Catwalk Fail

by Jason Godfrey

  I’m not feeling well, and even after my work out—with my muscles lean and taut beneath my shirt and obviously catching the attention of a trio of middle-aged trophy wives standing near the treadmill machines—the lurking anxiety that my entire world is one crack away from crumbling lingers.

  Nodding at the guy behind the glass counter I point at a row of quiches and hold up one, then two—then God help me—three fingers. Defiling myself with quiche, under any circumstance, breaks the rule about not feeding the models. But quiching myself moments before shooting for the world’s premier fashion magazine—that’s a total fashion taboo.

  I check my iPhone to see if there is any news from Beatrice. Maybe a nice message explaining their webmaster had an aneurysm and collapsed on the keyboard while his mouse hovered over my profile, deleting it by accident. But there’s nothing.

  Then my phone buzzes. It’s Jasmine.

  The guy behind the counter hands me a paper bag piled full of quiche. I snatch the top one and stuff it into my mouth as I answer the call.

  “Jas,” I say, with my cheeks crammed full of quiche. “I’m busy. I’ve got a Vogue shoot to get to.”

  “Vogue? Cool!” Jasmine says, as I head to the exit with the phone tucked between my ear and shoulder. “Guess you’re preparing!”

  “Something like that,” I say, as crumbled tart and bits of egg fall out of my mouth to the tiled floor.

  “I’ll be fast! I just had an idea,” she says. “Did you see my new profile shot?”

  I wrestle the phone from my ear and check her Instagram account. It’s a black-and-white shot and she’s staring neutrally into the camera, lips parted and sultry. Her dark hair is wet and slicked back like she just waded out of an infinity pool. Wannabe Testino is getting better, and even worse: Jasmine is looking increasingly model-like.

  I remember when she was four years old and posed for every photo with a wide jaw-clenched grin that looked more like a grimace. It would be so much easier to keep her from modelling if she still smiled like a constipated chimpanzee.

  “I know this one shot won’t make me in Milano,” she says, as I push my way out the front door of the café and onto the street. “But it’s a start to building my book like you said. Now I need to get to a decent fashion market. That’s my big idea! I was thinking you could talk to your agency in Hong Kong and I can go there first. Brilliant, right?”

  Standing on the street corner next to horn blaring traffic, I realize I don’t have enough quiche to deal with this. “I don’t know, Jas,” I say. “You’re pretty young, maybe you should wait a year and we’ll talk again.”

  “No, I don’t want to wait,” she says. “What if you started when you were younger? It would have been better!”

  Jasmine has no idea what she’s talking about.

  “Actually, guys peak later than girls,” I say my fingers sinking into the greasy pastry bottom of a half-eaten quiche. “Girls start earlier, most of them burning out around twenty-five, a select few can continue into their thirties, but that’s not the majority. For guys, the burn out age is early thirties, but many continue into their late thirties and even forties. Starting earlier wouldn’t have been an advantage for me.”

  Planning ahead, if I perfect my forehead wrinkling and eyebrow usage, I could easily work into my forties. Then Jasmine gasps and I realize I shouldn’t have said any of this.

  “Oh my God,” She says. “I’m running out of time!”

  Fuck my Wikipedia-like knowledge of the modelling industry.

  “Please, please, please, Colin,” she says, and I can picture her scrunching up her face and it kills me a little. “Talk to One Models for me.”

  I can’t argue with my sister right before Vogue. I need to focus.

  “Fine, I’ll talk to them,” I say, waving at taxis with one hand and using the other to smash the waiting quiche into my mouth as that timer on my sister beeps to six and then five. Shit.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Jasmine squeals followed by a barrage of kissing noises.

  I’m flapping my hand at an oncoming taxi.

  “I’m so excited!” She says. “I can’t wait to see Hong Kong and hang out with you!”

  Hefting myself into the backseat of the taxi, I grunt into the phone. “And your friends! O. M. G!” She burbles on. “I saw on Instagram;

  your friend Damian is sooo freaking hot!”

