CiaoSteve reserves the right to be identified as the author of this work. This story cannot be published, as a whole or in part, without the express agreement of the author other than the use of brief extracts as part of a story review.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

This is an entry for the National Nude Day Contest. I do hope you enjoy, and would welcome both your comments and votes, oh and yes, some favourites would be great. A word of warning though. If you are looking for a quick stroker, then this is probably not the story for you as it is intentionally low on explicitness.

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Chapter One – Invitation and Assumption

We all had our escapes.

Some people laced up running shoes before sunrise, chasing the miles through the cold morning air. Others disappeared into crowded pubs, into noise and laughter, into the comforting blur of being one face among many. Then there were those who immersed themselves in collecting, never stopping until they had one of everything.

I had mine too, but mine was quieter.

Mine came with the faint smell of paint and the scratch of bristles against canvas.

It wasn’t something I’d chosen to do, not with any great sense of purpose. In fact, I wasn’t sure I had chosen to take up painting so much as being cajoled into it. The idea arrived one afternoon out of nowhere, the way rain sometimes does in summer. I needed something to do, something to take me away from the stress of work.

And yes, I had to admit, I was chasing something else, or maybe someone else.

It started with her.

It wasn’t a great love story, not even close.

She was just a woman I liked enough to say yes to, when she suggested attending an evening class, together. I told myself it was curiosity, but really it was hope dressed up under the premise of a shared interest. Hope that sitting side by side, sharing something creative, might tilt the balance in my favour. Hope that in my early-thirties I might finally find the one.

It didn’t, and more so, I didn’t either.

She moved away before anything serious could take root, leaving behind a handful of unfinished canvases and the lingering memory of what might have been. She went, but the art classes stayed.

Somehow, painting stuck to me.

I don’t know what it was—for sure it wasn’t my inner creative sense as I never had one in the first place—but I truly enjoyed the sessions. Okay, so I was never going to trouble the professionals, but in my own little way it gave me a certain satisfaction, and I had made a few new friends along the way.

Not far off a decade later, and with my thirties now nearing their end, I was still turning up every Tuesday evening to the same modest art club. It wasn’t glamorous. It was no more than a club tucked away inside a community hall that always smelled faintly of old wood, air fresheners, and instant coffee.

Nobody there was chasing exhibitions or recognition.

We painted because we liked it, because it gave us purpose, because for a couple of hours each week the rest of life didn’t seem to matter.

And as for me, I never talked about it outside those walls. At work, I was someone else entirely. I was a project manager, structured, efficient, measured in every detail. I never missed a single deadline. It was what I did and what I did well. Painting, on the other hand, didn’t belong there. It felt too soft, too personal, too open to interpretation. So, I had no choice.

I kept my passion secret.

It became my quiet corner, my escape from the reality of life.

If anyone ever visited my house, not that many did, they might have noticed a piece or two. Usually, they were in places where guests didn’t linger too long, a landscape above the stairs or maybe an abstract in the downstairs toilet. It was intentional. They were discreetly placed where they wouldn’t invite too much scrutiny.

After all, there was nothing that asked to be admired.

But they were mine and, to me, that was enough.

Or at least, it had been.

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It was mid-June when things took an interesting turn.

It was just a set of decisions, each small, each seeming so innocuous. It really didn’t feel that important. With hindsight, though, I thought long and hard about that moment, and realised just how the smallest of details had made such a huge impact.

And to think, I nearly turned my back and walked away.

I’d arrived early that evening. I didn’t have the time to head home first, so I changed in the office then headed out to the class. The room was empty when I got there. Chairs and easels had been set up in anticipation, eighteen painting stations waiting for eighteen painters, with a couple of spares resting against the wall. A blank canvas sat upon each easel. A bowl of fruit and a vase of flowers sat, purposefully positioned, on a single desk at the front of the room.

I grabbed a seat towards the back of the class—I preferred to sit in the shadows, out of the limelight—placing my jacket over the back of the seat as if to claim my square metre of space. And with that done, I found myself drifting, killing time, waiting for the others to arrive.

