Jenna’s Model Life

How’d I spend Friday night, you wonder? Swinging from a chandelier, knocking back calorie-free rum-and-diet-Cokes, or partying hearty after a long day of shows? Not quite. Or at least, the night didn’t start out that way.

My polymath writer friend Nam was in town to give a reading in the yoga room of a Union Square gym, so I took along College Friend Greg and we listened. First the gym handed out free day passes to everyone in attendance — Isn’t this kind of like giving copies of War and Peace to the spinning class? whispered CFG, and while I agree in principle, I’m totally using mine to schedule a massage for the day after fashion week ends — and then Matthew Klam read a really great short story that came out in the New Yorker in 2006. Then Nam read part of this story Peter and I and CFG and my friend Alyssa and everyone else I’ve mentioned it to really like, and which was deservedly in last year’s Best American Nonrequired Reading.

We migrated two doors down the street for an enjoyable Two Buck Chuck-fueled reception, during which time I talked with an effusive Indian named Bir about his boarding school (”So conservative we had to wear swimsuits when we showered,” said Bir), Project Runway (he’s a Jeffrey fan! Gah!), and ethnic literature. Then he offered to get me some lipgloss from one of his cosmetics clients (he works in PR) and finesse my boyfriend’s résumé ahead of our potential move to New York City. Though Bir regrettably headed home, CFG and I braced ourselves to continue the night with Nam and his entourage, which included a fellow Writers’ Workshop alum, and This American Life contributor Starlee Kine.

We went to Soho and began drinking heavily. Nam ate a sandwich, I had a molten-centre chocolate cake served with ice cream that mysteriously stayed unmelted and intact (how is that possible? surface tension? localised cold spot over the table?) for what seemed like an hour, while CFG and Starlee talked about candidates for the most depressing movie ever (the Romanain Abortion Movie v. Passolini’s Salò: Discuss) and the anxiously fertile Starlee intermittently solicited tall gentlemen for possible spermination. Nam and I discussed what it’s like to have agents, and therefore be able to put together sentences like, “My agent and I are doing lunch.” We ordered more mojitos and I had a beer from Maine that cost $8 and Starlee told a story about how although her favourite video store in Brooklyn gave her the name of the deadbeat who’s had the season two disc five of The Wire out for months, now she doesn’t know what to do, Facebook him or call him or what.

When we wrapped up, it was almost 4 a.m. We had to hand the poor waitress a sheaf of bankcards with esoteric bill-splitting directions composed on a tiny piece of paper. So many numbers and mathematics so difficult. So tired.

My eyes snapped open at 8:30 and I headed to Midtown for a hair and makeup test at 10 a.m. Certain of the bigger designers will pay models they aren’t using in their shows significant sums of money (sums of money more significant, in fact, than smaller designers pay the models they are using in their shows) simply for the use of their hair and skin a few days out from the runway. The team has at you, plays around with various looks, and then you try on some of the clothes to test how it all meshes. It’s basically being paid to play dress-up, only with more crud in your hair.

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This took four hours to achieve. I look like a black-eyed triangle-headed alien who gets her hair done either with or by Yulia Tymoshenko, except mine are five-stranded plaits, not three. Quite becoming, you must agree! Astoundingly, the hair team was the same Cockney-accented gay comedy crew who had me in stitches in Paris last season when they gave me a giant teased globe of interwoven curls. “Do you mind me putting goop in your hair, love?” leered the one with the hat as he squirted a pile of translucent styling cream into his palm.

“I think she likes it when you put goop in her hair, yeh,” replied the one in the t-shirt.

“Just a bit of protein, love, won’t hurt ya!”

“Comes right out with a wash.”

And then they set to work.

When they were all done, of course the man in charge of the rolling suitcase of products had packed up and ran off to a shoot with the powder shampoo that would have gone some way to relieving my locks of their solid, wet, dank film. And of course Mr. Hat and Mr. T-Shirt immediately turned and said to each other, “Blimey, today’s products were nas-ty.”

“Nasty indeed.”

“Nice enough guy but I’d never use that if I had a choice.”

“If I had a choice, yeh.”

The makeup artist’s assistant thrust a fistful of wipes at me and said, “Will this do?”

I nodded gamely. I had another three castings. So I took off the makeup as best as I could, then picked the navy-blue sleep out of the corners of my eyes with my pinkie, and persuaded the wiseacres to make the best of the situation and give me a nice, sleek ponytail. Lunch had just arrived, so I grabbed a bowl of dill and squash soup and some bread, and I was on my way.