AN: It's a chapter done by some anonymous kid somwehere, trying to pay his/her rent. There will be swearing, but light. :)
I hate musehunting.
Well, it's not really hunting, to be honest – it's more like opening yourself up to be inspired. At least, that's how my mentor, Herr Doerfler, puts it. But then again, Herr Doerfler is the sort of man that ladies (and men) flock to, so he never had any issues there. With gold hair and dashing good looks, it's always been easy for him to attract a few moths. Myself, on the other hand… well, let's not go there. Really – let's not.
So anyhow, that's the whole reason why I was standing in Herr Doerfler's studio that Wednesday afternoon in the fall: project musefind. Don't get me wrong – every artist needs a muse. At least, all the good ones do. Herr Doerfler specializes in those odd, lanky brunettes. Well, he's done other stuff it's just that the brunettes stand out. That was what I looked for – something that distinguished one girl from the others.
I paced. Up, down, up down, up down, and up again. Seriously, was this all that London had to offer? Tsk, tsk. So in an effort to appear mildly authoritative, I waved a couple away, and was left with a lineup of ten or so. "So," I found myself asking, "Why are you here?" Legit question. It's an awesome time-killer if you have no clue what the hell you're doing, and you just need to have some time to figure out who to eeny-meeny-miney-mo.
Almost immediately, the same verbal diarrhea comes up. Some trite stuff about wanting to go into modeling since a young age, and something about dreams. You know what, girl? I had dreams too. Look where they got me: here, in front of you, and listening to your bullshit. So yeah, if I appear to not care, maybe that's why. You, and your terrible makeup. God, if I wanted paint-by-numbers, I'd do it myself.
Halfway down the line, there's this short (well, relatively, considering that all these glorified toothpicks tower above me) brunette. "What about you?" I ask, ready to move on to the next girl. Really, they're all just about the same.
Instead of feeding me the same scripted shit that the rest of them have done, she gives me a quick appraisal. Guts. I like those. "I felt like it," she says, careless, shrugging as though this all means nothing to her, and she has a legitimate job offer waiting in the next five minutes. She then makes the mistake of looking directly in my eyes, without bothering to hide the fact that she's lying blatantly, and challenging me to call her on it.
"What's your name?"
"Antje." Lies, lies. I like that.
So that's where I was, stuck. I'm still stuck, because I haven't actually said anything, and I think they're fidgeting. I walked over to where Herr Doerfler's secretary stood, no doubt ready to make some sort of report in the event of an emergency. Fantastic. "So, uh, what do I do if I've found something that works?"
"Herr Doerfler said to tell you to figure that one out on your own."
Well, damn. But I guess I get my own style if I do it my way. "You can all go," I said loudly, almost a little too loudly, and noticed some shoulders droop at the sound. "Antje, a word, please."
She trots over, careless arrogance still on her face, as I explain the terms of the contract. She doesn't bat an eye, just signs it and asks when shooting starts. "Tomorrow," I tell her, picking up the piece of paper and trying to figure out her real name. It starts with a C, but that's all I can get. No matter, I finally found a theme for the damn thing:
Truth.
《 ❀ ❀ ❀ 》
My mom claims I would've made an excellent shrink. She thinks that I have some sort of weird urge to solve people's problems, which may or may not be true. I was just bored that day, honest, and "Antje" offered a solution to that boredom.
Anyways, one of the real reasons I needed a model was because some designer nobody saw something that I did ages ago and liked it. And since I'm a nobody with rent to pay, it works out pretty well. I don't charge much, for one. So I'm a cheap nobody, who's attempting to make it big off of two other nobodies, which is kind of ironic if you think about it. If anything, they'll get recognized, and I'll still end up being the cheap nobody with rent to pay. Woe, alas.
So "Antje" comes in the first day in some sort of gypsy/ragdoll getup, and I'm so damn tempted to just photograph her in that. Looks fantastic, anyways. We do the generic stuff for the day, and when she's about to go, I hear her jabbering in Polish to one of the makeup artists. Interesting. But because I'm not a creeper, I don't stay behind to eavesdrop and pretend I know what's going on.
