“Wait. Put in?” I asked, swiveling toward her in my desk chair. She was picking something out of her hair.
“Duh,” she explained. “Fucked-up teeth are so in right now.” (Granted, this was the same girl who once referred to parentheses as “those half-moon thingies.”)
Another time, an older client—she had graduated to catalog modeling—fell out of her chair mid-sentence.
“Oh my god, Valerie, are you okay?” I reached for her wrist, its circumference the size of a silver dollar.
“The funny thing,” she said as I pulled her back onto the chair, “is this is the first time I’ve come into the office sober!” She laughed like a maniac.
“But Valerie, you always come into the office at, like, 11:00 am.”
“I know!” she howled. More maniacal laughter.
Successfully relaying audition information to the models was another challenge. This was back when phone calls were still the primary mode of communication and before most cell phones had email access. I’d have to dictate five-digit street addresses—“11317 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, CA 91604”—over the phone, frequently to someone who was, at that moment, driving, smoking, and petting a small dog in a purse on her passenger seat. Time and time again, while making one of these calls, a model would answer and stop me mid–zip code.
“Wait, will you call back and leave this on my voicemail?” she’d ask.
“Well, I would have left it on your voicemail in the first place if you hadn’t picked up,” is what I wanted to say. But what I’d really say was, “Sure! No problem!” and then hang up, re-dial, re-recite.
This was also well before iPhones and cars with navigation. This was the era of the Thomas Guide, though none of these models owned one. Addresses were often so garbled by bad cell connections that they were totally lost in translation. One afternoon, a model called me in an absolute panic.
“Where the hell is this casting?” she demanded, in a whisper.
I repeated the addresses.
“That’s where I am,” she breathily snapped back, “and there is a sign on the door that says NO GUNS ALLOWED.”
After some back-and-forth we realized that she thought I had said “Perry Avenue” instead of “Barry Avenue,” which landed her right in the middle of the hood. “Okay,” I instructed her, now also whispering. “Walk away from the house, get back in your car, and lock the door.”
Almost daily, the agency received presents, and most of them were edible. I always thought it was sort of cruel to send your agents cornucopias full of crap you’d never eat yourself. A cookie and muffin combo would arrive from a fancy LA bakery, with a card attached that read: “Thank you for booking me on the Revlon job!” This, from a girl who wouldn’t be caught dead eating a muffin. In those first six months, I gained fifteen pounds. I know this because there was a scale in the agency’s kitchen. The kitchen. It was for weighing the models, but of course we weighed ourselves too, the boxes of See’s Chocolates mocking us as we slid the scale tab ever farther to the right.
Aside from babysitting in high school and briefly working as a hostess in college, this was my first job. I didn’t yet know that you weren’t supposed to eat everything in sight, all the time. Because, I would learn, there was always something to eat. Candy on desks, edible arrangements from clients, cupcakes for a coworker’s birthday. The dress code at our office was casual, but for the first few weeks I tried to look cute. By month two, I rarely wore makeup and often showed up with my hair still wet. I made a point of looking like the assistant, not one of the gorgeous models falling out of twirling chairs.
I had accepted my station on the other side of the camera lens. The dream had died. Lucky hadn’t even used me as a “real person,” and the idea of me being a “real model” hadn’t crossed Francine’s mind. I was simply a real “real person.” I could eat all the muffins I wanted.
Worse still, I was surrounded by models at all times, and not just in the office. Because I was the youngest employee, it was my job to accompany the girls to various fancy functions and red-carpet events. The promoters throwing the parties would call our agency and ask for “twelve girls” or “twenty girls” or “our top three” to help up the attractiveness of their events. While I felt lucky to get to attend, in my role as model wrangler/babysitter, I always felt more than a little awkward at these soirees. I was never quite sure what to wear. I felt like a poser donning the same slinky cocktail dresses the real models wore, but jeans and a blazer made me feel frumpy. I was rarely allowed to bring friends to these events, and no guys ever talked to me because I was perpetually engulfed by a pack of perfect tens. I spent the majority of these nights pretending I had to go to the bathroom and looking for Leonardo DiCaprio. (I only found him once, wearing a black leather jacket and a baseball hat, already insulated by his own moat of models.)
