Almost 5'4"

Since it felt like his shoot, I had followed and played along till now but I started to feel more like his afternoon whore as I picked up the material and wrapped it around me the best I could to cover all of my private parts. The white fabric did look really pretty against my skin. I felt sexy. I wanted Danny to see me like this, I wanted to be touched and caressed while I wore the fabric around me. I could feel myself getting excited and the triangle I had shaved felt itchy and moist. I wondered if the photographer was married. If he had children. When he last had sex.

We took a few shots of me looking down and some from a side profile. I felt like a Middle Eastern Princess about to lose my virginity.

After the fabric shot I stayed without a bra, but put my shorts back on and went downstairs. I put on a sheer tan top that still showed my nipples and we took some shots near an ethnic-inspired cloth mural on the wall. Then we went to the dining area, where I changed again, and sat on a pink and cream carpet that looked like a quilted blanket. I faced the mirror and wore only a lace black thong and a little lace tank top, the most clothing I had worn at the shoot.

By the time we were finished, Joel still had noticed nothing. In the car he said, ‘That guy was really cool. I bet it’s expensive to have a place like that.’ He didn’t know about the nude shots. He didn’t say one word about the shoot; he just kept talking. ‘I want my own company one day.’

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I tried to think of each shot and imagine what the picture would look like.

Nipples (#ulink_65afbb98-d560-5c9c-a7ad-1ed3ca62ab80)

I could have asked Danny to drive me to the shoot – he had a car – but we had just started dating and I didn’t want to scare him off with my modeling adventures just yet. We had dinner together that night and I wanted to burst from holding in all the excitement of my first naked modeling experience. A few days later, I did tell Danny of my modeling dream but he was less than enthusiastic. He liked me the way I was when he first met me – a boring waitress, not a sexy model.

But I was planning on modeling all summer and he would just have to accept it. I let Danny drive me back to pick up my photos, but I made him promise not to say anything to my mother or my sister about it. Then I asked him to take a couple of photos of me by the lake; he didn’t know if he wanted to. In the end, I forced him, telling him how to hold the camera, how to click it. I got pissed when he didn’t know how to zoom.

I tried to lead a normal life: dinner with my mother, watching MTV, hanging out with friends at the mall or sitting by their pools talking about boys. But before too long, I wanted to be back in front of my computer admiring my profile and checking for emails. I told no one of my new project. I wasn’t confident enough to tell my friends, in case nothing came from it. At the time, finding a modeling agency hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t understand what it meant to be with an agency or how to get with one. Besides, they all had height requirements and I knew I would be too short for them. I was fine with the Internet. It was making me a model.

I wasn’t in a hurry to look at the shots of myself from the wedding hall. It wasn’t the photos that enticed me, it was the feeling of being photographed, the feeling of being in front of a lens. Only when I was alone in my bedroom did I examine them closely.

My nipples were very perky and could be seen even in the bra shots, but I was too embarrassed to show anyone. I took the 4″ × 6″ prints that screamed ‘nipple’ and hid them in a folder, putting the ones where I was wearing the black lace lingerie in my ‘portfolio’, a cheap Wal-Mart photo album. When Joel called to see them I changed the topic right away and told him I wasn’t really serious about modeling, even though I was checking my email over five times a day and scoping my mini-website for an hour at a time. I would admire my page and check out other girls’ images, reading their comments and comparing mine. The words of applause and compliments, from photographers and other models, stayed with me throughout the day.

Messages (#ulink_16937c80-8ab6-5f99-9a7e-85a2057650be)

June 2001, Syracuse, New York

‘Hello, I’m a petite model with a great body and I will be moving to New York City in three weeks…’

‘Hello, I like your work, and I am a petite model with a lot of personality and a great body and I will be moving to New York City in two weeks…’

‘Sorry I won’t be in town for two weeks, but I would like to keep in touch to schedule a shoot when I arrive.’

‘Yes, I am interested in your lingerie shoot. I will be in New York City in one week.’

‘I will be in New York City in three days!’

‘Yes, I have a class on Wednesday, but I can do the shoot after my class.’

I didn’t want to waste a second. I mailed ahead to all the photographers I could find in New York to let them know I would be in town soon. I wanted to be naked again and feel the light touching my skin.

9/11 (#ulink_fb2c0598-473c-5faf-8c03-e07a244299ce)

I moved to New York City, or more accurately Brooklyn Heights, on September 1, 2001. Ten days later, two iconic buildings crashed down. I hardly knew the meaning of those buildings and, honestly, the only way their fall affected me was the lack of running subways for the week afterwards. I wasn’t from New York City and had never even heard of the Twin Towers until I first set eyes on the skyline.

That morning, I slept through the whole crisis in my dorm room. I thought it was just thunder or a dump truck going past. When my mother called at 9 A.M., I just ignored her. Afterwards I walked to the promenade in my pajamas to see it for myself and tried to understand and feel something sad for a city I had just met and was so confident about. I decided to make something of the day and brushed my teeth thinking about the young men in suits, maybe their first expensive one, off to the job they worked their ass off to get. I spit the foam into the sink and prayed that I would live to see myself as a model no matter what it took.

