Destiny

The problem with having artist friends and acquaintances is their disregard of propriety.

The problem with me is that I, too, have little to no propriety. Chances are if you ask me to get naked for the sake of art, I will.

It all started with a little blog called the Daily T. Lo, which my screenwriter friend T. Lo and I created from the futon of her L.A. apartment a few years back. I had just quit Café Gypsy for the first time and had moved in with her for a little sabbatical from my life.

The Daily T. Lo was a fake blog, now defunct, about our lives together in which I co-starred as her perpetually, annoyingly, and embarrassingly topless roommate. There are lots of pictures on this blog of me eating scalding hot spaghetti and holding awkward yoga poses with a black censor bar over my tits. (I wasn’t ever really naked.)

Then, earlier this year, as I was on the verge of quitting Café Gypsy again, my scarfmaker friend Isobel asked me to model her work for a sort of “look book”—but, she mentioned, I would have to be topless. Topless, I thought, meant scarves would be covering anything that ought to be covered. But the day before the shoot, I found out I would be wearing only a thong.

Technically though, I hadn’t bared all, because I ended up covered in voodoo-like body paint, head to toe. Perhaps in an act of filial provocation, I showed off the pictures to my mother, who was none too happy—not simply because I was wearing only a thong, but because the photos were freaky rather than pretty. My mom prefers when I do “normal,” pretty things.

Well, last Friday night I went over to the apartment of this older artist couple I met through Café Gypsy, to meet with the guy, an old Irish photographer named Alen Macweeney. He had asked me if he could do a portrait of me, and after checking out his work, I said sure. We exchanged a couple of emails, and he suggested I wear whatever I wanted for the shoot—or nothing at all. I laughed, thinking to myself, “What do I look like, a nude model?”

But destiny called. Halfway through the shoot with Alen, I ended up topless. No censor bar, no paint, no nothing. Just destiny.

I don’t even know why I am writing this blog, documenting my quest to find the perfect job and to quit the imperfect ones. It’s all been bared to me now.

I am to become a nude model.