Catwalk Fail

by Jason Godfrey

  “Come on, Colin,” he says, his voice all gravely. “I’ll make it easy for you. Come over here and I’ll do all the work.”

  Boyd’s mouth is suggestively ajar and I’m thinking I’d rather get oral from an open electrical socket.

  “Can’t I just do a catwalk?” I say, hoping somehow his clothes will materialize back on his pudgy body so I can cast and leave.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Boyd reaches for a digital camera on his desk. “You don’t have to do a thing. I won’t do anything. Just take off that swim-suit and let’s have a little photo shoot. Let’s see where that goes.”

  I don’t want to do this. But Milano.

  “Posing nude isn’t a big deal,” Boyd cackles, and the skin under his throat vibrates like the loose flap on a turkey’s neck. “Any model worth their salt has done a nude shoot at some point.”

  “I’ve shot nude, but they were, you know, tasteful.” Not for some pervert’s private collection.

  “No one’s going to see these photos except me. You’re not a bashful guy, are you? It doesn’t look like you’ve got anything to be bashful about, my boy.”

  He’s not bashful about staring at my earphone-enhanced unit. Fucking male push-up bra.

  “It’s like being in the change room at the gym,” Boyd says.

  My thumbs slip under the band of my swimsuit. I clench my eyes shut. It’s like a being in a change room. It’s like being nude on set for a shoot. I start sliding my trunks down, millimetre by millimetre.

  Remember Milano. Remember dedication.

  “That’s good. That’s it. Giovanna is going to love you in the Gucci Show.” There is a buzzing in my ear and it feels like everything is moving in slow motion. Then I’m outside myself, floating over the scene and watching it happen like it’s a movie. Like I’m not the one making this choice.

  “Are those headphones?”

  I jolt back into myself and open my eyes. My suit is pulled past my pubic line ready for the reveal, but the male push-up bra has come lose.

  “No,” I say, though there are clearly headphones dangling from my ass crack. I pull my swimsuit back up and grab for the wire to secure it. My face flushes red.

  “You are a freak,” Boyd says. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  That smile that looks like a grimace comes back and I realize this—

  whatever this is—Boyd likes it.

  Now he’s putting the camera down and tucking his thumbs in his little white shorts like he’s going to show me what he’s concealing in his crack. I can’t do this. For so many reasons. I can’t. I pull my shorts up.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say, heading to the door.

  “Wait,” Boyd calls. “It was getting interesting. What are you doing?” What I should have done in the first fucking place.

  “I’m going home,” I say, trying not to look in Boyd’s direction. Who knows what he’s doing on that shag rug.

  “What the fuck?” Boyd says. “You leave, and you can forget about getting the Gucci show! And you can forget about Milan!” That’s probably true. But right now, I want to forget about him on the shag rug, thinking that tying things around my testicles enhances me, and every debauched thing I’ve ever considered doing for the good of my career.

  I need to get as far away from this place as possible.

  Sweeping my clothes off the floor, I retreat out of his office and into the elevator. I peel off the Gucci swimsuit, and fling it out just as the doors shut. I’m standing naked watching the floor numbers drop, my clothes are crumpled at my feet, and I’m feeling so stupid that I want to cry.

  CHAPTER 28

  Colin Bryce Hamilton

  Things always get worse before they get better, so start getting better already.

  19 people like this.

  IT’S HARD NOT to dwell on half-naked Boyd and my Gucci failure, or that I’ve messaged Maxwell Chen numerous times and still haven’t gotten a reply—but none of that matters when I’m with Taylor. It also helps that she’s wearing a bikini.

  She rises out of the sea, her eyes shut as she slicks back her brown hair. Salt water glistens off the ends of her long eye lashes, streams down the sides of her face, and drips off her chin onto her lithe tanned body.

  Taylor catches me watching and smiles.

  “Hey,” she says, wrapping her arms around me. My fingers trace the dimples on her lower back.

