1
And you know, life does go on. It has to; time is entropy: one thing occurs, then a second, then a third. An endless string of events. In some of them, well, we feature. In others, perhaps the vast majority, we are absent.
Some of us are in more realities, more events than others. And that is what defines fame. Fame is the condition of being in far more realities than most can ever imagine.
Fame, however, is not a simple thing, a simple issue.
Fame is a complex set of, well, a set of everything.
Every part of every aspect of your life is magnified.
And to someone, that means important. Wear leggings on a January morning on a plane to New York?
When you get off the plane, someone will ask about the color and brand of the leggings.
They will want the exact style number. And how many times have you washed that pair of leggings, and what detergent and temperature did you use in your washing machine?
Someone will want the brand, make, and model of the washer and then ask for the same about the dryer.
And why? Not one bit of all of that information has any importance to anyone alive. But if you're a famous runway model arriving in New York for a week's shooting, I assure you, you will be asked. And not just once.
And we haven’t even begun to talk about the boots, known as high, black, suede, and a famous maker. Nor the bag you are carrying, black suede. Not your long jacket or coat? Black suede. And is that real black fur, or is it dyed, or is it artificial? All of that is important to someone.
And yes, I got paid for wearing these boots, those leggings, those panties, but you never see them, that bra, and don’t forget the blouse, even if not one single person in New Jersey at Teterboro or on the limo ride into New York could ever see the blouse.
I got paid more to wear a blouse that no one had ever seen or would see than I earned for a single day’s employment in any job I ever had before I became a model.
And that is what it means to be famous, what it feels like. What waking up in the morning now means. I get paid for wearing clothes that you can buy at a decent department store for more money than I had ever made in a week before modeling. And I get dressed seven times a week.
Do the math. Now, all of this is just for wearing some clothes.
You want to photograph me wearing those clothes?
I would get about two months' work for allowing myself to be photographed by the maker of my coat if they were to use that photo in an ad, two months of a teacher’s salary, for one photo. And I get to keep the coat, mind you.
I will most likely make more money this year than a researcher who will find a cure for cancer does in a lifetime.
And I will get that not because I am smart, not because I am a decent student, carrying a virtual 4.0 at my University.
Not because I cannot sing. I cannot play an instrument.
I like throwing balls, but I suck at it.
I am not tall enough for basketball, strong enough for football, fast enough for baseball.
In other words, I would never be a professional athlete, and to be honest, I do not have that drive.
And I am not driven to invent the next level of computer. None of the things that usually mean high income.
I just look good in women’s clothing and really photograph well in designer designs.
So? What is the issue, you ask?
I am Shannon. The model, no last name. But in reality, I am Shannon O’Connor, 20, a freshman at Mercer University.
However, if you are thinking of enrollment as a student in terms of credits earned, as a junior.
And I am a cisgender heterosexual male who lives and works as a woman because, well, it's rather easy.
Or at least I try to convince myself and everyone around me that is what I am.
And because of that junior status, I attended Slippery Rock University when I was a high school student.
And yes, that is its name; it was named after the Slippery Rock Creek, which was named after a slippery rock in that creek.
It’s in Western Pennsylvania, and where my sisters and I were raised, OK?
And Slippery Rock, the University, not the creek, is about 40 miles from the University at Mercer, where technically I am a student.
I was raised outside of Slippery Rock, the town where the University sits, which is not on the creek, or even all that close. But I was raised in an 1830s stone farmhouse on the creek itself to the west of the town and school.
My mother is a professor at Slippery Rock University, and my father is a lawyer in a downtown Pittsburgh law firm.
OK, he is a senior partner who specializes in contract law, does a lot of work for the Pittsburgh sports teams and their players, for instance.
Yes, someone actually does make money off of the rich ball players besides the agents.
And we, my sisters and I, had a gifted life.
We attended a semi-private school associated with Slippery Rock University.
We lived on a few hundred-acre farm with a stone farmhouse that has had many additions, along with a stone barn, outbuildings, and all of the rest.