And there it was.

A poster, freshly pinned to the noticeboard near the entrance grabbed my attention.

It was bright.

It was confident.

It was impossible to ignore.

I stood there longer than I should have, reading it once, then again. It was an invite to an additional session, a charity session at that.

‘July 14… National Nude Day… A Celebration of the Naked Form… Paint and Sip… All Proceeds for Charity’

What was on offer was clear, but all the time I tried to read between the lines and make sense of what it really meant. I was curious. No, it wasn’t curiosity, it was intrigue. What did it mean the naked form? Why was it a celebration? For a moment I closed my eyes and, as I did, I saw the room in a different way. The easels, the chairs, the table in the centre where, occasionally, we’d set up still-life arrangements, they all took on a different perception.

Except, this time, what was being offered wouldn’t be fruit in a bowl or a vase of flowers, or a combination of both. This time, it would be a person. And it was that thought which I found almost captivating. No, not the idea of there being a person to paint, but more so who, and why.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

I practically jumped.

The voice had come out of nowhere.

I hadn’t noticed Martin sidle up beside me. He was one of the regulars, a few years older than me, the kind of man who looked like he was born to paint—he stood there in colour-splashed denim dungarees—and spoke as if everything in life was there to be enjoyed.

“I dunno,” I replied.

“Bit steep don’t you think?” I added, using the fifty-pound price tag as an excuse.

“Guess it has to be, or you’d get anyone coming… but it goes to charity…” Martin replied.

“Oh… and that’s not forgetting the glass of wine… and, for sure, a model the ladies will all approve of,” he continued.

“Martin!” I exclaimed, cutting him off in his prime before he could go on to say anything he’d regret, especially given that the room was now filling up and walls had ears as the saying went.

“Let me think about it,” I replied, carefully neutral.

Martin grinned.

“That’s a yes,” he quipped.

“I didn’t say that,” I tried to explain.

“You didn’t need to,” came another quick response.

I glanced back at the poster, then away again, as if someone might see me looking and pass judgement.

“It’s a bit… well… different,” I offered.

“That’s the point,” Martin said. “We all spend our time painting things that don’t move and don’t mind if we get them wrong. This…”

Martin glanced vaguely toward the centre of the room.

I followed suit, my gaze landing on that centrally placed table. And as I did, once more I imagined the scene, a chair, a sitter, the idea of painting somebody alive, somebody who might offer opinions.

“This might actually make you look more carefully,” Martin added.

“I do look,” I replied, seeming like I needed to justify what I called works of art.

Martin raised an eyebrow, unconvinced.

“Properly, I mean,” he added, “you know… in detail.”

I didn’t answer straight away. The truth was, he might have had a point. I painted what I saw, but often it felt like a translation rather than an observation, shapes into colour, colour into something passable as objects. If it had a style, it was probably somewhere between impressionist and surrealist, but for me it was simply… art… good, old fashioned, safe, art.

This though wouldn’t be safe.

A figure, a human body, a presence rather than just a form.

And then there was the other part.

An unspoken assumption had already begun to form in my mind, uninvited but persistent. It would be a presence sitting in that imaginary chair. Yes, I’d seen the programmes on television, the portrait contests, with all their famous subjects. Okay, so this was hardly likely to be somebody famous, but he would be there, nonetheless.

He?

Oh yes, I could see him. Of course I could. It felt almost inevitable that it would be a man. That made sense, didn’t it? Most weeks the painting group was a predominantly female crowd, and an event branded National Nude Day practically begged for something a little crowd-pleasing. If you were going to charge fifty quid and promise a ‘celebration of the naked form,’ you didn’t bring in someone ordinary.

You brought in a hunk.

You brought in someone intended to make the women laugh and blush.

After all, they would all rush home and tell their friends it had been such fun. And for the rest of us, well… it would be simple, less complicated, easier to observe without feeling like you were crossing an unwanted line. In my head, he took shape with surprising clarity.

