Almost 5'4"

To my mother, and to anyone chasing a dream

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Suitcase

Hello Mom

Four Years Earlier

Dad

Boys

Scholarship

Deep-Fried Bullshit

Profile

My First Shoot

Nipples

Messages

9/11

Giant Dick

Bitch

Maryam

Lord of the Flies

Challah Bread

Hobby

Penthouse

$$$

Portfolio

Miami

Miami (Again)

Fuck Them All

Hello Isobella

Goodbye Heather

Coffee

Pussy

Agent

The Frenchman

Extras: Episode 1

Feet

Melons in Miami

Gene

Mr Know-It-All

Make-Up

Francis

Finals

Mr Deathbed & the Big Titties

Robert

Body Parts

Body Double

Fight

Woman’s World

Bikini Bottoms

Bad Actress

Balls

Pong

Liar

Dumped

Stuff

Isobel?!

Tear Sheets

Craigslist.com

Giraffes

Couch-Surfing

Designer

Catwalk Show

Jerks

Fail

Blackout

Birthday

Threesome

Extras: Episode 2

Pneumonia

Roller-Skating Rock Chick

Moving On

Frankenstein

Back to Miami

Reality

Fishy

Roaches

Extras: Episode 3

www.isobelladreams.com

Hurricane

Goodbye Miami

Home Sweet Home

Back to Business

Playgirl

Apple

Briefcase

Breaking Up

My New Office

$600

Hostess

Dildo

Extras: Episode 4

Casting

Period

Eviction

Thirty-One Days

Almost 5′ 4″

A Place of My Own (Well, Almost)

Epilogue: Stand Tall

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Suitcase

March 2006, Harlem, New York City

My clothes smelled awful. I hadn’t done any laundry for about six weeks. Actually, more like six months. I sat on my suitcase, using all my weight to shut it, nearly breaking the zipper in the process.

My life was inside that bag.

I had no idea where I would be sleeping later. I had a photo shoot in a few hours and if the photographer turned out to be cool he might let me stay at his place. Failing that I could call a friend and sleep on their floor.

Here I was leaving yet another apartment. I thought back over all the places I had lived in during the few short years since leaving home. Astoria, Brooklyn Heights, the college dorms on 88th and Riverside, Syracuse, those seven months in Miami. And now I was leaving Harlem behind as well.

I had precisely $23 in my pocket.

I checked my suitcase zipper one more time to make sure it was secure. It was. Something had to be.

If you took the contents of that case – three pairs of shoes, my notorious red dress, a few pairs of jeans, some scrappy tops, my journal and the many scraps of paper with names and dates scribbled on them – you pretty much had Isobella Jade.

Not forgetting the most important item of all: my modeling portfolio.

Now that I had finished packing I realized the smell hadn’t gone away. I sniffed at myself and it wasn’t pleasant. I had been wearing the same underwear for three days. I felt gross and disgusting, but there was no time for laundry and I really couldn’t afford the $4.50 anyway.

As I sat there I wondered why I was doing all this. Why I was flitting from place to place with barely enough money to eat. Did I really want to be a model this much? Was it really worth all the doubt, the rejection, the poverty, the sacrifice, the broken relationships?

Hell yeah.

Modeling was my dream and nothing was going to stop me. I would do anything to get what I wanted. I would endure all the hardships my chosen profession could throw at me.

I would even lie to my own mother.

Hello Mom

I was en route to the subway with my case dragging behind me when I felt the vibration of my cell phone in my coat pocket, but I ignored it. It was on vibrate for a reason; I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

It kept vibrating.

Annoyed, I looked at the digital display. Shit. It was the worst person to call at that moment. Her voice would kill me.

‘Hello, Mom…can you hear me?’

Boxes of fruit, ketchups, and empanadas lined the street, ready to be shelved at the storefronts I passed. I had to zigzag through the commotion.

‘Mom, are you there?’ I had my mother and an uncertain future in my hands, an awkward mix.

‘Yes, I’m here, Heather, how are you?’ I hated it when she said my real name, especially at this moment.

‘I’m good. I’m going to SoHo, Mom.’ She had only been to New York City once before; I don’t think she actually knew where SoHo was.

‘Oh, that sounds like fun, what else are you doing today?’ Oh great, she sounded talkative.

Answering her with the truth would be like pulling my own teeth; I hated talking to her about modeling, about myself, about my living situation. She had given me the money to get the apartment that I had just walked out on. Telling her that I’d wasted her $1500 would not go over well. Telling her the truth would ruin my day, let alone hers. It would ruin this moment.

