Jenna’s Model Life

Most of the time, my relentless perusal of Facebook is wholly unsatisfying: no matter how many times I reload, nobody’s played any Scrabulous moves, nobody’s had any gossipy relationship-status changes, nobody’s made their profile picture anything I haven’t seen before. And I still have no new messages. Sigh.

But just occasionally, you find some piece of friend news that’s truly startling. In between the ridiculous wallposts and Notes that refer to events I wasn’t around to witness and today’s round of paid Facebook spam I spot: So-and-so attended Dudley Benson National Tour. What?

Dudley I remember mainly as the guy who turned me on to Björk — he was a funny, shy, dorky, theatre-buddy high school friend I last saw in 2002 — and my jaw dropped when I learned he has put out an album of songs that might be labeled chamber pop. It involves recorder ensembles and harmoniums and church acoustics. And Dudley is really, really good. Like so good that by the time he got around to making his second EP, he was already attracting the remixing talents of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, off the back of opening for them in New Zealand. I’m embarrassed that I had no idea he was even making music, let alone had been earning favourable reviews in the hip New Zealand magazines I used to pore over since 2006.

This story has so much to love. Dudley Benson has a beautiful, pure voice; he was first encouraged to sing by a headmistress named Mrs. Winnicott; he grew up on a goat farm on the Port Hills; idiots at Christ’s College bullied him; his favourite book is Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. I found an interview where he says things like “dedication to the point of obsession really makes me horny.” As explicated by his blog, Dudley’s songs reference New Zealand historical arcana like Christchurch’s willows — grown from cuttings of those at Napoleon’s grave site — and the hanged baby farmer Minnie Dean. And on the eve of his tour, he made the national newsmagazine, Campbell Live (for the appearance, Dudley wore a blazer with elaborate epaulettes, walk shorts, and Roman sandals). All of which reinforces my nostalgic preference for believing that in New Zealand, all is right with the world.

He’s even gotten my friend Ed Lust to direct one of his music videos:

I love his Postal-Service-goes-to-church-with-Nick-Drake kind of sound.

This is why Peter is a superplusgreat boyfriend:

I’m touched.

This week, I sold the lovely desk that got me through college. In the process of disengaging its drawers for easy moving, Truman hopped in a drawer cavity and made himself at home.

Think I can resist the promise of Hong Van Grass Jelly Drink With Honey? Think again. (Alleged) Ingredients: Water, Grass Jelly, Cane Sugar, Corn Starch, Honey. True to its advertised appearance, the drink looked like ink, was full of tapioca pearls (or jelly globs?), and was also quite tasty.

Especially so when paired with a $2.50 sandwich from Vietnam (awning motto: SMOOTHNESS ABOVE ALL ELSE) on Broadway. When I worked in North Beach, I went here for lunch all the time — partly because it was the cheapest thing around, though admittedly a skimpier option than Chef Jia’s $5.25 lunch combo (with hot and sour soup!) and I was almost as destitute then as I am now, partly because these are some of the best Vietnamese sandwiches I’ve had in San Francisco. Right up there with the fish balls sandwich at Yucatasia in the Mission.

San Francisco beaches? Not for pussies.

That’s right, Southern California. You can keep your “sand” and your “sunshine” — I choose fog! I choose a giant craggy pile of rocks! This, motherfuckers, is a real coastline.

In which Jenna goes meta

“We’ve been really looking forward to meeting you,” said the voice on the phone. “We read your blog. That’s partly why we picked you.”

I was talking to a stranger in an unfamiliar city and I was hearing precisely the words a person who lives in fear of getting dooced dreads most. I’d been in Miami long enough to find a credit-card-friendly cab, arrive at the hotel, and lay my swimsuit and a book out hopefully on the bed. And now some stylist was freaking me out with the powers of Google.

“Really?” I replied. “Uh, you couldn’t get Elyse, or what?”

The stylist sounded hurt. “No, we just thought you’d be fun to work with.”

