Catwalk Fail

by Jason Godfrey

  “There are going to be a lot of sexy shots.” Marcel grins at me like the degenerate he is. “Colin, are you looking forward to playing this lovely young lady’s boyfriend for the next week?”

  Taylor cocks her head and looks at me. Here’s where she expects me to make an ass of myself as I blubber on about how I can’t wait to play make believe, and have my hands all over her. Fat chance, I’m not giving her that satisfaction.

  “No,” I say, avoiding meeting Taylor’s stare. “I can do it, but I’m not looking forward to it or anything.”

  I stab a cluster of sliced palm heart with my fork. Everyone is staring at me as I shovel salad into my mouth. I think they’re expecting me to finish chewing and say I’m joking. I don’t.

  After forty-three grating seconds that give me a hint of what Sheldon must feel like all the fucking time, Marcel finally says, “So… Taylor are you looking forward to it?”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” she says. The smell of lemongrass that hovers around her wafts into range of my nostrils and I can’t help taking a deep breath. “I’m just excited to be out here. I’ve never done a shoot like this.”

  “How long have you been modelling?” Marcel leans forward, swirling the wine in his glass like a true pretentious prick before wrinkling his forehead and taking a sip. I want to swirl the wine in my own glass before I smash it over his head.

  “Eleven months. I’ve been traveling the entire time, and it’s been a really awesome way to see the world,” Taylor pauses. “But I’m ready to stop and try something else.”

  “Really? But I imagine you’re doing well.” Although I have to agree with Marcel’s verdict, I chalk this statement up to his non-stop bullshit barrage designed to get Taylor’s panties dangling from the ceiling fan in his villa.

  “Work has been better than I could have hoped,” she says. “But modelling isn’t something I want to do long-term. I’d like to do something a little more meaningful.”

  Bam!

  There it is, and I should have seen it coming.

  Hating Milano even though she booked shows other models would perform oral sex on farm animals to book, dressing to hide her looks like some obese shut-in dresses to hide their sweat-drenched folds of skin, this is where she was going with it all. She played the I’m-too-smart-to-be-doing-somethingso-mindless card like it’s never been laid on the table before. Taylor gives me an apologetic grin, and I pretend not to notice.

  “Intriguing,” Marcel sits back in his chair and crosses his legs. “What would you like to do?”

  “That’s the hard part. I don’t know yet,” Taylor says. “After my contract in Hong Kong, I’ve got an offer to go back to Milan. But I’m thinking maybe I’ll volunteer at an NGO in China and then go back and get a masters. But I don’t know.”

  I’ve finished my palm heart salad and begin stuffing dinner rolls smeared with butter down my throat.

  “Not just another pretty face,” Marcel says, trying to look impressed but it looks like he smells dog shit. “Very nice–”

  And before he can say another stupid word, before I have to hear more about Taylor’s plans to become a gorgeous rocket scientist, social working stereotype, before I have to eat more palm heart salad while Marcel makes earnest Parisian-style love to Taylor right on the fucking dinner table, I stand up and say, “I have to go. My stomach hurts.”

  “You’d better get some rest,” Genevieve says.

  I say goodnight and leave and the funny thing is, on my way back to my room to browse photos of myself and read the archive of Sheldon’s glowing comments on Instagram until I feel good enough to go to sleep, the lie I made comes true, and my stomach aches like something is burning a hole in it.

  CHAPTER 14

  Colin Bryce Hamilton – Active Now

  COLIN BRYCE HAMILTON is online.

  Jasmine Verano: Hey! How is Africa? Colin Bryce Hamilton: It’s good. Jasmine Verano: Sweet!

  Jasmine Verano: Guess what?

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: You’re staying away from guys? Jasmine Verano: lol except my roommate

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: He hasn’t been trying to give you samba lessons has he?

  Jasmine Verano: lol how did you know? He does but he’s totally not into me.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Yeah, Latino guys are known for not being into girls.

  Jasmine Verano: Smart ass! Jasmine Verano: Maxwell Chen called to confirm my Elle shoot this week!!!

