You took out heavy, oversized books of vintage erotic photographs. You said they were the inspiration for your magazine. Maybe you were insecure about being a cheesy Playboy photographer, a Hugh Hefner wannabe, so you jumped to prove you were an artist after I mentioned that my father was a painter. Or maybe you were just testing me, seeing whether I really understood the references I made. I pointed to the pictures I liked, oohing and aahing over the squeaky, glossy pages.
I must have said something right, because you peered up at me from the splayed pages of a Helmut Newton book and paused to consider me, as if you really saw me for the first time. That was when you asked me to strip.
“Why don’t you take your clothes off and put a little pair of knickers on?” You indicated the bathroom.
I acted nonchalant. “Oh, okay, sure,” you remember me saying. Our memories align there. But what you couldn’t know is how deeply satisfied I was. I was glad that our interaction had led to you wanting more from me, happy that my commute might not have been in vain.
I suppose that, from your perspective, this should be the moment I thank you for. When I was younger, I would have thought so, too. You looked past my unappealing outfit and cheap shoes and figured why not, she’s not bad to talk to, let’s give her a shot, see what she’s working with.
Besides, some part of me figured, I love being naked, who the fuck cares. I’d just started to learn that actually, everyone seemed to really, really care. I was beginning to understand that I could use this attention to my advantage. I wanted to test the waters: What is the power of my body? Is it ever my power?
When I came out of the bathroom topless, I stood up straight, not covering my breasts. I believed that by taking off my clothes proudly, by not letting myself be embarrassed by my nakedness, I might somehow intimidate you, shifting the dynamic. But of course there was no chance of that, when we live in a world where millions of women will jump at the chance to win the attention of men like you, Steve.
I was already an expert in assessing myself through men’s eyes. I had recently started smoking cigarettes and skipping meals to maintain a tiny waist, so I felt confident that you would be impressed. I was right. When you saw my body, your eyes went wide. “Jesus fucking Christ,” you said. “Where were you hiding all of that?”
You took my hand and walked me through the studio, past the other models, to the photographer as I stumbled, giggling, behind you in nothing but my underwear and a pair of heels. It felt so incredibly validating to be recognized by you as special.
I was nineteen. I loved driving down the coastline with the windows down, playing music. I loved the way my skin smelled after rolling in the sand when I drank too much sangria on the beach with my friends. I was eager to meet the kinds of smart, cool people I thought I’d find in LA if I was able to make enough money to move there; excited about the adult world and where I’d fit into it and what I might do. Do you remember what it was like to be nineteen?
* * *
Once, while leaving a nightclub, a famous musician plucked twenty young girls off the dance floor and had them sit in a room next to his recording studio until five in the morning. He took their phones, made them sign NDAs, and put them all together, out of the way, to wait till he was done playing his new album for some friends. Then they would all party, he said. A guy I know was there, and as he was leaving, he saw the girls crowded together. He said the room looked like the DMV.
I pictured the girls exhausted, with no internet or cameras or texts to distract themselves. A little drunk. I saw their push-up bras, their curls falling flat under the fluorescent lights.
Why do you think they waited in that room, Steve?
Maybe many years from now, maybe next week, those girls will suddenly feel upset at something and not know why. Where is this reaction coming from? They really won’t know, they won’t be able to place it, but it will be because of the way they let themselves sit in that room. The way they put on their makeup and dressed themselves up. They’ll feel small and blame no one but themselves.
I so desperately craved men’s validation that I accepted it even when it came wrapped in disrespect. I was those girls in that room, waiting, trading my body and measuring my self-worth in a value system that revolves around men and their desire.
* * *
Was I unknown when we worked together? you were asked. “Not for long,” you responded. “I got all these emails from people like Kanye West and Adam Levine, who wanted to use her in campaigns. Then Robin Thicke called me.”