I made some lame comment about hoping nothing in our shoot would inspire me to type a lengthy online harangue. Immediately I thought, what the hell am I doing? Why would I advertise to a client that I sometimes write lengthy online harangues? After stumbling through the thicket of my sentence for a minute, I shut up, and the stylist and I made arrangements to meet for a fitting in the evening. I shook my head, put on my togs and went to the pool, since the hotel didn’t have a beach so much as a rock-and-concrete shore.

By the time the sun had gone down and I’d absorbed some Didion, I felt I could trust myself again to meet some strangers and not immediately fork up my own foot. The stylist, Gabriel, introduced me to his friends — a vintage collector named Keni Valenti, and a Korean-American designer named Min. Keni Valenti frequently refers to himself in the third person; He referred to Min as “the Dragon Lady.” This was all right mainly because Min referred to herself as the Yellow Bitch. We soon figured out that my girl, Zosia the Amazing Pole, had recently shot Min’s look book in New York City, then Keni Valenti mistook the bouclé-and-braid minidress I took about three months to plaid-match two years ago for real Chanel (it was getting dark out), and then we all drank some white wine and became good friends.

When Gabriel and the photographer, Toni (who was also Min’s boyfriend), had finished their work for the day, we all headed to a Chilean restaurant for a great feed. Raw fish in lime! Yuca frita! Agua fresca! Peep my yellow spicy calamari/fish/shrimp/mussels extravaganza:

I had totally already sucked up a third of my dish before I remembered I would be wanting to commemorate the meal later. Weird coincidence: I’ve used those same plates at home since my middle year of college.

“Are you blogging this? Will you write about this? Are you taking mental notes?” Gabriel asked. “Find me a boyfriend on your blog. No, don’t put that.” I moved to take his picture, and he hid behind a menu and changed the subject to how he had always wanted to be an artist, and how grad school still beckoned. I talked about my own plans for an M.F.A., and asked about the concept for the next days’ shoots. “Fashion is obsessed with this idea of the woman perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Gabriel responded, between bites of ceviche. “Her makeup is bedraggled, her dress is askew, her pose is awkward, she’s running away, her eyes are desparate. I wonder why it is we see these kinds of images again and again in editorials. Anyway. That’s sort of what we’ll be doing Thursday.”

“And, Wednesday, we shoot…swimwear,” I said. I had been dreading the swimwear. Models are not supposed to dread: We’re supposed to wear the dead animal, not let our asses get in the way of the designer’s needle, smoke the cigarette, look orgasmic and climb the rock. But I had a knot in my stomach, because I am not your typical swimwear girl. “You do realise,” I continued, “that I have the chest of a 12-year-old boy, and that being raised melanin-free in a country directly beneath the hole in the ozone has given me a vampiric fear of the sun? I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m kind of pasty.”

“Oh, that’s why we wanted you! I have this whole Rudy Gernreich thing planned. Lots of acid colours, bright suits, sunglasses, and kind of Surrealist backgrounds. Art Deco pastels and big plastic jewelry. It’ll be great.”

Just then, someone across the table mentioned Ohio as a great place to buy mid-century modern, Keni Valenti told another story about the time Bergdorf’s bought his line, Min explained how Zosia worked her butt off to finish the look book shoot on schedule, even neglecting to pee until the last frame was captured, Toni laughed, and the Colombian to my left checked his BlackBerry. We all piled in a rented truck to drop off Keni Valenti and head back to the hotel. I slept soundly until my 7 a.m. call.

The worst part of this profession? Sometimes when one goes to shoot swimwear in Miami in February, one awakens to a 50°F/10°C day, a day with thunderstorms, a day where Biscayne Bay, as someone pointed out, “looks like the North Sea.” The wind was so high the hotel sent minions out to bring in the sun shades, which were cracking like whips in the longshore breezes.

We persevered. “Don’t worry about shivering,” Toni said kindly. “I’m using a very fast shutter speed.”

