Poses and Promotions

You know how you get that urge to smoke after having had some really good sex? I’ve never felt that. Interpret it any which way you like, but I was referring to the cigarette action. However, I am feeling a similar satisfaction much like the one felt after a good romp.

Not that I’ve romped. Stop hyperventilating, mother… I know you’re reading this. Go back to marthastewart.com, please. I am merely trying, in a creative fashion, to open this post by telling you all that I’ve had some very good days lately and now I want to lie back and breathe it all in with the hopes that my recent lucky streak won’t wake up and not remember my name because it was under some universal alcoholic influence when we first met.

God, I can even confuse myself with the way I write.

Back to the story.

Two things happened in the last three days. The first, and by far the most important, was that someone out in the blogosphere thought I had a sense of humor good enough to save the tomatoes for a rainy day. I won the coveted ‘funniest post’ award in RD’s line-up for 2008. George Bush judged it, too. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank God, RD and George for bestowing this incredible, humbling honour upon me. I also want to thank the Doc, without whose unending tortured soul the winning post could never have been. I dedicate this award to my cats and John Cleese.

The second event that took place was to do with work. So I let the cat out of the bag in my last post about a little career upgrade that I’d been informed about by the powers that be. Last evening, the rest of the office was informed too. I guess that makes it official and I can safely blab out more details to those of you who aren’t yawning at my self-obsessed natter. Yet. I was appointed as a group head within our creative department, which means I now have the power to veto the opinions of any cat-haters. All hail me. They also say I now have the authority to call the shots, though this may come at the risk of getting shot at. Not everyone in the team is dancing the jig of joy at the announcement – I am, of course, a newbie in comparison to some of the other stalwarts and institutions, and sometimes taking direction from a loudmouthed woman can be an icky experience to say the least. I didn’t expect it to be hunky dory and I am fully geared for the onslaught of ‘how-she-got-the-job’ assumptions that are bound to scatter far and wide in the coming days. Nevertheless, it still feels good to have made a mark with my work and be recognized for it. Yes, Ms. Gaynor…. I will survive.

Besides the two most recent causes for joy, I had some rather good fun two days ago too. Remember how I mentioned my clients wanting me to model in their campaigns? Note how I assume you’re an avid fan of this blog to remember such things? Even if you don’t, now you do.

Thursday saw me posing and pouting at a full-day photo shoot for a spa catalogue, in which yours truly was the creature feature. If I ever thought modeling was a glamorous job, I don’t now. It is something akin to ranching, where you are the cattle and the photographer, agency, make-up artist and light boxes are four very mean cowboys. I was pulled, pushed, poked, prodded and pummeled in every direction humanly and bovinely possible, all in the name of a good shot. Along the way, a good many adventures took place, as is usually the way with the universe and I.

Make-up was the biggest adventure of all. I had been granted, by virtue of a stingy client, a make-up lady who was still learning to differentiate a powder from a glue. A mousy little thing, so fragile that I felt her pain every time she bravely wielded the weight of the blusher brush, wondering whether it was meant for my face or a wall. Had I been cruel enough to growl in her direction, she’d have had to undergo trauma counseling, she was that timid.

She had with her a platter of colours and creams of all sorts that she presented with pride. The instruction was to:

a) Cover my spots (because this was a glamourous brochure and not a connect-the-dots playbook)

b) Make me look simple and sublime.

Simple, right? Wrong.

First, she took out the one foundation stick she’d brought (about ten shades darker than my skin) and painted my spots until she’d actually created more than I already had on my face. Chicken pox would have been jealous. I diplomatically asked her if she’d like to blend, and blend she did. She took that thumb of hers and with an alarming force that kept throwing me off my chair, rubbed my face so hard until I was sure I’d end up doing a pet commercial for pugs.