He would be tall.

He would be balanced.

He would have the kind of physique you’d associate with sculptures rather than real life.

He would have his modesty preserved, of course, with a carefully arranged drapery or cushion, or maybe even a symbolic fig leaf. This was an art club, not anything more provocative than that, and this was just another excuse for painting. Oh, and yes, there was the bonus of a glass of wine and doing something for charity. I found myself almost smiling at the thought and, in that moment, I realised how far I’d already fallen into the idea.

“Go on,” Martin said, nudging me lightly. “I’m doing it… and… you know you want to too.”

“I haven’t decided,” I continued to protest.

“You will,” Martin replied.

I glanced at him, half-annoyed, half-amused.

“You seem very certain,” I commented.

“I’ve seen that look before,” he said. “Curiosity always wins in the end.”

Martin wasn’t wrong. I tried not to think about it over the next few days. Tried, though, was the operative word. Work was busy enough to keep me occupied during the day, but in quieter moments the thought of that poster kept returning. It was uninvited, but not unwelcome. I’d catch myself imagining the setup, the lighting, the way the room might feel as the sitter took stage, and we all started to paint. And, as I did, something tugged at me, drawing me closer and closer to what Martin had suggested.

It wasn’t just the novelty.

It was the challenge.

It was a chance to push the boundaries.

People had never been my strength. Still-life and landscapes didn’t shift under your gaze. They didn’t breathe. They were simply there, lifeless. A figure did. A living one, even more so. But there was something else.

It was a chance to have a little fun.

A week later, as I arrived for the next session, I already had my mind made up. I knew what I was going to do. The sign-up sheet was on the same board as the poster, a simple list, names already beginning to fill the page. I scanned them briefly, recognising most, smiling when I saw Martin’s name.

Most were regulars, with just a few newer names. My hand hovered for a second longer than necessary before I picked up the pen. It felt… well… oddly significant. It was ridiculous. Really, it was just another session, a slightly different evening in a room I’d been coming to for years, nothing more. And yet—

As I wrote my name, somewhere inside, there was a small, quiet thrill. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t overwhelming. It was just a subtle recognition of having stepped into something I didn’t fully understand yet.

“Well done,” Martin’s voice appeared again, as if summoned by the act itself.

I didn’t turn.

“Do you spend all your time lurking near noticeboards?” I asked.

“Only when it’s you, Simon,” he quipped, laughing.

I stepped back, glancing first at Martin, then once more at the poster, and finally at my name, now inked among the others. It looked entirely ordinary there. There was no hint of the small storm of thoughts it had already begun to stir.

“Who do you think it’ll be?” Martin asked.

I hesitated.

There it was again, that image, that assumption, that adonis of a man.

“I don’t know,” I said, though the words felt less certain than they should have.

Martin shrugged.

“Guess it doesn’t really matter,” he replied.

For a moment, I stood there, considering that very thought. Did it matter? On the surface, no. A figure was a figure. The fundamentals didn’t change. But something in me shifted at the very question, a flicker of awareness that perhaps it did matter, in ways I hadn’t quite considered yet.

“Come on, Simon… we’re doing abstract this week… that’ll be right up your street,” Martin joked, as he headed back towards his easel.

“Less of the cheek… I’ll show you… I’ll show you just how good I am at painting the human form… and then we’ll see who’s laughing,” I replied.

Laughing?

I wasn’t laughing, but as I stood there, painting, there was something I couldn’t get out of my mind. All I could think about was painting him, the model, the sitter, and making sure to do him justice.

And then… then we’d see who was laughing.

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Chapter Two – Unveiling and Recognition

The weeks passed quickly and, before I knew it, the night was upon us. Fourteenth of July had arrived and there was no going back.

The room was already well and truly alive by the time I got there.

I’d never seen it so busy this far in advance of starting.

I paused just inside the doorway for a second, taking it all in, before suddenly realising the obvious. If it was this busy already, then where was I going to sit? A feeling of dread washed over me when I considered the realistic thought of being front and centre. I didn’t do that on one of our rather mundane still-life sessions. For sure, I didn’t want to be doing that tonight, not when we had a live model to paint.