  Jasmine Verano: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!ELLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Grats.

  Jasmine Verano: My first job! At least I’ve booked something! Jasmine Verano: And there’s more! For Elle I’m shooting with a friend of yours! Want to guess who it is? Colin Bryce Hamilton: Not really!

  Jasmine Verano: Maxwell said his name and I was like, no way!!! I know him!!

  Jasmine Verano: It’s Damian!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: That’s just fucking awesome! Jasmine Verano: hahahahaha yeah, ur friend!! Lol Jasmine Verano: Your SUPERHOT friend!!!!!!!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Hold on, you said Maxwell said. Colin Bryce Hamilton: Did he call you directly?

  Jasmine Verano: Yeah. That’s the other awesome news I’ve got!

  Jasmine Verano: Maxwell said he loves my look and that Elle is going to be wicked but I should stay around after the shoot and he’s going to make my portfolio ‘kick fucking ass.’

  Jasmine Verano: That’s what he said, his EXACT words!! He’s sooooooooo cool!!!!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Yeah, he’s boss.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: He wants you to stay after the shoot?

  Jasmine Verano: Yeah, he wants to shoot a creative with me.

  These shots should really help me pick up work, right? Colin Bryce Hamilton: I suppose.

  Jasmine Verano: Soooo good, then I won’t have to go on an all air diet to be skinny like the rest of the girls.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: You’re skinny.

  Jasmine Verano: You can always be skinnier. But I’m kidding, no all air diets. I love food.

  Jasmine Verano: For now.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: The shoot is just you and Maxwell?

  Jasmine Verano: Yeah! It’s awesome right? Can you believe that Maxwell Chen wants to shoot a creative with me?!?!?! Colin Bryce Hamilton: I really can.

  Jasmine Verano: Awwwwwww! That’s sooooo sweet!!!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: You should see if you can hold off on the creative until I get back.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: I heard Maxwell can be intimidating one on one.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Something to think about.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: That gives you more time to prepare. Colin Bryce Hamilton: I can help you with your poses.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: What do you think? Colin Bryce Hamilton: Jasmine?

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: HELLO?!?!?!?!? Jasmine Verano: Sorry! Eduardo came into our room to see what we were doing.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Who’s we? Jasmine Verano: My roommate Larissa!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: Why is some guy just popping into your room?

  Jasmine Verano: He lives in my apartment!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: At least he’s not making you learn samba. Colin Bryce Hamilton: Anyway, did you see what I wrote?

  Jasmine Verano: Yeah, I’ll check it out! I’ve got to go, we’re going to watch this video on YouTube where this guy strapped a GoPro to a hamster and let it lose in a mall. Eduardo says it’s incredible!

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: That sounds incredible.

  Colin Bryce Hamilton: But listen if you want to delay your shoot, you should.

  Jasmine Verano: Delay? No. I need those prints to get more worky worky! Look, I gotta go. The hamster is really running hahahahahah 

  Jasmine Verano was last seen at 8:54

  CHAPTER 15

  Colin Bryce Hamilton

  Woke up to the sound of surf. I get paid to do this!

  12 people like this.

  THE PARADIS RESORT Spa has the marble
flooring, brown teak finish, clean minimalist vases with lilies, and staff in white uniforms with neatly pulled-back hair that I’ve come to expect from a luxury spa. Not that I frequent spas, but I’ve shot for a lot of them.

  I put on the pair of Calvin Klein swim shorts Genevieve gave me, wishing that someone had told me I’d be shooting body stuff today. If I’d known, I would’ve at least done a few hundred sit-ups and push-ups this morning.

  Instead, I woke up to the faint sound of Taylor showering next door, which pummelled me with visions of her legs lathered with soap and her conditioning her hair with orgasm inducing Herbal Essences, which of course, made the pain in my groin excruciating until I took a cold shower. I drowned it all out by ordering hollandaise and bacon-smothered eggs benedict from room service.

  Now, there’s nothing I can do but flex every muscle in my torso for the duration of the shoot.