  We kiss and the growing familiarity of her lips and the way she tastes washes away my anxiety. Ironically, abstaining from sex is an incredible aphrodisiac because we’re all over each other like a couple high school kids kissing every chance we get. Though the kisses never lead to anything remotely R rated, I’m enjoying our grade school romance.

  “Can’t believe this is Hong Kong,” Taylor says.

  We’re waist deep in clear, blue water. A nearly deserted white sand beach framed by palm trees runs the length of the shoreline. “I thought the only beaches were those crowded ones on the island.”

  “Think you can only get here by boat or something,” I say, and glance at the handful of junks anchored in deeper water about a hundred metres away. It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon and the junks are covered in people drinking beer and jumping off the top decks into the ocean.

  “Hmm, in that case, maybe we should swim back to our boat before they get too drunk and forget us,” Taylor says. She dives under the water emerging a few metres away, and transitions into a competent front stroke. I doggy-paddle after her. It’s the best I can do, I’m a shit swimmer.

  Junk trips, all-you-can-drink-and-eat events on large open wooden boats are popular diversions for expats in Hong Kong. Most locals have probably never stepped foot on one, but this is how most models spend every Sunday.

  This one is pretty typical, full of model girls in bikinis with a handful of male models with wet hair and sunglasses. I don’t even know who’s hosting the junk party, Damian invited us and I doubt he knows either. There are a few older fat guys with corporate blow-dried haircuts hanging around. One of them must be paying because the models definitely aren’t.

  Though I climb on board only a few seconds after Taylor, the effort of trying to keep pace with her swimming has got me gasping for air.

  “Heads up, bru,” Damian says, chucking me a beer that feels especially icy after the warm sea. Taylor’s drying off next to him and she’s already got a vodka mixer in her hand. “You two went off to be a cute little couple. We all saw you kissing by yourselves on the beach. So sweet.”

  Marek, who is standing next to a young blonde, leads the chorus of models on the bottom deck in mocking us with kissing sounds and sickly-sweet cooing.

  Taylor’s right, models are dickheads.

  “Taylor, I’m happy you’re with this guy,” Damian says, having trouble standing and not because the boat is rocking. “You should have heard him. Every time I saw him he was asking about you, what you’re doing, what you’re like.”

  “Cute.” Taylor grins at me and my face goes red.

  “Have another beer.” I pop the top on my bottle and hand it back to Damian before he can keep talking. He forgets, or doesn’t care, that he gave me the beer in the first place and starts double fisting.

  “Going to visit the little girl’s room,” Taylor says. Damian and I watch her go.

  “Good work, bru.” Damian knocks the beer bottle against my shoulder. “Taylor’s cool.”

  “Yeah,” I say, noting that Damian sounds genuinely happy for me. If things were reversed, I’d swim head first into this junk’s engine propeller— but that’s me.

  There’s a loud cheer from outside the boat and I turn to see a yacht populated with bikini-clad model girls that has drifted next to us.

  “This is getting better and better,” Damian says, before raising both his drinks in the air and screaming like he’s watching the World Cup and somebody has actually scored a goal. Model girls from the yacht start to board our junk like a rabble of hot-ass pirates, but instead of carry
ing cutlasses and flintlock pistols, they’re armed with glasses of Moet and bottles of Stella Artois.

  The ratio here is insane. For all these girls to go home happy, Damian, Marek, and the other guys are going to have to take a six-pack of chicks apiece. There are so many girls, I start to think one of the corporate sleazebags might actually have a chance.

  As I watch Damian and Marek doing their best as a drunken welcoming committee, I feel that same twinge of jealousy I felt back in Asylum the night Jasmine arrived. Ever since my penile fracture took me out of the game, I’ve hated to come to these fashion parties and watch other guys pick up. But as girl after girl comes aboard, I conclude that Taylor is infinitely hotter than all them and I don’t want to try to pick up anyone.