My mother wanted the farm as she raises Arabian horses, so we always have a riding stable filled with riding mares and a few geldings.
And my father likes dogs, Golden Retrievers.
So my sisters, Claire and Angel, twins, fraternal, not maternal, and two years older than I am, grew up spending our days and summers on the farm.
We all shared the horses, dogs, chores, fishing in the creek; we owned about a half mile of frontage on the creek, canoeing, swimming, and living the life that you expect somewhat privileged kids from a well-educated and liberal family could provide.
And in that world, I grew up a very normal male.
I was tall, about 5’10”, unfortunately very skinny, like rail thin, and I somewhat looked like my one sister; we were told that we could have been identical twins.
Angel actually was about 5’9”, and I think she may weigh one or two pounds more than I do.
But our hair is the same. Skin? Identical.
Even shoe size is the same, go figure. Not the thing that I wanted to hear as a child, but it really was true.
I looked like a smaller and younger version of Angel.
Claire, my other sister, is completely different in looks.
You would never confuse Claire and Angel or Claire and I as sisters or as a brother and sister.
So no, my sisters never dressed me as one of them; we were all kids on a farm.
I was the boy unit, Claire the tomboy unit, and Angel the girl unit.
When you learn to ride a Shetland pony when you are about three or four, there is no real male or female distinction.
And that was how our parents raised us. To be who we were.
And not to seek to fill someone else’s definition of who we were supposed to be.
Claire is studying pre-law, which is her thing, to go to work somewhere like Pittsburgh and to work in LGBTQIA law.
Claire came out at about 14, and our parents said, “Good, you never did like boys.”
End of discussion. Angel is at Penn State and was in a pre-PhD program.
I don’t know exactly what she was intending to get her terminal degree in, but it was something in the psychology or sociology world.
But she wanted to follow our mother and become a college professor.
Me? I did not have a clue what I wanted to do.
None. I graduated from high school with somewhere over 40 credits at Slippery Rock University.
I earned them while in high school with a 4.3 or something like that.
But I did not know where I wanted to go.
So rather than invest in a major school, I decided to attend a good school that would allow me to get into a better program when I decided.
I did not want to go to Mom’s University, but hey, Mercer was an hour’s drive away, and why not?
It is the same system as Slippery Rock, so that means my credits were not transferred, but just accepted.
It was like I had earned them at Mercer.
And the grades were rather good. From the credits I carried in high school for University, I had one B. I took a class my mother taught that she felt was too young for me. Something about porn as literature. My mother teaches lit. And I was what? Fifteen or seventeen at the time?
I thought it was a hoot, being in high school, having to read omnibus for a college class taught by my mother. Come on, wouldn’t you have pulled that stunt?
So, it is like September; I am ahead of everyone in my program.
I was studying photography and whatever.
You know, nothing specific. And I really, since I attended a small semi-private school for the professor’s kids at a small University and lived on a farm, I never dated much in high school.
Dates were gang dates, not hook-up dates.
Hook-ups were not dates. They did occur, but they were not dates.
When I got to Mercer, I definitely wanted to change that, and her name was Carmine.
Carmine was the daughter of a single mother from the wrong side of the tracks in Pittsburgh.
The product of rape, she had no contact with her extended family, and her mother?
Sad case. When her mother could work, she worked as a bartender at a gay bar.
When she was sober and off drugs enough to work, that is.
Carmine was everything that her mother was not.
Hard worker, wanted a good education, wanted to leave the values she was raised under and make something of herself, and managed to earn a scholarship for Mercer, but it was not a full scholarship.
So with grants, student loans, etc., she managed.
But other than what her mother could give her, Carmine had zero spending money, and the rules with some of her grants were that she had to be a full-time student, that is, not a working student.
You know, we take what we can get, even if it is really problematic at times.
Carmine is a very good looker, which reads as sexist, especially coming from me, but I am being honest here, the camera does like Carmine.
And Carmine heard about a modeling thing-a-doo at a local Outlet Mall not far from Mercer, close to my home, actually, and asked, since I had a car and she did not, if I could take her.