‘I’m going to do some laundry.’ Lie. ‘And mail out some more comp cards.’ Another lie; I had no stamps. ‘It’s a nice day in the city. I might go to the…Mom, I gotta go. I’m about to get on the train!’ I lied again. The train was three blocks away.

‘I wanted to see if you were alive. It has been a couple of weeks and you haven’t called.’

She was right. I had avoided calling her for fear that she would ask about my life and I’d be forced to lie, just like I was doing now.

‘Sorry, gotta go!’

Speaking with my Mom reminded me of home. It would be so easy to walk back into the security of my old life. I felt vulnerable hearing her voice. If anything was going to make me give up it was this. I needed to be strong. I had to push away the guilt and stay focused. I consoled myself with the thought that it was often at these lowest moments that a new modeling job would appear.

Four Years Earlier

‘Heather, I need to talk to you.’

We had just finished Thanksgiving dinner: turkey and stuffing, Jell-O and green bean casserole. It was great to be home, to see my mom and sister. It had been a good day, too good to last.

My sister Lara followed me to my mother’s bedroom, walking proudly. She knew what was going on.

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’

Of course I said, ‘No.’

She paused, eyeing me carefully. ‘What is this then? Do you know where this came from?’

My mom whipped out the evidence. It was a photo of me posing butt naked. I was only wearing a smile and an American flag that barely covered my nipples and crotch. I looked at it in disbelief.

‘When did you do this?’

Heart racing, I recalled the face of that ugly, shaggy, scary old Santa Claus of a photographer and wondered why he would put my photo on his website. Why did I even sign that damn release? Perhaps I could persuade my mother that I had been tricked into doing it – the naïve young model exploited by the seasoned professional.

Fuck! I knew that wasn’t the truth. I had wanted to be naked that day. The photographer had given me $300 and it was my first job as a paid model. I booked it all by myself, too. After the shoot I felt beautiful and radiant. Now everything was ruined and I was back to being that ugly girl again – the one who wore hand-me-downs and glasses, the one who never fit in.

‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled quietly. I hated myself, couldn’t believe I’d been caught. ‘Mom, I just…’ There had to be a way I could explain things in a logical way without sounding like an idiot. Instead, I felt a flush of heat. I couldn’t think straight. My secret was out, loud and obnoxious. I couldn’t shut it up. Before I could think of some explanation, my sister spoke up instead.

‘Everyone knows. How could you do this to us?’

I thought about ‘everyone.’ Did she mean my friends? Did my father know? Did she mean all of Syracuse?

‘Everyone thinks you’re a slut,’ she continued, without letting me say a word. ‘I was working at Kirby’s as a hostess and one of the cooks comes up to me and says, “I saw your sister on the Internet the other day…and she was naked!”’

When she said the word ‘naked,’ my knees buckled and I fell to the floor. I was naked on the Internet for all the world to see. I couldn’t take it back. The words I had spent my whole life running from, words that stung – whore, slut, loser – now reverberated in my ears. I thought no one would know my secrets if I kept them back in New York, yet my family had seen the photo in Syracuse, before I’d had the courage to warn them.

‘You know what Heather,’ my mother said. Oh God help me. ‘You are supposed to be in school!’ Typical for a teacher. I rolled my eyes like a schoolchild.

‘Why are you wasting your life? I have worked so hard for you girls!’ She poured on the guilt. All the car rides, money she didn’t have, always running around to take care of our needs, and how that left her with no life of her own. ‘You are supposed to be making something of yourself, not becoming a whore!’ She sat on the bed staring at the photo, her eyes wide. It was all so predictable and that just made me feel worse.

‘You’ve shamed the family,’ Lara chimed in. Suddenly I was my plump mother’s daughter again. My alcoholic father’s daughter. The below-average scholar. Yet I knew deep down I was doing the right thing. For the rest of my life, if that’s what it took, I would prove to them I hadn’t made a mistake, that modeling wasn’t just another ‘silly phase.’

But right now I had a situation to deal with.

‘I’m sorry.’ I could hardly breathe or speak.

‘And what about me?’ my sister continued. ‘I’m getting dirty looks at school and people are calling her a slut to my face.’

She was still talking as I stormed to my old room and slammed the door shut.

That Thanksgiving Day still haunts me. The look in my mother’s eyes, like I wasn’t her daughter anymore. Lara’s frown, her knowing look, reminding me that this big sister wasn’t worth looking up to anymore. I had lost my father to divorce and the bottle; I had lost my virginity to a boy who didn’t deserve it; I had lost my track scholarship. There was no way in hell I was going to lose my modeling too.

