As I become slowly sealed in the envelope of sleep, I wonder what Melody would have thought if she heard the boys talking about their white girlfriends. I suppose I should be outraged, but instead I feel strangely left out. Cheated, because I’m not getting anything out of my relationship except suicidal affection. I wonder if Melody would have been as willing to bleed in the bathtub for a white man. I wonder how long it’ll be before she realizes she’s being short-changed. I ride horses. I don’t mind the Beach Boys. I think black people are better off here than they were in the jungle. When Melody’s with me, does she really notice the difference? I’m not the genuine article. I come with no pedigree of negritude. These things never would have crossed my mind back in the days when I wore corduroy pants that went zwee, zwee with every step.
There was no black or white in my world until that day at camp when David Wiener asked me why I looked like poo. Since then I’ve realized the world isn’t shot in colour film, where everyone’s a different hue. It’s shot in black-and-white. There are only different degrees of one or the other. We’re black, or we’re white. Or, like me, we’re shades. Insubstantial images of something real. Reduced almost to nothing. The only thing worse than living in that black-and-white world is living in a grey one, in which race doesn’t matter except to everyone else. In which nothing’s black or white, and everything’s both. The problem with living in grey is that one grows no natural defences. Growing up grey is like growing up weightless on the moon. To return to earth is to be crushed by the weight of one’s own skin.
FOUR
“Look up. Look to the side. Wow, your eyes are, like, really scratched, man,” the makeup man says. He gives me drops that make the world go around. “And you have an oil slick happening on your nose.” He wheezes out the contents of a bottle, splurts it onto a cloth, and wipes my face. Then I’m frosted with brown powder.
“I...don’t normally wear makeup.”
“Then you don’t normally work,” he says, and continues dusting with his makeup brush. Craning his head back every so often, he holds me up to the light to make sure there aren’t any patches of my true colour showing through.
“What’s this for, anyway?” Crispen, already made up, is sipping water in the corner.
“I don’t know. I wrote it down somewhere. Something for a software company, I think.” I pull out my appointment book. My go-sees, appointments, and auditions are written in red. This, my first booking, is written in black. Our Feyenoord appointment books are the same ones used by all five Feyenoord agencies across the world—books obviously not manufactured by a Canadian printer. Every page is full of obscure holidays and questionable celebrations. Samoan Independence. Jeudi Noir. All-Cherubs’ Day. And every day, the size of the moon: quarter, half, full, harvest. I can’t figure out who would find that useful other than a werewolf.
“Let’s see. All I wrote down was ‘computer shoot.’ Sorry.” I probably should have paid more attention when Shawna explained it to me. I simply went into shock when she told me I was actually booked.
The photographer, Brian Bean, claps to get our attention. Next to him are a man and a woman, both short, both, it would seem, younger than I. “This is Darryle and Jeanie from Mycrotel. They’d like to go over the concept for this spot.”
Darryle plucks out several sheaves of paper from his briefcase, sets them out in order on the large table by the window. “Hi, everyone,” he says. Everyone is me, Crispen, one female and two male models from other agencies who I’ve seen at auditions but usually ignore, a young black boy, a young white girl, the stylist, his assistant, Brian Bean, and his assistant.
“This is the storyboard. We’re going for a friendly, family fun-type thing. High-tech, but warm. Approachable. Big smiles and all that. Making learning fun.” Jeanie nods. It doesn’t look as if she ever approves of much.
“Does everybody have sunglasses? A white T-shirt?” The stylist takes over, issuing each of us bright silver jackets. “If you do, put them on. These jackets go on top of them.”
“Shawna didn’t tell me anything about bringing anything,” I whisper to Crispen. He pulls out a white T-shirt and sunglasses from his bag. “You should always carry that stuff in your modelling bag, partner. Makeup, tape, a towel, lip balm, a white T-shirt, a black T-shirt, sunglasses...and a book, if you don’t like waiting while you wait. I have an extra T-shirt in my bag, but you might not want it. It’s sort of a backup backup. I call him Old Stinky.”
The stylist spots me. “No shirt?” He turns to his assistant. “Do we have anything for him? Thank you.” He tosses me a white tank top, and I sling it on.
Soon we’re twirling and gyrating to trip-hop as multicoloured lights flash overhead. An intergalactic dance bar. I, as usual, am the family man. In tow, the young black boy—my six-year-old “son,” whose mother is obviously several shades darker than I am. I’m to take the kid in my arms and hold him up to the lights.
“It’ll all make sense in post-production, don’t worry. There’s all kinds of special effects and characters and things that the computer guys are going to cook up for the ad. But I need you to hold him up like you mean it. You’re in love. Not...like that. You know what I mean. Like a son. He just won the pennant, or whatever. Yeah, like that.”
The kid is as light as a Frisbee. I want to wave him around in the air, squeeze him just to hear him wheep like a dog toy.
As usual we spend the first half hour shooting Polaroids. Brian Bean and his assistant set our scene, tell us to freeze, the flash goes off, they empty the camera’s magazine, flap the Polaroid in the air, then huddle together with Darryle and Jeanie in the corner, who tell them how much better it would look if I were Chinese, or if I were holding a puppy instead of a kid. Then Brian and his assistant come back, jiggle the lights a little to the left, and shoot another one. This goes on for an hour. A call-and-response with F-stops and shutter speeds. I’m getting paid to stand on an X made of tape. So I stand. My meter, running.
Eventually the lighting’s just right, we’re clothed in our shiny grey space jackets, and they’re ready to shoot colour. I hold the boy aloft, pretend I’ve won a prize, and smile.
“Chin up. Eyes open. Don’t try to look so sexy. Less smile. It looks like you’re about to eat him. Less...less...okay, now you just look evil. More— that’s it! Magic!”
It’s not long before the boy’s crying, and his mother, who’s drinking something out of a thermos on the sidelines, is forced to waddle onto the set and placate him with promises of video games and Oreo cookies.
“Makeup!” Brian Bean shouts. “His makeup’s running to hell. Where’s Tanya? Why is she out having a butt now? No, I didn’t tell her to. Shit.” To the boy he says, “You’re doing great, little man.” To me, “Just perfect. Keep smiling.” He spins around. “Shit. Okay, let’s take a lunch. Fifteen minutes, please.” He turns to us. “Help yourselves to food. There’s plenty.”
I gouge out a piece of cheese, grab a handful of crackers.
Crispen walks up to me, eyes wide. “What are you doing?” he whispers. “You don’t eat the food!”
“But he offered it to us.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to actually eat it, fool. Models don’t eat.”
“What are we supposed to live off then? Flash-bulb light and runway dust?” I glare as the crew gorge themselves on slivers of tandoori chicken and honeydew melon. I hope it’s all off.
Crispen’s scene is shot next. He’s with an older model and a young girl. They’re supposed to be moving up an escalator, pointing to objects on either side of the stairs, things that will be added in later digitally. The “escalator” is a five-foot stairway to nowhere.
“Hey, it’s Ronald McDonald,” Crispen says, pointing at the distant wall. The young girl