PIDGEON VS CRAB:

a fundamental question about life.

One of the things I do for money is model for artists. It’s like if you’ve ever been in an art museum and seen a nude painted or drawn on a canvas, most likely that picture didn’t just spring out of the artist’s head. Most likely a real person was standing in front of the artist, standing very still, and the picture you see is their image. On some days, I am that person.

It pays well. I do it for money. I keep having to rewrite this story because it used to read I do it for the money and I do it because I like it, I like it because it’s hard. I thought that sounded great, but it’s not true anymore. I don’t like it. I got off on the challenge at first but now I don’t like being sore all the time. I do it for the money though, and I’m grateful for the money.

The nudity is incidental. It’s not a romantic or sexual so your body is just your body. You don’t need anyone to want it and all you ask from it is stillness, which is hard but very simple. In exchange, you walk out the door with a check or cash, no taxes. Sometimes you’re exhausted but it’s clean exhaustion. It’s not emotional or intellectual; it’s just physical and I do like that about it. That’s a better aftertaste then a lot of jobs.

The beginnings of most sessions are short poses and they are fun and snappy. Then the poses get longer, gradually, 5, 15, 20 minutes and those are OK, and then there is the long pose, which the reason I’m currently seeking a new life plan. It’s usually about an hour. There are tiny breaks but then you have to get back in the same position, even if you picked something stupid that made your leg go numb. I usually pick stupid positions because even though I don’t like it anymore, when they say this is your grand finale, give me something fabulous, I’m can’t help myself.

Sometimes people ask me if it’s liberating, but I really don’t feel all that third wave about it. I look at the drawings or paintings on breaks but it’s more confusing than empowering or affirming or whatever. It’s tricky because I’m neurotic and if an artist is untalented, the pictures can make me worry I am getting fat. And even with the drawings or paintings are beautiful, usually I don’t see anything I’d recognize my body. It’s just a body, an obviously female body, but not necessarily mine. When they get the face right, which is rare, I recognize myself. Sometimes I look morose and I wonder about my natural resting expression.

For reasons unknown, most of people who show up to figure drawing classes are men, usually old. They hire models who are male and female so it’s not just old dudes being pervy. Well, I say that but also I’ve noticed they almost always draw my breasts too large. I’m not a small-breasted woman, but they draw me like a Viking barmaid. I don’t think it’s on purpose. They’re trained to draw what they see and that’s what they see I guess.

After the first time I modeled, I felt a twinge. Regret is too strong a word; it was like mild disappointment. These gigs pay well, I needed the money, but there was something about exchanging unfettered visual access to my body for that sum — even though it was more then I’d ever been paid to do anything, it still didn’t feel like enough. What I mean is my body is beautiful, we all have beautiful bodies, and it felt like seeing all of mine was worth more. I thought about how I’d prefer give that kind of access as a gift, to a lover. But that thought was a flicker, now it’s gone. No one gives me 20 dollars an hour to keep my clothes on.

I was really tired when I had that twinge, so that’s why I was emotional. I was tired because it was late and I was full. I was full because I’d eaten tacos with the artist who’d booked me for a private session. We’d eaten tacos because we were high.

I’d posed for him for 2.5 hours, a short session. We talked the entire time. It was irksome because I wanted to space out, but we did end up well-acquainted and I liked him. He was nice, they are usually nice, but it was my first time so I didn’t know it was going to be like that. He was young and we mostly talked about his girlfriend and the mall-elf gig I’d quit, the reason I needed fast money, the reason I was now standing naked before him.

After we finished, he offered me a ride to the train and I said yeah for sure because it was cold. Then he said he was a little hungry and I said I was fine, as in take me to the train please. I knew he wanted to keep hanging out. He was lonely; I knew this cause he’d told me all about while he drew me. He said OK, I’m going to smoke a little bit before we go, do you want any?

I said yeah, I would love to smoke because I’d been buck-naked, stock-still under bright light for 2.5 hours and my nerves were fried. Earlier that evening when I stepped up on the platform for the first time, I was shaking. I didn’t know when I was supposed to take my robe off so while he was futzing with his easel, I tossed it on the floor.

He looked up. Whoa. I guess I’ll start the timer.

We both got high fast. He told me about how he used to do martial arts and then he quit and now he was getting fat. He didn’t look that fat to me, but I didn’t see him before he gained weight. He did describe eating a burger with bacon and an egg and then half of someone else’s sandwich for lunch though, which does seem like a lot. Our eyes got slitty and weedy-looking. He kept glancing at me, then glancing away.

What? I asked.

I just…I want to ask you goofy questions, but…I don’t know.

What kind of questions? I was suspicious. I’d been waiting for this to turn creepy the whole time, so I thought, here it comes.

Just goofy questions.