And Heather would not lose again. I would make sure of that. I decided to change my name and really make a go of my modeling career.

Dad

My alcoholic father never gave a shit about my modeling, which was a good thing because he was one less person to impress. I don’t think he ever wanted to be a father. He told me so a few times when I was a teenager, but it didn’t bother me. The only good thing he ever did for me was to pass on his gift for running.

Back in the mid-1960s he was a long jumper and a track runner. He had been born in Syracuse and raised in a series of foster homes. His mother was also an alcoholic; his dad left when he was two. As a result, he never really wanted to have kids. He has never paid child support; he could barely even support himself. When he showed up at my track meets in high school, my parents wouldn’t sit together. My mother and Lara would be in the stands, and he was always down by the track. Sometimes he showed up a little tipsy but at least he was there, which was all I needed to know. He called me his ‘running rebel.’

His honesty about not wanting to be a father meant that I could tell him anything and not worry about being judged, the complete opposite of the relationship with my mother. For a while this was pretty cool but I soon realized that I was becoming the parent in the relationship, listening to the many problems and tragedies of his ‘death of a salesman’ life.

I think I understood his troubles from an early age. I can remember as a twelve-year-old pouring a six-pack of beer into the sink, watching it slip down the drain so he couldn’t drink it, wishing I could make him stop. I would stay up all night worrying about him and how I could help to fix things. But there was already too much jail time and rehab for this little girl to make a difference. Even so, I really believed that if I ran fast and performed well on the track it would make him proud of me and that maybe, just maybe, he would stop drinking.

My father’s problems meant I didn’t have a constant, stable man in my life. As a result, I craved male attention and I certainly got it, mostly from immature boys who had just discovered their penises.

And so began my sexual curiosity.

Boys

I craved the feeling of being wanted by a boy, being desired by anyone who would look in my direction. I would wear short skirts and tops without bras. I liked the looks and stares from boys at school, at the track meet, at the water park, at the mall, wherever. I gave the impression of the sexy, sassy teenager but, in truth, I was still a naïve young girl. I was interested in sex but didn’t know anything about my vagina or what to do with it to have an orgasm. But that didn’t stop me.

Almost a month after I turned fourteen, I had sex for the first time.

I wrote about it on a piece of paper and stuffed it into my dresser. A few days later I found myself taking a deep breath and walking downstairs to speak to my mom. She was reading on the couch and cramming greasy macaroni salad down her throat. I could smell its stench filling the living room air and see her cheeks puffed full of the fatty salad. I shuddered, vowing to run even harder so that I didn’t end up like her – but she was still my mom. I took another deep breath.

‘I have to tell you something.’

She looked up from her plate. She was tired from a long week of teaching kids. I sat facing her with my legs crossed Indian-style. I touched her hand, to feel close. I could smell the scent of her peppermint hand cream. It was better than the macaroni.

‘What is it, honey?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Please don’t be mad.’ I started slow, with an innocent, careful tone. ‘I had sex the other day.’

The house was quiet and my sister wasn’t around to hear. I hadn’t told any of my friends yet. The boy and I had already broken up and we weren’t talking at school. Maybe he didn’t like the sex, that night at the party in the tent. He had said it was his first time too. Maybe he was disappointed in me and my small breasts. Or maybe he just didn’t like me anymore. I still liked him.

She looked puzzled. She actually stopped chewing and took a deep swallow.

‘Well, when did this happen?’ Her calm tone confused me but when I took a breath to explain she switched to a wicked witch voice. Knowing when it happened didn’t seem to matter anymore.

‘No, forget it! You are just way too young to have sex!’

‘I know, but I am…and we used a condom,’ I added in panic, like I should be rewarded for being smart.

‘Well, I don’t care. You’re fourteen! You’re going to the doctor!’

The sound of that scared me but later that week I paid a visit to the gynecologist and started on birth control. I guess my mom knew she wouldn’t be able to stop me having sex and wanted me to be safe. I tried not to be too obvious about it but, like most teenagers, I would often have sex in the house. She caught me out once when she found an unflushed condom floating in the downstairs bathroom.

When I wasn’t acting upon my sexual curiosity, or flirting with boys, my time was spent running on the varsity track team. I felt a purpose when I ran. For most of my high school career I was the captain and the top runner on my team. By my senior year I had run States, Empires, Junior Olympics and I hoped for a college scholarship as a track runner. My coach cared about my grades and was more of a father than my own. He never failed to keep me focused when there was a chance of me going off the rails. He would honk the horn so loudly on Saturday mornings when he came to pick me up that it woke the entire neighborhood. The whole team would be waiting with him in the van for the captain who had slept in again. But once at the track, I was tireless and pumped for ten miles.

