ROCK CHICK GOES ROGUE 3: LAUREN BACALL OR CHARLOTTE RAMPLING? OR TOO FAT??

I learn to snooty walk!

(read part 2 of ROCK CHICK GOES ROGUE: HOW I MET MY HUSBAND HERE)

TOO FAT!

One day, while riding the bus to go for a walk on the beach, a middle-aged man approached me and asked whether I was a model. He was English, he told me he was a photographer, and asked whether I’d be interested in doing a photoshoot for a brand of English knitwear, because one of the models that had been booked had just dropped out, and I’d be perfect for the brief. He said I looked like a mix between Lauren Bacall and Charlotte Rampling, and he gave me his card. The shoot would be taking place the following weekend, with the designer, a makeup artist, a hairdresser, and a stylist.

I was flattered, but a little wary, too. He gave me the name and phone number of the designer and the other model and encouraged me to call them. The shoot wouldn’t pay much, but I’d get copies of the photographs, and one of the outfits.

I called the designer and everything checked out, so I accepted, and a few days later I was whisked off to a beautiful hotel up in Napa Valley surrounded by vineyards, where I had my hair and makeup done, and spent the day having photos taken with a beautiful Chinese model who had loads of experience and who was signed to one of the bigger modeling agencies in the Bay Area. I floated through the day as though in a dream. Everyone was friendly, everyone was encouraging.

The photos were great, the designer was thrilled, and the photographer, a real gentleman, suggested we do a test shoot together so that I could approach modelling agencies with a wider range of photos. A few days later I went to his apartment with some clothes and makeup and spent several hours playing supermodel in front of his camera.

Once again, the photos were good. But the little money I’d saved while working at the law firm was disappearing fast, so having several photos printed was an issue. I couldn’t just take them to a corner photoprint shop; they’d been shot  on fancy, high-resolution film, so needed to be developed in a high-end photo lab, and they would need retouching, and it all cost a lot of money that I didn’t really have. Nevertheless, I splurged and had a few of them developed. Then I looked up the main San Francisco modelling agencies and tried my luck.

Well, I was too old, and too fat. “But we love your look, so lose a little weight and come back to see us,” one of the bigger agencies said.

I was 24, and most of the girls in their books were between 16 and 22. Fair enough. But too fat?! Since arriving in San Francisco, I’d been living on avocados and tomatoes. My shoulder blades stuck out like coat hangers, my ribs and hip bones were scary-looking, and my arms and legs resembled sticks. But maybe quitting avocadoes might further enhance my cheekbones?

I didn’t quit avocadoes. I ended up signing with a smaller agency, where everyone was lovely, but nobody was very professional. Nevertheless, they were a fun team, and held classes once or twice a week where they taught that haughty model walk, so I went along to practise walking and stopping and turning and looking bored and snooty. Apparently, I was a little too swingy-hipped (I’m hypermobile!) so they made me snooty-walk over and over to George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ with a gorgeous black guy who always told hysterical jokes every time we sat down, and then the lady in charge would give us the evil eye for not paying proper attention. Anyway, although I went to a few model “go-sees” as they called them, I didn’t book much work, but I really enjoyed going to those classes. I met a good group of people, and it gave me something to do for a couple of hours a week. Now, decades later, I sometimes do the snooty walk-pose-turn-pose just for fun on those long, flat, moving walkways in airports!

Meanwhile, all was depressingly quiet on the rockstar front. Blaze went off to Marin County for days on end to do construction work, and Isaak sat sulking in our cruddy flat playing guitar, eating pizza and fending off rats. One day he said, “Merde.” He got up, packed his bag and his guitar, and flew back to Switzerland, never to be seen again.

When the mothers of some the younger models at the agency found out that I was now living mostly alone in an awful flat in the Tenderloin, they were horrified. One of the mothers, Nessy, who lived in an old house in the Mission district, said she had a two-roomed ground-floor apartment that Blaze and I were welcome to rent for a small amount of money, as long as we took care of its tiny back garden. We could move in immediately.

Nessy was a wonderful, salt-of-the-earth sort of person. I told Blaze about her offer, and he said he didn’t care one way of another, that he wouldn’t be back for a while, and that it was up to me.

So, I moved our stuff into Nessy’s flat. It was a funny little place, with vaulted, roughcast ceilings painted with gold sparkly paint. An archway divided the main room from the kitchen that led onto a pocket-sized nettle and bramble infested back garden that I never even began to take care of. While I felt far safer there than I ever had in the Tenderloin, the police did once stop me on my way back from the small Mexican grocery a few blocks away with my tomatoes, avocadoes and small loaf of bread. What are you doing out here? they wanted to know. I explained that I lived close by, and they were shocked and insisted on giving me a ride back to the flat, saying this area wasn’t safe for a young white girl to be wandering the streets. And that was the only time I ever rode in a police car!

READ THE NEXT EPISODE HERE!