Dinner was consumed at a charming restaurant called Puerto Sagua, where all the waiters were old, dignified, reedy Cubans wearing bow-ties and short-sleeved white shirts. I took a vegetarian holiday to eat my first Cuban sandwich (verdict: Clearly, someone mistranslated Homer. Pork is the food of the Gods.) And they had fish soup and home-made caramel flan! Between the restorative meal, and the forty-five minutes I spent reheating in the hotel steam room and sauna, my internal temperature felt pretty much returned to normal.

The next morning, I awoke to 70-degree sunshine, continental breakfast with fresh-squeezed OJ and pain au chocolat, and a makeup artist who not only asked me about my skin type so he could plan his product usage accordingly, but who actually had me sit down for a mini-facial before setting to work with the rouge. Man was quick and error-free with false lash glue, too. And he gave me a killer brow shape! It was love.

We were doing a 12-page edit for a Spanish magazine, which involved lots of summery clothing and many large accessories (think 4-8 pinching bangles and rings on each hand). Marks were left.

There were three male models, and one other girl. Two of the male models were Brazilians who spent most of the day talking to each other in Portuguese and complaining about the cold (I was all, “Bitches? Yesterday I shot swimwear.”) The girl was a really sweet Canadian giantess with size 6.5 feet.

Here are the Brazilians, huddling against the “cold” at lunchtime.

The third male model immediately did three things that pissed me off. Firstly, he hugged me — close — upon being introduced. I am not a touchy-feely type; Gabriel must’ve seen my expression over the lumbering hulk’s shoulder, because he started laughing.

Secondly, he said he was from Croatia. Even as his American accent was giving me pause, I found myself telling him all about my good friend who spent a summer learning Serbo-Croatian and traveling through the country, and how I used to ice cakes with a super sweet Zagrebian named Mirjana at a supermarket in Minnesota, and how I’d always wanted to go to Croatia, before finally he sheepishly admitted that he had been raised since toddlerhood in Detroit. I realise national identity is a complex thing and I hate to be prescriptive. But I think it’s far fairer and more accurate to claim the country of your acculturation, rather than the location of your birth, as yours in the truest sense. I happen to have been born in the U.S., but when people ask me where I’m from, they mean, Why do you talk like that? And the answer is New Zealand. In my book, the “Croat” was starting to seem dangerously like those legless Americans who’re suddenly all shamrocks and leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day (but who would probably get thrown out of a bar for ordering an Irish Car Bomb or some shit if they ever went to Dublin).

Thirdly, the “Croat” then began bragging about being a wealthy lady’s rentboy. He claimed she gave him three cars for his services. I’m guessing the dude also has a MySpace page loaded with putative club hits, for reporters to “uncover” when the time comes and the divorce proceedings begin.

Before the day was over, this guy had promised to get me an agency in Chicago (”$2,00o daily rates, and it’s all direct-bookings, no need to do anything but fly in for the job,”) taken care to flex his pectorals in my and the other girl model’s direction, and, in a move straight out of The Game for primary schoolers, “accidentally” splashed me while crashing through the pool. It was not hard to pull off the on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown face with this loser around.

But weirdest and most mystifyingly gross of all, the “Croat” took a picture of himself. With my camera. In Gabriel’s room, where we’d been doing the dressing and accessorising. While I was off working with the hothouse-flower Brazilian twins, the “Croat” was fucking around with my goddamn camera, leaving me a present. Do you think if he’d dropped it he would’ve owned up? Fat chance. Do they not teach the kindergarten rule — don’t touch it if it isn’t yours — in Motown? When I uploaded the day’s pictures, long after the “Croat” had hustled off the set, I found one of him, shirtless, lounging in a hotel bathrobe, making bedroom eyes at me.

I just about retched.

Now I’m faced with two choices: Post the picture (thereby potentially feeding the overweening ego of this creep and validating his intentions in taking it), or don’t post it (thereby failing to take a plum opportunity to ridicule this crazed whore).

