Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

“Thank you!” I say, after snapping only one photo that I don’t even need to take a look at to regret wasting the film on. “We’ll be in touch with you if anything opens up.”

This is a lie.

We won’t be in touch with her or any of the seven duds before her.

Modeling is an underestimated profession.

People assume that models are all uneducated, dumb girls who just happened to get lucky not once in their life, but twice. The first being when they started developing nearly perfect features, and the second being when someone plucked them out of a crowd or an audition and said, “You’re a model now!”

But modeling is a lot like acting in that it requires a reserve of emotions. Ads especially are all about telling an entire story in just one single photo or one short, nearly timeless video that will evoke such emotion in consumers that they themselves feel compelled to buy whatever the advertisers are selling.

You can’t just show up to a shoot and put on a mask for that — especially not when it’s your frighteningly perfect face that the advertisers are wanting to showcase to move their products off the shelves they’re waiting to be sold from.

There’s got to be a real emotion that you can tap into, a sense memory, and convey in just one shot or just a few short seconds that will conjure that same feeling up from the bowels of a person’s soul and make them feel it too.

It’s an art.

And these girls I’ve seen today… well, let’s just say they’re not exactly artists.

“How many are left?” I ask Tony, as I beat my head against the fold-up table I’ve taken in and set up beside in a fold up chair.

“Just one,” he says.

“Lucky number nine…”

“Here’s hoping,” he replies as he scribbles some notes down onto a piece of paper.

“Can I just have two minutes to decompress before—”

“Number nine!” he shouts out toward the hallway. “Number nine! You’re up!”

“Guess not.”

However, the moment that I lay my eyes on the creature entering the studio of our workspace from the hallway leading to our offices and, past those, the lobby, I am suddenly quite satisfied with the fact that Simon has called her in as quickly as he has.

Because quite frankly, just laying my eyes upon this young woman— she’s certainly younger than me, anyway— makes me think that I almost don’t know how I’ve lived an entire 37 years without gazing upon something so exquisite as she is.

She’s got long brown hair, and caramel-colored skin, and just from what I can take away now, she has to be the single most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my entire life.

She’s just tall enough to make her body curve in all the right places, statuesque, but not Amazonian.

The apples of her cheeks are propped upward in perfect symmetrical position by the bones lying beneath her flesh, and her breasts— round and commanding as they are— are positioned at perfect height to reveal her hardened nipples beneath her sheer, white, modestly cut t-shirt.

Oh, how badly I want to photograph her in candid motion before she even knows I’m doing so.

As I’m beginning to feel the drool slide over my lips and threatening to spill onto the tabletop below, I’m forced to gather myself and restore my professionalism.

“Hi, I’m Brittany Berry,” she says in her meek, somehow melodic alto voice.

“Hi, Brittany…”

Christ, I can’t believe I’m tongue-tied. I’m usually always in such control of myself. But now I suddenly feel like I’m in one of those dreams where I get on stage to give a speech in middle school, and I suddenly realize I both don’t know the speech and forgot to wear any clothes to school.

“I’m gonna be honest,” she says, once I don’t say anything further, “I’ve never done this before in my life. In fact… I’ve never done anything like it at all.”

What I want to say is “me neither,” but I catch myself, because clearly I was thinking I hadn’t ever fallen in love at first sight before, while she’s thinking of something altogether different.

“Um, I see,” is all I can get out in time to save my near mistake.

Tony looks over at me as if I’ve lost my goddamn mind, which, by the way I’m bleating out nonsense, seems to not be so far off base from what’s actually happening.

“Omigod, are you as googly-eyed as a high schooler right now?” Tony whispers to me.

“Dude, shut up,” I tell him, as I shake off my nerves.

“So, uh, Brittany,” I go on. “How did you hear about us?”

“Probably from one of my marvelous online ads,” Justin says as he saunters into the room with his arms out to his sides as if he’s balancing himself on a tightrope.

The way he rolls his R’s when he says ‘marvelous’ makes me feel uncultured. Then again, most things gay guys do make me feel uncultured.