Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

Now we’re thirty-seven, with flecks of gray and silver appearing in our hair, and we’ve both shaped up to become pretty successful, attractive— albeit still single, and that’s very much by choice— men. The business, along with our friendship, is still going strong, and we’re doing our best to keep our stride amidst the pandemic.

Today’s shoot was our last one on the books for a few days, though, which is rare for us. Being that Tony and I are both voracious workaholics, we tend to overbook and probably have had more than one day off in a row since back when we first started. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a vacation in my adult life that wasn’t work-related, like for some exotic shoot in front of a European landscape.

After I break down my camera from the tripod and put it back in its bag, I pour over our datebook and look to see if there’s any possibility that we might have missed something we were supposed to be doing these next few days. No sign of that though.

“Stop stressing,” Tony says, as he comes over and slaps me on the back a bit harder than anyone else would. “It’s just a couple days off.”

“That would be fine if there was anything to do in the world besides stare at a blank white wall in my house. But there’s a quarantine. What are we supposed to do?”

“Watch Netflix,” he tells me with a shrug. “Read a book. Hell… write a book!”

I scoff.

“I don’t like being bored,” I tell him.

“That’s not why you’re really stressing out, and you know it.”

He’s right… at least partially.

“I don’t think the City of Angels is going to come knocking on your door in the middle of COVID-19,” he says. “At least not to take your money.”

“Our money,” I remind him, because he somehow keeps forgetting that half the unpaid taxes we owe the City of Los Angeles are his to pay.

It’s a little complicated, but more or less, we recently found out— right before the pandemic, in fact— that there was a licensing issue with our agency that resulted in an extra tax we were supposed to be paying until it was resolved. But until Los Angeles sent us a very stern letter in a very thick envelope telling us not only that our licensing issue was still an ongoing matter and subject to revocation without notice, but also that we now owed back taxes because of it. And we had had no idea about any of this.

Now more than ever, the struggle is on to find models who will work for next-to-nothing in order to make enough money from gigs with magazines and companies shooting advertisements to get us out of this hole we’ve fallen quite deep down inside the city with.

And somehow Tony— the man behind the actual business of our business, who also is the one with a business degree— does not seem to be taking this quite as seriously as I am. I don’t know how, either.

I mean… we could go to jail if we don’t take care of this.

“We’ll get them handled,” Tony reassures me. “No one is going to jail in a pandemic. I actually heard some cities are having to let people out of jail because of how unsafe the overcrowding is right now. It’s nuts.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask him.

“Bro… don’t start spiraling on me now, okay?” he says. “In fact, a really good use of our time while we have these few days off is to scout some talented, amateur models who are looking to work and willing to do so for experience and a small check.”

As an artist, I loathe when non-artists expect people to work for “experience.” Experience does not pay your light bill… especially during a pandemic. But he’s right. We are sort of cash poor right now. And he’s also right about utilizing this time to figure out how to find more models.

So, I take a breath before I finish packing up my equipment.

“What’s meant to be will be,” I repeat to myself as I practice my breathing.

And it will be… I hope.

“You wanna go grab drinks since we’ve got tomorrow off?” he asks me as he finally gets the remaining models out the door.

I just sort of give him a shrug. If we’re being honest, I don’t see how it could possibly be productive of us to sink our money into beer when we have to figure out how to budget for models at this point.

“Nah,” I tell him, although I’m remiss about it. A beer would be great right about now. “I think I’m gonna go home and start getting ahead on our talent search.”

“Justin!” Tony calls to our assistant across the studio.

The great thing about Justin is not only that he’s young and spry, but he’s also hyper-intelligent and a hard worker. On top of all that goodness, he’s also extremely gay, so we never have to worry about him acting inappropriately around the models.