When I hung out with Gabriel in Los Angeles, I told him what the “Croat” had done.

“No way!” he laughed. “Is it nude? Is it hot?”

“No,” I said. “He’s washed-out because of the flash, it has that obvious self-taken, distorted look where you get a little too much chin, and he looks kind of sleepy. It’s not sexy at all.”

“Damn. I thought he was kind of cute.”

“Gabriel!”

“I would post it. Post it so I can grab it for my own purposes.”

I asked Peter.

“How did he get your camera in a hotel room? Did he steal it? I wouldn’t post it. You are so above that.”

“Am I?”

“We have a saying in Iowa. Don’t ever wrestle with a pig: You get dirty, and the pig likes it.”

“Yeah…”

“Are you gonna blog about this? Blog about deliberating over whether or not to post the picture. I’ll let you quote my pig thing.”

“I was going to anyway.”

“Only say I said ’sully.’ As long as it means the same thing, right?”

“Sullied by the pig. Got it.”

I’m tantalised. I couldn’t bear it if I accidentally flattered this camera-nicking jerk. But the picture is so funny.

I can’t decide what to do.

(This photo by Nikos Laub.)

Los Angeles, it’s been great getting to know you. For a non-driver, you treated me well, even if certain of your carbound yokels honked and made unnecessarily pointed swerves as I traveled your bike lanes. I particularly enjoyed your tar pits, art, near-New-Zealand-grade beaches, climate, and doormen. Thank you also for allowing me to enjoy your sunshine while still preserving my blinds-passersby pallor. That was tops.

Los Angeles, you were lots of fun. But I’m gone now — back to cooler, NorCal climes. And, Mum: Though I was traveling on the Ides of March, I did eat breakfast with a Unitarian minister on his way to speak at a large Orange County war protest. I’ll make a point of joining a march or a vigil as soon as I can. It is saddening to think that the first Iraq war protest I participated in was a full five years ago, in Geneva. My friends and I (and, well, thousands of other people) bunked off from work and school and walked to Place Voltaire. It was exhilerating, and, I believed at the time, important. It’s difficult and frustrating to still be in the same position, half a decade on. What can I say? Don’t vote for the guy who wants a new 100 years war.

I have somewhat of an LA blog-hangover to work through. Check back for pictures and thoughts on the Museum of Jurassic Technology, skeevy male models, and my derelict financial situation. (I have go-sees with some large commercial affairs this week in SF: Cross your fingers.)

Being a model is a lot like this:

Fig. 1: Photographer.

And like this:

Fig. 2: Makeup artist.

And this:

Fig. 3: Hairstylist.

It’s hot tools being waved near sensitive body parts, it’s the sensation of brushes on your eyelid skin, it’s hair pulling, it’s semi-public semi-nudity and the contortions of posing. But mostly it’s being pointed at, and people looking at you, but at the same time, not really.

The upside? You get to become extraordinary versions of yourself for brief periods of time. It’s like being Cindy Sherman, except you’re getting paid (and you’re not making the trite gender commentary).

Tuesday I shot at Matador Beach in Malibu. I worried a lot about rattlesnakes, but didn’t see any. The magazine was Greek, so everyone had impressive, storied names: the photographer was Thanasis and — even better — the stylist was called Iphigenia.

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Iphigenia made gladiator sandals by hand. So I liked her immediately. At the end of the shoot, Iphigenia’s sandals were so universally complimented that she was moved to offer them to the three of us models as gifts. I’ve been wearing them daily since.

It was one long day. The first picture in my camera is of the sunrise, looking down Hollywood Blvd., just before I went inside the Roosevelt Hotel to meet the team. The last is the the sunset, which came 14 hours later, just as we were returning to the city. In between, the team, the two other models, and I completed eight shots. (As editorials go, this is not a breakneck pace. My 13-year-old room-mate, for instance, shot 28 looks in four hours this morning. But I can respect a perfectionist when I meet one.)

