I modeled in New York back in the late seventies, early eighties. Started when I was seventeen, stopped completely in '81, just walked away from the whole thing. My mother thought I was crazy. I had bookings lined up, a contract with Elite, the whole deal. But I couldn't do it anymore. People always ask why I quit. They assume it was the pressure, or the competition, or some bad experience. That's not it. I quit because I figured out what most of the other models actually were. And I know how that sounds, but I'm telling you, most of them weren't human.
You ever heard of the Nordics? Tall, blonde, perfect features, that's what people report when they talk about certain types of aliens. Well, I worked with dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. And here's the thing, they never aged. Not the way we do. There was this girl, Katarina. Swedish, or so she said. We did shoots together for three years straight. Three years. I watched myself change in those years, you know, you're seventeen, eighteen, your face matures, you lose that baby softness. But Katarina? Exactly the same. Same skin, same face, same everything. Like she was carved from marble. And it wasn't just her. There were maybe twenty, thirty girls who worked constantly, always booked, always perfect, always the same. You'd see them at every major shoot, every runway show. They'd disappear for a few months, then come back looking identical. I started keeping track. I had this notebook where I'd write down who I saw and when. The patterns were clear if you paid attention.
The real tell was the eyes. You spend enough time looking into someone's eyes for a camera, you learn things. Human eyes, there's depth there. Even when we're tired or zoned out, there's something happening behind them. But these girls? Nothing. Just this perfect blank surface. Like looking at a mannequin that learned to smile. I brought it up once. Big mistake. We were doing a lingerie campaign, six of us in a studio in SoHo. I made some joke about how Katarina never seemed to age, how she must have some secret. The other girls, the human ones, they laughed. But Katarina and the three other Nordics, they just stared at me. Complete silence. in the 80s was such a different era - Jason' This frozen moment where nobody moved. That night, I got a call from my agency. They told me the client wanted to go a different direction. Then the next booking canceled. Then the next one. Within two weeks, I couldn't get work anywhere in the city. Nobody would say why. Nobody would explain. My agent finally told me I should maybe try LA, or Paris, or anywhere else. So I quit. I got out.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]