Adam is the only one in the studio when I arrive. He’s sitting at a white desk covered in stuff from the last few days: laptops, paperwork, stacks of model cards. Two big windows face a building across the street where the sun etches shadows around delicately carved fleur-de-lis and other beautiful things that don’t happen anymore. Adam and the designer used to rent this room full-time but because of the recession and their lack of strong sales, they discontinued the lease. But because of the recession and everyone’s lack of money, the building has never been able to find a tenant. Their name is still on the door, literally.
Our “hello” is a gay flourish you think you might only find on a reality show for Bravo Network. The intonations are high and lingering, like a screeching bird with the most beautiful voice in the world. You want to hate it but for some reason you can’t. We sit across from each other and he asks me questions and I ask him questions because that’s what you do. I’ve been working for this client for years; they hired me when I was twenty and I’ve been doing stuff for them ever since, although I often thought that it was out of laziness on their part more than genuine liking of me.
The first day I ever worked for them I was supposed to be the backup model for the backup model. “Guinevere was supposed to do this,” Adam told me as he rolled up the sleeve of a starched button-up. “You know,” he continues, “GUIN-evere.” Adam’s language always places emphasis on some part of a word that ordinarily wouldn’t require it. Talking this way is like writing a song. It’s music theory or something, I don’t know.
The owner of the company is a young woman, about a year older than myself, who is the child of wealthy parents. And I don’t mean wealthy parents, I mean loaded parents. I mean some of the richest people I have ever met or heard stories about. If I read Forbes magazine more often, they might be listed somewhere on there. That’s the type of family she comes from.
We don’t feel the same age because of her money. Money adds years to your age because you are automatically higher up on the totem pole – something that generally happens as you acquire wealth as you eek closer to forty. But, for my client, she was born into this. By the time she was ten, she had more money in her bank account than most people do in retirement. I always felt like a thankful spot on the bottom of her shoe.
Adam asks me about my new apartment while we wait. “Where is Greenpoint?” he asks and I am thankful again, because the fewer people know about my neighborhood the less likely they will be moving there any time soon. Including these people. All of these people.
I slouch down in my chair because that’s what models are good at – inappropriate behavior disguised as carefree beauty. James arrives. He’s Lars’s assistant. Lars is the stylist – a manorexic, queeny head case whose brain was lost in the developing years of his eating disorder and drug abuse. I remember James from last time, how Lars told him to “Get on (his) knees” and calling him “Petey Boy.” I am amazed he’s still here and that he’s survived the last three months since we’ve seen each other. Within the context of this world, James seems to me to be a soft piece of Jello that gets furiously gnawed at before just falling out of someone’s mouth.
Lars arrives thirty minutes late. He’s wearing a tent-like striped shirt in red and white. Where’s Waldo? Here’s Lars. Last time he was wearing stripes but the shirt was child’s size and rolled up at the biceps into meticulous cloth tubes. Apparently oversized is in now. The black jeans he wears pass over a nonexistent ass and toothpick legs. He’s a size I bypassed en route to adolescence back in 1991. His black hair is thrown up into this vertically wind-blown coif, saturated and thick.
“Hiiiiiiii,” he groans into the room. His voice is like an SNL skit and he is his own self-parody. The affectation involved in simply being him seems like an impossibly long joke in which you eagerly wait for a punch line that never comes. He is like a retarded fashion Beavis with raven hair and tight pants.
He sees me. “Oh, hiiiiiii. It’s good to see you again.” He’s looking down and I’m looking down and no one makes eye contact because this is not a real world. None of these people act like this around their parents; I’m convinced of that.
Two more assistants arrive and no one has a camera. No one has a camera which means I can’t start putting on clothes because if you can’t document the styling process, there’s no point. The jewelry’s late, too. Adam and I sit across from each other with raised eyebrows and wide WTF eyes and even though Adam says he cares and that this is unprofessional to me later on, I don’t think he cares. None of that matters because he’s working with Lars.
After an hour and a half of me being paid hourly for nothing, someone shows up with a camera. “Can you put this on?” Lars asks. I walk over to a rack of clothing, none of which I think is good this season, and strip down to nude underwear. I put on a black shift dress with leather sleeves and stretch cotton and it pulls at my shoulders because they are broad. Swimmers shoulders, people have told me, though I never swam much to account for it. The dress is too short and I feel too big and I will feel big the rest of the day. By the time you hear comments like “That will look better on a smaller girl” or “That short needs a thinner leg” and “Damn you, Jenny. You had to be a runner” – you hear all that and you want to kill yourself. Each piece of clothing you put on that doesn’t fit is a testament to eating too many pieces of cheese or too many cookies, but the problem is that I don’t eat any of that to begin with. I would have to eat nothing, always. That’s what these clothes need.
I stare out the window, numb to the eyes that are on me all the time. “Turn around,” they ask, and I pull my hair out of the way so they can see the back of the garment. “Turn around,” they ask again and I am back facing forward, repeating this same motion over and over and over again until I forget what I actually want out of this life and what I am capable of, until my self-esteem atrophies into a comatose state of size ten shoes and pants that don’t fit.
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Funny and insightful. The line about Lars being his own self-parody is great. I really like the last paragraph. The idea of spinning and forgetting what you actually want out of life is something we can all relate to.
You are probably a beautiful girl and an excellent model,but you are a WONDERFUL writer and that,you can always fall back on. Keep up the good work :0)