Since it was a beach, we had beach hair: Beach hair, like makeup tips that involve putting lipgloss anywhere but your lips, and “easy up-dos” that take two years of hair school to pull off, is a thing that exists only inside the pages of fashion magazines, because if you actually saw someone with a scraggly troll mop sauntering down the beach, you’d find it discomfiting.

This is Rachael, one of my co-models. She rocked.

Thanasis was the kind of photographer who would try each picture various ways. Shooting close-in with a regular lens, shooting from 100 yards away with a long, ash grey telephoto; from a vantage on top of a rock, from the bottom of a wooden staircase; with his subject standing in front of rocks, in front of surf, or on a private beach patronised by only two shirtless high school boys, whose game of catch self-consciously arced closer and closer to the photo’s range with every coy toss. Whenever the boys got too close, Thanasis would stop shooting, puff out his lips, and shield his camera from the sun to inspect the frames so far. The boys would slowly slink back, finding a fencepost or a beach towel suddenly compelling.

Iphigenia stood slightly behind Thanasis, miming instructions when the wind or the distance or the language barrier stood in the way of oral communications. She would twist and turn in one-legged arabesques, swinging her arms as though twirling invisible scarves through the air. Rachael and I copied her, our sundresses billowing in the wind.

Then Thanasis frowned and came running over. “You are moving your arms too much,” he said. “You need to be like, the things, they are like the witches? But good? How do you say — fairies.”

“Cool. Shakespeare,” said Rachael.

Thanasis nodded. “Yes. Fairy. And sexy, but no lesbian.”

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Sometimes Thanasis and Iphigenia found the best picture on top of a rock.

On the leg of the third model, peeking out of the hemline of one of the briefer numbers, was a vicious scar. I have a few scars myself — my worst job was selling knives; I quit the day the Petite Chef took an 8-stitch slice out of my left forearm — and I tend to ask people about theirs. (I try not to be all creepy, Kate-Winslet-in-Heavenly-Creatures about it, but scars have stories.)

“Oh, a boyfriend — an ex boyfriend — did that to me,” the model said matter-of-factly. “I was riding in the car with him, and I asked him a question and he wanted me to shut up. So he screamed at me and then he stabbed me. You know.” She paused. “You think you’re in love, you’re young, you believe it when they say they’re sorry.”

The makeup artist, Marissa, put a little foundation on the model’s thigh, and then she clambered up a rock to take the picture.

Today KfQ and I booked the same job, a magazine shooting three future covers in one day. Here she is, curled up like a pretzel before the start of her shoot.

The makeup artist put five different unguents on my face before even starting with the paints. She leaned in with beta-hydroxy to brighten my skin, slathered Crème de la Mer, dabbed eye cream, smoothed on pore minimizer, and finally covered my face with a putty-coloured primer. (Always a good sign: Face spackle cements on the foundation like none other.)

“How long have you had this broken capillary on your cheek?” she asked while wielding an egg-shaped sponge near my left eye. Too long, I thought to myself, then explained that I first noticed it after the semester I took 18 credit hours and held two part-time jobs and read a bunch of novels I no longer remember and slept around 5 (non-continuous) hours, at least most days. I rather wish it were what a hobo I met once called “wine burn,” from some hardcore partying of my youth.

Her crack at me (or, perhaps: her persnickety level of observance) notwithstanding, the woman made me look and feel like a goddess. I spent all day touching my face in wonder and trying to surreptitiously catch my reflection on glass surfaces. Anything to revel in the illusion of having ridiculously good skin. I’m writing this now, 12 hours after her first brushstrokes, and although the lipstick is of course gone, nothing she applied to my face has faded, drooped, melted, shifted or settled. As far as I’m concerned the woman should get a medal.

My mother agent just sent me a high-res scan of the sunglasses editorial from Glamour Italia.