I’ll never forget one party at “P. Diddy’s house.” (We later found out that was a rumor started by the event planner. I think they called him “P. Daddy” on the invite so they could get away with it.) At the party was the not-yet-infamous duo—we’ll call them Blonde Beard and The Bro—and it took them no time to sniff out our pack of models. The Bro tried to brag to us about how they weren’t on the list, and how they had to scale a wall to get into the party, and how he’d ripped his designer pants (I want to say it was an Armani suit). Meanwhile, Blonde Beard told us they were in the process of pitching a reality TV show about their own exploits in Southern California. (Those two have been trying to get famous for a very long time.) Blonde Beard started talking to me, but when I said I was the assistant at the agency that represented all these girls, he quickly lost interest and moved on to the real model to my right. After standing there like an asshole with no one to talk to, I sucked down the rest of my vodka-soda and pretended I had to go to the bathroom.
About a month later, I ran into Blonde Beard at a bar in Hollywood. That night, I wasn’t with any models, just real “real people.” Again, he tried to strike up a conversation with me.
“We’ve met,” I said.
“Um, pretty sure we haven’t,” he replied.
“Yeah, we met at that fake Puff Daddy party, and you proceeded to totally blow me off when you found out I wasn’t a model.” I stabbed the lime at the bottom of my glass.
“No wayyyyyyy,” he said in his fake surfer drawl. He punched his buddy in the arm to get his attention, then cupped my chin in his hand, asking his friend, “Could I forget a face like this?”
I arched my eyebrows, unconvinced, and retracted my head from his grip. Yet again, I found myself pretending I had to go to the bathroom.
Later that night, Blonde Beard found me and asked for my number. I had no business giving it to him—one, I was dating someone, and two, I never found him remotely attractive. But he was a guy who allegedly only dated models, and he complimented my face.
He called me twice, and twice I didn’t answer, guilt-ridden than I’d given him my number in the first place. His first message said, “Lilibet, it’s me. Give me a call.” Or something like that. The second one said, in the lackadaisical So-Cal cadence that he would later become known for during his horrifying stint on a show that took place in the Hollywood Hills, “Lilibet, what the fuuuuuuuck, why aren’t you returning my calls? It’s so laaaaaaaaaaame. Why are you blowing me offffffff?” I was driving west on the 10 when he called. I waited for the last ring, listened to the voicemail, snapped my phone shut, and smiled. I never called him back; the messages were validation enough. If I had only known what a famous freak he would eventually become, I would have held onto those voicemails for dear life.
My other responsibility as a rookie assistant landed me in equally awkward situations. This involved me running the agency’s Open Calls, a try-out of sorts for prospective models from three to four on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’d recite the rundown to hopefuls over the phone: “You must be five foot eight or taller and between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two.” And twice a week, girls
five foot eight or taller would line the hallways, snapshots of themselves on their laps. I’m not sure why we did this; the agency almost never signed anyone from this human slush pile. I always wanted to—it would have been fun to claim I discovered the next Giselle. But really, more than anything, I just hated saying no. Once, while working the front door of an art gallery party in downtown LA, I unclicked the rope for every single person who showed up, even if they weren’t on the guest list. Especially if they weren’t on the list. I mean, they had come all that way and were so dressed up . . . Unfortunately, the agency’s velvet rope was harder to unclick. It is sad to say, but most of these girls had no business believing they were the next Giselle, or even the next girl in the JCPenney circular. I just couldn’t bring myself to break that news, so instead I’d say, with the hey-girlfriend inflection of Tyra Banks, “You’re a beautiful girl, Chastity, but you’re just not right for this agency. I would definitely try your luck somewhere else, though.” And with that, they’d gather up their snapshots and head down the road to Elite.
It was the same dodge-and-flatter dance, week after week, until the afternoon Amanda walked in. Amanda, a statuesque African American woman with incredible calves. Was this the next Naomi Campbell?
