AS EXCITING AS MODELING WAS, it was also all-consuming. To recenter myself, I took a brief break and moved to Nebraska, where I worked at a Tyson plant. It was there that I learned from my cousin Wunbil that my father had gotten into a disagreement with Nyantek, Wunbil’s mother, and killed her. My mind was in chaos and my body was powerless to turn back the hands of time to save her—to save anyone. More discord, disruption, and devastation from my real life was seeping into this one, the idealized fantasy version. I couldn’t reconcile the two. I couldn’t keep them apart.

I returned to New York City after a year and moved into an apartment in Washington Heights with Kueth’s younger sister, Nok, with whom I’d lived in Bloomington. Tall, slim, and confident, Nok was a big encouragement, always urging me to take my modeling career more seriously.

NOK: You have what it takes to get an even bigger break in fashion, Ger.

She had gotten interested in fashion and was laying the groundwork for her own modeling career. Along with Nok in the apartment was Chi Chi, her friend from Georgetown University and an athlete of great note, with whom I became close.

Our three-bedroom apartment turned into a sort of mini United Nations, where dozens of friends, mostly in the fashion industry, from many different countries, would come and hang out. Nok, Chi Chi, and I introduced our friends to each other, and the fact that we all had outgoing personalities made any visitor feel at home. The apartment’s kitchen was always busy, cuisines from across the world getting whipped up in there: Jamaican (jerk chicken), Haitian (black rice), Nigerian (the rice dish jollof), Sudanese (okra and combo stew), and African American (soul food, barbecue, sweet cornbread, and desserts).

By this time, I was starting to sort of build my life from scratch again, doing catering, waiting tables, and being a personal trainer, trying to save as much money as possible. But Nok had other ideas.

NOK: Ger, guess what!

ME: What?

NOK: I talked to my mom and dad in Juba. They want us to come back to Sudan.

Uncle Wal and Aunt Julia had already relocated from America back to Sudan, and were now serving as senior officials in the new interim government.

ME: Really?!

NOK: Yeah, there’s more opportunity there than here in New York.

ME: But our country just got out of war a year ago through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. We might be united under the name of Dr. John Garang Mabior, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got prospects yet. Where do you think the country’s going to get money?

NOK: It’s oil money, dude!

I was so taken by my new life that I myself couldn’t quite imagine going back home. Life in the fast lane was beckoning once again.

In time, I stopped doing the catering and restaurant jobs to focus exclusively on modeling. My new roommate, JAn Christiansen, and I settled into a simple routine. We “worked” all night at clubs across New York, got home in the morning totally exhausted, slept the whole day, woke up in the evening, hit the gym hard, got back to the apartment, made our one solid meal for the day, and jumped back into the nightlife all over again. On some crazy nights, the party would turn into a party-after-the-party at someone’s apartment early in the morning. These sometimes lasted the whole day, meaning neither JAn nor I would get a chance to go back to our apartment. We would leave the party in the evening, hit the gym without failure, get a quick change of clothes along the way, then promptly report to the nightclub scene and carry on partying. That’s what qualified as work, and we were paid by the club supervisors just to be there.

In the alluring swirl of all this glitz and glamour of nights surrounded by some of the most beautiful people in New York, at some of the hottest nightlife destinations with the bass thumping and the champagne flowing, I almost managed to forget my past sorrows. I unwittingly put aside my professor uncle and aunt’s intellectual aspirations for me. I allowed my concerns and curiosity about the fates of my family members back in Sudan to completely fade into the background. That’s the power of life in the fast lane, bright lights and endless partying. It was fantasy, an escape. And I was running from my demons, fleeing my past as I’d had to do my whole life. But, eventually, reality always catches up to you.

Although this was my job—yes, partying was my work—I didn’t feel peace or calm inside. It was as though the only way not to have to face myself in the mirror (ironic, given that the lifestyle is all about looks) was to keep going, to keep partying, to keep waking up at one more model’s apartment, without ever taking a break. Because in the quiet is when the nightmares start to scream.