Alongside my face is the caption, “JENNA: Neozelandese, vive tra Londra e Parigi. La sua passione è scrivere, tanto che ha anche un blog su internet. Il suo look è bon ton ma sempre con un tocco second hand. Gli occhiali? Li sceglie macro.”

I remember the interview wherein these nuggets were gleaned — it was at the end of a long shoot, in the middle of a transit strike, and while Eduardo, the extremely sweet fashion editor questioned me in English, he interpreted my answers in real-time for the benefit of a scribe holed up at Glamour Italia HQ, whom he joined on the telephone in simultaneity. It was kind of confusing to be talking to a person who, as soon as I opened my mouth, would begin talking into the phone line in another language, pausing when I paused, and, more worrisome still, generally continuing on long after I’d closed my mouth. And I was pretty sure the whole time that Eduardo was feeding the scribe words I was not exactly saying — I for instance do not wear those fly-eye grandma sceglie macro I think I’m endorsing in print here — but I couldn’t be sure since I don’t speak Italian.

I gather from the above that I’m a Kiwi [true] who splits her time between London [never set foot there] and Paris [true at the time], whose passion is writing [true], and who keeps a blog on the Internet [doesn't everyone?]. I have a look that is something [??] and something [??] and secondhand [guilty as charged]. And my fave sunnies? Big ones [no dice].

Is this the jist, Italianophones?

Check out this month’s Skateboard Mag to see a fantabulous double-page spread of Peter doing the same trick in the same spot on four different occasions spread over the last year we lived in Iowa City. Peter’s skate photographer friend Sam shot it and wrote the accompanying text.

I think it’s funny that Peter wears so much more clothing in Summer than in Spring.

I’ve been asking all the Angelenos I know where all the good thrift stores are in L.A. I know they’re down here; everyone says so, and plus my buddy who works at Aardvarks in San Francisco confirmed to me privately that they get their wares shipped in direct from Los Angeles in massive weekly boxloads. While the Haight is far from the best place to get good, cheap, secondhand stuff in the Bay Area, this is still an instructive anecdote. I’ve been asking all the Angelenos I know where all the good thrift stores are; all the Angelenos I know just shrug, and say, “You know, they’re around. Maybe you should check out the Goodwill on La Brea, or something.”

Withholding bastards.

Today I finagled a lift to the Rose Bowl, which is thankfully for me perhaps the worst-kept secret of Los Angeles-area secondhand. My escort, Brian, a set designer, ferried us to Pasadena by 8:45 a.m. I gave him strict instructions not to let me buy anything I couldn’t fit in my tote bag or pay for with the money I’d allowed myself. I pointed to a boudoirish brass bedframe for emphasis.

“Brian,” I said, “that would be an example of a thing you cannot, under any circumstances, let me buy.”

He nodded gamely and we set to our task: Make the rounds of the vendors cramming the sweltering tarmac of the gigantesque stadium’s carpark, and return to L.A., where I had a fitting, by noon.

To enter the Rose Bowl, you must first eat a hearty breakfast while you wait on your misty apartment stoop, thumbing Joan Didion and avoiding your neighbour’s fag smoke.

Then, you will travel on the freeway to Pasadena, line up early in the morning on the first Sunday of the month, and receive an entry ticket and a $2 bill in exchange for your proferred tenner.

Then you must pass the man in the patriotic sequined vest who rides the penny farthing.

Say hello to the tanned lady in pink.

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Ignore the hunks of meat on the barbecue, for you have stalls to attend to.

They sell scissors!

And magnifying glasses!

And faux road signs, perfect for someone’s teenaged bedroom.

More interesting are the board games based on notoriously bloody WWII battles.

Classic, gendered reading selections.

Shoes which you will covet, but which shall be three sizes too small.

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A choice selection of vintage motorcycle porn.

A child’s bike, with banana seat.

Too many red Chucks.

1960s comics which express the culture’s mistrust of women’s liberation. (Approved by the Comics Code Authority.)

Cigarette packets and matchbooks with naked ladies on them.

