Be still, rogue toe. Please! Don't you dare surrender to that muscle cramp. Now is not the time.

Lying here diagonally across the top of a dining table in the back room of Ambassador Wines and Spirits, naked except for the scallop shells covering my nipples and the silk scarf sheltering my crotch, while guests gorge on sushi and sashimi pieces plucked from my torso, I require your cooperation.

There is more than raw fish at stake. I owe it to Hirosaki Koko, the caterer who invited me here tonight, to remain completely still. I owe it to the customers who have paid good money for a dining experience spiked with a dose of sexual fetishism. And I owe it to the spirit of the Japanese practice of Nyotaimori.

Utterly exposed before a group of strangers, I do my best to fight off the impending toe cramp and a fierce desire to wince. This is all very new to me. You see, it's my first time as a naked body sushi model.

The author is prepped for dinner.

In fairness, you might wonder how one becomes a naked body sushi model. More specifically, you might wonder how one with zero experience of undressing in public becomes a naked body sushi model.

It began two weeks earlier, during one of those shameless email flirtations that are so common between people who have been on only a few dates—or, at least, that are common to me, with my middle-child tendency to seek attention at any cost. In my eagerness to amuse my email partner, I boldly (or moronically) sent him a link to Hirosaki Koko's Web site, under the guise of "finally finding my calling after five years of self-searching following graduation from college." He replied: "You'd be perfect for it." And that was the last I thought about being a naked body sushi model.

Until about ten hours later, when I awoke in the middle of the night. At that moment, I could see clearly that the opportunity to expose your half-naked body to a group of strangers wielding chopsticks doesn't come along every day.

I decided to try it.

I phoned Hirosaki Koko the next day, fully expecting a haughty rebuff. But Koko was surprisingly receptive. She asked me to meet her at a penthouse studio in Midtown west so she could evaluate my "qualifications."

Koko is 37 years old, but she looks 25. She greeted me dressed in jeans and a black tank top, with hot-pink bra straps peeking out, and disarmed me with her patchy English and genuine warmth. She was born Japan, lived in Los Angeles for a few years, then moved east on the advice of friends who assured her that the naked-sushi trend would take hold in New York. We chatted and drank some wine with a few of her friends, and that was it: I had passed the in-person body examination.