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squatted next to my drawing bench.
    â€œNo problem,” I said quickly. Maybe too quickly, since I spoke a little too loud, and David glanced my way, smiled briefly, then turned back to his drawing.
    â€œAre you sure?” Susan glanced at Terry. “You’ve got a wonderful angle here.” She picked up a piece of charcoal from the Baggie in front of me and sketched out a rough outline of Terry on my drawing pad. “You can really make out his inguinal ligament from here. That’s the line from his hipbone to his groin. Terry’s is quite defined….”
    â€œUm,” I whispered uncomfortably. I had to say something. I had to. “Yeah. That’s just it. I wasn’t really expecting to see his inguinal ligament.”
    Susan looked away from her drawing and up toward me. She must have noticed something about my expression, since her eyes widened, and she said, “Oh. OH.”
    She got it. About Terry, I mean.
    â€œBut…what did you think I meant, Sam,” she whispered, “when I asked if you’d be interested in joining my life drawing class?”
    â€œThat I’d be drawing from life ,” I whispered back. “Not a naked guy .”
    â€œBut that’s what life drawing means,” Susan said, looking as if she were trying not to smile. “It’s important for all artists to be able to draw the human form, and you can’t do that if you can’t see the muscle and skeletal structure beneath the skin because it’s hidden under clothes. Life drawing has always meant nude models.”
    â€œWell, I realize that now ,” I whispered.
    â€œOh, dear,” Susan said, not looking as if she wanted to smile anymore. “I just assumed…I mean, I really thought you knew.”
    I noticed that David was glancing our way. I didn’t want him thinking there was anything wrong. I mean, the last thing I need is for my boyfriend to think I am freaked out by the sight of a naked guy.
    â€œIt’s cool,” I said, picking up my pencil and willing Susan to go away and leave me to blush in peace. “I get it now. It’s all good.”
    Susan Boone didn’t look as if she believed me, though.
    â€œAre you sure?” she wanted to know. “You’re all right?”
    â€œI’m peachy,” I said.
    Oh my God. I can’t believe I said peachy. I don’t know what possessed me. The sight of a naked guy, and all I can think of to say is “I’m peachy”?
    I don’t know how I got through the rest of the class. I tried to concentrate on drawing what I saw , not what I knew , the way Susan had taught me to during our first lessons together. I still knew I was drawing a naked guy, but it helped when all I saw was a line going this way, and another line going that, and a shadow here, and another one there, and so on. By breaking Terry down into so many planes and valleys, I was able to render a fairly realistic and even kind of good (if I do say so myself) drawing of him.
    When, at the end of the class, Susan asked us to put our drawing pads on the windowsill so we could critique each other’s work, I saw that mine wasn’t any better or worse than anybody else’s. You couldn’t, for instance, tell from mine that it was my first drawing of a naked guy.
    Susan did say, though, that I hadn’t done a very good job of fixing the subject of my drawing to the page. Which basically meant that my drawing was just of Terry, floating around, with no background to support him.
    â€œWhat you’ve drawn here, Sam,” Susan said, “is a fine representation of the parts. But you need to think of the drawing as a whole .”
    But I didn’t take Susan’s criticism about the parts versus the whole to heart, because I knew that it was a miracle I’d been able to draw anything at all, given my great naked guy–induced shock.
    To make matters worse, later, as we were