Last night I completed task number two on my eight week challenge list. And here is the verdict. I will never be Picasso, Rembrandt or another famous artist I don’t know the name of, nor will I ever be able to sit comfortably in a year five drawing class. My life drawing is terrible. I promised that if drawing boobs got too hard that I would just draw their storm trooper helmets but even that got difficult.
It wasn’t that the bodies were hard to look at, quite the contrary. I’ve decided women’s bodies in all of their lines, curves and wobbles, are quite hot. But transferring the lines that I see to paper was bloody near impossible. I need more than the five minute time limit and who am I to make a naked woman stand there indefinitely while I desecrate her body in pencil. Apparently it’s a matter of picking a line and just drawing it. When I couldn’t find a line that ran the way I needed it to, I picked something smaller to focus on and the helmet was it. The time limits, breasts, sparkly corsets and free lollipops however were the least distracting part of my adventure.
Going to a club sober is an enlightening experience. The things you see, the lives taking place in front of you, is mind blowing. The burgeoning romances that may change the world, the Seal look alike that skulked in the corner, the bar man whose hands flew with flames, the sex rorts that can’t wait to get home and the awkward silences of strangers sitting with scattered nude people. Watching that kind of mix with a glass of red wine was better than any TV I’ve ever seen.
We watched a pair of lesbians at the bench seat try and carry on a conversation with a third party while her partner licked her face and held the top of her head, hiding her hands in the other’s pants while conversation flowed back and forth across the table, the jigging on stools where she tried to force herself into her partners lap, all of these things I wouldn’t have noticed had I arrived as I normally do, self-centred and chirpy on booze. We laughed hysterically at the poor woman sitting across from the couple who was doing her best to keep the chatter flowing but failing dismally when one part of the couple grabbed the other’s face to keep her mouth attached to hers.
We watched a couple, too perfectly dressed and suitably tattooed, dressed in rockabilly pride, perch themselves majestically across furniture in the hope of being spotted by a random photographer. Her dress was hot, as were her tattoos, but I couldn’t help but think about the cramping her neck was going to have if she stayed there for the whole show.
But by far the most exciting performance of the night was the burgeoning romance growing slowly at the other end of the stage. She arrived on her own, dressed in 50s glamour with a set of well held in, but flowing breasts and her sketch book. He walked in a few minutes later in a v-neck, knitted jumper and polo shirt with his grandpa’s satchel. He sat three seats away and somehow, the cherubs chimed in and love was in the air. We watched them move slowly closer together, watched the looks over pencil and sketch books, the awkward moments when the strippers came a little too close and he didn’t know where to look. The stories flew like wildfire. Was she a recently rejected woman and needed the ego boost? Was he a closet lumberjack that when his clothes fell off he was chiseled and sweaty? Was she looking for a gentleman and was sick of the artsy men with backwards fedoras that littered the rest of the room? There was no way to tell for sure but it did give me hope that chivalry was not dead and the sizzle of potential sex still exists for someone.
With the sexual tension and my lack of talent flailing around the room the strippers could only help matters. My drawing friend was expecting sexy acrobatics and I was expecting large champagne glasses filled with bubbles. We got neither. “They’re just slow strippers!” she said.
“I know” I thought to myself.
They have corsets and cool costumes and arrive on stage with props but in the end, they are strippers. There is dancing, there is music, there is much jumping, gyrating and hip thrusting but there is no pole. There are tattoos and outfits from yesteryear but in essence they are women who get nude to music for a living. However when you put it in a fancy club with low lighting and your patrons are drinking wine by candlelight, it’s called art.
I’ve only ever been to one strip club before and there they wiped down the poles at the end of each performance with a chux. My shoes stuck to the floor and the men had no issue screaming obscenities at the dancing ladies in very high shoes. At this club, the men and women sat in even numbers, clapped and applauded ‘fancy’ moves and not once did I hear “Take it off!” It seems that with the addition of nipple tassels and ostrich feathers stripping becomes fancy. And I loved it.
So after challenge number two, what have I really learned? I have learned that I am better with a rifle than I am with a pencil. That sometimes its worth to hold off on the wine to see how the rest of the world lives. I think I could add stripping to my repartoire of activities that I did in a former life and I loved that the women let their bits fly about and wore the most amazing shades of red lipstick. While you won’t see me on stage at The Press Club in a fortnight, I might be hiding in the back corner sans my pencil and sketch book.
But probably the most important thing I’ve learned in this two week journey is from my fellow drawing partner. When asked how she could she be so bloody positive about green dress’ burgeoning romance she explains she has to be positive otherwise what’s the point? I laugh and make fun of her married status and she giggles back. “Oh hun, if it’s not half full, just put some ice in it.” Probably the smartest thing she’ll say all of May.
life in big frilly knickers 