Like personal questions?

No, no no. Just like. Okay. Okay.

Ask me.

Okay. So let’s say for the rest of your life you had to be either a crab or a pigeon. And if you are a pigeon you can fly as high as you want but you are confined. You are confined someplace lame, like Tulsa. But within the borders of Tulsa you are totally free. If you are a crab you can go as far as you want, out into the ocean, but you can never get out of the ocean.

I considered. My first concern, uncharacteristically, was safety. If I’m a crab, how big am I? Crabs have predators.

Oh no one has asked that before, that’s interesting, um…

Do you, like, talk about this a lot?

I like to ask everyone, like all my friends. If you were a crab you would be a King Crab, so the biggest possible crab.

Then I want to be a crab, crab for sure. He was a pigeon. We hashed this out for a long time, like high people really can and we got real deep with it. I convinced him crab was better then pigeon and then I had an epiphany.

This question is really whether you want to have a vertical or a horizontal life!

Huh?

No, it’s like do you want to stay in one place and get good at one thing and build relationships and a community, vertical like a pigeon, or do you just want to cover a lot of ground and keep on moving, and see lots of stuff, horizontal like a crab?

Then I heard myself talking, I realized how high I was, and I changed my mind about tacos.

But later, the next day or the next, I was walking down the street and I thought about the crab vs. pigeon thing and my not high self agreed with my high self, the horizontal vs. vertical is the key to the pigeon vs. crab question thus making pigeon vs. crab is a fundamental question about how you want to live your life.

I’ve started poling people. It’s best to ask them pigeon vs. crab first and then explain my theory after so the responses aren’t tainted. Sometimes people are stupid and they say things like Wait, what kind of skills and connections can a pigeon really build? They aren’t smart birds. And then I have to explain the concept of metaphor, which is fine, but if I have to explain a basic literary terms for you in bar then you have to buy me drink. That’s the rule.

Usually people’s selections do correspond with their values and choices. I have this one friend who picked pigeon and she is a total pigeon. She moved to New York after college and she is just living in New York, it’s like her home and she got a job with a company and she is working at that company and she got a promotion and she has a 401K. She has been in this long-term serious relationship and she has a couch she paid for, etc.

I am a crab. I think I’ve moved 8 times in the last 2 and a half years. Big moves. Across state lines. It’s to the point where core people in my life, people I have real love for, will call me and the conversation starts off with wait, so where are you? I’m not always working, but I’m usually working and it’s usually random. Right now, I model for artists and I work at a store that sells candles. Next week? I don’t know. Maybe something different; hopefully something different because that combo is not actually paying the bills and, did I mention, I hate it.

I like being a crab though, I think crabs are cool and kind of anti-establishment because if we are going for horizontal rather than vertical, achievement means something different. Also we don’t get attached to stuff because we can’t take it with us and we have great stories.

However. Crab life involves a degree of loneliness. Or maybe, I just get lonely as a crab because I have to spend a lot of time around someone before I am comfortable with them and that’s been hard to do since I move so often. I have really good friends, but I made them while I was a part of institutions, such as childhood and college, that forced me, against my nature, to stay-in-one-place and live a more pigeon-style life. While I mostly wasn’t happy back then, those relationships are part of the reason I think my life is good now. So, I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve been thinking about what crab life will mean deeper into adulthood. I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to make the same kind of friends as a crab. Also there is a poem I read recently by Mark Doty. It’s called Deep Lane and it’s the titular work of his recent collection. The last lines read

If you don’t hold still, you can have joy after joy,

but you can’t stay anywhere to love.

That’s the price, that rib rattling wind waiting to sweep you up,

that’s the price the wind pays.

I’ve been thinking about this and about my life but I don’t know if it’s productive to think about it because I don’t know if we can choose between crab or a pigeon; maybe we are what we are.

When I’m doing the art modeling thing, I’m very still, perfectly still. I’m pretty new but I’ve been told I’m good. It is interesting to me that someone who tends towards motion would be good at playing statue. Maybe I will learn something about holding still or maybe this is just more of the same. Maybe this is a way of spreading myself wider, of going further. So many people who are not even lovers have seen me naked now and they each draw me ten or twenty times and those drawings of me go out, away, to who knows where and then I go away too.

I was walking to the train after a session the other night; it was late. I wasn’t high but I was so tired. Maybe the longer you do art modeling, the less tired you get, maybe it’s a weird form of fitness. I don’t know, I probably won’t be doing this long enough to find out. The walk to the train was short but it didn’t feel that way, I fantasized about picking my body up in my arms and carrying it home. Home right now is an apartment above a sushi restaurant with two guys I know a little bit. I’ve lived there for two months. Which is awhile for me but I do like it, so maybe I’ll stay a little while longer.