50 Days ‘til 50 Day 14--Parlez-vous makeup? (Part 2)

As long as I can remember I’ve always had the desire to run. I don’t know exactly what I was running toward or away from but the need to keep moving was in me. As soon as I was legally able to, the gates were open and I was off. I knew the narrow streets and minds in New Hampshire were not going to provide me my salvation. Having grown up with many fears and doubts about myself its almost against my nature to throw myself into the unknown head first but its in me, for better or worse. Nowadays I do love routine, moderate organization, and the familiarity of my home, my work, etc. I still run but I just run to the corner now and not around the world. I haven’t been a world traveler by any means but have had the chance to see many places. I still have quite a long bucket list of places that I want to visit so hope to keep checking them off the list as I can. It can be a bit scary going to a place you don’t know anything about and all I can say to that is for me I learned the only way to do this is to just jump in. The only requirement is a comfy pair of shoes, a friendly smile, and an open mind. When I travel internationally I love to get lost, try and communicate with the people, just breath it all in. Even though Paris was all new to me, I had a very strong sense of comfort and familiarity in the city. I don’t know how you all feel about past lives (I'm a believer), and to my memory I’ve had this experience in only two places in my life. That feeling that you’ve been here before. Not a deja vu but a real gut sense that you know this place, you’ve walked these streets before, that you belong there. Of the two places this has happened to me, one of them is Paris, France.The plane started to descend as I arched my neck to see out the window trying to get my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t realize Charles de Gaulle airport was not in Paris itself. I hadn’t slept a wink with all the adrenaline running through me and had befriended another non-sleeper from New York on the flight who was coming to Europe to just bum around and hang out. He asked me why I was going and I said proudly, “I'm moving here for work.” He shared with me a few things he knew about the city including the most valuable place ever for all the Americans in Paris, The American Church (L’Eglise Americaine) on the Quai D’Orsay. I'm so grateful that he gave me this address, as it became my instant haven for everything from finding my apartment to job listings to just being around others who spoke my native tongue. I quickly realized there are many places in the city where no one speaks English. Why would they? It’s France. I had found a cheapie hotel for a few nights just to catch my breath but knew I had to find a place to live. Remember people, this was pre internet and pre cell phone. It’s so much easier to get around today when you have a smart phone in your hand. This was old school relocation. Paper maps, pay phones, answering machines, and no texting. I took one and only one of the index cards at the church for apartment rentals and phoned the owner immediately. Guess what? She only spoke French. The next thing that kicked in for me in that second was self-preservation. I needed a roof over my head and food in my stomach quickly. The real basics. Somehow the words came to me and I scratched her address on the card and agreed to meet her right away. Two hours and a lot of walking later I found her, nowhere near the American Church. It was a small working class neighborhood on the southwest part of the city. Near Montparnasse. Nothing touristy nearby, so no English speaking nearby. It was one flight up and sat above a boulangerie (bread and pastry shop). Probably not so smart I had converted all my money to the franc and had it stuffed in a fanny pack. It was pre Euro also. I counted out the money to her and paid for the place all upfront. “Ok”, I thought, “I now had a roof over my head except for the fact that I had given her almost ¾ of my money. I needed to work and work fast. The place was heaven…and all mine.It had a small kitchenette, toilet, fold out sofa bed, and a square waist high bathtub, at the most 200 square feet. It also had no phone service. Each tenant was responsible for turning on a phone line at the phone company. I had the thought to ask her if she had an extra answering machine by chance and by gosh she did and brought it to me the next day. I needed to be available for any calls I might receive from the agency and any photographers looking for a hair or makeup artist. Now onto the phone company. Anyone who has ever done this in a strange land not having a full grasp of the language is a highly daunting task. I stood in queue and got to the counter to place my order for the phone service. What seemed like hours later I had my phone number. I could receive calls and messages. Things were looking brighter. Around the corner from my apartment was a brand new Supermarche. It was the new thing to hit Paris, as most food stores are all small, independently owned, specialty stores. You go here for your meats, over there for your fruits and vegetables, around the corner for your bread etc. This was one stop shopping. It was Publix in Paris. Or Safeway on the Seine. The Parisians had never seen anything like this. You could buy all your groceries under one roof? They scoffed at it but I was loving it. I would go on to learn that the US was far advanced in some areas, but surprisingly far behind in others. I stocked up on what seemed to be a month of food and stuffed every corner of the apartment with cereal, crackers, soup cans, whatever I could grab that I knew would keep for a while.Ok, so onto the hair and makeup. My new route to the agency consisted of two changes on the subway and about a half a mile of walking. It was not somewhere I could get fast unless I wanted to spend all my money on a taxi. Again, weaving myself through all the arrondissements and small streets, I couldn’t shake the thoughts that I had been here before. I walked in awe of the beauty of it all, confident, and happy. I guess I was just old enough to appreciate all that I was seeing and experiencing and still not care I only had $100 bucks in my pocket. My senses were so heightened and I could even eavesdrop on some random conversations of people and feel like I knew the gist of what has being said.  