  Damian helps a swaying blonde with big sunglasses aboard. She wobbles, laughing hysterically, and when she spots me, her jaw drops so far that for a second I wonder if I’m witnessing a possession. She waves and puts her sunglasses on her head. Suddenly I wish we were being boarded by pirates.

  It’s Britney.

  “Oh my God!” Britney rushes toward me, not being especially efficient with her steps as she drifts to the left and then back on course. “I’m soooooo happy to see you!”

  Britney throws herself at me and I wrap my arms around her, not as much to hug her as to keep her from sliding onto the floor. I prop her up until it feels like she’s not going to tumble to the deck. I check over her shoulder for Taylor and, thankfully, don’t see her.

  “I was in Hong Kong and my stupid agency sent me to Shenzhen for a month because there was no space in their model apartment here. Oh. My. God. Have you been to China? It’s terrible. Facebook’s censored or something down there. And I couldn’t get my sim card to work, I couldn’t reach anyone,” she slurs as she continually gropes at my bare chest, and I keep brushing her hand away. “I mean get some democracy, China! Get some good ol’ US of A down there and… you know… like go vote… I’m really political.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I know.” Britney opens her mouth wide and there’s a three second delay before she pukes out the corresponding laughter. “Don’t tell my parents, they’re real strict.”

  This is exactly why parents should let their children get a little fucked up at home—keep things too strict and when the kid finally escapes, they can’t hold their alcohol, get over excited about sex, and cause catastrophic sex injuries.

  Britney’s hand is on my chest and her head droops toward the floor. She freezes.

  “Are you ok?” I ask.

  “Yeah, yeah, gimme a sec,” she mumbles, her hand pressing against me for support.

  “Bru, what’s with this chick?” Damian wobbles over, grasping a freshly opened beer. “I’d take her off your hands, but she’s a little too messy for my liking.”

  Britney is frozen. Her blonde hair hangs in tangled strands over her face. I think about stepping away and letting her fall. She probably wouldn’t even know what happened.

  “Don’t worry, bru.” Damian slaps me on the shoulder. “I’ll get Marek to run damage control on this bitch. He loves the sloppy ones anyway.”

  “Thanks.”

  I stand there hoping that Marek comes through before Taylor gets back. Britney is in the same position but she’s taking deep breaths and holding them. She’s hammered into next week. What’s taking so long?

  “Damian?” I call over my shoulder. I glance back and see Marek and Damian with their arms around a collection of Ukrainian hotties. The girls are taking turns pouring vodka shots straight from the bottle into Marek’s and Damian’s mouths, but they’re really just bucketing vodka all over their faces. “Fuck.”

  Suddenly Britney pops her head up. Her blue eyes are wide, she spits strands of blonde hair out of her mouth.

  “Thought I had the hiccups—but I think it was just gas,” she says. Then she laughs and falls into me and I hold her up from under her armpits.

  “That toilet’s trashed,” Taylor says, reappearing beside me. “Um, who’s this?”

  Fuck. I have the innate male urge to lie and say I’ve never seen Britney before today. Then I realize I have no reason to lie, I’ve done nothing wrong.

  “This is Britney. We worked together a while back.”

  Britney’s eyes glaze over and a long strand of saliva drips out of her mouth before she wipes it with the back of her hand and rubs it on her bare leg.

  “That must have been fun, if not all together hygienic,” Taylor says. Britney returns to the land of the living and her blue eyes narrow on Taylor. “Colin, who’s this?” Britney spits, looking Taylor up and down. “Your new bitch?”

  “Oh ok,” Taylor smirks. “See, this is why we have a minimum drinking age, so little girls don’t go out in public and make fools of themselves.”

  “Little girl?” Britney says, looking up at me with her mouth dangling open and one of her eyes half shut. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you really have to hold her up?” Taylor says. “Maybe you could just hang her from the rafters by one of her bikini straps. I’m sure it can handle the weight.”

  “Are you calling me fat?”

  “Holy crap,” Taylor says. I’m looking around the boat for a space on a bench, a spare chair, or an empty bucket I can overturn and plop Britney onto. It’s too crowded, there’s nowhere to sit.