“Welcome! Please, take a seat,” I said. She gave her skirt a tug as she crossed her long legs. “So, what’s your name?”
“Amanda,” she said. Her voice was reminiscent of something I couldn’t quite place. It was rich, velvety, vixen-esque.
“Great, Amanda, tell me a little about yourself.” With that, Amanda placed her hand on my knee and looked me sternly in the eye. Okay, I thought, this was a first. Clearly this Amanda had the boldness it takes to make it in the modeling world. With her hand still on my knee, she headlocked me in eye contact and restated her name, this time dragging out the syllables:
“A-Man-Duh.”
“Right, Amanda, you said that,” I said.
“A man,” she paused. What the hell? Why did she keep repeating her name? And would she please remove her hand from my thigh? She cocked her head at me and batted her false lashes. And then—welcome, Lilibet, welcome—I finally made it to the party. Her Adam’s apple appeared as she pronounced the last syllable, “Duh.”
Fortunately, scenarios as such provided endless amounts of amusement for the agency’s employees. I loved my coworker’s like dysfunctional family members, and we spent a decent portion of our days doubled-over in our ergonomically correct office chairs. You just don’t get diversions like Amanda the cross-dressing model in every place of employment. Some of the characters who worked in the office were as ridiculous as those we represented. The guy who sat across from me, Dave, took it upon himself to initiate “Jersey Fridays.” Sort of like “Hat Day” in middle school. On Fridays, he told us, we were allowed to wear our favorite team jersey to work. I am still not entirely sure how this Dave ended up working at a modeling agency, an industry entirely dominated by women and gay men, neither of whom would be caught dead wearing a jersey to work. (Two of the male model agents, both of them flamboyant and overweight, used to bicker like Dorothy and Rose on The Golden Girls. When one announced he’d lost ten pounds, the other said, “Oh please. That’s like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic.”)
It goes without saying that “Jersey Fridays” never caught on, except with its founder. Every Friday, without fail, Dave was clad in one of the following: a boxy mesh Cleveland Browns NFL jersey; a snug, University of Arizona college basketball jersey, which he wore over a tee; or a cotton jersey-esque Mets T-shirt. (Dave was an equal-opportunity fan, not partial to one particular region of the country.) Dave also occasionally brought his cat to the office, stroking it on his lap while he worked. The giant fluff ball, covered in snowy fur, would poke out from under his desk, right on top of his crotch. My favorite thing about Dave, however, was not the cats or the Cleveland Browns, but the fact that he would take his lunch breaks in the office, and he would take them very seriously. If I tried to get his attention during this designated hour, he’d wave his hand frantically in my face—“I’m at lunch! I’m not here! You don’t see me!”—and continue walking down the hall.
In the year and a half I worked at the agency, we moved offices three times. While each office was different, one thing remained the same: the towering wall of “comp cards”—glossy paper rectangles, each with a close-up of a model on the front and four smaller pictures of her on the back. All day long, a hundred beautiful faces would stare at us, each with the same pissed-off expression. Across the bottom of the cards were the model’s names and heights. They all went by their first names, some sexy and foreign-sounding (Oksana, Michiko, Katarina), others Southern-California-cute (Ashley, Chelsea, Desiree). If there was any overlap, we added a surname initial, like on The Bachelor. The clients called them by their first name and last initial as well—heaven forbid they book the busty blonde “Caroline B.” for the Chloe job, when what they really wanted was the waifish, brown-haired “Caroline M.”
Because I’m a borderline hoarder, I still have my notebooks from this job. Based on one entry, it appears I was trying to keep the models straight. I had jotted down a handful of models’ names and some identifying triggers to help me remember them. Next to the name “Jamie” it says: “Gave directions, wavy brown,” and next to the name “Nina” it says: “Nice, red hair.” (I’m not sure which was nice: Nina or her hair.) Apparently “Megan” was a golfer because I wrote: “Megan: Blonde, golf, very nice,” while “Amber” gave me less to work with. For her it just says, “Curly blonde.” It seems redundant that I noted “Yalia” was “foreign.” In what is by far my favorite descriptor, next to the name “Sarah,” it simply says: “Dated Leo.” Enough said. I clearly wasn’t going to forget her.
