The Clay of It

When he walked into her studio, Elodie was sculpting her seventh ceramic penis of the week. This one had antlers.

She didn’t look up. “Custom or classic?”

The man hesitated. He was tall, with nervous shoulders and a brown paper envelope clutched like it contained his last will and testament. “Custom,” he said.

She glanced at him, a quick, assessing look. No sleazy grin, no too-wide eyes pretending not to scan her overalls. His posture said apology. She’d learned to read them, over the years: the oglers, the moaners, the “accidental” touchers. Men who claimed it was about art but watched her work like they were waiting for a lap dance. This one wasn’t like that. This one was here for something else. Something he almost didn’t want to ask for.

Elodie rinsed her hands in the sink, clay circling the drain like it wanted out of this conversation. “Alright. There’s a form.” She handed him a clipboard.

He read the first line aloud. “‘Please describe your member in three words or fewer?’”

“It’s a vibe check,” she said, shrugging.

He wrote: “Not conventionally impressive.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Brave.”

The next part involved measurements, preferences, and the option to provide photographic reference. He slid the envelope toward her.       

Inside was a Polaroid, and she appreciated the analog commitment. The photo was… honest. There was no dramatic lighting. No shadow games. Just a man, standing in what looked like a dentist’s office, stark naked, with a hopeful tilt to his head and socks that read “Mondays, amirite?”

She bit her lower lip, but she didn’t laugh. She didn’t need to. He was already doing it.

“I know it’s not—well. People laugh. Even doctors. I just thought… maybe it could be art. You make everything else look heroic.”

She looked at him properly for the first time. Noticed the way his hand twitched on the table. The way he didn’t look at her, exactly—just to the left of her face, like eye contact might crack something still setting. The shadow of a dimple in his three-day beard. Also: broad across the chest. Solid, in that quiet, unassuming way. The kind of body that might make a satisfying sound if slapped.

She blinked. Refocused. “What’s your name?”

“Dave.”

“Alright, Dave. I’ll need you to sit for me. Not nude,” she added quickly, watching the blood flee his face. “Just your energy. It helps.”

He came every Tuesday at 3 p.m. She sculpted. He sat. They talked about Renaissance depictions of masculinity, about humor in Japanese pottery, about growing up small in Texas. Once, she told him about her first boyfriend, who said her work was “cute but not art.” She broke up with him via sculpture. A sad, drooping thing, slightly crooked to the left. That’s how she found her medium and her muse. She hadn’t stopped since.

What she didn’t say was how Tuesdays became her favorite. How she looked for his text. How she liked that he never flirted. That he didn’t treat her like a curiosity or a kink.

That he smelled like cedarwood and tea tree oil.

Seven Tuesdays later, she handed Dave a box.

Inside: a sculpture the size of a thumb. Polished, delicate, burnished gold glaze. It was resting on a pedestal, under a bell jar. And beneath it, a plaque:

Dave. Not large. Just brave.

He stared at it a long time. Then he looked at her.

“You made it beautiful.”

“No,” she said. “You did.”

He kissed her in the parking lot, awkward and warm and a little clay-smelling. It was not a cinematic kiss. It was better. It was true.