Monday, May 28, 2007

Instant Karma... Or Why I'm Not A Model

This brings me back. Way back. To a time when I was young and studying in Paris.

I never would have known about Rick Astley or Terence Trent D'Arby had it not been for an enterprising young Jamaican man I met in Paris named Chris. Chris was an ambitious young model who sold it all to make it in the big city. Instead, he wound up rooming with three amiable if very un-glam Frenchman in a Paris flat, all the while self-promoting and trying to convince everyone he was the. Next. Big. Thing.

I met Chris through my friend X. (She no longer goes by her name, but just in case, let's keep her anonymous.) She was dating one of the roomies' brother, or cousin, or second cousin. Who cared? He was French, she was (recently) unattached, and the sparks flew.

Meantime, Chris convinced X and I that we should help him promote his career by coming to several FABULOUS parties at the apartment he shared with his French roomies. So we did. We chose our (pathetically American and very un-mode Salvation Army) outfits carefully. We contributed to his party food fund. We should have been asking -- Why on earth would we be an asset to his self-promotion?

In tres Francais fashion, we brought flowers the nights of the fetes. We greeted his roomates, whom I'll call A,B and C, with affection and genuine appreciation for their hosting, um, the host of the party. (What we didn't know until much later was that Chris rarely if ever chipped in on rent, a major faux pas in any language or city. He eventually disappeared before he could be kicked out.)

I genuinely enjoyed the company of Chris' roomates. They were fun, and real, and kind of shrugged their shoulders at all the fashion nonsense swirling about the apartment. They kind of celebrated with the party, even if they weren't a party to it.

I'll never forget the last of these parties I attended. There were two pathetic scenes playing out. One was another model who was walking around the party with her headshots, unabashedly talking only to those people she thought could get her a job. The second was a photographer who had his portfolios spread out on the floor around him as he sat, cross-legged in the entrance to the apartment. Everyone who entered had to first take a cursory glance at his oeuvre and oooh and aaah, or some BS like that.

Oddly, around this same time, but independent of the whole Chris interaction, I was walking down Blvd. Montparnasse and someone said, "Hey, do you speak English?" I turned and said that yes, I did. The man who had tracked me down said, "I'm a photographer and I have a Nike shoot coming up. I can't find any French women with calves like yours."

At this point it seems relevant to add that I grew up as a ballet dancer. So I have unusually large (and reminiscently muscular) calves. At 19, they were probably still quite so. Anyway, pursuant to several minutes of idle chitchat, he said, "Look, if you would only drop 35 pounds, I could get you modeling work here."

As any 19 year old would do, I convinced myself that giving up baguette, cheese and wine would certainly be worthwhile for a chance to work with a Vogue photographer. I began to sit in on similar (though more powered, and smaller group) parties with his crowd, where real working models would stop me before I sipped a glass of champagne to say, "Do you know how many calories are in that flute?"

It wasn't long before I realized that he was BS with a capital B, capital S. I hated his friends, his colleagues and everyone around him. Definitely a short-lived friendship.

Meantime Chris had vanished from the City of Lights, and I went back to being just another American student in Paris. Happily.

Fast forward two decades. I am in an emergency meeting at the software company I worked for and someone comes rushing into the conference room saying, "Don't you speak French?" After confirming that yes, I was still verbally fluent, the international sales manager says to me -- "We've got this new distributor here, and we're localizing our product for them." (In un-technospeak, that means translating English software to French.) "Can you help with dinner?"

I walk into the lab where they are working, ready to suggest a restaurant for dinner. Who do I see but A and B, who have since launched an IT services company and are now, well, here in Wisconsin working with my company. I met their gaze evenly. A certain recognition is happening, though none of us can quite believe it. There is no mention of modeling, of late night parties, or of Paris. Only of TCP/IP, how Win95 will affect our business, and how our browser compares with Netscape.

And how Chris disappeared into the night, having made keys to the apartment for all his friends, but having rarely paid any rent. "That's the modeling business for you," they said. Which is just one of the reasons I never made it as one.

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