Waiting for my Career

6 years ago this week, I walked in a Hood By Air show. I had just moved to New York to do whatever. I can't really recall why I had moved here or what ambitious idea I had for myself, though I do remember that after that show I thought I'd be the biggest thing in the world. That it was the beginning of a lifelong career in fashion...all because some guy named Walter had plucked me out of the instagram masses and asked me to do it. I thought I had found my calling. I started working for stylists, casting directors, and modeling once a month for magazines no one had heard of. I never got paid, and I never really had fun. The degree of broke I was led me to do bad things. I lived in a studio in Bushwick with 2 other girls. One of my roommates at the time was a grifter and taught me how to dine and dash the polite way. We would go to restaurants, get wasted, and then leave. I'd find some money and go back the next day and offer to pay. They never made me so I'd give them a $20 as a tip to the poor waitress who had to serve us. We would do this at the same restaurant almost weekly. It got to the point where they just stopped charging us in general and we didn't have to sneak out. I still feel bad especially because that restaurant closed. (R.I.P. Jules Jazz Bar)

Anywho, I started interning at Eckhaus Latta. I had no business being there. I asked for the job and when they asked what I wanted to do, I said, "I don't know. paperwork?" I couldn't sew, knit, clean, or even use Excel so for four whole months I would just sit at my computer and pretend to type things into a spreadsheet and call it research. They would give me meaningless errands such as washing one piece of cloth to see how it faired in a washing machine or get sheers sharpened just to keep me out of their hair. I one time fell asleep while smoking in the backyard and I'm still in awe that they didn't fire me after I decided that I'd drive to Maine to get a tattoo of a lobster. When they called asking where I was I said, "Vacation! I thought you had to pay people in order to implement rules. I'm so sorry I didn't know you needed me." Much to my surprise, I ended up walking in that season's show. I thought them asking me to be in the show was a good thing but it turned out it was a really nice way of letting me know I was too stupid to do anything useful. That was the very end of my internship so I walked across the street and asked for a job at Dimes. I loved it from the beginning but I genuinely felt worried that working in a restaurant would hinder my 'career' in fashion. I really thought that my life was falling apart because I wasn't typing gibberish into Excel for $0.00 an hour. I wanted to keep trying so I could one day get the free flights to Paris that all of my friends were enjoying. I kept up some of the modeling gigs and assisting jobs but I was losing steam on the opportunities due to my being insufferable. Getting booted from the fashion world was quick and painless however, out of the blue, I would get asked to do these big jobs and I would unconsciously destroy them. I was supposed to walk in Hood By Air again but I slept through it. I was supposed to interview with the casting directors at Gucci but when I arrived I showed them my diary and they asked me to leave. I was supposed to be on the cover of National Geographic but I slept through that, also. I decided in 2017 to stop saying yes to modeling. I then quit Dimes to try and do other things that felt more 'real'.

 I started assisting Amber Heard but by assisting I mean picking things up for her. It was the best job in the world. I would wake up, she'd tell me what she wanted, I'd go buy them and bring them to her hotel in Gramercy, and she would PayPal me $400. Or more. Sometimes the job involved more emotional things and I'd occasionally fill her in on my intensely delusional love life. She was always the sweetest to me. She was like a mom who didn't have to do much more than give me money and tell me I was pretty if I went to CVS and bought her falsies. :) Once upon a time she lived in the pink Schnabel building with her boyfriend, Vito Schnabel. I became quite close with the door men who would let me know all that was going on. I would go into the apartment and look through the junk drawers and imagine living there. I never found anything interesting because the man was never there. It was a sad sad place with horrible energy. It was all for nothing but doing coke and sitting on the toilet. I would imagine the incredible parties one could throw there but they didn't seem to happen. Everything was dusty and the apartment smelled like a college dorm. The dining table was an open air file cabinet. Everything was broken. Nothing worked as intended. The refrigerator was a crime scene and don't get me started on the bathrooms. I was very happy when Amber moved out and went back to the hotel life. I loved the bellhops at the Gramercy Park Hotel and writing this makes me want to go visit them but it just simply isn't the same if I don't have a case of wine and false eyelashes to deliver to Amber.

