I'm jealous of the naked girls (Patreon)

[Patreon struggles with embedded images, so if they don’t display just click the URLs I’ve pasted below each picture]

I'm jealous of the naked girls.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus1.jpg

There's this collection of interesting, eloquent, beautiful women that I follow on various platforms across the internet. They write these essays (or just brief thoughts) and post these photos and videos and I eat it all up and I admire the art that they make and I admire them and I'm jealous.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus2.jpg

Going back nearly 16 years ago I started out formulating plans with my girlfriend about how we were going to go to San Francisco and sign up to shoot with queer porn studios, I'd shoot practice sets to submit to the various alterna-indie naked girl pin-up websites that began springing up all over the place in the early 2000s, I moved to Portland intending to get my first job stripping because that's just kinda what you DID when you were tattooed and had crazy hair and were in your early 20s and kind of an exhibitionist in the city with the highest count of strip clubs per capita. But I never even reached out to any of those places. I kept pushing the day I auditioned or submitted my photos later and later, telling myself I have plenty of time and I'll totally get around to it but right now I've got this other stuff that needs my attention...

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus3.jpg

I found other places to get naked and get paid, by life modeling for artists and posing for a photographer named Elisa Lazo de Valdez, who worked under the name Visioluxus. Both of these avenues scratched that itch, to get my kit off and be the focus of attention and do something beautiful and interesting and engaging with my body.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus4.jpg

I like getting naked. I like exposing my mind and my heart and body to an audience. It gets me into lots of trouble with real life consequences. When I sob on my friends they remind me that I could avoid this if I just stopped. Stopped sharing my life with strangers in blog posts and through comics, stopped "being so honest" and "being so open" about the things that I think and the way that I live and I think "yes, that is the smart thing to do" but I just can't make myself do it.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus5.jpg

I need to get naked. It's compulsive. My mind, my heart, my body, I feel this drive inside me that says show show show share share share leave nothing to the imagination. See me at my most vulnerable, see me at my most beautiful, see me as a naked human being just like you.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus6.jpg

As I've become more known, as my career has become more respectable (Which, yes, I realize sounds hilarious considering the subject my work revolves around. But it has, my work is respected [more or less] in the world of professional comics), I continue to hold that compulsion back more and more. The Masturbateers were invented specifically to avoid drawing my naked, masturbating body into Oh Joy-- not because I felt embarrassed to depict myself like that, but because I knew it would bring me trouble, make my life more difficult. Because of course it would, how could it not. And I reduced modeling for drawings and photos more and more until now I haven't done it at all in years.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus7.jpg

And I miss it. I miss making art with my body. I miss writing honestly and raw-ly about my thoughts and life. I regret never having posed for a pin-up site, or stripped, or done porn.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus8.jpg

I see these women who do it, who get naked in photos and videos, and I'm so jealous. I want to do that too.

http://www.internationalhobo.com/forPatreon/visioluxus9.jpg