So of course it wasn't going to go smoothly.
The day after spilling the drink, I have a casting at the Standard Hotel. I go to it-- it's around 8pm-- and I'm on Twitter as I'm waiting in the hallway. And Twitter is basically blowing up about how awesome the Marc Jacobs show is. How it's like a fusion of a musical and a fashion show, how it's like setting the bar for how a show should be, how if he wasn't a complete and total homo every fashionista girl on the planet would fuck him until his Spongebob tattoo turned red.
For those who don't know, he has this picture of Spongebob. As a tattoo. Awesome.
Anyway I'm following along and starting to get pretty excited myself, as if I already wasn't (I would probably get excited about being invited to a 4-year-old's birthday party). I get done with my casting and text Spilled Drink Girl. She says they're leaving the show right then. But since I'm at the Standard Hotel, and the after-party is at the Dream Hotel, that means I'm only a couple blocks away-- I'll get there well before they do. So I decide to walk around the block a few times, just kind of wait until they arrive.
Except once I get close to the Dream Hotel, it's just a line of fucking limos pulling through the street. Like, limo after limo. Did you ever play that game Snood? The one where you shoot those little monster faces at a brick wall and try to get them into groups of three so they explode?
Yeah this has nothing to do with that, but god damn were there a lot of limos.
I decide to abandon my idea of walking around the block for fear of never crossing the street through the limo parade. So I literally sit across from the entrance to the hotel, a little ways down the road, and take a newspaper out of my manly messenger bag. I text SDG, who tells me she and her friends are on their way...except they got wristbands after the show, so now she doesn't know if she can get me in.
I finish reading about some random thing in the newspaper, probably how Mitt Romney is entering a hot dog eating contest or some shit so people will like him better (they won't), when I get another text from SDG. She tells me that they're inside the party now, that they checked their wristbands at the door and that without one I probably couldn't get in. She does encourage me to try anyway, but when I ask her if she'll come to the door to give me leverage-- to say, like, "hey let this kid in"-- she says she doesn't think she can. Essentially I've been invited to a party by someone who wasn't allowed to invite me to the party, and I'm outside, by myself, with no way to get in. ...i.e. what is also known as "My High School Experience."
Sidenote, I tend to compare a lot of what happens as a model to high school, and there's two really good reasons for that. One, high school wasn't that long ago, and regardless how long ago it was, most people can relate to that shit. Two, there's a real high school vibe put out by a lot of people in the industry. There's a sense of entitlement, of intrinsic knowledge, like "We are inherently better than you because we fundamentally know things that you don't." Or, simply, it's people who think they're popular. Fashion is, stripped of its potential for artistic expression, basically a popularity contest, and if you're not one of the cool kids then you're just not one of the damn cool kids. This applies to everyone from designers to casting directors to assistants to models. That's not to say there's not objective skill involved, just that subjective bullshit tends to win the day. Welcome to Fashion High.
This isn't totally a high school situation, however, because I actually have another party to go to instead (the one my agency people are at), and that would never have happened to me in a million years. But I do react to it as if it was high school, and by that I mean I said "Fuck this shit" and this is what I did:
I walk up to the entrance of the Dream Hotel, where no less than 4 giant suit-and-tie-clad men stand guard, with some folks mingling together next to the roped-off line of people waiting to get in. Limos are parked along the curb waiting to be in groups of 3 so they can explode.
I pause as I get up to the giants, just a millisecond, just long enough so that if they close the gap between each other to create a giant man-wall I can pivot to the side and say I was just innocently walking on the sidewalk the whole time, and why the fuck would I want to come to your party anyway? You know Mitt Romney's in a hot dog eating contest right now, right?
But they don't close the gap, in fact they don't even react to me, and instead I waltz right past them and into the lobby of the Dream Hotel. At this point I calmly yet furiously text SDG and ask her what floor the party's on. She excitedly yet confusedly asks what I mean by "What floor?," as this party's on the first floor. I calmly/confusedly/etc. look around at the mass of people in the lobby, trying to determine if I'm actually inside the party right now despite the fact that there is no music and no one throws a party in the lobby of a hotel.
I spot a less-giant but no less suit-clad man directing minor traffic in the corner though, and I decide to slip over and take a peek. Sure enough he's moving traffic into a smaller room, where yet another suit-man guards a doorway. And it is through this doorway, my brain is now telling me courtesy of my ears, that the real party is thumping.
I slowly take off my hoodie (fashion!) as I gather myself and attempt to look nonchalant-- the key in these situations-- and gently stroll up to the semi-giant as if to enter the party. He asks if I have a wristband. With all the confidence of someone certainly invited to this gig, I ask where to get a wristband. He tells me out front. I thank him for his help, ostinsably because he has told a legitimate guest where to check in, but in reality because he's revealed to me the next step in the epic quest to get one of those fucking wristbands.
I return to the front and find a lady outside with a clipboard. She asks for my name. I tell her, knowing full well that it's not on the list, or that if it is, it's probably that other guy with my same name. As she flips through her clipboard pages fruitlessly, I tell her that I'm supposed to be there with Spilled Drink Girl, who I know has to be on the list.
This stops Clipboard Girl in her tracks, and she sympathetically raises her eyes to meet mine and says: "I'm sorry, there's no plus-1's to this party."
To a normal human, this is the end of the road. I was invited as a plus-1 to a party that has no plus-1's, requires a wristband, has a guest list, and employs an army of Hulk-sized men in dinnerwear.
But I'm not a normal human, I'm Awkward Model, and so without missing a beat I...
...I'll tell you in the next one. I feel kind of bad splitting this up, but it does mean I get to post things earlier. And maybe shorter entries allow more people to read it on their feed between the waves of animal gifs? Oh who am I kidding.
