It’s my fourth casting call of the day. Fourth, or fifth. You lose count. The girl behind the desk, she’s wearing huge hipster glasses which further glaze her dull disinterest. Her mouth is turned down as tight as hotel bed sheets. Her fingers flick through my book, my big fat shameless ad for myself.

     Just look at me sizzle in this tailoring. Check out my cheekbones here; you could whet a knife on them, right? This debonair indifference in the cigarette ad; I can pull that shit all day. You know you want to pick me. Come on now, don’t kick me in the teeth again. (Those teeth have been shaped by several grands’ worth of orthodontic expertise. Pick me?)

      “I’m sorry,” she almost smiles. “You’ve got an interesting look. Just not what we’re looking for here today.”

     I usually thank them at this point, although I’m not sure why. Not today. I whip the book off the desk, narrow my eyes devastatingly, and turn on my heel.

     Back at the apartment, in a concession to decorum, I pour the vodka into a glass. In another flourish of propriety, I add a dash of Diet Coke.

     Just then Brandon arrives in with a huge shiteating grin stretched across his horrible handsome face. He sleeps on the bottom bunk of my bed.

     “Hey, Adam.”

     “Hi, Brandon.”

     “Get any work today?”

     Brandon has got work; this is why he’s asking.

     “I’m drinking almost-neat vodka; what do you think?”

     Brandon pauses. If he were capable of empathy, his face would be creasing into a physical conveyance of this right now. Those particular lines wouldn’t be a good look for him in any case. Instead, he says he is sorry and that he’s sure tomorrow will be better. (Why, Brandon? I’m thinking. Why would it be better?) Then he pauses meaningfully. He is affording me the opportunity to share in his awesomeness; all I have to do is ask him if he’s got work. Which I don’t, of course.  Instead, I just swig. In the end, he can’t help himself.

     “I’m in the Macy’s spring-summer show.”

     Brandon forms a gun shape with a forefinger and thumb, fires a few imaginary rounds, and blows imaginary smoke off the imaginary barrel. He replaces the imaginary gun in its imaginary holster. He really is an unconscionable fucking douchebag.

     “Congratulations,” I manage.

     “You know,” Brandon says. “You do look a little bloated today. Maybe cut down on the Coke?”

     “And maybe you should cut down on the coke,” I retort. He sneer-smiles and flips me the bird, disguising the sincerity of the gesture behind jokiness.

     Brandon swans off towards the bathroom. To throw up his lunch, no doubt. I’d hurl the glass at him, but there’s still a little vodka in it.

     I go to the steaming dung-heap that is my bedroom here – two bunk beds, thirty or forty kilos of dirty laundry arranged à la Tracey Emin and a lingering fug of aftershave and sweat. Home sweet shithole to four tender egos knocking on the big bolted door of the New York modelling industry. There are eight of us crammed into two such bedrooms on far too little square-footage of Manhattan high-rise. In comfort and appearance, it’s somewhere downscale of a municipal dump. Anywhere else, this’d be slum dwelling. Here it’s bijou, baby.

     I lie on my bunk. I consider Ryan, the photographer from that fashion shoot a few weeks back. Ryan, who tucked in my shirt for just a little too long, a little too deep. Ryan, who wanted me to know how many people he knew in the industry. Ryan, who gave me his number.   

     Ryan, who I’m going to call.

     No, I’m not. I’m going to lie on my bunk and drink till I sleep. Tomorrow will be better.

     Might be better.

     Will at least not be today.

     My phone rings. My mother, who will slice through my lie that everything is going great. Without saying it. It will be in her pauses, her inflections. Whose assurances that it’ll all work out, though just as baseless as Brandon’s, will be borne of ferocious goodwill alone. My mother, the quiet constancy of whose love down a transatlantic phoneline might be too much just now. The phone rings out.

     I don’t need pity or pep talks. I need work.

     I’m in debt to the agency. They paid for my flight. They stump up the rent on this shithole. They cram us in like battery hens and wait for us to lay a golden egg. Some do; most don’t. You don’t lay; you don’t stay.

     I scroll through my contacts to Photographer Ryan. I swig from my refilled glass and I dial and I swig again.  

     “Hello?”

     The voice is guarded, set to duck for cover.

     “Ryan? Hi!” My tone is so exaggeratedly bright it’s generating wattage.

     “Who is this?”

     “Oh, hey, it’s Adam Kiely! We worked together on that suit shoot a few weeks back. Don’t pretend you don’t remember me!”

     Jesus Christ, listen to me. I’m a human fucking exclamation mark.

     “Adam,” Ryan says, his tone an octave higher as he plays for time, riffles through his mental card index. I wonder if he can hear the glunk of the vodka as I tip more of it down my throat.

     “Adam, of course. The Irish guy. Adam, how are you?”

     “Good, yeah, good. How are you?”

     “Very well, Adam. And all the better for hearing from you.”

     I can hear in his silence that he’s waiting for me to make the move. So, this is the game.

     “You, eh, you mentioned maybe going for a drink some time?”

     The phone is shaking in my right hand, but the words are out.

     “That would be delightful, Adam.”

     Ryan suggests a bar for tomorrow evening. I run to the bathroom to vomit. I rinse out my mouth.

I almost turn back as I’m exiting the subway. Then I think about coming home to Dublin, tail between my gym-toned legs. That first drink with my mates, and each and every one of them studiously not slagging me about modelling for the first time ever. It’s when they don’t ridicule you that you know things are bad.