  Staring blankly ahead, I thrust the remaining quiche into my mouth, choking it down like a starving pelican as the taxi driver eyes me in the rear view. Getting an agency in Milano isn’t like getting an agency anywhere else in the world. Milano is the Mecca of modelling. Every professional model, newly scouted prospect, and pitiable fashion hopeful, will make a pilgrimage there at some point in their lives. This means a steady flood of attractive and wannabe-attractive people from all over the world, and not enough agencies to handle everyone.

  In most other markets, with my portfolio strong as it is, I could walk into any agency and have them gagging to rep me. In Milano, only the strongest models get agencies. What my sister doesn’t know, and I hate to admit, is my book may not be up to competing with the portfolios of guys coming out of New York and London. Not that those guys are better looking than me, that’s not the case at all. It’s simply that the body of work they build their books from is consistently better than the stuff I book in the markets I frequent.

  Building a stronger portfolio means booking fashion editorials and campaigns. I can’t lie to myself, shooting a campaign in New York is much more valuable than the same campaign with the same photographer shot in Hong Kong. Name-dropping New York when a client flips through my book is better than name dropping Turkey, Bangkok, or some other fashionista forsaken backwater. In the meantime, shooting Vogue for anywhere makes for a nice name drop.

  Today’s shoot is like an insurance policy in case—for some exceptionally moronic reason—Beatrice has dropped me. A recent Vogue shoot is currency to get me another Italian agency. Simply killing this shoot will not do, killing it and desecrating its steaming carcass is more what I’m going for.

  Since annihilating enough quiche to fill a small pig, I’ve decided two things to help me focus on massacring this Vogue shoot. The first is that despite what I’ve said to my sister, I will not talk to One Models about getting her a contract in Hong Kong. I’ll tell Jas we spoke and make up some excuse as to why One Models wasn’t interested. Maybe something about one of her eyes being a fifth of a millimeter smaller than the other, something that won’t scar her for life.

  The second thing I’ve decided is that Damian will not be at this Vogue shoot. This second decision is based on nothing more than the fact that it makes my anxiety more manageable, and it’s working.

  As the door to the studio buzzes open, I’m feeling better. Strutting in— past assistants setting up lighting stands, stylists steaming clothes— everything is right with my world. Then I see something that drains my newfound enthusiasm like a frat house draining a beer keg on a Saturday afternoon.

  Damian.

  He’s sitting on a stool while a makeup artist dabs foundation under his eyes.

  “Hey bru!” he says, popping an eye open and looking at me in the mirror. “Told you we had the same shoot.”

  He grins at me, and I grin back, even though inside I’m wishing he would disappear or turn into a nice potted fern. Shooting with Damian is a double whammy of suckage. First, another male model cuts this eight-page editorial spread down to a four, and reduces the chance that I’ll get tear sheets for my book. The second dimension of suckage is that Damian’s ever-grinning face, taut torso, and effortlessly cool presence are increasingly beginning to irritate me like a screaming baby.

  But I have to make this shoot work.

  “Get changed,” says a stylist with short cropped hair and black glasses, holding what looks like a zebra print napkin pinched between his fingers. “This is yours.”

  “First outfit?” I say, clinging to the hope that they’r
e starting with a pair of ball hugging male G-strings and moving on to a range of haute couture men’s wear.

  “First? The only outfit for you guys.” The stylist puts one hand on his hip and grins. “You boys are props for our celebrity.”

  “Cool. A celebrity,” I say, but really all I’m thinking is: fucking fuck.

  A celebrity confirms that this Vogue shoot is going to be as fashionably useless as a roll of film taken by a family portrait shooter at K-Mart.

  “Who’s the celeb? Kylie Jenner?” Shooting with an international star is the only way this shoot would have any redeeming value at this point. The stylist laughs. “Of course not.” He hands me the degrading underwear. “She’s a local celeb. Really, she’s more of a socialite, she married this rich…”

  And though I keep nodding in response to the stylist’s moving lips, I tune him completely out. I don’t need to hear anymore. I wish I could turn the clock back ninety-seven seconds so I could return to the blissful mental state where I believed this shoot could save me.

