works by william pham, 2005-present
Starvation Modeling
My full-time job is starvation modeling. If you see a picture of a body without a head or face where you can count every single rib, every single vertebrae, every single vein tracing its way across skin and over bones like the trail of a gold rusher heading west across the United States in 1848 -- well, it's probably me. I hit my 20's ten years too late for the Calvin Klein glorification of skinny, so instead I sent hundreds of photos to the advertising departments of nonprofits and charities across the country.
You've seen my rib cage in Los Angeles. You've seen my scapula in New York. My collarbone is somewhere in Seattle. My hips are spread across Midwest highways. The images are always desaturated, stark, minimalist; the slogans are always brief.
"Overconsumption. Underconsumption."
"Conserve food to preserve life."
"Share."
"Eat."
I started working out a while ago and when I told my agent over the phone she went silent, then said her left side felt numb, and she mentioned stabbing chest pains, and if I hadn't threatened to call an ambulance she probably would have actually gone through with the heart attack. Every pound you gain is thousands of dollars down the drain, she had said, and she was right.
A young woman walked up to me while I was lying on a towel at a near-empty Northern California beach, alone, reading a book.
"I know you," she said.
"What?" I said.
"I know that stomach. That bottom of the rib cage. Those hip bones." She was staring down at me, hands clasped behind her back. Her hair was wet with ocean water. Beads of it still covered her chest, her shoulders, her abdomen. She was skinny, but not as skinny as me. Almost, but not quite: the difference between one percent milk and nonfat.
"Overconsumption. Underconsumption," I echoed in monotone.
"Conserve food to preserve life," she said.
"Share," I said.
"Eat," she said, and she took a step closer, and I put my book down, and she lay on top of me, and then I was on top of her, and we groped at each other's skeletons, our skeletons on display. If anyone saw us, what they saw was a garish display of pale skin and hyperdefined bone structures. She and I fucked for an hour, until she asked me to finish, and so I finished, and fell against her, inside and on top of her. I buried my face in the hollow between her collarbone and neck and she pressed her mouth against my ear. "Eat," she said.
I pulled on my jeans and she put on her skirt and we went to In-'n-Out burger and ordered double-double cheeseburgers and French fries and milkshakes and we ate without speaking to each other, not until the very end, when I asked her for her name.
"Pan," she said.
"Like the Greek myth?" I asked.
"Like Peter Pan," she said.
"Can you fly?" I asked.
"Only when I'm high," she said.
"Lost Boys?" I asked.
"Left them behind a long time ago," she said.
"Captain Hook?" I asked.
"Dead in a gas station bathroom somewhere between Death Valley and San Diego," she said.
"Wendy?" I asked.
"I'm not into girls," she said.
"So I shouldn't even bother asking about Tinkerbelle," I said.
"Right on," she said. She asked for my name. We exchanged cell phone numbers and she told me to give her a call whenever I was in the area. I agreed. I told her that I still had four hours before my flight out of the area.
We went to her apartment. The furniture was plain. The only decoration was her artwork on the walls: the images were desaturated, stark, minimalist. She set up a digital video camera on a tripod next to the bed and pressed RECORD and pulled me down on top of her, on top of the bed. She took off her shirt and then took off mine and we lay together like that for a long time. I traced my fingertips across every inch of skin I could reach, memorizing the geography of her: the thin hairs that covered the tops of her arms, the goose bumps along her wrists, the slopes of her upper back. I kissed her sternum. I licked her iliac crest. I rubbed my nose along her floating ribs. She unbuttoned my jeans and I hiked up her skirt and she pulled her panties to the side and I entered her and she dug her nails into my scapula and I held her lower jaw in my right hand and she dragged her nails down my lower back and I held her right wrist to the bed with my left hand.
She bit my shoulder. I bit her neck.
Our full-time job is starvation modeling.
---
Some time later she sent me the video. It was all very awkward, watching it on a laptop in a hotel room between photo shoots. I told her so via text message. She responded, also via text message:
"Re-shoot? Next time LA."
My reply: "Yes."
One month later I was in a suite at Le Merigot in Santa Monica, watching the water pour from gold-plated fixtures, when she knocked on the door. I turned off the water and opened the door for her. She was carrying a small black bag. She walked past me and carefully laid it upon a table, then opened it, retrieved an unfolding tripod and her digital camcorder, and walked into the bedroom with these things in her hands without looking at me.
I followed her.
We pulled the oversized sheets off of the oversized bed. We undressed, not facing each other. We held each other, our bodies an awkward fit for each other; we kissed each other, we touched each other. My fingers traced the route of Christopher Columbus over the route of Leif Erickson over her body.
"Pan," I said, I spoke into the nape of her neck.
"Yeah?" she asked into the air, eyes closed.
"Frying pan," I said.
"I've heard that one before," she said.
"Teflon, non-stick, cast-iron, aebleskiver-capable Pan," I said.
"What was that last one?" she asked.
"Aebleskiver," I repeated.
"Yeah? And what's that?" she asked.
"Danish pancake balls. Powdered sugar. Jam. It's sweet, and fluffy, and it tastes good," I said.
"Never heard of it," she said.
"Trust me on this one," I said, and I held her shoulders and pushed her down and kissed her and fucked her. She kissed me. She bit my lower lip, then bit it again, then closed her mouth over my neck and inhaled and exhaled sharply.
Everything we knew about cookware, we had learned from the Food Network, from Rachael Ray's white-toothed grin. Everything we knew about meerkats, we had learned from Animal Planet, from Meerkat Manor and its sensationalized day-to-day drama of those small mammals we would never have noticed if they weren't cute. But beneath that cute exterior, the little black eyes, and tiny paws, there was a social animal not really all that far removed from humans. Like us, they waged war. They fought battles, large and small, for territory and blood and out of a familiar malice. The researchers who filmed the series regarded the meerkats as individuals and gave them names like "Bubbles" and "Flower" but there was no disguising the fact that they lived savage lives, just like us. They killed the young with their jaws, ripping and tearing.
I wrapped my arms around Pan and held her warm, skinny body close to mine. I was very close to feeling sentimental and so I closed my eyes to avoid seeing all her beautiful skin.
copyright (c) 2007 by william pham