My first trip to the agency was more for me to just make sure I knew where it was and that I could get there. I hadn’t planned on a real sit down meeting with anyone but since I had made the trip there, I went in, unannounced. Naomi Campbell walked passed me on my way into the offices and I naturally did what anyone would do, waived at her. She kept walking. I was feeling very small all of sudden. My little South Beach didn’t seem so horrible in the moment. I forged on. I had my prized portfolio under my arm with about 8 or 9 photos in it. I was met by a man who walked me over to his desk and looked through my portfolio in 2.1 seconds flat and then had me turn around. He gestured for me to look at the wall. On the wall were the composite cards of all the hair and makeup artists they could call in a pinch. Stephan Marais, Kevyn Aucoin, Oribe, Serge Normant. The blood just ran from my face. These were the Gods of the business. Faces of Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer stared down at me from the wall. These names may not mean much to everyone but in this industry, at this time, this was as good as it gets. These were the supermodels…the ones that professed they wouldn’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day. The booker handed me my portfolio and said goodbye. I blurted out to him that I was from their sister agency in Miami Beach and was sent here. He mumbled something French and said leave your number with the receptionist. I did along with my composite card which I had scribbled my new French phone number on the top and left. Feeling like Dorothy in Oz, I wanted to click my heels and run back home. But I did not. (Besides, the best lines of the movie are at the end anyways.)I had to have a new strategy. It was obvious this agency didn’t know me or want to know me. I did go back many times in addition to other new agencies and left my composite cards and my French phone number everywhere I went. Lo and behold one day I received a call from the agency. “Monsieur Fuller?” the voice asked abruptly. “We wanted to have you work on one of our new girls tomorrow. To assist the hair and makeup artist in getting this young model some new photos for her own portfolio.” (On a side note, I went on to work with this girl again for a shoot with Marie Claire. One of my proudest moments while in Paris.) I had made a few friends during this time, a group of guys I had met at a café who all spoke English. They were ex-pats from England who all lived in Paris. They became my lifeline many times. One day I even gave one of them a haircut, outside on a park bench in the Tuileries Garden. Talk about a Parisian moment. An amazing feeling to know that all I needed was a comb and a pair of scissors and no matter where I was in the world, someone always needed a haircut. So of course I said yes to the booker and went the next day to the shoot. The main hair and makeup person didn’t show up and it was just the photographer, this 16 French model and me. The photographer was American and told me “we have to do this shoot for the agency today or else”. I guess they were waiting outside for the camera film for after the shoot. The business can make a lot of importance out of stuff that isn’t really that important. It can be very affected sometimes. Especially in Paris.My curling iron was plugged into my power converter, as the power in Europe is different than it is in the states. My makeup was neatly set up and I had discussed three looks that we would do with the model. She was extremely gorgeous but for only 16 still had that childlike look to her. I immediately thought of Lolita and that was my inspiration for the shoot. The model sat with her back to me in the chair as I grabbed my curling iron to start putting in some loose waves in her hair combined with some red lipstick making her look way more sexy and sluttish than she should be, but it made for good photos. I wrapped her hair; on the entire left side of her head around the curling iron. In what can next only be described as in a nano second, her hair literally melted off onto the barrel of the curling iron in a poof of black smoke. My transformer obviously was not working and my iron was at a temperature so high that could have been used by a metal forger. Burning hair is not a great smell to begin with, but the entire side of her hair on fire was about as bad as it gets. I dropped the iron out the window that was half open next to me to let the hair burn off and then looked at the model ready for her to be hysterical and stab me with my cutting scissors. She was reading a magazine, smoking a cigarette, and didn’t even have a clue that I had just left her almost half bald. I think in this moment I cried, peed my pants a little, and laughed all at the same time. I could barely speak and tried to signal the photographer to tell him half her hair was hanging out the window sizzling on the curling iron like a steak at a Korean BBQ. That was it. I was done, never to work in this town again were my thoughts. Not only had I been entrusted to do this girls hair and makeup but I had just left her looking like one of the Muppets. The photographer and I spoke in the adjoining room and of course we had to tell her what had happened. We had to get the shoot done first though. I grabbed my water bottle and slicked her hair back and we did the shoot. The photos were actually beautiful and I still to this day use that image in my portfolio. If only they knew? Well, I guess they do now. After the shoot I spoke to the girl and she started to laugh. Asking me if I cut hair and that she had been trying to get her hair cut for months now. A short pixie haircut is what she and the agency had been wanting for her for a while now but they never got around to it. I banged out a rocking pixie cut for her and when word got around the agency of her “new look” all of a sudden I started getting calls for more work. Who knew? Here is that image of that shoot. I called it Paris Is Burning.I would go on to work on many more jobs and shoots while I was there. Meeting people from all over the world and honing my craft and my soul.Paris for me produced day after day of just stunning beauty. To actually stand in front of the Eiffel tower eating a croissant is, well, just beyond words. To come off the subway and be standing in front of the Opera House gave me chills every time it happened. I had a grasp of the language now, ran through the city like I had lived there my whole life. I learned so much about myself. How resilient I was, how with a smile and a sincere desire the people embraced me like I was one of their own. They really have it right. To sit in a café for hours and eat, have a coffee, and just talk about life seems just so civil and perfect. The joie de vivre they call it. At the end of the day the work always got done, the clients were happy, and so was I. As I was now more known than I was that first day in that agency I scored coveted tickets to a show for fashion week. There I was, little old me, standing with the top echelon of fashion at a Gianni Versace fashion show in the Ritz Hotel in Paris while these supermodels bounced down the runway. Linda, Christy, Cindy, Naomi, Tyra stomped above my head. I really did pee a little in that moment. It is and was a moment burned into my brain forever.I would return back into the states right into Manhattan. It got lonely after a while, it got good, and it got bad, but mostly I was ready. For I was running again. For as the song goes “if you can make it in Paris, you can make it anywhere”. Oh wait? That’s a different song.Paris, je t’aime! You changed my life forever. ❤️❤️jf