“Hey… Simon… over here,” came a welcoming voice.

It was Martin, my partner in crime when it came to all things paint. It was the same Martin whose teasing comments at that noticeboard had led me to sign up. It was the same Martin who I would be only too happy to pin the blame on if I did end up in a front row seat with all eyes watching me attempt to get any sort of likeness onto my canvas.

It was the same Martin who…

“Got in early… grabbed us a couple of easels at the back… decent enough view but not too much in the firing line, if you get my drift,” Martin added, offering out a welcoming hand.

I smiled.

I followed Martin across to where he had, indeed, secured two primely positioned easels in the back row of the class. I placed my jacket and took a deep breath, suddenly feeling a little out of place. For a moment I stood there, gazing around the room as I wondered just what we were letting ourselves in for.

It was the same room.

It had the same smell of paint and paper, and that aroma of cheap instant coffee.

It had the same arrangement of easels, though tonight they felt just a little different.

Was it the easels? Or was it the tone of conversation, which seemed to have a little more of an excited edge than normal. It was as if everybody there was quietly aware of the same thing, that this wasn’t going to be an ordinary evening.

Or maybe that was just me.

Maybe, I was the one building this up to be something it wasn’t.

Calmly, I set my stall out. I adjusted the height of the easel, as I always did, to match my six foot plus height. I clipped a fresh canvas into place. I laid my favourite brushes out in a loose row. I did the same with both my sketching pencils and paints, leaving the latter capped for now, my mind already pondering over which colours or mixes I would be needing. And finally, there was my palette, the very same mixing board which had been with me ever since day one, the sole reminder of the woman who first brought me to this very club.

It was my routine. It should have steadied me. But tonight, it didn’t. There was something else, a sense of anticipation, maybe even nervous tension, like the pause before a curtain lifts and the performance starts.

I found myself glancing toward the front of the room a little more often than usual. Instead of the table, the table which usually held our still-life subjects, there was a chair. It wasn’t like the other chairs dotted around the room. This one was a large wicker armchair, the sort of thing which might have come right out of somebody’s conservatory, not that you could see too much of the wickerwork.

A collection of cushions and a large fleecy blanket covered the chair, adding a layer of comfort to what would have been a rather harsh, uncomfortable sitting position. And in my mind, already I was weighing up the view, imagining a man sitting there, posing proudly as a roomful of strangers attempted to paint his persona.

In the moment though, there was no sitter.

Instead, it was Sandra— a sixty-odd-year-old ex-schoolteacher and the matriarch of the club—who stood near the chair, talking to a couple of the regulars. She had that calm, easy authority about her, the kind that didn’t need to announce itself. If anyone could orchestrate something like this and make it feel natural, it was Sandra. I focused on her as she eventually called the room to order, conversations slowly tapering off until the space settled into a sort of anticipatory quiet.

“Alright, everyone,” Sandra said, smiling as she looked around at the packed art club.

“Make yourselves comfortable… get those paintbrushes at the ready… and let’s get the evening under way,” she added.

I rested my hands lightly on the edge of the easel, leaning forward just a fraction. I wasn’t trying to make it obvious. I was just, well, intent on making sure I didn’t miss anything. I’d never done one of these sessions before, not with a live model, and for sure I didn’t want to be the one breaking all the rules.

“Do I have a treat for you tonight,” Sandra continued. “Later we’ll share a glass or two… but first… I promised you an evening where you can let your creativity flow… I promised you the beauty of the human form…”

There was a small shift in the room. It wasn’t so much a reaction, but for sure the whole room seemed to be hanging onto Sandra’s every word. And in that moment the atmosphere was filled with the soft buzz of anticipation.

“…and for sure, she’s beautiful,” Sandra added.

Suddenly I was confused. I’d heard what was said, but for some reason I was struggling with one word. It was such a simple word. It was such an unexpected word.