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was a legitimate pose for a bathrobe or perhaps a scoop-neck sweater, I felt it was a limiting pose and not one I would have selected. Amazingly, nobody chose the Brooke Shields Calvin Klein pose. I had felt certain that I wouldn’t be the only student to bring this electrifying pose to class. But apparently the other students had naturally gravitated toward a certain comfort zone, a safety area without risks: mediocrity.
    Finally, it was my turn, and I assumed my position on the floor. Even with my short hair and no fan, I could feel myself resemble Brooke. I glanced quickly at Phillip’s eyes, to see if I could gauge his reaction. And for one brief instant, I felt I saw awe in his eyes. But I wasn’t sure. It may have merely been the hair-spray fumes, which had replaced the oxygen in the room. The entire buildingsmelled like hair spray and nail-polish remover. The men’s restroom smelled like face powder.
    Phillip cornered me as everyone was collecting their notebooks, magazine clippings, and towels after class. He spoke in a low voice that seemed to suggest wisdom and authority. “You have real potential as a floor model. I mean, you
work
that floor.”
    Had I heard him correctly? “Floor, um, floor model?? What, you know, exactly is that?” It sounded exotic, like a cosmologist who scans the sky for only collapsing stars.
    He nodded. Phillip didn’t have the looks or the height to be a model, but he had the polish, and he certainly had the passion. Although the curious thing about him was that he was clearly a straight man. He was like some variant breed of straight man that seemed like a fag. “There are catalogue models, runway models, hand models, crotch models, and there are floor models. These are, you know, models who just really do well in a horizontal position. Some people? They just look wrong on a floor. Take Cheryl Tiegs. You never see her lying down, no way. Cheryl just doesn’t work when she’s horizontal because she’s actually got saddlebags. Neither does Christy Brinkley, although she’s very thin. She just doesn’t work when she’s flat because she looks slutty. But you know, there’s a lot of work for a model who can work a floor. There’s bedding, nightwear, and then the more avant garde. The eighties are going to change everything. With ‘new wave’ and everything, it’s just real exciting.”
    So there were
specialties
. I hadn’t realized that modeling was such a parallel career to medicine. The decision between runway model and floor model was easily as difficult as the one between infectious disease and proctology.
    But I still wasn’t convinced that I had the looks to be a top male model. I worried that my eyes were too deep-set and that my nose, while Roman, was too long. If I were going to be a top male model, I would have to be ruthlessly honest with myself. “Truly, do you think I have any chance? Or is this just a waste of time?”
    Phillip bit his lower lip and touched his fingers to his intensely hair-sprayed hair. “I think you need to grow into your looks. I think you’re going to really bloom in four, five years.”
    “Thanks,” I said. Maybe he was right. Maybe I would bloom. This gave me hope. I’d forgotten I was only a teenager and that I would change. Perhaps my eyes would begin to push out from my head. Maybe my face would grow in around my nose. And while this did comfort me somewhat, it also alarmed me. There were too many variables. If my biology decided to screw with my looks, it wouldn’t matter how ambitious I was; I’d never be a top male model. The Barbizon instructors would surely understand this. For they were people who had enormous ambitions to make it to the top of the modeling profession but whose genetics had other plans. Their genetics said,
“Oh no. You can’t be a top model. But you can teach modeling at a franchise school!
”
    Phillip patted me on the shoulder, like a coach. “Now I want you to tape that picture of Brooke Shields