I ended up back at Dimes two years ago and I'm still there. My career as a waitress is the only constant in my life. I don't love it but I certainly don't hate it. I've travelled the world being a waitress. When I was 20, I took a month long trip to Tokyo by myself, for fun. I promised myself I'd do it again but in Europe. So when I was 23, I packed my bags and went to Paris and Berlin for a month to do some sightseeing. Everyone I knew had been to Paris. They all got flown out there and put up in hotels, went out to nice restaurants, and did the whole fashion week thing. I was always butthurt I was never invited or asked to work in Europe so I took it upon myself to go alone with my waitressing money. It was horrible. Paris sucked. I had gotten there at the bitter end of Fashion Week and kept running into all the people who had no money to pay me back when I was trying to make it in the fashion world 4 years prior. Everyone was mean but not in the nice way. They were mean in the dumb way. I walked into a bar one night and walked out being pointed and laughed at by the other patrons. I tried to buy a baguette one time and the lady wouldn't let me and she too could not stop laughing at me. Every time I'd ask for water they'd bring me an egg. I developed a weird, short-lived masturbation addiction. It was a horrible horrible trip. I would go back to the maid's quarters I was staying in and watch porn at 8pm and try to talk to people on the phone. After two weeks of this, it dawned on me that I didn't have to stay there so I prematurely went to Berlin via train. It was instantly better. Everyone was hot, nice, and the sky was gray. I made friends 20 minutes after being there and I even fell in love with a law student and we took care of a baby together. I cried when I had to go back to Paris. My flight was out of Charles De Gaulle and I thought maybe I'd regret it if I didn't try a little harder to like it. I took the train back and by the time I arrived, I had gotten an email saying that I was needed in Berlin to model for a German magazine. I swore off modeling but I needed out of Paris and was running out of money so I said yes. The shoot was excruciating. I cried 4 times in privacy because I simply hated being looked at. When I got back to New York, I was so relieved to not be living in Paris and will only go back if I am payed.

I was a host at Metrograph for 2 years. The private parties were ridiculous but deeply entertaining at times. Jennifer Lawrence was extremely nice and thought I was one of her friend's friends quietly stalking her but I was actually just her personal waitress and she had no idea. Michael Imperioli loved talking to me about whatever book I was reading at the host stand. He loves Rachel Cusk. The girls from Broad City are mean as all hell, Uma Thurman almost spit on my face when I asked her who the birthday cake she had in purse was for, Quentin Tarantino was nice but I felt bad for him because no one came to his party except for Harvey Keitel and Uma. Kristen Wiig's agent and his lawyer husband asked me to go upstate and work at their orgy, Greta Gerwig had a panic attack Christmas morning and asked if she could sit next to the host stand and stare at the wall. There are plenty more celebrity anecdotes but writing about it reminds me why I had no desire to go back after the pandemic.

After many years of staying out of the fashion orbit, I walked in a show again this past Monday. It was fun and I didn't feel ugly for once. I'm glad I did it but being back in that environment brought back many memories of sitting around waiting all day. When you model all you do is wait wait wait. Sit in foldable chairs and twiddle your thumbs. Maybe if you are lucky, a stock model from Russia will ask you a question. There is sometimes free bagels but usually they are old. When the food arrives, it is fun to go sift through the salad and pick out the sandwich no one wants because you want to seem greedy. You will wait for 4 hours doing absolutely nothing but if you get up to go smoke, you could be in trouble for potentially wasting time so you smoke it as quickly as you can and get back to the foldable chair and wait another hour or two. I definitely do not miss all that waiting and wasting the day away so for now I will keep my job waiting tables and having no obligations the second I clock out.