That evening, I have the most fantastic conversation with Herr Doerfler in which he basically tells me to do whatever the hell I want, but within reason. The man is awesome, and just pretty much gave me permission to use blindfolds and crazy stuff and generally harass groundskeepers for some old-as-dirt homes or schools to let me shoot some photos. I may or may not be in love.
《 ❀ ❀ ❀ 》
It's the eyes.
I swear, it's those eyes. As soon as she puts on the blindfold, it's like the whole thing has changed completely. There's no longer this jaded, sexy, come-hither look that would totally turn me on if I was into women. It's, like, completely transforming. I'm a fucking genius. Even that studmuffin that we've got for the male model. In contrast to her Hade's, he's, like, freakin' Persephone, but in male form. It's… scary, to say the least, but pretty damn genius. Even the makeup artists and the dude who does the lighting are staring, not to mention the guy that she's supposed to be working with.
They're all staring, and it's not because she's pretty. It's because she looks completely different. That mouth, that chin, those lips – they could all belong to any innocent girl playing blindman's bluff in the 1800s, but in her shift. Yeah, the clueless nobody who wanted fall colors in his photoshoot designed next-to-freaking nothing, and both of the models are shivering, the poor things.
But the blindfold… that blindfold's scary, even for me. It's elegant, classy, and strangely mysterious, yet disarming in a way that I would've never imagined. So me, being the creeper I am, get mister what's-his-face to come over, and I pretty much bribe him into finding out her name. I can see it happen as he stands behind her, bare-chested, and probably warmer than anything else in this cold fall twilight. "Hey," he probably says, whispering so that only a puff of breath escapes. "Am I ever going to figure out your name?"
She leans up, links her arms around his neck and pulls his ear down to near her mouth. Snap. Snap. Snap. I have no clue how many times I've pressed the shutter by this point. "Charlotte," she whispers, and the voice doesn't even sound like the brash, assertive one from the selection day. Damn, this is good. If there were two of me, there'd be high-fives all around.
《 ❀ ❀ ❀ 》
The sun set a couple hours ago. It's dark, but not nearly dark enough for us to quit, because I'm a selfish bastard, and really like evenings and the dark. Between setups, Charlotte and What's-his-face are shivering, cocooned in blankets, but bloody-freaking-brilliant at the same time. I might have shot a few photos of them, just like that, simply because I could. It looked pretty decent, at least.
She gets up and unwraps, patiently waiting as the blindfold gets tied around her head, and then goes to stand in the middle of the path. This one's her, just her, and I'm so ready to just snap this photo and then say farewell to this Muse of mine, just because – well, that's how life tends to work. People don't really see each other again, but this girl has potential. She stands there, shivering, and the lighting dude is aiming the light, and I'm all ready to take the picture when some asshole comes up through the set, spoils the moment, and puts his jacket around her shoulders.
Wait. Did I say "spoils the moment?" I actually meant "completes the moment." Whoops.
In a way that What's-His-Face never could manage, she looks up at him, questioningly, as if she knows who he is even with that white cloth covering her eyes. Snap. He unties it gently, and she looks up, wonderingly, and (snap) I get another photograph in before just stopping and staring like the moron I am. These two, whoever they are, pretty much complete each other, which is really, painfully, disgustingly obvious. So obvious that lighting dude has forgotten his job (like I just did mine) and we're gawking together. Power to the losers. I like that guy.
So yeah, Charlotte and Other Guy are just staring at each other, and she pulls his jacket closer over her shoulders, because she's shivering because Designer Nobody's more of a moron than I am in making these "clothes." But I can't do anything about it, so I get up and leave, since it's really rude to interrupt people – didn't your mother ever teach you that?
《 ❀ ❀ ❀ 》
A week later, she's shuffling through the pictures, because I invited her to. Y'know, portfolios and all that great shit. Models need those too, don't they? Well, anyways, she was standing next to me, and of course (I so called this) she makes a beeline for those pictures of her and Other Guy.
"Hey," she says quietly. "Can I keep a couple of these?"
"Yeah, sure," I say, and she slips the two of them into an envelope. Funny, those were the only two that she bothered taking.