Never His Muse Again

Summary

To save him the cost of professional models, I spent eight years posing nude in the drafty chill of our walk-up studio.

Eight years of holding my breath on splintered floorboards while Derrick Cross caught the light on my collarbones.

The night his solo retrospective opened at the Whitney, I sat in the third row, blinking through tears of raw pride. But the moment the host introduced the artist’s “enduring inspiration” and a photographer knocked the silk scarf from my face, a ripple of muffled laughter washed over the gallery.