  I walk out of the change room to the fan-fern surrounded spa pool. “Let’s get you in there,” Marcel says. He’s wearing shorts and a linen shirt with a plunging neckline that doesn’t match the dark curly tufts of chest hair he’s sporting underneath. His chest looks like the used tape from a gorilla keeper’s lint roller. “Waiting on Taylor.”

  I lower myself into the pool, and the water is warmer than expected. “What’s happening in this shot?” I say.

  “I have the reference here.” Marcel leaves his camera on the tripod mount and pulls a folded bunch of pages from his pants’ pocket. As he’s flipping through them, Taylor emerges from the women’s change room wrapped in a long white towel.

  “Just wear the towel in the pool,” Genevieve says. “Marcel’s assistant will collect it before we shoot and be waiting to give it back to you.”

  “This is what we’re going for.” Marcel holds up a sketch of a guy hugging a topless girl. Then he winks at me and whispers, “Lucky you, huh?”

  Shit.

  “Hi,” Taylor says, standing waist deep in the pool beside me. I can’t help but notice she has a little oval beauty mark high up on her right breast. Something about a beauty mark on a breast makes it that much more inviting.

  “Get in position,” Marcel says, standing behind the camera. “Taylor, you’ll have to lose the towel for me so I can get a proper light reading. The white reflects.”

  Turning her back to me Taylor drops the towel, but keeps her arms across her naked breasts.

  “Colin, hug Taylor,” Marcel says. I take a step toward Taylor. The skin on her bare back looks silky smooth, and despite her height, her frame is lithe and delicate. She is extremely huggable.

  Taylor looks over her shoulder and says, “Give me your hands.”

  She takes me by the wrists and wraps my arms around her like a robe. My forearms press hard against her supple breasts, as her arms rest on top of mine. Her bare nipples are levelled against me and the rhythm of her heart is beating through her back against my chest.

  The photo assistant wades in and begins reciting light readings to Marcel.

  “This is slightly awkward.” Taylor looks back and smiles.

  I nod. Her skin is warm and soft, reminding me of clean sheets on a bed in a sun-filled room. Through the water, I see that she’s wearing a little black G-string, and I try to keep the natural arc of her ass from touching me beneath my shorts. Now I wishing the pool was ice cold.

  “Are you having a good time?” Taylor says. “What?” I shift my hips back from her.

  “I meant in Mauritius. Not right now. Not holding my… you know.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

  We stand in silence. Her hands are clutching my wrists as if she’s scared I’ll let go and leave her standing topless. I focus on the assistant circling us, taking reading after reading while Marcel snaps tests and shouts adjustments in French. I can’t take this.

  It’s because I know she doesn’t like me. Even right now, with her nipples flattened against my arm, I can’t derive any pleasure from the juvenile copping of a feel, raising the fears that my sex injury has somehow traumatized me in some deeper and more profound way.

  “Say something, please,” Taylor says. “This is really weird for me.”

  “Ok,” I say, and proceed to say nothing. There are too many things to ask. Are Damian and her fuck buddies? Does she prefer him to me, and if so, why? But instead of any of these things, I say, “So, you hate modelling?”

  “I don’t hate modelling.” She says.

  “But you don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “There’s no future in it, and even if there was, I don’t want to do this forever.” Taylor frowns at me from over her shoulder. “Having strangers fondle me for the rest of my life isn’t really appealing.”

  That’s me, the stranger she’s allowing to fondle her tits because she’s getting paid. Maybe Vogue Bitch was right to solicit me.

  “Shooting,” Marcel says. “Looking over your shoulder at Colin like that is good, Taylor. Colin, look at her eyes. Let’s get some heat between you two.”

  Taylor narrows her eyes and her glistening lips part slightly as if she’s about to give me a hot open-mouth kiss. I flip into modelling mode and furl my brow as I meet her gaze. Marcel snaps away as Taylor’s eyes search mine, and I can’t stop looking at her full wet lips begging me to press my own lips against them. We’re only inches away and I can’t keep looking at her. I cheat, and stare at the tip of her nose instead.