  “Well, I better change,” I say, not entirely sure the stylist has stopped speaking as I head to the change room.

  “And here.” The stylist hands me a little silk ribbon and gives me a wink. “You know how to use one of these?”

  I take the ribbon.

  “You want me to tie it in my hair?”

  “No, silly!” He laughs and then whispers in my ear. “It’s like a push up bra—but for men. You know?”

  I stare at the ribbon, seriously doubting the ability of a six-inch piece of fabric to support my breasts. The stylist can read the lack of comprehension on my face because he looks around and then flicks a finger at my crotch that disturbingly nicks the very tip of my penis. Mercifully, he missed the bruise or I’d be calling the hospital for morphine sachets.

  “It’s for down there,” he says, and I cover my groin with my hand to prevent more nonchalant yet startlingly accurate finger strikes at my damaged privates. “You use this to bring everything forward. Wrap it around your tutti fruits.”

  Tutti fruits?

  “Or you want me to tie it for you?” He reaches for the ribbon. I snatch it away from him.

  “No. I can manage to tie it on my own. Thanks.”

  A couple minutes later, I’m tying the ribbon tight around my balls and knotting it off with a neat bow above the base of my penis like I’m ready to put my genitalia under the Christmas tree.

  I squeeze into the little zebra print tights, staring at myself in the mirror. Beneath the recognizable imprint of penis is an enlarged amorphous area of testicle. This is the result of the male push up bra. I stare at the formless but enlarged mass that is now my groin and shrug.

  I like it.

  The celebrity is this wealthy fifty-something socialite that—with her tattooed-on eyebrows, heavy eyeliner, and her obviously surgically rounded eyes—reminds me of a stuffed raccoon. She sits on an apple box on set, wearing a beige tweed skirt and jacket from Agnes B.

  Damian and I stand on either side of her in matching zebra print nut huggers. We’re wearing black floral-patterned masks that obscure everything from our noses up, effectively axing the last sliver of hope that any of these Vogue shots will be usable for my book. We’re just props for this rich bitch. I might as well be any chump off the street. Well, any chump off the street with a set of abs worthy of an Armani campaign.

  As the assistants do the final check on the lighting, the rich bitch turns to us, looks us up and down—not bothering to hide her admiration for the job the male push-ups are doing beneath the zebra print—and says, “What a handsome pair of boys. Do you also work events?”

  “Like runway?” Damian says. I look at him and realize, with the masks on, we’ve become interchangeable. It’s like I’m looking at myself. My stomach rolls and I wonder if we’ve always been that way.

  “Yes, but more intimate events,” The bitch says, as her personal makeup artist brushes yet more powder on her face. Her skin looks like the flour-coated bottom of a pizza. “Events where you need to schmooze with the clientele and have a good time.”

  “That sounds like the M7 launch party in Athens,” Damian grins. “You remember that, bru?”

  “No. I don’t.” I don’t care to reminisce with Damian about when we were roommates.

  “Remember?” Damian smiles. “It was seven of us. We got paid a thousand Euros to be the faces of that cologne from YSL at the launch in Athens years ago. We got super hammered, you and me? Remember?”

  Despite my best efforts, I actually do. We got paid to get drunk and flirt with a bunch of rich old women to work them into a perfume buying frenzy.

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to stop myself from smirking.

  “We all got completely wasted,” Damian laughs. “You remember that lady who kept trying to sit on your lap? You had to keep bouncing her off of you.”

  “Holy shit. I forgot about that,” I find myself smiling. “She was like six hundred years old and wanted to pretend she was a little girl sitting on Santa’s lap. I started bouncing my leg up and down to shake her off, but she grabbed on to my thigh and acted like she was riding a bronco.”

  Damian laughs, and so do I. I haven’t thought about a wealthy senior riding my thigh in years. It isn’t really an experience you want to relive.

  “You two would be available for that sort of job?” The bitch says. “I mean, I could go through your agencies, but then I pay a percentage on top of your fee. I’d rather just pay this directly to you boys. Would booking you boys directly without your agencies be a problem?”

