Lucia,
I’d like to give Beatrice another chance at representing me in Milano before I hit the free agent market. Attached are some of my latest tears.
Ciao bella
Perfect. Working Milano and ciao bella into the message are strokes of near brilliance. Now Lucia knows she’s not dealing with any loser who wants to be in Italy, I’ve been there before.
I turn my attention back to Instagram, and a sense of calm washes over me.
Britney liked our selfie together and I check out her Instagram feed. The cock-smasher has the usual black-and-white, professional fashion shoot quality profile pic that all models use to immediately separate their pretty-selves from the rest of the population—who rely on the chin down, slightly turned face, and flash drenched picture to look adequately attractive. She also has the usual plethora of try-too-hard-to-be-casual messages from an assortment of idiotic guys.
These assholes all comment on her photos in the typical asshole way by writing stuff like: hey gorgeous, saw you out on Saturday but you didn’t say hi…☹ and lol that’s hilarious! Blue steel forever! when they comment on photos of her pulling the Zoolander face—a face every model is obligated to pull when they take candids with other models. I wade through more unoriginal drivel from these wanna-bang-a-model chumps. They’re all working overtime to sound charming or witty, which I suppose is better than: can I fuck you? Or I masturbate constantly to your profile, which would be more truthful and accurate. If Jasmine’s Instagram page is ever spattered with this much assholery, I’m going to punch myself in my own cock.
Then my iPhone dings with a new email message. It’s from Lucia in Milano.
I open what will no doubt be her apology and an offer of representation from Beatrice. I’m hoping she can wait a few days for me to sign a contract as I’m quite busy. But what I read is this:
Go ahead and declare yourself a free agent in Milan, dear.
I scroll down to see if there’s any more, and have to re-read my message before hers makes complete sense. I stare at the screen until it goes blurry, then I close the window.
Britney’s profile is still open, her eyes searing into mine. She’s just posted a new photo of her sticking her tongue out wearing Raybans: Looking forward to the Why Not agency party in Milan tonight! See you all there!! Shutting my laptop and getting up to go to my fitting, I realize that everything I’ve worked for in the past five years has been undone by a single-sentence email.
At the fitting no one talks to me, no one looks at me. Guys are standing shirtless while assistants kneel and hem their Hugo Boss pants over pairs of identical black leather shoes. I sit on a stool next to a big window with a clear view across the harbour to Kowloon, but I can’t tear my eyes off the other guys.
Each of them is armed with a defined set of abs, and I realize I’m rubbing my hand compulsively over my own flexed stomach. I wonder how many of these guys have agencies in Milano. I’m measuring how tall each of them is in my head when Marek taps me on the shoulder.
“Hey dude,” he says. “Figured you’d book this show too.”
I grin. Seeing Marek is a welcome distraction from the ripped guys stripping down to their packed-to-bursting bikini briefs.
“Party’s shaping up to be good tonight.” He says.
I’d forgotten about that. Sheldon—my rich nerd friend—has resurfaced from whatever corner of the internet he was squatting in, and in celebration rented the Wow Suite, at the W Hotel. He told me to organize a party, which wasn’t hard to do. I texted Marek the suite number, the date, and told him the place would be stocked with alcohol and that we had to stock it with girls.
Marek handled the rest.
Sheldon decided Monday night is a good night to party because he’s a rich kid and doesn’t conform to the constraints of reality. This would be a problem if he wanted to party with anyone but models. Luckily, every day is Saturday for models so getting belligerently fucked up on a Monday night is not only doable but perfectly acceptable.
“Hope so,” I shrug, watching a male model linger in his bikini briefs vying for a row of female models sitting across from him to look at his crotch. I don’t see Damian anywhere, which makes me feel slightly better. “Guess Damian didn’t book this show.”
“He’s shooting a property print ad.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he booked this show but he’s got other work today,” Marek says. “He texted me earlier, said he’s jumping as high as he can and smiling like a motherfucker. Shitty job, but decent cash.”
The reciprocity casting. Damian booked it. I’d kill for that job.
“Good for him,” Even though I muster the words, I can’t muster the feeling to make it sound sincere, and before I know it I’m asking, “Hey, does Damian have an agency in Milano?”
“Yeah,” Marek says, as he smiles and waves to a blonde teenager who catwalks in on a pair of six-inch heels like they’re stilts. “Fuck, she’s hot.”
“What agency is Damian with in Milano?”
“Hey, baby,” Marek says to the girl and she nods, fighting back a smile. “Uh… he just switched to Beatrice. They got a new booker and she poached him from his old agency.”
“I don’t think he’s with Beatrice,” I swallow hard, and like a vision of flaming apocalypse Damian’s grinning face flashes in my head.
“I’m pretty sure he is.” Marek turns to me though his eyes linger on the blonde. “The new booker, Lucy… Lucia… something like that, just signed him to a contract. She wants him there for the coming show season. It just happened, dude. He just told me about it. Hey, you’re with Beatrice in Milan, aren’t you?”
I do a nodding shrug and turn back to the guys stripping out of their second outfits. Their muscles look like they’re trying to escape from under their skin, and I return to running my thumb over my abs.
Sheldon Ferguson comes from a British family that has a long history in colonial Hong Kong. Sheldon’s father owns all the Value Marts in South East Asia. For anyone who doesn’t know, Value Mart is the Asian convenience store equivalent of the cockroach—it’s everywhere.
Every time I’m sweating my balls off in the street and run into a Value Mart for a bottle of water, I’m conscious of the fact I just gave Sheldon’s family fifty cents. Multiply that by all the dudes sweating their balls off in South East Asia and you don’t have to do the math to know that Sheldon is Forbes-shortlist rich. Sheldon was one of the regulars in the Hong Kong club scene for a while and we became default friends. Default for me, anyway. For Sheldon, I’ve become some kind of friend/guru/mentor. This means we party a couple times a month, he flies me to meet him on vacation when he rents a villa in Bali, or he flies me in for his birthday at a vacation house in Ko Samui. But it’s not completely one sided. In return, he’s hoping a little bit of my suave, my charm, my it factor, will rub off on him. Not likely. But it’s not like I have much to work with.
Being born to wealth doesn’t stop someone from being shockingly socially inept. Sometimes it helps. Sheldon’s in his early twenties and being around hot girls, regular girls, most guys, old people, kids, certain breeds of cats—in fact just about anybody he doesn’t meet online in League of Legends—reduces him to a snickering, blushing, pre-teen. I doubt Sheldon’s ever had a girlfriend.
When I show up at the Wow Suite at The W, Sheldon breaks out a grin that has no 90-degree angles in it, before shaking my hand, and giving me a hug. He ushers me in, immediately popping a festering pimple on his forehead with the same hand he shook mine with. This prompts me to ask where the toilet is.
“So glad you could make it!” Sheldon yells over the sound of running water as I scrub my hands with Dettol. When I get out of the toilet, he’s standing there compulsively poking at the pimples that spot his face like an out of control case of chicken pox.
“Relax,” I grab his wrist. “Quit picking at your face. The hotties aren’t gonna like it.”
Sheldon blushes like a kid caught picking
his nose and giggles. “My God! Did you invite those girls from the photos on Instagram? Natalia and Marell?”
I don’t remember anyone named Natalia or Marell. I think Sheldon pays more attention to my posts than I do.
“There’s gonna be a nice selection of girls. Don’t worry about that,” I say, turning my head sideways to follow the gentle arc of a blue striped fish in the built in-wall aquarium. “This is a nice suite.”
“Wait, wait,” Sheldon interrupts. “You haven’t seen the best part. C’mon.” He leads me into the master bedroom, which has a low minimalist bed and floor-to-ceiling view of the city.
“Check it out,” Sheldon says flipping a switch in the master en-suite. A Jacuzzi tub that is easily bigger than my bed froths with hot water. “I reckon the girls are going to love this.”
I imagine five topless model girls sipping Moet in the tub and conclude the Jacuzzi will make me happy. I think the girls might be happy about the tub too until I picture Sheldon taking off his golf shirt, revealing a chest load of ripe blistering acne so bumpy it camouflages his nipples. This makes me wonder how well the Jacuzzi will handle large amounts of barf.
“Should be ok.” I head back to the living room where I use the view of lit up skyscrapers on the Kowloon harbour side to bury my vision of shirtless Sheldon. “What do we have to drink?”
On cue, the door chimes and Sheldon runs to open it. A team of waiters roll in carts of alcohol and glasses, along with what looks like a bar on wheels.
“I arranged with the bar downstairs for some of their wait staff to take care of the party,” Sheldon shrugs. “Think this is enough?”
I nod as the waiters’ cart in enough bottles to give an entire frat house alcohol poisoning.
“It’ll do.”
To an outsider, partying with models may seem as elusive as a getting a photo of Bigfoot. But to anybody in the know, it’s easy. Find an exclusive locale, provide a shit-ton of free alcohol, and watch freeloading models materialize like vultures flock to road kill.
With these key ingredients, by midnight Sheldon’s ten thousand-dollar penthouse suite at The W is looking like the Playboy mansion minus the fake tits and platinum blonde hair. Sheldon spots me across the room and gives me a big grin before he returns to eagerly nodding at whatever the Amazon blonde in front of him is saying. I go back to my drink.
Free alcohol isn’t one of my mainstays, but tonight a steady stream of Jack Daniels and Coke has really helped make reality more palatable—or more accurately, ignorable. The biggest perk about being a model is the easy access to an ever-rotating crop of hot girls. Normal guys complain about having to buy girls drinks and dinner to get them into bed. Then there are the desperate chumps slipping girls animal tranquilizers, dreaming of having their way with a passed out drooling chick. It’s all pathetic. At a model party, all I have to do is pick the girl, grin and wrinkle my forehead, and let the magic happen. The toughest part is deciding which girl to choose. But tonight, the challenge is corralling this great power to not further endanger my already aching groin.
I recognize a bunch of guys here from fittings and castings, and suppose I could make conversation with them but don’t want to. Guys aren’t like girls, who can go to clubs and dance in little same sex groups feeling like they’re having the time of their shitty lives. For guys, when you subtract girls from the nightlife equation—clubs, elite lounges, and exclusive parties just become dark rooms full of assholes.
Sipping my drink by myself, I can’t help taking stock of the room: Brazilian brunette, Slovakian blonde, Russian blonde, Spanish brunette, Argentinean brunette, black haired Japanese, South African brunette, Kenyan with a shaved head, it’s like the United Nations of hotness.
Tipping my glass to my lips, I realize this no sex thing is going to be really hard, when someone bumps me from behind spilling gin and tonic on my black Gucci hi-tops.
“Sorry about that,” says a hot sounding voice. “Clumsy me.”
“Non pasa niente,” I say, which I’m pretty certain means ‘no problem’ in Italian. This is a deliberate choice that hints at my worldliness, and no doubt lead to an intrigued questioning by the girl. I shouldn’t be so charming with my penis situation, but I can’t help it.
I turn and Taylor is standing in front of me. A knot tightens in my chest.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says. “You’re not Italian, are you?” I stare at her as she sips an Estrella Galicia.
“No.”
“Then why would you be speaking Italian?” She smirks. “Or is this one of your cool fashion tricks, like your super power ability to know intimate details of runway shows from watching models walk.” I force a smile and take a long swig of my drink. Taylor’s hair is down tonight, she’s still wearing jeans and flats while the rest of the models in the suite are showing full leg in their gigantic heels. Yet somehow Taylor is more attractive than them.
“I didn’t recognize you, what with wearing a shirt and all—” She grins. “What?”
“That one time you were wearing that suit jacket with no shirt,” she says, looking over my shoulder. Suddenly, I’m wondering if my dream happened. She stares at me and I’m trying to think of something to say but the alcohol really isn’t helping. “Never mind. I’ll see you around.”