  “You really want to do this forever?” She whispers, barely moving her lips like a ventriloquist, a skill most models have developed to pass the long hours on set without disrupting the shoot.

  “Not forever. But I want to see where it can take me. Don’t you?”

  “I know where it can take me and it’s not really somewhere I want to go,” she says. “I want to do something with a little more substance.”

  “That’s why you want to volunteer at NGOs?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So, you hate modelling because you’re not saving the world?”

  “That’s not completely right, but it’s part of it.”

  “Most people who have normal jobs doing whatever aren’t saving the world either. Modelling is no worse than any of those jobs.”

  “But modelling is so unfulfilling,” Taylor says. “Genevieve over there is happy because the advertising campaign she envisioned is coming to life. Marcel is happy because he’s framed and posed us to best make his vision of Genevieve’s image happen. And what do we do? We’re props.”

  “No, we’re not,” I say. “We’re free to be as creative as we want in our craft.”

  To demonstrate, I turn my face more to camera but keep my eyes on Taylor.

  “Colin, face Taylor. Give me more of your profile,” Marcel says, and I turn my head a little toward Taylor. “Even more profile.” I return to my original position.

  “That’s it. Stay right there.”

  The camera snaps and the lights flash.

  “See?” Taylor says. “How can anyone feel good about doing this job? There are billions of other people who can follow someone else’s orders and stand here half naked.”

  “But there aren’t billions of other people who look like us.”

  “Am I supposed to be proud because I was born this way? It’s a genetic lottery.”

  “It’s not only looks that got us both to Mauritius.” I say. “What separates us from the rest of the models? Why are you and I here instead of two other people?”

  “It’s exactly our looks,” she says, shrugging her bare shoulders. “They like the way we looked or the way we looked together. They even said it last night. It’s not like we we’re the best trained for the job.”

  Taylor doesn’t know what she’s talking about. It’s a shame she doesn’t have the same amount of dedication to modelling that I have, she could be a super model.

  “You’ve been modelling for less than a year,” I say. “When you’ve been modelling for years like me, you’d understand.”

  “That’s a cop out,�
� Taylor says. “What don’t I understand?”

  “That modelling is a lot of work. You have to keep your model skill set current. You have to work on poses, work on your walk.”

  “Sure. But even if you do all that work, clients will still go with whatever look is in Italian Vogue or on the runways in Paris that month. I’m booking well now, but three years from now it will be completely different. It doesn’t matter how many poses you’ve got or how much FTV you watch.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “Clients want the experience. They want to work with someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Then why isn’t Damian here?”

  Marcel snaps off a shot and the strobes flash. As he checks his LCD, he says, “We’ve got that. Flip around Taylor. Colin, hug her from the front and same thing, look into each other’s eyes. Keep that intensity.”

  Taylor manhandles my arms to keep her nipples covered as she turns and presses her breasts against the sanctuary of my chest. I hold her around her waist and she wraps her arms around my neck. Her breasts tease me, pressed against me but I can’t enjoy this—I can’t believe she brought up Damian.

  “What about Damian?” I say.

  “If this client was looking for anything other than looks, if they wanted the best qualified model, wouldn’t they have chosen Damian?” Taylor says, her green eyes piercing mine. “He was the one that did the back flip in the casting, but they chose you instead.”

  Her bare, wet nipples are pressed against me. I can feel her chest rising with every tantalizing breath she takes, that lemongrass scent—that I’ve realized is hers—teases my nostrils, and for the first time in my life, holding a gorgeous topless girl against me just sucks. After a late lunch, Marcel announces we’re done shooting. We worked for three hours. On a normal shoot, you do eight to ten shots a day shooting from sun up to sun down. Here, we’re doing one sluggishly produced shot each morning. This isn’t a shoot, it’s a luxury vacation—for the clients anyway. I’ve got more important things to deal with.

  Marching away from the bungalows and faux bamboo thatched roof of the Michelin-starred restaurant, I soon find myself alone on the beach with only the well-manicured grass of the golf course and the waves rolling up on shore.