Catwalk Fail

by Jason Godfrey

  By the time I get there, dinner is over and the lounge has been converted to its darkened nightclub twin. The music is pumping and the place is already filling up. I walk past the queue of pathetic cover paying suckers and nod at the door bitch. She immediately nods and undoes the red velvet cordon. My face is my VIP pass.

  Asylum’s patio is already full of models. At least, the girls know how to dress. The guys are all in their early twenties wearing skinny jeans and t-shirts, and gorging themselves at Asylum’s alcohol bursting teat.

  Weak.

  Most models view Asylum as a meal ticket and a free pass for debauchery. They don’t understand the implied contract that models have with this place. An evening here comes with certain responsibilities.

  That’s why I’m wearing my gray wool plaid blazer from Prada minus an actual shirt underneath. I leave the jacket open exposing my bare torso, which means I have to keep my abdominals and pectorals constantly flexed to maintain a good aesthetic. This is part of my obligation to repay Asylum. They use models to lure in the elite crowd, and I’m more than equipped to attract my share of the elites.

  “Hey, bro! How was Spain?” Marek, a Czech model who moonlights as public relations or a PR at Asylum slaps my hand. When he says Spain, I feel a stitch of pain in my Mormon-injured penis. The weight of it against my jeans is agonizing. I can’t stop myself flinching when I say, “It was good.”

  “Cool,” Marek grins, not noticing and leads me into the club. “I’ve been saving you a spot at the model table.”

  I follow Marek to a large round table. In the middle is a wide bucket filled with Heinekens up to their necks in ice. Surrounding the bucket are bottles of Grey Goose Vodka, red and white wine, and rows of wine glasses and tumblers. The model table is fully stocked. If I weren’t so dedicated to my craft, it would be easy to degenerate into one of these other model clowns and get drunk every single night of my career. But I’m more interested in the girls sitting around the table.

  Marek hands me a glass of white wine, turns his back to the table and says in my ear, “The new season started and these girls just got into town. I’ll introduce you to the fresh meat.”

  Being Asylum’s PR, he always seats the hottest girls with us at the model table. I’m not sure of a better trait for a friend to have.

  “This is Colin, ladies. Colin, this is Aline, Triin, and Svetlana.”

  I make sure my abs are rock solid as I wrinkle my brow and smirk using my Debonair-Madrid-Matador look.

  The girls, two brunettes and a blonde, smile back at me. They’re dressed like all model girls—towering heels and little skirts that show off their long legs. From their names, I’m checking their nationalities off as Brazilian, Estonian, and Russian. This is useful information for later when I don’t want to go home by myself. Marek turns to the one guy at the table, “And this is-”

  Before he can finish, the guy stands up and gives me the half-handshake-half-hug combination that immediately sends the signal that we’re boys.

  “Howzit, bru!” he says and my first instinct is to dismiss him as some creepy super fan of mine. But that seems unrealistic considering I’m not a super or even a top model. Yet.

  Then the guy says, “It’s been years since that shithole apartment in Athens.”

  “Damian?” Shit. I used to live with him in Greece, though I have to fake my enthusiasm to match his. “Hey, man.”

  I wasn’t prepared for Damian, nor was I expecting him to look as good as he does. He’s no longer the partying kid I knew in Europe, he’s grown into a formidable male model. His dark blonde hair is surfer long now, and a dimple seems permanently creased in his five-o’clock-shadowed cheek. Though he’s dressed in a black Calvin Klein t-shirt and a pair of Diesel jeans, I realize he would look just as good in my Prada blazer as I do. Suddenly, I have the irrational fear that somehow, he would look better.

  My palms begin to sweat.

  “Just like old times, bru.” He laughs and squeezes my shoulder. I’m smiling but really, I just want him to stop touching me. He sits next to Marek. “How long you in HK for?”

  “Renewed my three-month contract for the season,” I say, reaching for a glass of red wine. “I’m in town until fashion week now.”

  “Awesome, bru, I’m here for three months starting today,” he says, downing his wine. Instantly, the vodka bottle is in his hand and he’s pouring himself a liver-killing quadruple shot.