And many, many stalls filled to bursting with cheap old clothes. I’m currently wearing my new $10 teal terry cloth sundress, and Brian snapped this picture of me as we left the grounds, wearing a new fake Hermès scarf covered in Native American designs with legends like “Les Indiens s’enfuient dans les montagnes.”

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(This photo by Brian McSherry.)

There was also a stall which sold nothing but rack upon rack of cashmere sweaters for $5 a pop. I didn’t take a picture but I did get a sweater.

My personal motto is that one never regrets buying cashmere. At least, I never have.

I have now procured the kick-arse red bicycle I rode yesterday, on loan from my friend Mark, for a period of one week. LA is perfect for cycling: The weather is great, it’s nice and flat, and there are bike lanes to boot. If you see me out and about, enjoying this sweet machine’s velvet-smooth ride, looking like I just stepped out of an ad for an athletic wear company where the concept was “Model riding bike to castings dressed in weird outfit with blue helmet hauling red backpack stuffed with portfolio and heels,” uh, say Hi. Or just don’t run me over. I’d appreciate that.

KfQ and I came to IHOP on Wilshire for a bottomless coffee and dessert this afternoon.

Who knew they had wifi? We’ve been sitting here for two hours, relaxing in the air conditioning and getting our Internet fix.

It’s my day off, so I didn’t flat iron the mane. And bike riding requires sustenance, yo. Gotta keep my strength up. Model hard!

Thursday I shot here:

It was very pretty. The hills — recently burned, from what I understand — were uproariously green. The place was an old ranch, still named for its original owners, the Gillettes (of the safety razor fame). A variety of rangers stopped by to ask us what we were doing, and took turns explaining the now-state park’s unusual history — its owners have included a VP of MGM and the Catholic church; at various times it was a Buddhist temple, a children’s camp, and an ESOL school. California bought it for $35 million last year.

It was only a test shoot, but the photographer rocked (despite/because of being 7 months pregnant? I can only imagine the hormones she was surfing; I was getting tired by the tenth look, but as fast as I could change, she could have the next shot set and lit and ready and waiting. Edit, March 12: Not only was she fast on the day, but I just noticed the pictures are on her site — and the test is not even her most recently-posted work. I’m on the second half of page one and the first half of two). The stylist had a trunk full of treasures, the hair and makeup artists were talented, and the male model was from Iowa. Small world, etc.

The night before, the agency had only warned me that I’d be doing a test with a sweet photographer who was going to get some good shots, and that I should go to her house at 8 a.m.

I wondered a little at the early call-time, but between that and the instruction to bring a sack o’ clothes (”Your favourite jeans, any other jeans, sandals, heels, dresses, shirts, jackets, scarves and, you know, other things,” was the helpful list I was working off), I figured the shoot would be the usual kind of test — in a studio/living room, with minimal makeup and only a few looks. The sweetener: I made plans to meet my new model bud Karen from Queens at 2 p.m. at the beach. (Six hours, for a test, I thought was generous.) The reality: My feet didn’t touch my doorstep again until 7:30 that night.

The sunset was really beautiful that night, however.

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Naturally, thwarted in our beach-bum desires, Karen from Queens and I decided to go out to some cheesy club where the doormen were snotty and everyone wore too many sequins (in our defense, they had an open bar). We crossed the street to a much better party once we were sufficiently soused, and immediately KfQ clapped eyes on a hot DJ and spent the rest of the night laughing at his jokes while I danced with my friend Mark and this dude who does web design development. We also talked RSS feeds and domain names.

The next day, despite the successful shoot and great night out, I was pining, pining badly, for some beach action. My agency called to inform me that my Friday job had been postponed — the foreign magazine I booked an editorial with has all its clothing stuck in customs, and they won’t be able to shoot me until next Tuesday.