Next came the colour. Out swished the brush and the electric blue shadow. Sweep, sweep, and I was instantly contesting for Drag Queen of the Year. I waited patiently till she turned away to load her evil brush and then hastily rubbed off as much as I could with my fingers. Should we apply some rouge, I asked her. Sure, she said, and gave me a Coco the Clown. More rubbing off. She next walked around me in circles, periodically clucking to herself while she examined my head and wondered aloud what to do with my hair. Enter abject pain, as she took out Satan’s trident in the guise of a comb and managed to skewer my scalp from every angle before hauling at my hair like a fisherman’s net while blasting my increasingly reddening scalp with heat. It was meant to straighten the tresses, she excitedly informed a weeping me. I now know that by ‘straighten’ she meant knock the last ounce of gayness out of my darling locks till I could pull off a convincing struck-by-lightning look. I hear it’s the rage in deepest darkest Africa.

Why we spent so long attending to every strand of hair, I will never know… the second I sat on my perch in front of the camera they switched on two massive industrial fans directed at me and all that painstakingly tortured hair just exploded everywhere, including into my nose, mouth and eyes. “Wow! Yes! Hold that!” the photographer instructed as I beautifully choked on a particularly large bunch of hair socializing with my larynx. “Love it!” he shouted when more hair went up my nose and made me tear. “Give me sexy!’ he barked, whereby the poltergeist on my head dutifully throttled me. If the shots that resulted are not used for this brochure, I’m sure I can make a mint selling them to Amnesty International for their next campaign.

One hour and much hair later I was done with the ‘hair care’ shots. Next came ‘skin care’. “Lets do the splash images’ I heard someone calling. Splash? As in, water? What the devil did that entail? While I mused and panicked, Make-up Mouse doused me in a new coat of colours – oranges and greens this time- till I looked like a carrot. My apprehension mounted when I saw someone bringing me a bathrobe. “Wear this over your clothes”, she muttered conspiratorially, not daring to look at me lest she felt my emotion and ratted on their secret plans. My thoughts went insane when they brought out a large basin filled to the brim with water and placed it on a stand in font of me. By this time Mouse was grabbing fistfuls of my hair and clenching them tight to create curls. She being a good two feet shorter than I meant that every time she grabbed, I got whiplash.

The photographer appeared again. Lights were adjusted. One last blob of orange dust was showered onto my face for an extra splotchy effect. “All right DQ… throw water on yourself.”

WTF? What did he mean throw water on myself?? The basin, I was politely told, was for my use. I was to use my hands to splash water on my face. With my eyes closed. With that lovely smile I always get when I throw cold water on my face with my eyes closed and thereby aim so well that it actually goes up my nose. Could I also please open the neck of the bathrobe to make it look like my shoulders were bare? Smile, DQ… don’t wince or scowl at the water. It is your friend. No spluttering, please… the camera needs you and the water to remain still, please. That’s it… open your mouth bit in a happy declaration… no don’t gag on the water like that, it doesn’t make a good shot. Come on now… LOVE IT. Yes…yes…that’s it…splash!..splash more! More! More water….hold it there… what’s that? No swearing, please.

60 shots later, I was drenched from head to toe – clothes and all- and not looking pleased. Mouse pursed her lips disapprovingly at me for daring to let the water get the better of her skillful artistry and leave me looking like a deranged panda with a badly done fake tan. It was time for the ‘aromatherapy’ shots and she’d have to start all over again. My hair was wet, she reported. She’d have to blow dry. Dear God, help.

Because ever millimeter of cloth on me was as wet as sin, someone’s convenient shawl was taken and wrapped around me. They wanted the ‘Sigirya effect’, I was told. I wasn’t sure if they meant the paintings of the maidens or the actual rock, which was what I was looking like at that point. Once they’d bathed me in purples and pinks this time around, I was instructed to clutch onto a bunch of lotus flowers and smell them, smiling serenely and the enthralling scent that supposedly wafted my way. Here’s the thing… lotuses smell god-damn awful. Especially the ones with the little flying bugs in them. Within the hour I was a grandmaster of serenely smelling stinky flowers while insects flew up my nostrils.

That evening, I went back to office with my face caked up like a cheap prostitute’s and a wealth of experience that teaches me never to agree to modeling assignments that involve water or lotus flowers. Or a make-up artist who looks like a mouse.

I hope that damn spa makes a sale or two.