  “Well, listen… you listen,” Britney says, pointing a long wavering finger at Taylor. “Would a fat little girl be with such a dreamy hunk of model man like Colin? Huh? So there. How many fat little girls have a boyfriend who’s this hot?”

  “We are not dating!” I say, holding Britney at arm’s length from me. Her head sags, and her limbs are swaying.

  Taylor is staring at me.

  “We aren’t,” I say to her. “We never dated. I swear.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Taylor says. “Fucking definitely isn’t dating.” She turns and walks away.

  Britney reaches out and I know she’s going to fall into me again. Marek is passing and I grab Britney as she falls and hand her to him like she’s a ragdoll. “Here dude, take this.”

  Marek grabs Britney and before he has time to figure out what’s happening, or she has time to say anything, I’m following Taylor up the stairs to the second deck of the boat.

  The downside to junk parties is that there is no getting off that boat when the day turns to absolute shit. I’ve tried to speak to Taylor twice and her responses were, so you finished playing human pickup sticks? and Was that girl even drunk, or just too weak from not eating to stand straight?

  I spend the next hour and a half standing in silence across from her as she talks to random models and avoids looking at me. Surrounded by ever-drunker models having the times of their lives, it feels like the junk is taking a tortuously slow route back to Hong Kong Island.

  When we get to the dock, the afternoon has clouded over and looks as shitty as I feel. Taylor is the first one back on land and I’m pushing by sunburnt models with towels draped over their shoulders to keep up with her. On the dock, I run to catch up to her marching away before she gets to the taxi queue.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” she says, hugging herself through the green towel she has wrapped around her.

  “Why are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “This is about Britney, right?” I say. “Look, to be fair. Whatever happened between Britney and I is over. I never pulled an Enrique Iglesias and told you I was a virgin or something.”

  Taylor stops and glares at me. Her tangled hair is damp with salt water and twisted into an ad-hoc pony-tail. Underneath her towel she looks naked. I’ve got sunglasses perched on my head, and my Diesel six-inch trunks on. We look like we should be heading for sundowners at a beach bar, not arguing at the taxi queue in front of the ferry pier. You’re never dressed appropriately for a public fight.

  “Honestly, it’s my problem, okay?” she says. “Leave it alone.”
>
  “What is?” I say. “I don’t get it.”

  “No, you don’t.” She rubs her temples, her eyes hidden momentarily behind her slender palm. “God, I got so petty back there with that girl. This is exactly who I don’t want to be.”

  “I understand why you’re upset,” I say, not really understanding but hoping feigning understanding will somehow get us back on track.

  “I doubt that,” she shakes her head. “Cause for you, all this fashion stuff is so important. But honestly the rivalry between girls in this industry, I feel like it never lets up…”

  “Come on,” I say. “All this because of Britney? She’s just some random girl!”

  Taylor angles her head, and I know I’ve said something wrong. “And how many random girls have there been?” She says.

  I don’t have an exact number but it’s in the triple digits. This is one of those times when the truth will definitely not set you free. I say nothing.

  “I’m trying to understand what’s up with you because you seem to have slept with everyone around here but me,” she says. “Whatever. No girl wants to be a notch on a belt.”

  “Random was a bad word to use—”

  “No, random is totally accurate,” she interrupts, stepping toward the taxi queue. “That’s what all the girls were, that’s what I am, and that’s all this can ever really be. Random. I see that now, even if you don’t.”

  “But…”

  “Bye, Colin.”

  With this, Taylor turns and gets into a waiting taxi. I stand there watching her go, pangs of anxiety building inside. It’s like when I get to the Alexander McQueen sample sale too late and there’s nothing left in my size. It’s awful. It’s just completely hopeless.

  CHAPTER 29

  Colin Bryce Hamilton

  Nobody really gives a fuck what I write in these status updates, do they?

  Sheldon Ferguson likes this.

  Britney Lind

  I give zero fucks. Yes.