Not yet five months into my teens, my résumé read like a coming-of-age movie. Thrown in and out of every school social circle. Virginity stolen. Labeled a whore. And then modeling in New York City. That ride in the Viper was like a whirlwind trip into a machine that accelerated time.
After I finished seventh grade, I was suddenly, gratefully out of that place. At least for the summer. Every day I wore heels. I walked up and down Park Avenue attending “go-sees,” modeling’s equivalent of auditions. I was a natural when it came to assimilating. I could make myself into whatever was required to get the job done. You want thirteen? Fine. You want eighteen? No problem. You want twenty-three? Watch me.
I was introduced to modeling about the same time that KJ was putting his hands up my pants. A representative from the Millie Lewis agency came to Ashley Hall and promoted their modeling class. I thought it sounded fun and it was close to where we lived. In the class, we were taught how to put on makeup and take a photo. To me, it was a fun distraction. When we took our headshots, everyone at the agency marveled at how I looked like I was eighteen. The agency’s owner, Victor, who was also the photographer, gave me his black leather motorcycle jacket and told me to put it on. He and his wife gushed over the results. Others marveled, too.
No one said it directly, at least as far as I recall, but with my hair swept up in a fashionable French twist and wearing a white T-shirt with faded high-waist jeans and that jacket, along with makeup and lighting, I was transformed into a pubescent Cindy Crawford. I looked eighteen but was still only twelve.
The shoot led the agency to sign me. They sent me to Hilton Head to compete in a nationwide modeling contest. I entered pretty much every category and met with reps from Ford, Elite, Wilhelmina, and all the top agencies. Some of the categories required girls to be at least thirteen years old; I was one month shy, but no one questioned me. I had such a fierce outer shell. KJ had even threatened to dump me if I did well. I guess my soul traded feelings for a career.
I was five-two at the time, hardly a competitive modeling height, but I partook nonetheless. One day I met a girl who confided that she was also twelve, but she stood six feet tall. I didn’t have any of the usual advantages going for me. Even Victor sort of abandoned me after he found another girl to personally chaperone around the event who was taller, very beautiful, and closer to eighteen. While practicing our runway walks, a boy from my agency came up to me and said he overheard a girl from another agency point me out and say, “She shakes her ass too much. I’m going to wipe the floor with her.”
I didn’t understand how someone who had never met me could say such mean things about me and develop an instant hatred. I cried to my mother in our hotel room. However, by the end of the event I’d won nearly every category I had entered, including Best Overall Petite Model (there was a thirty-five-year-old woman in the category). Nearly every agency had requested a meeting with me, and the majority of them added that they would sign me if I grew to five-six, as Kate Moss had just hit the scene and lowered the height requirement.
I had no idea what was going on or what it meant to be a winner or what to do with all the checks I received for winning the various categories, but I did know how to wear the dress and take the picture. You need sexy? I can give you sexy.
Wilhelmina took me into their kids’ division, Wee Willys, and set me up to come to New York City with my parents for the summer. We moved into the Gramercy Park Hotel, the long-term residence part in the back of the building. We had a small two-bedroom for the duration of the summer, and that was my life. Auditions were brutal. I never heard compliments. Only faults. You’re too short. You’re too this. You’re too that. If I wasn’t going to meetings, I hung out in the park across from the hotel.
A key was needed to get into the park. I picked mine up at the hotel’s front desk and sat on a bench in the private garden, reading or watching people. Every kind of life passed in front of my eyes. I made up stories about the people. Back up in our room, I mimicked their mannerisms as snatches of overheard conversation as I regaled my mother with the stories I made up about the world that had paraded up and down the sidewalk. It was better than a movie.
I booked an Oscar de la Renta swimsuit ad. Rolled hair pouring down in waves and my curvy thirteen-year-old frame squashed into a onesie in one image and a frilly bikini in another. It was my one and only highlight of the summer. I tried not to think of it all that much and not to take it that seriously. I wished I were older and built differently. And at the end of the day, or the end of the summer, I had no idea who I was or wanted to be, which was what made modeling a perfect escape. People would tell me who they wanted me to be.
That summer was a tough one for my mother, too. I wasn’t sure why, but she needed to spend much of the time in bed. My father did his best to stay with her and I was told she was bleeding. That was the extent of what was communicated to me. Now even more alone and isolated, I sat on the park bench watching life pass by and pining for the day it would include me.
The wait wasn’t long. At the end of the summer, we returned to Charleston and I started eighth grade. Though I’d always been an honor student, my grades fell a bit after all of my “relationship drama,” as it came to be known, but I still did well. Schoolwork was the one thing I could completely control and there wasn’t much else to distract me. After the holidays, people at Wilhelmina brought up the idea of my spending the next summer in Los Angeles. If my parents were agreeable, which they were, I saw no downside.
That’s an understatement. I was ready. I was chasing that feeling I had riding in the Viper. I wanted to feel the wind and enjoy the thrill of freedom.