  Any hesitation I have to work around my agency is alleviated by the promise of making a full show rate without paying the 30% agency fee. It must be the same for Damian because he says, “I’m good with it.”

  “Same here.”

  “Good,” the bitch says, giving me such a long, lingering look I’m surprised she doesn’t end it by flicking her tongue over her withered red lipstick smeared lips. “I wonder if we can get this exact wardrobe for you two at the event.”

  The wrinkly socialite hacks up an uneasy laugh that makes me think if I work with her, I will indeed end up in another tiny pair of short shorts that clings to my genitals like wet tissue.

  Makeup moves on to powdering a couple blemishes on Damian’s chest and the stylist—who’s been staring at me and biting the nail on his little finger for the past five minutes—steps in eyeballing my balls.

  “Are you sure you’re using the ribbon the right way?” He whispers in my ear.

  “Yeah.”

  “There seems like a lot of extra material in your shorts.” He snaps his fingers and an assistant hands him a pincushion. He drops to a knee in front of me. I sneak a look at Damian’s crotch and the zebra print is stretched full across the bumpy man lump of groin. The stylist kneels at eye level with my crotch and stretches the fabric tight, pinning it below where my balls would be if the ribbon didn’t have them mashed forward in display position.

  “Must have given me a larger size,” I say.

  “Sorry,” The stylist looks up holding pins between his frowning lips. “You’re both wearing the same size, honey.”

  “Ready to shoot!” The photographer yells.

  “Crotch emergency here!” The stylist shouts over his shoulder. He continues to pull the slack out of the zebra print fabric and pin it just south of my rectum for the next four and a half minutes as Damian, the rich bitch, the photographer, the hair stylist and makeup artist, a team of assistants, and a handful of representatives from Conde Nast look on.

  CHAPTER 5

  Colin Bryce Hamilton

  Penthouse party tonight at The W!

  73 people like this.

  Sheldon Ferguson

  You know it! Please bring girls. LOL! But seriously. Bring girls.

  3 people like this.

  IT’S NOT UNTIL a few days later that I finally get a reply from somebody named Lucia at Beatrice in Milano. As I’m reading it, a breeze wafts in
from across the water and over the snarling expressway bringing the fused stink of dead fish and exhaust fumes. A fittingly unpleasant odour for reading this:

  Colin,

  Antoinette is no longer with Beatrice, she was meant to tell all her boys of her departure. I’m the new men’s booker, Lucia. Unfortunately, the market here has changed and we feel your look no longer fits our board.

  Ciao

  Lucia Suddenly my head feels light and my fingers and toes are tingling like I’ve come in from a hike in the snow. My agency in Milano dropped me.

  Being good looking makes a model, but it’s something else that makes a successful one. Good models—working models—share a certain indiscernible quality that separates them from the rabble of pretty wannabes. I used to have it, but more and more I fear my it is slipping away.

  I might be in some low-level form of shock, but my hands are operating like an emergency backup system during a crisis. Before I know what’s happening I’ve got my phone in my hand and I’m on Instagram. Taking a deep breath, I scroll way back through years of posts, before I stop.

  A black-and-white head shot from my first test. Me leaning against a brick wall squinting hard at the camera in my first fashion editorial. I purse my lips and flip off the camera in my first cover shoot for Bravo magazine in Barcelona. My expression is pensive as I lead a brunette in a bright red dress through the windswept grass in a Kenzo campaign.

  These photos clear my head like smelling salts, and I regain enough strength to know what I need to do.

  I scroll to my newer shots. Here I stop on a shot from Prestige, where I sprawl across a gray shag rug in an all-white Ferragamo suit. Me stepping out of a Lamborghini in an ad campaign for the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Macau. I’m grinning on the cover of Men’s Folio and flexing my torso so hard my eight pack looks like it’s carved out of stone. These are only the tip of my tear sheet iceberg. Of course, I’ve got all these tear sheets on my Drive account under Colin’s Book. I attach the entire folder to my reply to Lucia at Beatrice and feel better already. By the time I scroll through all my photos, I’m feeling completely diesel, as I write: