“I’m gonna head out to the terrace,” I say, hoping that Damian will leave me and I can go back to watching Cantonese period pieces, which I may not understand but are still more fun than standing around in clubs not being able to pick up girls.
“Cool, bru,” he says, slapping me on the back. “Head out there, I’ll finish this drink and meet you in a minute.”
Standing on the terrace, I’m checking my YouTube video. It’s been a week since I emailed the link to every men’s booker at the agencies in Milano and still no word. But my video has 156 views, so somebody other than me is watching it, though I don’t know why they’re waiting so long to offer me representation.
Then my iPhone buzzes, threatening to shake itself out of my grip as three messages pop up simultaneously. They’re from Jasmine. I open WhatsApp and read:
Hi!! u there? Guess what?!?
Colin?!?
I haven’t heard from my sister since that day in Elements where she seemed to get my point. I’ll message her when I get back from Asylum. But my iPhone buzzes again, and a message pops up:
Don’t ignore me! It says you’re online!
My sister sounds like the crazy girlfriend I’ve never wanted. I move to avoid a couple stumbling partiers and send Jasmine this:
Hey, I’m busy.
Instantly she types back: I saw on Facebook… you’re at Asylum!
I reply: That’s busy.
Jasmine: Cool!
My sister goes offline. I stare at the screen expecting some other response, but my iPhone stays dark. I’m in shock. Normally, when Jasmine wants to talk there’s no stopping her. Maybe she’s seen the logic of what I was saying about her staying out of fashion.
“Cheers, bru,” Damian says, appearing from the crowd and handing me one of the two beers he’s holding. He takes a swig not waiting for me when my iPhone buzzes again. And yet again, it’s my sister.
Turn around!!!!!!!!!
This message makes no sense and as I read it again, time slows to a crawl. Damian frowns and asks if I’m okay, but I ignore him as I turn to face Asylum’s entrance. A long beep sounds somewhere in my subconscious. It’s the timer in my head counting down to my sister modelling.
Two finance types stagger past, talking so loud they’re showering each other in spit. Behind them, the crowd on the terrace has thinned.
Another beep, and on some level I know what’s happening, but don’t want to believe it.
I can see all the way to the door bitch. She unhooks the red velvet rope for a group of models who trot in all taut biceps, long legs, and catalogue smiles. This concentration of models diffuses across the club like an oil slick spreading black across an ocean of blue, until there is only one model left.
Then the final beep echoes in my head.
Standing at the entrance of Asylum—backlit by the floor lights, her wavy brown hair somehow blowing in a non-existent breeze, her legs distressingly long and smooth in her little black dress, and wearing enough eyeliner to be the face of a MAC campaign—is Jasmine.
Mother fucking boom.
Moving towards Jasmine, I’m hoping I’ll squint her into being somebody else, but as I get closer it’s depressingly obvious my sister has come to Hong Kong.
“What are you doing here?” I say, wishing I had a moo moo to throw over her to hide how model-like she looks. It’s bad enough she’s in HK, but in Asylum? Virginity isn’t allowed within fifty feet of this place.
“Surprise!” Jasmine says, her smile big and perfect as she hugs me. “So happy to be here!”
Glancing around, I hope no one has noticed my sister but clock a couple Goldman Sachs looking scumbags already eyeing her from the shadows. It’s starting.
“Yeah, great,” I say, putting my arm around her waist and pulling her into a quiet corner of the terrace next to an oversized wooden birdcage. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought about what you said about nobody handing me anything. I realized you did it all by yourself, and I had to too,” Jasmine shrugs. “I looked up One Models and emailed them myself. I used my Mom’s last name. They don’t even know you’re my brother. Apple saw my friend’s photos and loved them!”
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, my sister getting a contract from One Models or One Models liking Wannabe Testino’s work.
“They asked for some snapshots, so my friend took some with my phone ‘cause they said they should be simple. Next thing I knew, the agency sent me a contract advancing airfare, accommodation, and allowance.” Jasmine says so happy she’s shaking. “And now I’m here. It’s so cool!” I’m nodding but all I’m really comprehending is that if I don’t get my sister out of here fast, I’m going to have to bludgeon one of these bankers with a bottle of Grey Goose as an example to all the other bankers.
“We need to go,” I say, trying to tug my sister’s dress down. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But my roommates! We just got here!” She says, swatting my hand off her dress. Then her eyes go wide and I realize she’s looking at someone or something behind me. I turn expecting to see some sort of terrifying monstrosity. But it’s much worse.
“Hey, bru, got tired of waiting,” Damian says. His mutant ability to show up at the worst times borderlines on unreal. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” I say, trying to block Jasmine from view, but she steps out from behind me and stands there biting her lip. Damian swigs his beer and grins. I’m hoping for an earthquake, tornado, a raging inferno—anything to interrupt the current situation.
“Jasmine, this is Damian,” I say, despondent at the lack of disasters occurring. My sister gives him a little finger wave, apparently incapable of speech in his presence. “Jasmine is my sister.”
“What?!?” Damian’s mouth drops and he momentarily loses the tension in his wrists, sloshing beer on the floor. “Are you fucking with me?”
“I wish I was,” I say, putting my hand on Jasmine’s shoulder. “But we were about to go.”
“No, we’re not!” Jasmine twists out of my grasp. “I’m hanging out with my new roommates. What’s wrong with you?”
“Jas…”
“Bru, seriously, she’s your sister?” Damian says in my ear. “I always pictured your sister looking like a female version of you, you know, like completely terrible. Cause your looks work for a guy—but on a girl, would be all wrong.”
What the fuck?
“I wouldn’t look bad as a girl,” I say. Damian is hammered and not thinking logically. Good looks transcend gender. It’s all about symmetry. I’d be an awesomely hot girl.
“You guys are weird.” Jasmine frowns, moving towards a crowd that holds nothing for her but chlamydia and unwanted pregnancies. “I’m gonna find my roommates.”
“Wait, Jas!”
“Seriously, how are you related? She’s so exotic, bru,” Damian continues as if our shared lineage has broken his brain. “Look at her. I mean, look at her.”
“She’s my half-sister.” I say, following Jasmine. “My step mom is Filipino.”
This makes Damian take a step back as if he’s admiring a familiar piece of art in a new light.
Jasmine has stopped on the edge of the crowd to speak to a younger model guy whose eyes look like they only ever open halfway. The guy is wearing a tank top to show off his arms and is chewing on a toothpick like he’s the coolest guy in 1956. He glances at me, purses his lips, and gives me a head nod.
If there is any karmic justice at all, then everything that has befallen me lately has to dictate that this is not one of my sister’s roommates.
“This is one of my roommates,” Jasmine turns to me and grins. Fuck you, karmic justice.
I hate dancing when it’s not related to picking up girls. I hate dancing even more when its only purpose is to be a bobbing human firewall to block the horde of desperate dickheads trying to make contact with my hot sister.
“I’m having so much fun!” Jasmine shouts over bass heavy techno. “Great,” I sh
out, giving her a thumbs up.
My sister goes back to dancing with three Brazilian brunettes who, standing next to her, look like homely librarians. But it’s not only the Brazilians, Jasmine’s making every girl in Asylum look like they belong on a trash heap. This is not easily done. And I’m not the only one who has noticed.
Every single guy is leering at Jasmine. The attached guys are perving at her out of the corners of their eyes, hoping their shitty girlfriends don’t notice. Even their shitty girlfriends keep glancing over, probably wishing a cellulite-loaded ass onto my sister. Jasmine remains happily oblivious to all of this, as only the truly beautiful can be.
And she’s roomed with Brazilians.
Fifty-percent of the models in any market at any time are Brazilian. It’s like instead of conscripting soldiers the Brazilian government is conscripting models, sending them abroad to fuck the world into acquiescence of a Brazilian world order.
So, it’s not surprising that Jasmine landed smack dab in a Brazilian-dominated model apartment. One of her roommates is a scrawny brunette named Larissa, and the unimpressed looking guy with the toothpick, is Freduardo—or something equally Brazilian. While the girls dance, he lingers scanning the crowd but clearly eyeing Jasmine when he thinks I’m not looking. Beside me, Damian bobs his head draining beers and mixed drinks like the party doesn’t stop until cirrhosis.
I’m not very happy about Jasmine being in a model apartment with this guy, but the good thing about having Freduardo, and tonight, myself and Damian, around is protection. Male models ward off the douchebags like DEET repels mosquitoes. While we’re here, no arrogant financial type, sad sack lawyer, or millionaire playboy will dare make a move on any of the girls in our circle. Now I just have to keep the models off my sister. Maybe the repellent is worse than the pest.
I stay close to Jasmine, acting nonchalant while eyeing Damian for signs that his focus is straying from pickling his liver. He pauses for a moment, wavering, his drink empty, then he glances at Jasmine.
“Hey, D!” I shout and lean into Damian’s ear before he can look at my sister for longer than two seconds. “So, I heard you got pretty crazy last week.”
Damian squints at me longer than it should for him to digest what I said, and then breaks out a huge grin. “Fuck, bru,” he says. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Then he launches into the unnecessarily detailed and seemingly realtime recounting of how he picked up so many girls that he had ‘leftovers’, as my sister laughs surrounded by samba dancing Brasileñas.
This is going to be a long night.
Thankfully, Jasmine’s jetlag kicks in earlier than dawn, which is usually when models first begin to consider going home.
“What a crazy day.” Jasmine yawns, fumbling with her keys before finally opening the door to her model apartment. “Can’t believe I haven’t slept since I got on my flight.”
When we enter the model apartment, I’m shocked, though I shouldn’t be.
Most models especially new ones, who the agencies aren’t sure will make money, get clumped into agency flats called model apartments. Working regularly has meant I can afford to splurge on the luxury of having my own apartment in most of the markets I hit. Even my shitty guest house, simply a room in an apartment carved by drywall into rooms, is far superior to living in a model house or what I call a model brothel, and I’m reminded why.
Jasmine’s living room looks like it’s straight out of the zombie apocalypse. Occupying the top of a cabinet in the corner, a clunky cathode ray TV lays uselessly on its screen, its wires stripped and sticking upright out of its dusty covered rear. Dirty clothes and bottles of alcohol are strewn across the floor. An ashtray on the table overflows with cigarette butts, a mug on the floor overflows with cigarette butts, in fact, anything that could be used as an ashtray is overflowing with cigarette butts. The only seating—a couch that has no cushions—sits menacingly on the floor. Its upholstery torn and covered in overlapping layers of stain that probably contain samples of a horrifying variety of bodily fluids.
“The place is a bit of a mess.” Jasmine shrugs as she heads to one of two closed bedroom doors. “Model apartments, right?”
I wonder how much a hazmat suit costs, and if I could get Jasmine to wear it to sleep. She opens the bedroom door, revealing a wooden bunk bed set that was probably intended for children. The bottom bunk’s sheets have been pushed into a rumpled pile at the foot of the bed so it’s user could better store what looks like the dumped contents of a purse, a paper plate with a half-eaten piece of pizza, and her panties, which—in the context of the greater filth of the apartment—is really disgusting.
“That’s my bunk up there!” Jasmine says, apparently keen to sleep in close proximity to contagion. She bends over, fishing her pajamas out of the luggage stacked neatly in the corner.
On the floor, I see the torn corner of a condom package. I bend over and turn sideways to look under the bed, and stumble on the used condom graveyard. There must be twenty of them under there, looking like shed snakeskins.
“Fuck, Jas!” I say, as she climbs into her bunk and disappears. “Why don’t you sleep at my place tonight?”
I don’t know how that’s going to work. Possibly by letting her sleep on my bed while I go sleep on a park bench, but it’s better than leaving my sister in this dump to certain venereal disease.
“You looked under the bed, right?” Jasmine says. Only her leg is visible as she wiggles out of her dress. “It’s disgusting. Larissa just moved in yesterday too and we hope the maid will clean it when she comes by.”
That could be a stretch. If this place does have a maid she apparently sits at home collecting cheques.
“But this is a model house, right?” Jasmine says, reappearing transformed from club vixen to kid sister as she sits cross-legged in her white cotton pajamas and pulls her hair into a ponytail.
I’m taken back to babysitting, coercing her to sleep while she sat on her bed dreaming up reasons to stay awake. Back then she used to grin like an idiot to stay up past 8:30pm. Now it’s closer to the sun coming up than going down, but as long as she’s sleeping alone, I’ve done my job. This is a different kind of babysitting.
“I’m sure you stayed in a place like this once,” she says.
I nod, I’ve stayed in a lot of places like this. But that was me. This is my sister. “Gotta pay my dues. Just like you said, nobody will give me anything,” She says, her chin in the air. “I have to earn it.”
I’m really starting to hate my sister’s plucky determination.
“I suppose One Models has you here until after fashion week,” I say, trying to calculate how my sister containment schedule is going to work. “And what’s your plan after that?”
“Yeah, ‘til fashion week,” she grins. “After that I don’t know, I’ll talk to Apple about it.”
I nod. I have to talk to Apple to ensure there is a maid and that she cleans the atrocity under my sister’s bed before she gets pregnant from taking a deep breath.
“Hey, you always said modelling was hard work.” She smiles, gesturing around. “At least I’ve got my big brother here on my first trip to look out for me.”
I force a smile as Jasmine yawns, lays back and disappears from view. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, and it’s not only coping with my newly modeled sister’s exposure to fashion calibre douchebags. Now Jasmine’s going to be surrounded by girls who only have two major food groups, lettuce and Coke Zero. Girls who won’t be seen in a photo unless they’re posing with their hips cocked and lips pouting. Girls who live and die with their latest tear sheets. If modelling is hard on guys, it’s a self-worth wrecking gauntlet for girls. And my sister is right in the middle of it.
“Turn the light off,” Jasmine says, sounding drowsy. “Love ya, good night.”
“Night,” I say, switching off the light.
Standing there in the dark, I watch my baby sister falling asleep in a model brothel—wondering where I wen
t wrong.
CHAPTER 11
Colin Bryce Hamilton
Please tell me there is some good news on the way. It’s been long enough.
14 people like this.
WITH ALL THAT Value Mart money, I would think Sheldon could do something about his acne besides pick at it.
“She’s always laughing at stuff I say,” Sheldon says, tweezing dry skin off what was probably a vicious boil on his face a couple days ago. “I mean we’re not really talking, we’re only sending silly photos and stuff over Snapchat, but if she laughs at me, that’s good, right?”
He probably means laugh with him. I can think of plenty of reasons girls would laugh at him—and none of them are good.
“Yeah, that’s cool,” I say. Sheldon’s supposed to be on a business trip with his father in Shanghai, but he took two days off to come back to Hong Kong so he could take that Russian girl he met at his party out for dinner and a movie. Must be nice to fly to another country to go on a date. I’m sure the gold-digging bitch will have lots of fun telling that story to her gold-digging bitch friends.
A server places our pizza on the table.
“Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” Sheldon says, lowering his voice and sounding like a complete imbecile. “I love Motorino pizza—oh and you too, mate.”
He laughs. I smile and glance at my iPhone on the table—nothing from Jasmine. One Models has given her the morning off to help with her jet lag, but after that she’ll be doing castings straight for the next few days to meet all the production houses, ad agencies, and photographers. This is standard operating procedure for any new model in a new market.
“You’re not going to eat?” Sheldon says with a mouthful of pizza.
I nod and take a slice, even though I told myself I wouldn’t eat until tonight. My discipline is starting to lapse, though I still rip the crust off the pizza to save a few calories. I need something to go right, and tap on my iPhone to check my YouTube video.
Catwalk Fail Page 11
