his assistant set our scene, tell us to freeze, the flash goes off, they empty the camera’s magazine, flap the Polaroid in the air, then huddle together with Darryle and Jeanie in the corner, who tell them how much better it would look if I were Chinese, or if I were holding a puppy instead of a kid. Then Brian and his assistant come back, jiggle the lights a little to the left, and shoot another one. This goes on for an hour. A call-and-response with F-stops and shutter speeds. I’m getting paid to stand on an X made of tape. So I stand. My meter, running.
Eventually the lighting’s just right, we’re clothed in our shiny grey space jackets, and they’re ready to shoot colour. I hold the boy aloft, pretend I’ve won a prize, and smile.
“Chin up. Eyes open. Don’t try to look so sexy. Less smile. It looks like you’re about to eat him. Less...less...okay, now you just look evil. More— that’s it! Magic!”
It’s not long before the boy’s crying, and his mother, who’s drinking something out of a thermos on the sidelines, is forced to waddle onto the set and placate him with promises of video games and Oreo cookies.
“Makeup!” Brian Bean shouts. “His makeup’s running to hell. Where’s Tanya? Why is she out having a butt now? No, I didn’t tell her to. Shit.” To the boy he says, “You’re doing great, little man.” To me, “Just perfect. Keep smiling.” He spins around. “Shit. Okay, let’s take a lunch. Fifteen minutes, please.” He turns to us. “Help yourselves to food. There’s plenty.”
I gouge out a piece of cheese, grab a handful of crackers.
Crispen walks up to me, eyes wide. “What are you doing?” he whispers. “You don’t eat the food!”
“But he offered it to us.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to actually eat it, fool. Models don’t eat.”
“What are we supposed to live off then? Flash-bulb light and runway dust?” I glare as the crew gorge themselves on slivers of tandoori chicken and honeydew melon. I hope it’s all off.
Crispen’s scene is shot next. He’s with an older model and a young girl. They’re supposed to be moving up an escalator, pointing to objects on either side of the stairs, things that will be added in later digitally. The “escalator” is a five-foot stairway to nowhere.
“Hey, it’s Ronald McDonald,” Crispen says, pointing at the distant wall. The young girl looks and laughs. “And over there, it’s your mom in her underwear.” He indicates the other wall, where the child’s mother is standing, definitely not in her underwear, but turning red just the same. The child laughs again.
“Magic! That’s the stuff. More pointing... Well, you all have to point at the same thing. Yeah...no...just decide on a direction, and everybody point there. That’s it. Magic! Out of film.”
Five minutes later they’re done and setting up for my final shot. “Do you always talk when you’re shooting like that?” I ask Crispen.
“Yeah, it helps me get in the moment. Makes it real. As real as it gets with pancake makeup and a fake white daughter, anyway.”
“Are you done?”
“Yep. You have two scenes. I have one. Don’t look so happy. We both get paid the same.”
They’re ready to shoot the bar scene. An older male model with antennae is our waiter. He’s supposed to serve me and my young protege the software, a box on a plate. When we get our huge plate and open the box, we’re to act surprised.
“More surprise, please. Like the box just spoke to you. That’s what happens, right?” Brian Bean asks, turning to the clients.
“The box?” Darryle says. “Yes, in the software, it talks back.”
“Right. So more surprise. Big eyes. Open mouth. Try again in five.”
The waiter comes back and hands us the box. I suspect he stepped in front of me, but I continue, anyway.
“Hey, look at that. A box! That’s not what I ordered,” I say to my new son. He opens his eyes wide, mouth a big O. Nails it.
Brian Bean grins. “Brilliant. That’s the good stuff. A couple more like that and it’s a print. Keep going, guys. Three more.”
Three more, and Brian Bean shows the clients our twelve-second scene. Backward, forward, slow motion, reverse angle. Darryle smiles. Jeanie asks if it’s too late to make me Asian, digitally maybe.
“So now you’re talking to the camera, too,” Crispen says. Stealing my style, eh?”
We’re hanging up our silver jackets, folding our silver pants. “Borrowing it,” I say. “That’s okay, right?”
Crispen thinks for a moment. “Sure. Anything to help out a brother. Did you bring your voucher book?”
“Yeah. But you’ll have to show me how to fill it out. Our DBMI vouchers were tiny. This bastard’s as big as a poster.”
Crispen whips out a pen, starts filling in both of our vouchers. He presses hard—three copies. He writes our names, the client’s name, address, the number of hours, our hourly rates.
“Mine’s $150 an hour,” I tell him. He writes “150” on my form, fills in “220” on his. I almost break my eyebrows. Under “usage fee” he adds $4,000 to the total, the bonus of being used for a national campaign. It looks as if I’ll be able to afford meat for a change.
“Do you want me to take your voucher back with me?” he asks. “I’m going to Feyenoord this afternoon, anyway. Yellow copy’s for the agency.”
Brian Bean signs my voucher. I rip out the white copy, hand it to him. Rip out the yellow copy, hand it to Crispen. The pink copy, the only proof so far that I am, in fact, a real model, flutters alone in the field of blank forms. It can take up to six months to actually get paid. In six months I may no longer be a model. Or real.
The rest of the day, like most, is a blur of go-sees and auditions. Clients thumb through my portfolio, tell me how much potential I have, how much better I’d do in Munich or Miami or Cape Town. Most of them don’t even bother to ask me to walk. When I leave, I have to remind them to take a comp card to remember me by. My new comps—four of my best shots copied onto a small cardboard card—cost $300, most of it borrowed from Crispen. He knows as well as I do that it may take me six months to pay him back.
I’m supposed to see Clive Thompson at 1:30. His studio is somewhere in the grey wasteland of North York, and it takes me an hour to find it, even with a map. The elevator opens into a hall that thumps with dance music. I check my appointment book. Fourth floor, turn left. But I hear something else and turn right.
There are some sounds that will always turn people’s heads, no matter what they’re doing. The sound of falling change. The word nipple. The sound of a young girl crying. She’s in the corner at the other end of the hall, sitting on the floor, her hands clasped around her knees.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing.” Brown hair, decent body. I think she may have served me drinks somewhere before. She doesn’t look up.
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
