Dr. Sketchy, that is. Every other Sunday, apparently you can bring a drawing pad to some bar and a lovely lady will pose burlesquely for you. Today I helped Sugar out at Great Scott. Full album here.
Wheeeeeeeeeee.
You expect people to hoot and holler at these things. It’s the middle of a Sunday afternoon and they’ve holed themselves into a dark dive bar in one of the crappiest suburbs of Boston to draw a lady in pasties and sparkle boots. They probably want to get crunk, right? But this crowd was serious. “Do you guys want to do any contests?” Sugar offered. ” We vote on the best propaganda poster? No? You can win free beer. Tickets to this documentary on happy endings. No?”
No. These were mostly art students, full of debt and destroyed-in-a-year dreams. They just wanted to draw again. “How long are the next set of poses?” they kept asking. They organized crumbling utensils and furrowed their brows. In three hours, not one person got up to leave.
There was an old man sitting in the corner who didn’t draw at all; he just watched one minute, two minute, five minute, ten minute, twenty minute poses — the entire time. During each break he hobbled over to chat with me and tell me Latin jokes, even though I told him I’d never taken Latin. “See, that joke would be much funnier to you, if you knew the Latin.” His tobacco pipe was a finely carved naked woman. Before he showed it to me, he asked if I was ready for it. “Over a hundred years old. The model probably doesn’t look like this any more. I don’t smoke very often, but when I do it’s the most wonderful thing. And anything that improves upon that experience, I’m for it.”
Faint of heart, beware: after the jump it gets a little spicier.