Giant Dick (#ulink_12dc89eb-93fc-5562-b592-99b485a4f301)

I have always hated maps, or directions of any kind, but I needed to find my way around a new city. Everyone else seemed so confident; they all knew where they were going and how to get there. I wasn’t sure I could even find my way to class. I studied the MTA map in the hope it would cast a spell on me, that it would suddenly open up its secrets, but instead of streets and subway lines I could just see a giant penis.

The shape of the city is a perfect dick, almost as if they’d planned it that way. The Queens’ Midtown Tunnel creates the head of the shaft, the curve of the Harlem River making the round of the Bronx is Manhattan’s balls.

Or maybe that was just me. It certainly didn’t help on my first day in Manhattan. More by luck than judgement I found myself getting off the 1 train and racing up the hill of steps to 59th Street. I saw the sun shining on Broadway, my school diagonally across the street, and the Trump Tower smiling above me. I was happy to be a student in the greatest city in the world.

Bitch (#ulink_07ac02e9-34a8-569e-b7fb-a974e3a659ce)

I had turned nineteen a week earlier. On my birthday Danny had taken me to a shoot in New Jersey. I thought he was warming up to the idea of me being a model, but the shoot only made it worse.

‘Can you hold that reflector still?’ Danny looked nervous, he was already getting yelled at by the photographer and we had been there for less than ten minutes.

We got lost on the way and ended up in a fight. I hated sitting in the passenger seat. I couldn’t drive but I was not a passenger! Danny wore a gray, shaggy, worn and torn sweater that I hated. It embarrassed me. The sweater made a statement about him. It showed he wasn’t responsible, attractive, clean, or interesting. I told him not to wear his glasses either.

He smoked about a pack of Newport cigarettes and the smoke seeped through his clenched teeth. I tried not to gag. I wanted to die right there on the New Jersey Turnpike.

‘Do you want to turn around?’ I asked.

‘Do you want to go back?’ By the time the fight started I had asked about four times.

I focused on my mascara to avoid thinking about his outfit. I discreetly tried to tell him to take it off.

‘It’s going to be kind of warm today. You might want to just wear a tee shirt, because you sweat a lot.’ I ended with a giggle and a smile, but he didn’t look happy. We hit a bump in the road and my mascara brush hit the top of my lid and almost poked me in the eye.

‘Damn, Danny, slow down!’ I gripped the dashboard and checked that my seatbelt was tight. We were so busy fighting I didn’t realize until too late that we were lost. He refused my plea to stop and ask someone at the gas station for help.

Then, in a rage, he said, ‘I can’t believe you go around meeting strangers!’

‘Well, I want to model!’ I sounded like I was five. ‘And I don’t go around meeting strangers! You’re such an asshole sometimes!’

He didn’t like that I’d called him an asshole, so he called me a bitch. I didn’t know what to say because I was a bitch. I couldn’t stop being a bitch either. I worried about his appearance and mine, and where we were going. We were late, which made me jumpy. After what seemed like hours, we arrived at the park to meet the photographer. He wasn’t there.

We sat by the stone wall. While I played with my hair, Danny smoked more cigarettes. I dug in the dirt with my sandal, and then reached for his hand to let him know I wasn’t mad. Fortunately, he took it. We sat there, waiting. The photographer was fifteen minutes late. Great. I had freaked out for nothing.

When he finally arrived he immediately lit into Danny, barking orders, pointing him here and there. Danny thought he would spend the day smoking cigarettes and reading his books for flight school. Instead, he became a photographer’s assistant. A very bad one. He caught the huge camera bag that the photographer threw at him. Then, the photographer asked him for the fifty-millimeter lens, whatever that was. He looked over to me with nervous eyes.

‘I’m trying.’

Danny really was trying, but the reflector kept dropping and bending and creating all the wrong shadows on my ass.

The photographer told me how he had worked with a team of lingerie designers in France, which sounded very cool.

‘So after the shoot I’ll show the designers the photos and they’ll pick a model.’

He mentioned that other girls would be considered as well.

A child with long blond hair ran by with her parents. They looked our way but didn’t stare. Still, I felt like they were staring. We were in a fucking park for Christ’s sake, and my ass was showing for the world to see. He kept shooting me against the stone wall. About 100 meters away, I could see a bunch of sweaty soccer players. A crowd was cheering and the park was becoming more and more active as the hour progressed.

Danny went with the flow and helped to cover me with a towel when I changed into a black thong I had bought on West 4th Street in the city. He had never seen it before and said, ‘That’s cute.’ Finally…something he liked.

I felt as if he shouldn’t be so pissy and that he should be proud that his girlfriend had a great round ass and was a model. After all, he got to fuck me, even though he wasn’t all that good at it. I had more to be angry about than him.