And this isn't as honest as I'd like it to be. This isn't as stripped and exposed as originally intended. This isn't so.

I nude modeled once. For Montgomery College art classes in Rockville. It was liberating in a way. Almost exciting. Standing on a raised platform before a room full of strangers, naked. Peeled. Vulnerable.

My muscles would shake and my eyes averted all others. But there I was. And I got to see how people saw me. Every half hour I had a break when I'd slip on my bathrobe and circle the room. Observing sketches of my pronounced belly, my huge thighs, my small hands. My limp member.

It felt honest. All of it felt so honest. No one was trying to appease or discourage me. No harm was intended and none was delivered. It all just simply was.

And perhaps this is where I've failed. Perhaps this is what I cannot do.

I cannot present myself as wholesome. I cannot be whole.

What awful realizations. What awful things to discover as I sit, shivering beneath a ceiling air vent, in a Starbucks in Glen Burnie on a rainy Tuesday morning. Sipping coffee through a straw.

Someone help me.