     I was, you see, a large child. In swimming pool changing rooms, I was a creature of the shadows. The names were predictable. Lardass. Fatso. Porky the pork pig. (It did not help to point out the tautology inherent in this last. That demonstrated an extensive vocabulary, and merely prolonged beatings.)

     I bend my head against the raw slap of the New York winter and recall a July afternoon when I was 14. It was one of those freak Irish summer days that was either truly hot or has morphed into this in memory. We went to the beach at Portmarnock. I was coming out of the water, dodging the spent condoms eddying round my pale ankles.

     “Lardass! Lardass! Lardass!” Three rapid claps after each word, like a football chant.

     There were four of them. Young toughs, all freckles and crew cuts and swagger, fine camouflage for their trembling loveless little hearts. I invited the ringleader to say it to my face. He was happy to accept. Hot words were exchanged. I ended up with four stitches and a beautifully ripe shiner.

     It was around then I started doing weights. I hid diet books under my mattress. There were chicken and broccoli years. The weight fell off. It never made me feel much better.

     I walk through the steam and temporary heat rising from a subway grate and I see the bar. Then I turn around. I circle the block while my heart goes twelve vicious rounds at my ribcage. Second time round I force myself past the sidewalk-loitering smokers and through the door. I’m 15 minutes late. There is that crumb of self-respect at least.  

     It’s a dive bar. Exposed brick and fairy lights and ripped red leatherette seats. Overpriced IPAs and a thicket of beards. (This is New York City, 2014. We are approaching Peak Beard.) Ryan is seated. His face palely lit by his phone, he gives himself away by pretending not to see my approach for just a heartbeat too long.

     Ryan is a talker, and for this I could almost kiss him. He drops so many industry names, they’re glittering confetti on the floor round our feet. Stylists, agents, other photographers. The names wink with promise. Ryan is connected, one little strand in the great New York fashion web. If I’m connected to him, I’m connected to the web. Of course, neither of us says this out loud.  

     “So, you’re just off the boat from Ireland?” asks Ryan.

     “Yeah, well, I’ve been here a couple of months now.”

     “And you’re getting work, right?”

     “Eh, yeah. Some. You know, I guess it takes a little time to get established and all that.”

     “Oh, tell me about it. There are new guys who only last a few months in New York. Then they skedaddle back to Omaha or Indianapolis or wherever.  To work in their daddy’s dry goods store or whatever.”

     Ryan chuckles mirthlessly at these rejects.

     “I’m not gonna lie, Adam. It’s a pretty tough industry for someone starting out.”

      “Oh, I know that. It hasn’t exactly been a picnic since I got here.” I give a nervous little shrug. I understand that it’s important not to be explicit about things.

     “Oh, but I think you’re different, Adam. My God, those cheekbones of yours. They’ll open doors, don’t you worry.”

     This is the very first compliment anyone has paid me since arriving in New York. I disguise the slight watering from my eyes with some energetic coughing, dabbing at them with a napkin.

     “It’s true, though,” he says. “You have the most incredible cheekbones. And I’ve seen a lot of good cheekbones”

     “Thank you.” A compliment is a compliment. I don’t care where it comes from.

     Ryan brushes his index finger against one of those cheekbones. I smile. And in this way the deal is struck.

“Need a little help, huh?” Ryan says in his bedroom.

     I nod and he says he has something for that. He disappears and returns with water and a small blue diamond of a pill. I swallow it.

     “It takes a little time,” is what he says, and he runs his hand gently along the nape of my neck. I decide I should probably reciprocate, so I take his hand in mine and trail my fingers along the hairless skin of his inner wrist. It’s surprisingly smooth, like a woman’s.

     He kisses me hard, sucking at my lips and sweeping his tongue round my mouth. Looking for an escape from my mind, I kiss him back harder still and somehow this helps. He produces a baggie and lays out some lines on his kitchenette table.

     After, it’s easier. And the blue pill has worked its mechanical magic. Ryan says things about my body that make me feel good. In the midst of our fumbling, he talks a lot. I nod and make the expected noises, or the noises I imagine are expected. Soon enough it’s over. 

     I feign sleep, wondering how long I should stay. Finally there’s a grey seep of early morning light through the curtains. I swing my legs from under the duvet and onto the freezing floor.

     “You leaving?” he says.

     “Yeah, I’ve got an early casting.”

     “Good luck.”

     “Thanks.”

     He turns his head on the pillow so it’s facing away from me.

     “Maybe…” I say. “Maybe we’ll be working together on another shoot one of these days?”

     Ryan’s head does not move.

     “Sure,” he says.

     I move shakily towards the door. The world’s loudest gong is pounding out a rhythm inside my cranium.

     “See you soon, then,” I say.

     “Sure.”

     I head straight for the bathroom when I get home. I look at myself in the filthy mirror, which is spattered - like some shit Jackson Pollock painting - with toothpaste and hair gel and maybe other fluids. A portrait of the modelling careerist as a young man. My skin is drawn and corpse white. My nose is running and bloody from the powder. My eyes are red from everything.   

     The pleasing crinkle and rip of a freshly opened pack of razor-blades. I take a new blade. I think about shaving. I don’t shave. The once-white tiling around me is a palimpsest of filth, of spills I’d rather not contemplate. The hammering on the bathroom door comes from Brandon.

     “Hey, get a move on, I’ve got a casting in, like, twenty-five minutes,” he says.

     “Okay,” I say. “I’m finished.”