Chapter Mexico City
Mexico City
It all fell apart with Miguel a couple of days after her return. Luisa had been quiet, preoccupied, and he could tell.
He confronted her, accused her of having another boyfriend, and despite her trying to explain to him that that wasn't how the world of modelling worked, that you didn't have the same people in each place, he wouldn't hear of it.
She came close, very close in the heat of a blazing row to telling him just how wrong he was, that she'd slept with two female models and was wondering if she was gay, but she held her tongue.
.. partly out of fear for what he might do, not physically but emotionally, his conservative upbringing coming with an unhealthy dose of homophobia, and partly because it would be unfair to lay it on him that she'd slept with someone else.
In the end, they went their separate ways. It was clear to both of them that they'd grown too far apart, particularly when Luisa made it crystal clear that modelling was her profession and she wasn't going to settle down and be the good, dutiful wife that he expected any time soon.
Her parents, surprisingly, were understanding, her father letting slip in a moment of candour that they'd had their doubts about Miguel and that Luisa could find better.
It was with their support and blessing that she made the difficult decision to move a few weeks later, renting an apartment in Mexico City to be closer to the heart of the fashion scene in Mexico.
And it was there, single and thrust into a much more happening, vibrant scene, that Luisa started to really discover herself.
***
Luisa had always known it, really, but moving to the big city hit home that as a model making good progress in the industry it really, really wasn't hard to have a lot of fun.
She had a few friends living there already that gave her a solid base, grounding her when the party life got a bit too much, but beyond them the connections she was making and the access she had to people and events meant that she could, and often would, get into all the top clubs and bars, not to mention the industry events.
It was obvious, really, in hindsight but for Luisa as she neared nineteen it was a major realisation after two years dating Miguel and the small town life in Aguascalientes that, if you’re pretty close to being a ten out of ten yourself, then it’s no problem getting a lot of attention and you can afford to be discerning about only going for the nines and tens yourself.
She stayed clear of anyone who was excessively powerful or rich…
in Mexico at that time you could quickly get caught up in something that you really didn’t want to be involved in.
But that still left a lot of options and, for the first six months in the big city, she went a little wild, dating a string of men, none of them for long enough to call it a relationship but similarly none of them just one night stands, and funnily enough no women.
The fashion industry in Mexico wasn’t quite ready for an openly lesbian model, not yet.
Looking back, Luisa realised that in large part she’d been trying to make up for lost time having dated Miguel for so long, but then also after a while she'd been trying to replace him, to recapture a little of what she’d had with him.
In many ways it was six months of her rebounding hard, but rather than landing somewhere good she ended up ricocheting from one person to another.
It was after ending things with one of the guys that Luisa looked at herself in the mirror and realised that she was actually dreading the date with a new guy that she had that night, not because she didn’t like him but simply because she was tired of putting on the performance yet again, of getting to know someone afresh, when none of them seemed to have the electric connection that she still craved and that, so far, she’d only ever achieved on that one night with Bel.
***
For the next year work took over, her career building nicely.
While Luisa didn't have much exposure yet outside the region, the work in the US coming through but slower than she'd have liked, she was building a name for herself locally without a doubt.
It had got to the point by then that she would be the main name on some of the smaller shoots that she went on, something that she was pleased with at the age of just nineteen.
Throughout that year she had little time for much else, and certainly no time for relationships. Not that there weren't the occasional nights or people she might date for a few weeks but they were few and far between, although she did start to experiment with women as well as men too…
…a model her age from Canada, she was sweet but innocent, experimenting herself with how the world of modelling worked, a night of fun but nothing special...
…a footballer playing in the Mexican Liga, she knew she was a trophy conquest for him, but she enjoyed herself regardless, and particularly enjoyed the stamina of a professional sportsman...
…an Australian fashion influencer turned model, visiting Mexico City, she had a body to die for and gave Luisa an enjoyable weekend after they met at a party, although it was Luisa's turn to be the experienced one, almost like the blind leading the blind…
There was the bad as well, the ugly side of modelling that Bel had alluded to and that Luisa had known existed.
A photoshoot that felt wrong from the start, one that ended up with just the photographer and her in a deserted studio as evening fell and with no easy way to say no.
An industry executive who invited Luisa to his hotel room to discuss creative plans and whose intentions became clear once the door was closed.
In both cases the men involved were charming, considerate even, and would probably have been genuinely surprised to hear that Luisa hadn’t been entirely willing.
She certainly didn't let on while she was with them. That was how it worked… the coercion was so wrapped up in flattery and opportunity that the people doing it rarely recognised it for what it was, and the people on the receiving end couldn’t quite point to the moment where they could have said no without it costing them.
Mercifully these were rare, and Luisa learned from them quickly.
She built her own rules: if a shoot feels wrong, leave early; the hotel bar, never the hotel room; never be the last person on set.
Easy to follow once she had enough standing in the industry to absorb the consequences of saying no, harder when she was starting out.
But the experiences sharpened her instincts and, more than anything, reinforced her determination to operate on her own terms.
All-in-all though work gave her little time for anything romantic, and certainly not a relationship. She ended up being strategic in who she saw and when, always thinking through the frame of, would this harm my modelling career?
And in all that time still no sign of Bel, nearly two years on from Tulum.
Bel still haunted her dreams and her fantasies, that night of indescribable pleasure still dominated her thoughts, but Luisa was starting to wonder if she might never see Bel again, realising that she needed to move on.
It was, after all, entirely possible to never see someone you worked with on a shoot again, particularly if you modelled in different markets normally.
As she turned twenty she was happy with her career but knew that she needed something to accelerate it more, to be able to break out of the local market, while she was just as confused about her sexuality as she'd been when she first got back from Tulum.
.. sometimes she felt quite straight, sometimes she felt quite lesbian, she really didn't know what she was still.