I was just reading a post over at Acerbia about a modeling job D is currently involved with and it reminded me of a similar situation long ago, when I was a model in Japan.

This was more than fifteen years ago. Back then, all you needed to get a modeling job in Tokyo was to be non-Asian, and have a little luck at the auditions. I was primarily an English teacher then, and like many in that branch picked up a little extra money now and then jobbing as a movie extra or smiling over a word processor in an electronics catalogue or something like that.

For better or worse, probably better, I lacked the right attitude to be a proper model (as well as the right looks) and generally had luck at auditions only when they were looking for a whole crowd of foreigners. Once, though, I was a finalist for a television modeling job.

They were looking for someone to be Julio Iglesias’s hands on a commercial for his latest CD. They had footage of him, and wanted a closeup of his hands holding a glass of wine and the CD.

It was late in the afternoon. I was the only one left in the studio. They took Polaroids of my hands. I grimaced when I saw the pictures – the color balance was off and they were waxy, yellowish and in general very corpse-like in the pictures. Glancing at them now, I’d have to say they are in real life more pinkish, hairy and slightly stumpy, although my nails and cuticles are in better shape than D claims his are in his post.

Anyway.

I was living in a boarding house for foreigners at that time. We had a central pay telephone in the lobby, and a message board. Whoever happened to be walking by answered the phone when it rang and wrote down a message.

When I got home (I’d had a teaching job after the audition) I saw there was a message for me:

“MIGUEL: AGENT CALLED – YOU DIDN’T GET THE HAND JOB?????”

Shortly thereafter I decided to concentrate my efforts more on teaching, editing and writing.