Model Behavior

You might be surprised to hear this after looking at my photo, but I was a model. A paid, professional model.

Twice.

The first stemmed from the year I was Wolfman for Halloween. My then girlfriend was skilled with theatrical make-up, and a photographer at the publishing company where I worked (I was a newspaper editor at the time) happened to see me. A few days before Halloween, my girlfriend and I trekked to the company's main office with a huge bag filled with make-up, glue, fake hair and a shirt I could slice so my "fur" would come bursting out. It took hours to apply the fake hair and makeup in stages, so I could "metamorphisize" into Wolfman, and I was scraping glue and bits of hair off of various areas for days, but it was worth it. I wound up on the cover of one of our newspapers.

The second time was when my roommate, a photographer, asked me to come to the studio to be a hand model. Puzzled, I agreed.

On the day of my modeling gig the manager of the department, a very attractive young lady, gave me a manicure on one hand and massaged lotion into every pore. It was great.

I held my hand as instructed in front of a white seamless background, holding a small school bell, as instructed. It was then that I found out why my right hand, which never seemed particularly remarkable to me, had been chosen.

The photo was to illustrate a story on parochial schools and my roommate thought it would be funny to have a Jewish hand holding a school bell. It was the "Most in" of in-jokes, because only he and I knew that I was Jewish.

Humor is a tricky thing.

The shoot went great, though the department manager showed no interest in continuing her massaging after the session.

Maybe if I'd been more of a diva.