And it was just as fabulous as you could
imagine!
My lover and I were in San Francisco when I saw her eyes
dance. I love her eyes, when they dance for me, but this
morning they danced over my shoulder. What on earth could she be
finding so mesmerising? I turned around, casually, and there,
sipping a cappuccino, was San Francisco’s dreamboat mayor Gavin
Newsom. His chestnut hair was slicked back without one strand out
of place. His mouth, pulled into the perpetual smirk of the
gorgeous, exhibited straight teeth white enough to light a boudoir.
His jaw was chiseled from marble. Goddamn him. He was beautiful and
I loathed him for it. His handsome, his beauty, had, almost
instantly, undone the arrogant je ne sais quois that I most usually
feel about myself. I find myself compelling. But confronted with
her dancing eyes and his unquestionable gorgeousness I felt weak. I
felt second tier. I felt I had lost my power.
I swallowed these feelings, agonisingly, and we went about our
days with little mention of Gavin Newsom. I set about building
myself up, internally, once again, and when he showed up in the
newspaper I undermined him by telling my lover that with those
looks and that political pedigree he was underperforming. He should
be President of the United States not mayor of California’s third
largest city.
Some time later, The Social Network came out and my
lover’s eyes danced at Armie Hammer. He was even more stunning than
Gavin Newsom, tall, patrician with the bluest blood and there was
nothing I could say to undermine him. Nothing. I was back to the
second tier. And I could no longer swallow these feelings.
Beauty is a son of a bitch. I could be good at many things, even
great, but without exceptional, noticeable, defined handsome I
would merely be a clanging gong. It all seemed so arbitrary. Talent
and wealth are mostly earned, even if one’s parents are Olympic
athletes. Beauty is given at birth. Dolled out by the gods.
Beauty certainly does not guarantee success. Many beautiful men
grind at Starbucks. But when rich, talented men take their lovers
to Starbucks their eyes, too, dance for the barista and their men
are relegated to the second tier, even if momentarily. And what
else is there besides being desired by all 100% of the time? Yes,
there is talent, there is wealth, there is beauty. And of these
three beauty is the greatest.
I had come to a definitive fork in the road and, as I saw it,
three paths lay before me. I could give up entirely and no longer
assume I was the greatest thing to ever walk the face of the earth.
I could become grossly self-deprecating. I could become beautiful.
I decided to become beautiful. And that meant I had to become a
male model. I would be beautiful because I was a model, not
necessarily a model because I was beautiful but this difference
would be purely academic.
As arrogant as I am, I am fully aware that I am not classic male
model material. I was born skinny, not thin, not trim. I was born
with eye the color of a dirty swimming pool on a cloudy day. I was
born not classic. Still, I am tall, I have hair, and I possess and
unshakable belief that all things are possible to him that
believeth. I sometimes even feel all my “shortcomings” might, if
honed, if bent just right, if captured by Terry Richardson himself,
might make me a very beautiful man. I sometimes feel I am the Big
Bang. A cataclysmic, once in history event of dirty eyed, crooked
nosed, tall tall awesome.
But how to become a male model? One very hot summer’s day, I
walked from Manhattan’s Meatpacking District toward the downtown
Ritz-Carlton. I was going to meet the owner of one of the most
respected male model agencies. I was going to get famous.
The Ritz-Carlton doorman eyed me as I drifted past him into the
cool of hackneyed decadence and the agent owner was waiting for me
at the bar. He had a kind but business-first face and he looked
over at me and I launched into my pitch.
“So, here it is. My lover thought that Gavin Newsom was too
handsome and it upset me greatly and I’ve been thinking about male
beauty and its relation to power ever since and I have decided
that…”
He finished my thought. “That you want to become a male model
and that you want me to represent you.”
“Yes” I answered. “I want to be famously beautiful. I want to
discover, first hand, if there is really power in beauty. And I
want to spite my lover for the Newsom incident and also the newer
Armie Hammer incidents.”
He looked at me some more, this time carefully, and asked how
tall I was. I replied I was 6’4″. He said that I was too tall. I
was taken aback. Isn’t height the very building block of male
beauty? He told me that 6’2″ is ideal and I said,
“Yes, I am 6’2.”
He said,
“No. You are 6’4.”
And kept looking carefully. Thankfully, he continued. “6’2” and
a 31 inch waist.”
My waist was 31 inches! Usually! And I told him so.
He looked down and said, “You know, male models are winners of
the genetic lottery. That’s it. And, don’t get me wrong, you are a
good looking guy but…” I kept staring at him and kept a straight
face but burned inside and thought, “I’m the Big Bang,
motherfucker. I’ll show you and all your beauty industry cohorts
that beauty can be willed!” Sensing my passion, or wanting me to
leave, he cracked. “OK I’ll do it. I’ll help you.” I don’t know why
he decided. Maybe he just wanted to send an “unusual taste” down
the mineshaft. That is what he called me, an unusual taste, when I
asked if I should get a nose job. “No no no no. No need. You have
tattoos and a certain, whatever. Look. You will already be an
unusual taste…” He then told me I had to gain 15 pounds of muscle,
while studying my arms, and get my teeth whitened.
We parted ways and I was fifteen pounds of muscle, and a trip to
the dentist, away from the start of an adventure.
