Confessions of a Model

-Simone Christian

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A girl pulls out a pack of cards.

The director is late. You tap your foot. Look around you at the people, the décor, your shoes. Did I wear the right shoes? You look at everyone else’s shoes – sneakers, boots, heels. You look down at your shoes – they’re alright. Maybe you should have worn something else, but they’re alright.

Shyly, the girl with the cards tells us what the game is about – the palm-sized box has creases and tears. She’s a waitress and she skipped a shift to be here.

“The director just needs ten more minutes.”

“The director just needs ten more minutes.”

“The director just needs ten more minutes.”

This is the industry. We wait. We wait for a faceless voice to join us from the comfort of his home on a different continent.

We wait.

We get to know strangers who wait with us. The waitress just finished her contract working on a yacht. The girl next to me is a Psychology student, and she came prepared with a book that lies in the crook of the couch as she listens to the rules of the game.

I sneak in a word with the student and confess that I left my book in the car because I thought this would be quick. We share a laugh.

You would think some animosity would transpire because we’re all vying for the same job, but this is hardly the case. When one of us gets called in, because the director has joined us finally, we give words of encouragement and genuine smiles.

We hear one another’s stories and what brought us here –

And by the end of the waiting period, you’re left hoping someone else more worthy gets the job.

Someone who needs it more than you do.

This is the industry.

You get called in. The faces are stoic. They drum out their instructions and you do your best to follow me – knowing your thirty second performance could pay for seven months of rent.

They thank you for coming in.

You say goodbye to faces you are not likely to see again – taking their secrets and dreams with you, divulged in the waiting period and during the game of cards.

You leave. The waitress already left. The Psychology student went in after you, her book lying abandoned in the furrow of the couch like an unsealed love letter.

This is the industry.

You meet people who are just like you. Mundane. Worried about the rent. Regretting the traffic you just sat through to get here, and the hooter-happy Uber driver you cut in front of at the intersection.

The façade of the industry disintegrates and the idea of shallow individuals becomes coloured-in with their stories – students, waitresses, accountants – all working other jobs.

What started with a girl pulling out a pack of cards, ended with modelesque caricatures lost and an unlikely fellowship found.