  Maybe Damian hasn’t changed as much as I thought. His effortless ability to binge-drink tells me he’s still living for free drinks with zero dedication to the craft. I, on the other hand, sip my wine and take a seat next to Svetlana.

  She flips her blonde hair back to hide her otherwise obvious appreciation of my exposed chest, I make a show of getting comfortable but really, I’m positioning myself directly under one of the cylindrical ceiling lights. I know I’m where I need to be under the lights when the ripples of my six-pack seem to pop out. I’m a little further from Svetlana than I would’ve liked, but she grins and shifts closer. I’m in the good light, I relax, and make a mental note not to move from this spot all night.

  “Uh, you’re in my seat,” a girl appears holding a glass of wine standing next to the table. “Sorry.”

  She winces, making the light smattering of freckles around her nose bunch up. Her brown hair is tied into a simple ponytail and her eyes are bright green. She looks like the poster girl for the Dublin Tourism Board.

  “Shit, I forgot. This is Taylor,” Marek says, leaning across the other girls’ laps. “She’s in HK for the season too.”

  Taylor’s a couple inches shorter than the other model girls and I realize it’s because she’s oddly opted to wear a pair of white sneakers instead of heels. She wears her slim-fit jeans and black top well but I can’t spot the designer which probably means it’s not. Taylor is uniquely beautiful, but the way she’s dressed, the way she lets the other girls take the spotlight, it’s as if she’s hiding herself.

  “So… Can you move over, dude?” she says. “You’re sort of hogging the seat.”

  I’m torn. I don’t want to lose the good light, but Taylor is stupidly hot. If it were another model, I’d probably just ignore her—which would score me points—but I find myself smiling and shifting over.

  Despite sitting in shit lighting, it’s hard to have a bad time at Asylum. The girls at our table are easily the hottest girls in the place. And as we all laugh and flirt, and things start to get touchy, I know every jerk banker, asshole corporate lawyer, and rich old prick with a pocketful of Viagra, would happily trade it all to be us right now.

  Svetlana has been edging closer to me all night, and now she’s practically on my lap. The only girl who doesn’t seem to be falling under the spell of glamour and free alcohol is Taylor.

  I glance at her and she’s checking out my shirtless torso. While keeping my abs flexed, I give her a little sideways grin that I like to call Hamburg-Handsome. She doesn’t acknowledge me, instead she stares at Damian.

  That panic that Damian may look better than I do resurfaces. I take a long sip of wine.

  “Hey, bru!” Damian calls across the table. “What’s the market like here?”

  “Good, lots of runway, TV stuff, catalogues, the occasional fashion campaign. It’s been good for me, so I can’t complain.” I shrug, and sip my wine. All the girls’ eyes are on me, which encourages me to add, “I just got back from Spain on a direct booking too, so that was good.”

  “Cool, bru,” Damian grins as he leans forward, and helps himself to more vodka. “You’re always working well.”

  “Barcelona is very cool city,” Svetlana whispers in my ear. I get a whiff of her Gucci Rush, and the Russian accent gives her another notch on the hotness scale.

  “I’ve never understood the entire working well thing,” Taylor says, as Marek tops-up the girls’ drinks. “I know it means that you’re getting jobs, but grammatically it sounds messed up. How do you work well, you know?” The entire tab
le stares at Taylor as if she’s speaking Latin. She takes a nervous sip of wine. I smell a university degree.

  This gives me an instant in with her. I finished university before I started modelling. It’s so true what they say about higher education being worth it. My degree has proven invaluable for impressing girls, mainly Eastern Europeans, who have been modelling since puberty and treat me like having a degree means I’m curing cancer. Luckily, girls from post-Soviet states don’t realize that a university degree is the new high school diploma. “You’re right,” I say, turning as if to give her my undivided attention, while secretly I’m flexing my pecs so hard I have to hide the wine glass trembling in my hand. “It doesn’t make sense outside of the modelling context. It probably comes from the term booking, which could also mean working. If you’re booking a lot of jobs, you’re booking well. You’re working well.”

