Kristian Knutsen
Let me start by saying this: wearing olive loaf pasties while encased in Saran Wrap is indeed as unglamorous as it sounds. The resulting response from an audience, however, makes it worthwhile. Ah, how we suffer for our art.
Last Sunday was the big day -- the day we'd model for Dr. Sketchy's Back to School event. Over Saturday through Sunday morning, we finished purchasing all the items we needed (and, honestly, many we didn't know we needed until we saw it, e.g. the toilet seat), hurriedly took our showers, and gathered our bags and bags of costumes, props and lunch food and headed to the High Noon Saloon.
The premise was simple enough -- three costume changes with varying criteria such as number of poses, length of poses, etc. We started off with what was, for me, the most difficult session -- 10 one-minute poses and five two-minute poses, with Megan dressed up as a naughty schoolgirl to my sexy nun. We had a rough idea of the various poses we'd do (we were trying to progress through somewhat of a storyline, though I think that kind of fell apart after a while). The end poses would, of course, be yardstick spankings.
Good in theory. Sounds easy. But man, it was not. All I know is, standing in one place wearing very high-heeled boots in an actual pose tends to make me shake like a leaf. We made it through, but I felt bad that any illusion of sexiness might have been broken by me going "Ugh, my back!" after the especially difficult poses. Classy.
We ran back into the changing area to get ready for costume/theme #2, realizing that unfortunately meant we would miss out on all the fun little contests, strip teases (go Cherry!), and other tomfoolery that happens while the models change. From the sounds coming from the crowd, we were really missing out. No time to dwell on that, though -- we had serious makeovers to accomplish in a short amount of time.
The next theme was our lunchroom brawl. The premise: Megan, the popular, blonde, stereotypical princess, has to sit at a lunchroom table with me, the weird, black-lipped Goth girl. Fight ensues after Frito throwing. Popular girl gets a swirly (we were especially proud of the impromptu idea we got just hours before while wandering around Menards). Teacher has to break up fight. The end.
This one wasn't nearly as bad -- much longer poses, but by this time we had learned the key was sitting and/or supporting ourselves with furniture and different stances. There were some great drawings that came from this pose -- the costumes were fun and colorful and I think everyone can relate to the lunchroom brawl theme.
Last was our most abstract -- yet so-goofy-it-just-might-work -- theme. We would become school lunches. We had picked up your normal school lunch fare: cheese singles, bread, olive loaf, small bags of chips, even the obligatory Capri Sun. With the help of the ever-lovely Anna, we stripped down to our undies and proceeded to completely wrap our torsos in Saran wrap.
With the layer of wrap down as protection, we then used the cheese, olive loaf, chip bags, etc as pasties and other "unmentionable" covers. Add one more layer of Saran Wrap, and voilà! We were lunches! We then encased ourselves in paper bags reading "Kitty's (or Betty's) Lunch -- Eat Me" and proceeded to make the most awkward entrance on stage I think I've ever had. Let's just say we didn't have a lot of range of motion in our costumes.
These poses were the longest yet, two of them at 15 minutes apiece, but by this time we were experts. We did the first one simply standing and quietly holding hands in our paper bags. For the second one, we lounged on the couch once the paper bags were ripped off (in another fake fight, of course). Aside from the fact that I bent over at one point and unnoticed Capri Sun came squirting from the straw, making it look like I was peeing, the poses went really well. And I think we gave everyone a good laugh.
Dr. Sketchy's always ends with the Model's Choice prize, and I have to say, Megan and I had a very difficult time choosing the winners. The talent, diversity, styles are all so different for each artist, it was extremely difficult to narrow it down to two "favorites."
We finally chose two that were pretty opposite ends of the spectrum from one another and thus ended our stint as models.
The experience overall was amazing -- tons of fun, laughs, amazing artwork, and free drinks the whole time, which, of course, was a very nice perk. I feel like Megan and I definitely brought our own flavor to the day, which has been one of the most fun aspects of Dr. Sketchy's -- seeing how each model interacts with the crowds, costumes, poses, etc. People were telling us they had a great time, and I'm going to choose to believe them. I know we did!