As a student I took a job posing nude for art classes at a university and became obsessed with a man who painted my body again and again. Tall and lanky with silver hair, he was unlike the other artists who stared at me as if I were not all there.  Instead, he smiled, asked my name, and nodded from time to time. As he painted and talked, his arms waving wildly, I felt the darkness I carried inside me glide away like a shadow.  

One day, without bothering to dress, I waited for him to pack his things after class. He sighed and lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I am a Christian, newly saved, which is why I miss so many classes. My pastor says I should not be seeing a woman who poses nude before an audience. He left without another word, the swinging door whooshing behind him. The next day, when I arrived for a sitting, I found a stack of paintings on my chair, rolled up neatly and tied with red ribbons. At first, I thought they were paintings of me, but when I opened them, I saw they were of mermaids, or rather, of women dressed in form-fitting white gowns that bound their thighs together and flared out at their feet like a tail. Will you marry me? was written in red on each painting.