  Turning my face profile, to showcase what should be a good angle for me in this light, I take a sip of wine, narrow my eyes, then smile just enough to get a slight dimple on the right side of my face. Playful-Dimple/ Bedroom-Eyes is the look combination I’m using here.

  “I guess,” she says, her green eyes gravitating back to Damian even though I had the distinct impression she was enjoying looking at me. I wait for her to say something else. She doesn’t.

  “You are very intelligent,” Svetlana is clearly impressed. Her breath is hot on my ear. “You must go university.”

  Though I nod and give the Russian a practiced smile, I’m focused on Taylor.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a degree,” I say. “What about you, Taylor?”

  “Graduated almost a year ago,” she says. “It’s been a bit of a lifestyle change to start modelling.”

  “I’ll bet,” Damian says, putting down his empty tumbler and grabbing a Heineken out of the ice bucket. “This is probably a little more fun than school, right?”

  This gets a smile from Taylor, and I have to do at double take at Damian. In the time it takes to hard boil an egg, Damian has consumed enough alcohol to kill a small child, he’s starting to look sweaty and unbalanced and I don’t know why Taylor is finding him so watchable.

  “I guess it is fun,” she says. “But I find the entire modelling thing’s just wrong. I mean, we’re helping manufacture demand so people spend money on stuff they don’t need. Which is bad enough. But we do that by making people feel inadequate. Basically, it’s our job to make people feel so awful about themselves that they go out and buy a bunch of stuff.”

  Taking shots at the morals of the modelling industry and thinking you’re Noam Chomsky is like beating the shit out of a bus load of senior citizens and thinking you’re Wolverine.

  “Ha! Good point!” Damian grins, tipping the beer to his lips and sucking it back like it’s water. Taylor smiles at him. Damian may be fresh off the plane but I’m already wishing he would just leave.

  “Well, you’re talking about commercial work,” I say. “It’s all about the art in Milano.”

  There’s a silence at the table as I let this fact set in. Taylor can have her opinion of modelling but she should know what it means to do a stint in Italy. Then Marek says, “You just came from Milan, right Taylor?”

  She nods. Fuck.

  “You like it?”

  “Not really. I don’t want to go back,” Taylor says. “It’s too much. Everything’s too… fashion.”

  If she doesn’t want to go back to Milano, she obviously didn’t work. Which is strange. Taylor’s definitely hot enough to book, but maybe her portfolio is shit. Or maybe the university girl craps out when you put a camera on her. The knowledge that she didn’t work prompts me to sip my wine, and ask, “How was work?”

  “Okay. I was there for the shows and booked Armani, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo, and a few others,” Taylor says.

  I nearly choke on my wine.

  She booked the mother lode of fashion shows and doesn’t want to go back? She’s hot, she has a degree, but maybe she was whacked in the head as a kid because she is seriously lacking in common sense. “It’s not about work, it’s just everyone is so pretentious. You have an agency there?”

  “Of course.” I say. “I’m with Beatrice.”

  “You don’t look like a guy on Beatrice’s board.” Taylor frowns, glancing at my bare chest. “All their guys are skinny and androgynous-looking. That Milan model type, you’re not really that look.”

  Milan model type? What the fuck is this supposed to mean? I grin, and say, “I’m with Beatrice, trust me.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t.”

  Everyone takes a sip of their drinks. Taylor is ridiculous, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I am the Milano model look.

  Svetlana seizes the break in the conversation to get so close that I feel her tongue flick my earlobe as she says, “Beatrice is good agency.”

  I grin at the blonde Russian, but can’t stop glancing at Taylor in her dumpy flats and shitty jeans, looking smug with her utilitarian views on modelling. I’ve got her figured out: Taylor could be a top model, if she didn’t think so much.

  What a waste.

  How many glasses of wine does it take to turn a six-foot Russian girl into a destructive whirlwind of lust? No more than four. I counted. Svetlana pushes me through the door of my guesthouse room in Causeway Bay. As I kiss her neck, she throws her head back smashing into the plastic coat rack on the wall. It falls to the floor, taking my Aquascutum cashmere cardigan with it.

  “Shit,” she says, rubbing the back of her head, providing a break before she resumes assaulting my face with her tongue.