I had one of those clouds-parting, ethereal music, lightbulb-in-a-thought-bubble moments: Three Friday morning castings + no afternoon job = Jenna’s butt on some sand with lots of SPF 45 and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly or maybe The White Album (’cause it is LA, you know. Last week I read Miami in Miami. I’m starting to like this match-my-Didion-to-my-city thing. On a related local lit note: I picked up a copy of Less Than Zero at a friend’s place yesterday and tore through the first fifteen pages and am currently wondering what happens to Clay and what the deal is with Muriel. Peter: Everything silly I’ve ever said about Bret Easton Ellis based on what I thought I thought about him is wrong. No further explanation for the freakish fandom which enabled you to slog through even Lunar Park is needed).

Problem: Transportation. Solution: Bikes! I rode the 10 miles to Santa Monica on a borrowed lipstick-red beast courtesy of my friend Mark. He didn’t think I could do it. And, now, from the safety of this blog, I will admit that I was pretty demoralised when we pulled up to a stop after having been riding for what seemed like ages, and he informed me we were perhaps 45% of the way there. My crest fell a little just then. But I tried not to let on, and we made it in the end. My camera was tucked into the folds of my beach towel, inside my tote, in Mark’s bike basket, so I’m afraid I have no action pics of our odyssey. But it was intense and fun and well worth it.

We arrived just as the sun was setting, so all we did was splash around and dig our tired, crampy feet into the sand. Bliss.

Since I was supposed to be in LA’s incomparable, two-zip-code Koreatown for some BBQ and kimchi at 7:30, and it was already 6, we immediately made for a deli to grab some water. Mark decided to sabotage my dinner by buying three kinds of candy, the cheeky bugger.

We staggered onto the bus in a tired fug, the sugar just beginning to kick in while the lactic acid still buzzed towards our extremities. The woman diagonally across from me was slumped over her armrest, dead to the world, which was what I (and my aching thighs) most truly desired at that moment. Check my dazed expression.

(This photo by Mark Hunter.)

I made it to dinner, in a little hole-in-the-wall tucked around the back end of a shady-looking strip mall, and even though I’ve showered, I think garlic stench is still emanating from my pores. (Which is to say, the meal was excellent.) I could barely keep up with the conversation, I was so beat, but I think I made plans to go to the Rose Bowl flea market in Pasadena and to tag along with a new friend on an afternoon thrifting trip later this week, if I’m not working.

How tired was I, exactly, after restive sleep, a night of partying, long work hours, and a 16 km bike ride? There’s a kind of Korean beer called Hite. There were several forties of Hite on our table at the hole-in-the-wall behind the shady strip mall. I gathered that we were sharing the Hite. Unsure whether the Hite was soju, or something else that would put me to forehead-on-table, drooling, snoring, unshakable, blissed-out sleep if I got within striking distance of it, I asked my stylist friend Gabriel what Hite was.

Gabriel said, deadpan, “That’s Shere Hite’s new beer. Hite Beer. It’s delicious. Have some.”

I nodded vaguely and said, “Oh, really? That’s cool.”

Gabriel gave me a funny look. That’s how tired I was: I was willing to believe Shere Hite had a namesake beverage, popular in Korean restaurants.

Later, after much Hite and lettuce-wrapped beanpasted beef was consumed by the table, Gabriel and his assistant sang songs from The Sound of Music. Something about liking to stay but it being time to go to bed, and 16-year-olds going on 17 needing someone older and wiser, telling them what to do. I nodded along like a zombie.

I should have gone home to bed myself at that point, but I went to meet some friends at a bar instead, and fulfill my longest-standing LA commitment, the very first gathering I scheduled after I booked my flight. I set out from my apartment and walked to the nearest major road, expecting to catch a cab there. It took me 1.5 miles to hail one, and he wouldn’t take my credit card. So I walked the rest of the way. Only two of my friends were still at the bar by the time I arrived, and I was glad I had already bailed on the double-booked party I thought I might also go to.

The friends drank, I tried to think energetic thoughts and perk up with refreshing LA water, and then I went home and got my first decent night’s sleep in the model’s apartment.