I'm in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back in an hour or so?"

"Sure. I'll be here."

"Great. Is this your number that came up on my phone?"

I confirmed and she quickly hung up.

I sat on the floor and spent the next hour looking at the picture of her in the park. All black with the slash of the lavender scarf, anchoring the chaos around her.

The phone woke me around midnight.

"Hi" she said. "I hope it's not too late."

"No, it's fine. I should have called you at work anyway. "

"I don't think I can insist on that. After all, I stalked you and followed you to your studio and then ran away. I'm so embarrassed."

"That's fine. A bit unusual, but flattering. In fact, it makes me feel better because I stalked you first."

She laughed at that.

"Yeah, I guess technically you did."

"Listen, I'm calling because I want you to model for me."

"Excuse me?"

"I want you to model for me."

"Uh, Eric...I'm flattered. Really. But the truth is, I don't know what I was thinking yesterday. In the park, following you, talking like that. All very much out of character for me. You're a very talented artist - I googled you - but I think I want to chalk it up to a bad day, not enough sleep and not enough sex."

I wasn't surprised. She'd run away so quickly that I couldn't imagine she'd be comfortable with what she'd done. Still, hearing her words set me on edge and my own words rushed from my lips out rapid fire.

"Nicole, I'm asking you to model because you're beautiful. I don't know you well enough to understand why you did what you did yesterday. I don't know if what you were feeling is something that can disappear overnight. I certainly don't know if modeling for me is a cure for what you think ails you. But I do know that it has been a long time since I've felt so inspired. And deep down, I think you want to do it."

"What do you mean, 'I want to do it'?"

"I mean that yesterday you acted like a woman who exploring herself and the undercurrent of sex was pretty damn strong. If that is in fact the case, you won't be happy if you back away. You might ignore your desire for a while, then you'll go and look for another way to fulfill them. I'm not offering you some gateway to self-awareness, just a chance to get more comfortable with yourself, and by extension, your sexuality."

This was in fact a lie. What I'd seen in her was more than just beauty. There was an intense sexuality that I fully intended to nourish. But there was no point in telling her that now.

"Mr. Christopher, you don't know me. I told you, yesterday was out of character and now you're trying to psychoanalyze and I don't appreciate it."

"Do you really think that's what I'm doing? You don't see ..."

"You're a presumptuous ass-hole."

And she hung up.

She didn't come by the studio for two weeks. I was surprised she'd held out that long.

People have always said I had a talent for art. I suppose that's true, but a lot of what those people see is simply technical proficiency. The talent, if you must use that word, is in seeing people beyond their immediate situations. When I was younger, I called it my freak-dar. No matter how conservative a woman dressed or acted, I could see her inner freak from across the room, even if she didn't recognize her urges for what they were. A very handy talent for a single man to have in NYC.

As I focused more on my art, I found my work dipping beneath the surface, pulling out the inner freak in my subject and in me.

I was sitting in the middle of the floor eating lunch when the elevator opened. Management had changed the control panel so that a key was required to come to my floor, but I rarely locked it.

"Do you still want me to model for you?"

"When can you start?"

*****

The first week was a disaster. She'd arrive at 1 in the afternoon, a model of corporate casual, dress pants and blazer, white shirt and expensive bag and expensive jewelry. She'd pose for 2 hours before returning to work. I drew her in her work clothes simply to get her used to being looked at. The first day was particularly frustrating. Not only did I not see the sexual creature from the park, for the first time I saw her as she believed others saw her. Cute, pretty even, but totally devoid of sexuality of any sort. Not exactly cold, not indifferent, but as disconnected from the world as she was from herself. She exuded competence and nothing more.

I asked what music she liked and she ignored the question. So we sat in a silence scratched by the sound of pencil on paper, her on my settee, me at in a chair 6 feet away. From time to time I'd get up and circle her, turning her head or moving her arms. I didn't have a pose in mind; I was looking for a state of mind.

During our breaks, she made polite small talk, telling me about the programs she ran, the places she'd traveled to implement them, events she'd been to. There was no more life to her conversation than to her posing. I'd taken to spending hours each evening after she left trying to see where the life had drained out of her. After several late days, I brought clothes to the studio so I could sleep there rather than make late trip back to Flatbush.

By the end of our ninth session, it was clear that the woman I'd seen in the park was nowhere to be found in the drawings I'd made. Perhaps I'd been imagining that woman all along. In any event, I'd decided to give up and was prepared to tell her when she showed up that afternoon.