  “Come on,” I say, prying her off me like she’s an alien face hugger. I want to get her to my bed, which isn’t very far away. My room is the size of a hallway, even though the rent I pay would make you imagine a two-bedroom apartment. Just when you get around the corner and expect it to open into a bigger flat, it dead-ends at a double bed with a 13-inch TV fastened above it like in a shitty hospital room. But I’ve modeled long enough to know that if I don’t have a roommate, living in a room the size of a walk-in closet is a luxury.

  Svetlana gives me a naughty smile as she wobbles backwards and bumps into the small counter top that comprises my entire kitchen. She hops up, planting her ass in the foot of space between the sink and the microwave. Dirty plates and utensils clank to the floor, and I’m fairly certain Svetlana sat in a half-eaten plate of macaroni and cheese that I felt too guilty to finish.

  “Oops!” She giggles as she puts a finger to her lips, and sucks on it suggestively enough, that I forget about her sitting on my leftovers. She wraps her legs around my waist as I move in to kiss her. “You remember any other Svetlanas?”

  “What?” I pause. Svetlana’s black eyeliner is smudged under her brown eyes, her blonde hair bunched in greasy strands, and she smells like faded Rush, cigarettes and Absolut. She smells like fashion.

  “You slept with my friend Svetlana when you were in Cape Town. We have same name.” She grabs my ass, wrapping her legs around me. She’s too long for my place. As she straightens her legs, one of her black highheeled feet presses against the opposite wall and the other clangs down opening the door of my mini-fridge. “You remember other Svetlana?”

  I remember lots of Svetlanas and have no idea which one this Svetlana is talking about, but nod anyway. Her heeled foot slips and knocks one of the fridge grates out of place. Four cans of Coke Zero roll onto the floor. Svetlana doesn’t notice. She tries to maintain eye contact, but her head keeps drooping backward like a newborn’s as the Coke Zero’s roll to my feet.

  “When I meet Svetlana, she show me your comp card and tell me you are very good in bed,” her smile becoming a sneer. Her eyes blink, drunkenly unsynchronized. “Now I find out for myself.”

  “Sounds good,” I say, kissing the soft skin of her breast. Stroking her long smooth legs, Svetlana moans as I hike her skirt up. She rubs her fingers through my hair with one hand, her other hand creeping ever closer to my button fly a
nd its Panadol numbed contents.

  “Yes…” She shifts, getting comfortable on the tiny cluttered counter top as only a drunken, horny, far-under-normal-BMI, model can. She’s pressed sideways into my microwave and there are a series of beeps and the unit hums on. I kiss her neck while caressing her warmth over her panties. Then I hear a hollow crack as Svetlana tenses her legs and punches a hole with her heel through the dry wall. “Oh yes, baby.”

  Thoughts of losing my safety deposit are put aside as Svetlana’s palm strokes my fly. I tug on Svetlana’s panties and rub her harder between her legs. It’s driving her crazy and she begins grinding against me.

  “Come on…” Svetlana bares her lipstick-smeared teeth and suddenly grabs my groin with all the finesse of a teenager yanking on a handbrake while doing donuts in a parking lot. I gasp as unreal pain sears through my crotch and into my midsection. I double over.

  “You like it rough, right, baby?” Svetlana says, her grip exerting the force of a hydraulic juice press on my genitals.

  “No, no,” I say through gritted teeth. “Let go, please.”

  Svetlana glares at me and yanks her hand away like she touched a hotplate.

  I exhale.

  “What’s wrong?” She says, as I concentrate on taking deep breaths. The pain still so raw that I have to check she’s not still clutching me with her fucking eagle talons. “What is matter with you?”

  “Too rough… Way too rough,” I manage to spit, leaning on my knees. “What?” Svetlana scowls.

  She wrenches her heel out of the wall and hops off the counter top. Svetlana ass planted right in my leftovers. She’s wearing a pink G-string covered in half-eaten bits of pasta. Microwaved cheese sauce coats her ass, though she doesn’t seem to notice as she tugs her hiked up dress down to cover the culinary mess that her rear end has become. “You think I don’t know what I do? That I do not know how treat man?”