The shirt comes off easily. As do the pants. And the socks, I guess. I just pretend I’m in a locker room, about to hit the showers at the gym. But once I get down to the briefs, there is a moment of hesitation. A fluttering of anticipation. Once those are gone, there will be nothing left to hide. That small moment when I tug at my briefs and take them off, a moment I’ve always associated with either total privacy or total intimacy, suddenly feels all too new.
There is a performed awkwardness to what follows. But John has done all of this before. I contacted him because I wanted to commission a piece for my boyfriend. Our three-year anniversary is coming up, and in my head a nude portrait is a playfully erotic wink of a gift. What is another bare ass, another (mostly) limp dick? His watercolor studies of well-sculpted naked men in everyday poses (lying in bed, sitting sideways, standing and staring), which I first saw online, have an alluring mix of raw sensuality and tender vulnerability. I was drawn to the pieces themselves for their own striking qualities, but was also intrigued by the scenarios they suggested, by the fabricated intimacy between a gay artist and a male model—too erotic to be utterly chaste, too demure to be outright sexual.