Things slow to a Tanqueray induced frame-by-frame. As Taylor passes me, her shoulder caresses my arm and the smell of her lemongrass shampooed hair sneaks into my nostrils. I’m fairly certain that all she has done since she made me spill on my Gucci’s is verbally destroy me, but before I know it I’m saying, “Wait!”
Taylor turns taking another sip of beer. I grin and tilt my face so far down that I have to wrinkle up my forehead to look at her, which in my drunken state makes me feel dizzier than normal. I perfected this look in Barcelona, long before a Mormon incapacitated my groin. It’s my Sensually-Sophisticated-Man-of-the-World look.
“Do you have gas or something?” Taylor wrinkles up her nose. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“I was thinking.” I wobble and erase the expression. “It’s weird. I had this dream about you…”
In my alcohol soaked brain, I know this is coming out wrong, but all I can do is keep grinning and speaking as if I still retain some modicum of control.
“I mean, it’s not really about you,” I say, as Taylor looks at me like I’m trying to convince her that fake news is news. “It was more about me, but you were there. It’s funny ‘cause I’ve been thinking about it a lot and it didn’t even happen. You know when you have dreams like that?”
“This is getting slightly creepy,” Taylor says, as she searches the room for an escape route. “Is this some kind of weird pick-up attempt?”
“No. You’re gonna laugh in a second.” I force a chuckle, not knowing where I’m going but incapable of stopping. “No, in my dream you told me that wearing a jacket with no shirt was a wank move. That’s it, see? It was nothing weird. I just dreamt that you said that to me.”
“I did say that to you.”
“What?”
She grins.
“Just messing with you. Though maybe you read my mind.”
Taylor smiles at me and I force another laugh though I can’t stop myself from wincing.
“Hey,” Damian appears and slaps my hand before he leans in to greet Taylor with two cheek kisses. Motherfucking Damian and his classy European cheek kiss greeting.
I watch as Taylor and Damian exchange small talk and for the first time tonight, I see her smile genuinely. I don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t care when I break in, “Why are you so late?”
“Just finished a booking, bru,” he says, which immediately makes me wonder why I didn’t have a booking tonight. I comfort myself by picturing Damian working some bullshit promotional event, like standing shirtless handing out tampons in front of a pharmacy in Central.
“What was the job?”
“I was shooting the Shanghai Tang campaign.”
Fuck, I didn
’t even cast for that. I take a big swig of my drink. My head is swimming with alcohol. Taylor and Damian stare at me for a bit, and I realize I’m supposed to congratulate him or some shit.
“Well, that’s fucking great, man,” I say trying to make my praise sound more authentic by adding an expletive but it probably just makes me sound unpredictable and possibly violent.
“All right, bru. Looks like I got a lot of catching up to do with you,” Damian says. “Gonna get a drink.”
“I’ll go with you,” Taylor says, pressing her lips together and giving me a half-hearted smile. As they disappear behind a wall of models, I think I see Taylor reach for Damian’s hand. I’m squinting through a tangle of lithe arms and well moisturized legs to see if they really are holding hands when Svetlana materializes, wobbling before me like a drunken apparition.
“Hello,” she says, sloshing the contents of her glass all over her taut push-up bra enhanced tits. She doesn’t notice the vodka bath she’s giving her breasts. “I want tell you sorry for other night. Is disaster, no?”
“A little bit.”
I’ve lost sight of Taylor and Damian. They’ve probably decided to ditch the party and head to Value Mart to take advantage of the two-for-one sale on condoms and lubricant before going back to his place. I wonder if I could get Sheldon to call his Dad and raise the cost on those items to price Damian and Taylor out of having sex. Probably not.
“It got a bit messy,” I say, noting that Svetlana’s eyes have lost the ability to blink at the same time. I’m starting to feel a little unsteady myself. The Tanqueray is definitely hindering my ability to stand straight but is also numbing the pain in my groin pretty effectively. This makes me think, wild-leading-to-erectile-dysfunction sex may be out of the question, but maybe nice-boring-gentle-sex could work.
Catwalk Fail Page 6