I thought running was my only ticket to becoming something more.

Scholarship

My mother and I screamed when we opened the acceptance letter from the New York Institute of Technology. I jumped on the couch and almost broke it. Then we both cried because we couldn’t believe it.

I was going to college. I was going to see something new, get the hell out of Syracuse and, just for sugar on top, I had a scholarship to run at a Division II school. I felt very important as we packed the car with tons of college supplies and goodies from Wal-Mart. It was like Christmas three months early. We drove down to Long Island a few days before my birthday, and five hours later I was free and on my own. An advertising major and a collegiate athlete.

But after just one semester I quit running.

Just getting into college was the biggest achievement of my life. Once I arrived the running didn’t seem to matter anymore. My father wasn’t there to see me run. There wasn’t anyone to win for. Running no longer felt special.

A piece of my heart caved in as I sat down at my iMac computer in my single dorm room to email my coach. I typed in the words, ‘I quit.’

Despite the hurt involved in making the decision, I immediately felt lighter and excited about the unknown future to come. That four-letter word – QUIT – was a new kind of freedom, one I had never felt before. Overnight, my scholarship was gone, but I did stay at NYIT. I stayed out of loyalty. The school gave me a chance.

Running had served me well and now, without it, I didn’t know who I was or what I stood for. Since seventh grade, running was my religion; there wasn’t anything to believe in anymore. I badly needed something to live for or at least to make me feel strong again. I needed to make myself over. I had just abandoned the one thing that had kept me safe. Now, I needed to create a new goal.

I joined a sorority and did the usual college campus drinking and partying till 4 A.M. It was great not to have to sneak around in case my coach or someone from the team caught me. Over time, not running felt normal and I could just be myself. I made it through my first year without gaining the typical freshman fifteen pounds from beer and cheese doodles. I still looked like my skinny, old runner self.

One day, I invited my friend Audrey to my dorm. I gave her my mini photo album from high school to look at, while I flipped through TV channels.

‘You know you could model,’ she said, looking up at me.

‘You think?’

‘You look like an Abercrombie model.’

Was she serious? She looked more like a model than me. She had long curly hair, and she was lean, with perfect proportions. At twenty-two, she was so much more mature. Most of all, she was tall. For the next ten minutes, I looked over the photos with her and she pointed to the ones she liked best.

Flicking through the pictures it dawned on me that I had always been posing, always making a face, a little sneaky show-off face, no matter who was in the shot: someone’s sick cat, a childhood friend, or a boy I was taking to the prom. Every photo was of me modeling before I knew what modeling was. I loved to pose, to be seen, to show off, and it started when I had a hunger to feel affection from a male, when I had a hunger to be seen, desired, wanted. When my father chose alcohol over his family.

Deep-Fried Bullshit

Back home for the summer, without a father figure, scholarship, or any semblance of a plan, I felt cramped and struggled to breathe. Being home was a reminder of how much I had tried to get out in the first place. The tension was building again with each helping of my mother’s deep-fried bullshit.

The more I thought about my situation the more that conversation with Audrey came to mind. The idea that I could make it as a model wouldn’t go away. I remembered her words as my mother handed me a second helping of chilli. I pushed the bowl away as if it were poison. It hit me right there and then, that a plain, hopeless girl from Syracuse with no connections or knowledge of the modeling world should give it a try.

I did the only thing I could think of. I opened Google and attacked it – typing in any modeling word that came to mind. The first results of my search showed two things: a lot of skin and tall women.

That moment could have ruined everything, and it almost did. My fingers hesitated over the keyboard as I scrolled through shots of long-legged gorgeous Giraffes (my nickname for the impossibly tall, skinny beauties that would from now on be my competition). My heart rate went up when the blond smiled at me. She was naked except for the tiniest G-string I had ever seen. She stared at me and whispered, ‘You don’t have a chance.’ I continued through the whole page, my eyebrows furrowed with doubt. I would never be as beautiful as them. There was nothing at all in that dusty basement to give me hope. I almost allowed my life to slink back to greasy fried chicken, potato skins and suburban shopping malls. Almost, but not quite.

Profile

I didn’t tell Danny, my boyfriend, about my modeling ideas or that I was thinking about the possibility of making it a career. I wasn’t ready to share my dreams with him just yet. Instead, I asked my friend Joel to help me. I met him at his house, out back by the swing set.

Even though we were old enough to break it, Joel and I swung, while his little sister Angela played in the grass with their snotty, snorting bulldog that I hated to touch.