When I wasn’t making notes about the models, I was handling pictures of their perfectly proportioned faces. Francine wasn’t kidding about the scanning; my newly acquired skill took up a large part of my workday. Back then, model agencies re-touched photographs the old fashioned way: someone actually painted over imperfections on large matte photographs, concealing under-eye circles and flyaway hairs. After that, it was my job to scan the now-flawless image back into the computer. We also took Polaroids the old-fashioned way, meaning we took real Polaroids. (They still call it “taking Polaroids,” but they take the pictures with a digital camera.) I’d ask a girl to come in “with clean hair and face” and have her pose next to a window. If a client needed swimsuit Polaroids, there was a spare bikini in the bathroom. Like the woman at Lucky, I instructed the girls to look right, look left, face forward, smile.
Doing this, of course, reminded me of that day at Lucky and of my circuitous route into the modeling agent world. Although I had absolutely no interest in moving up in this industry, I had somehow stayed for almost two years.
The Polaroids required scanning as well. I’d tape four Polaroids to a piece of 8 x 11 printer paper and write the model’s name and height across the bottom of the page with a Sharpie. Then, hunched over the scanner, I’d upload the images. I did this over and over, all day long, which was both incredibly monotonous and crushingly depressing. I wasn’t depressed because I wasn’t a model, though I often coveted their wasp-like waists and angular faces (my cheekbones had vanished months before). I just wanted to do something with my life that I had even a vague interest in. If I wasn’t tracking down a model’s UGGs in some wardrobe trailer, I was booking their hair appointments at Frédéric Fekkai, making their travel arrangements for a swimwear shoot in Bora Bora, or dictating directions to a famous director’s house in the Pacific Palisades. My job was a relentless reminder that, while I was very busy making other girls’ lives more fabulous—girls who were my exact same age, no less—my life was standing still.
I knew my last day at the agency was inevitable when I returned from lunch one afternoon to find the final straw on my desk. It was in the form of a Post-it note, stuck to my computer screen. I peeled it from the monitor while hooking my
purse to the back of my chair. I remained standing while I read it, trying to process the implications: “Morgan H. needs a bikini wax.” This must be some sort of inside joke, I thought. Maybe I accidentally snapped an unfortunate Polaroid of Morgan H. revealing an unkempt nether region?
“Dave, did you write this?” I asked.
Dave responded, not looking up from his computer, “She said Tuesday or Wednesday after ten would be good.”
“I’m sorry, I am supposed to schedule her bikini wax?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Dave answered, unfazed. “She needs it done before the Quicksilver shoot.”
I sat down at my desk and laid my forehead on top of my keyboard until it started to beep. This was too much. While it was one thing to schedule haircuts and highlights for these girls, it was quite another to make appointments for the removal of their pubic hair. I had to get out. While I loved my colleagues, this job was slowly but surely killing my soul.
It was already easy enough to become invisible in LA, spending most of my time behind the windshield of my car with fast food on my lap. While I wouldn’t be caught dead walking down Madison Avenue with a milkshake in hand, I had absolutely no problem driving down Wilshire Boulevard, sucking an Oreo McFlurry through a straw. Behind the anonymous screen of that squawking drive-through speaker, I had no issue boldly proclaiming, “You know what, make it a large.” Like a true friend, Rachel finally intervened. “Maybe you should switch to frozen coffee drinks,” she suggested.
That “real person” who strutted up Forty-second street like she owned the goddamn place was now buried under fifteen pounds of fast food milkshakes and two years of stroking other people’s egos. “You have amazing eyes,” I’d say to one of our models. “And those legs!” I’d also turned into the type of person who thinks it’s appropriate to wear a hoody sweatshirt to work.
In high school, my girlfriends and I would often say, “Stella’s gotta get her groove back.” Why the title of an all-black comedy about middle-aged women became the mantra of our teenage lives, I did not know. All I knew was, this Stella needed to get her groove back.
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