He had halfway-decent eyes and halfway-decent lips. The rest of him was a mess, for a male model at least. Walked in the same gait as Frankenstein’s monster, and had the same severe forehead. Wore a mathematically precise haircut too, positively rectangular, which was an insane decision considering his whole creepy aura.
He tries out like they all do. It’s in and out. Spin and smile, walk for me if you could. Yes, it’s a meat market, I’m fully aware. You think a guy can spend fifteen years in this business without knowing it’s shameful. There are levels to it. You don’t exactly enter with noble intentions, but you at least hope you can act with a degree of integrity, considering the circumstances. As time passes, you realise you’re reprehensible no matter what, and you stop caring.
Want to know the precise moment I stopped caring? Ten years ago, Paris Fashion Week. We’re recruiting for Balenciaga. My colleague, Hugo, he’s the other casting director. We’re set up in a conference room in a swish hotel. It’s this gigantic corridor of space, light flooding in through towering windows on either side. We’re hiring maybe five or six models, but the demand is one hundred times that. The queue wrapped its way around the whole building, then stretched out into grubbier territory, an underpass dotted with sleeping bags, pools of piss on the concrete. Hugo used to do this thing where he’d walk the length of the line, knowing they all knew who he was. Took selfies, exchanged Instagrams. He knew he had leverage and took advantage of it. These guys, they’d do anything for success. And Hugo was the guy to make them do it.
Cue eight hours of scowling and strutting. Everyone is beautiful, everyone is desperate. Many of the decisions were easy. Guys with tattoos, moustaches, hipster haircuts – these were easy nos. We needed blank canvases, these guys wanted to steal the show for themselves. But most guys are savvier than that. They fit the brief to such a brutal extent that once a few hours have passed, you can hardly even tell them apart. Your head becomes a wash of perfect cheekbones and manicured eyebrows. What you want is a paradox. You want someone who stands out but doesn’t stand out. Someone who makes a mark on your memory without stealing the show.
When we found the guy, it was obvious. He had greenish-blue eyes and hair like obsidian. He didn’t look like he’d been invented, not born. It’s hard to imagine someone who looked like that existing in any normal context. It’s like there was an aura around him that sucked everything in. Our attention, the light from the windows, it all concentrated on him, a black hole in the centre of the room. He was cagy when we questioned him about who he was and where he was from. Had some sort of ambiguous accent – German or Eastern European, it was hard to place. We didn’t care. We offered him the job right there and then. For the first time, we saw him grin with his mouth open. Something was a little off about his smile. A kind of severity. I didn’t know what it was then, but I guess I do now.
Next morning, Hugo turns up dead. They find him lying on his bed in a pool of blood. He bled out from the neck. Carotid arteries ripped right out of his flesh. There’s blood everywhere: on the ceiling, on the walls. No one conclusively knew what happened. I had my theories, but nothing provable. I knew what Hugo was like with the talent. How a flirtation turned into an ultimatum if he said it with the right degree of venom, the right length of pause.
But you know what’s especially fucked up? They found these tiny little puncture wounds all over his body. Four holes in an unbroken line. There were several on his neck, a few on his arms, even one or two on his hands. Each was so precise and symmetrical, it almost look machined.
Anyway, that’s the day I gave up on having a conscience. These guys, they’re every bit as vicious as us. Maybe even more so. What had happened? Hugo makes an advance, gets rejected and the model murders him in this supremely fucked up way? Don’t get me wrong, Hugo was a creep. But there’s a difference between being a creep and deserving that. There are many ugly emotions, but desperation is the ugliest, the ugliest by far.
Which is why, when faced with Frankenstein guy, I didn’t display much tact or show much mercy. You’re wasting my time, I told him. What makes you think you have a chance in this industry? Go to one of those midnight Rocky Horror screenings, you’d fit right in.
And I guess that was a mistake. Maybe it’s the sort of pitfall you can venture into in any line of work. Stick around long enough, accrue little grudges and prejudices, you’ll become bitter. Soon you’ll be liable to put your career at risk. Or even, in my case, put yourself in harm’s way.
Because I’d set out on this whole verbal tirade before I’d even let the guy speak. When I stopped to catch my breath, he didn’t look stunned or slighted. He looked like he’d heard it all before.
“I’ll confess I’m not looking my best,” he said, in an ambiguous accent. Halfway German, halfway Eastern European. “But I was hoping for a politer reception, especially considering it’s the second time we’ve met.” Then he smiled.
And this time, I really saw his teeth.