27
The next few weeks were hectic. Dad suggested, as a tax write-off, that I purchase my own private jet and then lease it to anyone who wants me to travel.
He claims that this way I will pay less in taxes.
Now, I will argue that I do not know a damn thing about taxes or high-income tax strategy, but how is owning a multi-million-dollar jet going to save me money?
I think this is a Dad’s way of making a private jet available to him.
One thing is clear: two models, not at my level, more like Carmine’s or Angel’s levels, were attacked on a European flight by several Islamic males, and both were hospitalized, and one is not, due to her injuries to her face, expected to return to work.
The two were from Eastern Europe and were flying on one of the smaller regional commercial lines, not a major airline, nor were they in first or business class seats.
But still. Imagine if that was Angel and someone thought it was me.
Reality is not what we always think it is, nor is safety.
And if I owned my own plane, I could use it to move Angel and Carmine when I was not using it.
And to be honest, sometimes we send the plane assigned to me to fly places empty, as we guarantee hours in the air for the pilots so that they do not lose their qualifications.
And since the plane is sitting in Lord knows where on my behalf, that is charged to me and paid for by someone else.
I could be shooting in Key West, and my plane is flying over the Gulf out to Tucson and back so that the pilots get their required air hours that they are not getting sitting at some motel associated with the airport or doing some beach thing.
That is a Dad thing, and I will allow it to remain a Dad thing, but I am also open to safety.
I do not want anyone at risk. Taxes? I prefer not to pay; that is natural.
But taking risks associated with what we do?
No, that is not OK, and public transit places us at extreme risk.
The truth is, we live in bubbles as working models.
No one allows us to be alone until we demand it.
There is something that those of us who are working have that the rest of those associated with us want.
And there is an unspoken belief or concept that this something can rub off if they spend as much time as possible in proximity of us.
And I travel with one or two professionals also.
At home, if I want to go for a walk along the Creek, I have either Kelley or Sarah a few hundred feet behind me, and I have a very small radio like you see security use on my body and turned on.
If I were to walk along the creek and stop to talk to some fishermen, Kelley would almost instantly start approaching in a defensive or offensive manner.
Or if I were to say, “Kelley, a canoe on the far shore, two locals, I went to school with them,” she would be there in a heartbeat.
We do not trust locals. Fishermen are OK, but local boys? Not on your life.
And that is why now Sarah always rides with me. Kelley is not the rider that Sarah is, and I was thrilled when I found out that she and Lowri could keep up with me, because now I am allowed to ride on our own land. Before, it was always a fight.
And this is what life seriously is like now.
Before, I was a boy, Shannon, and allowed the rest of the world to take care of itself as they were older and far more capable than I was.
Being two years younger than my sisters, I knew nothing of importance that they did not know, so almost always, they were my teachers.
And growing up on a farm, we were all aware of the truth of sexuality, be it animal or human.
There really is not all that much different to figure out when you are a kid, when your mother breeds horses and dogs.
Sex is constantly being discussed on some level, and I was smart enough and had ready access to the internet enough to figure the rest out.
But other than that, my sisters were always there.
They took care of me. I did not take care of them.
Now? Well, Angel has found a career that she enjoys, and that is being my sister, her words, not mine.
And when asked what she does with modeling, Angel will say, “I pretend to be my sister and act like her and get rich.”
And when she is asked, “Angel, how difficult can that be?”
she responds, “Have you ever actually tried to be my sister?”
It is about the fine details of the skeleton that shape your body, and especially your face.
Add the right skin and hair to the right skeleton, and you have a supermodel.
If anything is ever a tiny bit off, then you do not have a supermodel, as the cover shots never look as good as the in-person views.
And this is all about fame, desire, and the cover shot.
I have an XY skeleton that was, now that we know, feminized by my intersex, and Angel has an almost identical XX skeleton from the same parents.
However, the camera can see those subtle lines on the face and on the body itself. Those can be changed surgically, maybe. If you are lucky, the plastic surgery will be better than before the surgery. But if you already are an extremely attractive woman, are you really going to chance that?
Angel is a very beautiful version of me. She is one inch shorter, but otherwise we are all but identical in dimensions. And from a distance, she can not be distinguished from me. That means she can be my camera double.
Angel can have her image taken as long as it is not a close-up, and no one would know, say in a catalog, that it was not me.
If you have a camera double and think of this as a stunt double for a movie, if you have a camera double, you can be two places at once.
Angel never had a developmental contract with Ellen.
She has a modeling contract. When she models as me, which is virtually all of the time, she is paid somewhere north of sixty percent of what I do.
Then fifteen percent goes to Ellen, and fifteen percent goes to me.
Why to me? Because she is using my name to get the assignment.
If she were working on her own, as Angel, she would get maybe ten percent of what I get for a catalog shoot.
So, working as me, she gets roughly five times her solo rate, and she has all of the work she can handle, most of it for KK Brands and shot in London.
Angel does the heavy lifting of the twenty different colors in that style blouse, then fourteen colors in that fabric jacket over that blouse work that is the mainstay of commercial modeling.
This is what most models do most of the time.
It is the elites who walk the runways, jet to far-off exotic locations, and are considered A-list.
Angel shares my risk because no one knows that she is not me, and when she is seen in London with Shanna, her girlfriend and constant companion, going into a club, it is assumed that I am going into that club with a large black woman attached to my arm.
Yes. It is different in Europe, in London, but for a supermodel type of person going into a club with a black woman? I assure you, there is a lot of risk.
You can not hide beauty. I know; I actually try some days. And in the places where folks like myself are supposed to be seen, this is problematic.
So, what this is all leading up to was that on a Saturday a few weeks ago, Angel and Shanna were seen going to a club in London at the same time I was seen riding in a horse race in Butler County in rural Pennsylvania.
And both were filmed. And both were believed by the face recognition software that the paparazzi now use to be one Shannon, also known as Shannon O’Connor.
So, we have this interesting round of publicity caused for no reason by someone with nothing worthwhile to write about. However, as Ellen continually tells me, “There is no bad publicity for a model.”
“We, apparently, are judged not by our actions, but by the number of times our face appears in their minds.”
And for the record, Angel doing Shannon is not all that unusual.
What is unusual is the almost exact match between the two of us.
There are other sister pairs in this business, and in a few cases, identical twins modeling under one name.
Fewer demands, more personal time. And that is all known industry-wide.
If you were to contact Ellen about using me, she would offer Angel at a reduced fee as Angel in for Shannon.
Still, it makes me worry about security, and this all goes back to the fact that Angel and Shanna are coming to my wedding on commercial, first class.
Carmine and I both fly private, and that is by contract as we are developed talent of the Ellen Modeling Agency.
Angel is just a model, not that it makes all that much difference.
However, this has all set off a serious interest in Europe in my riding.
Barrel riding is a US and Canadian sport, not something that you would expect in Europe.
Unlike European equestrian events, a barrel race with the rider out of the saddle is high-action and high-drama images, and top models do not do that type of image.
So the images taken from practice runs and the race itself are hot items in fashion press all over Europe, and Ellen is negotiating a number of covers, including French Vogue, as I have modeled in Paris.
And I wanted to grow up and become famous. Really, this is what I wanted my whole life.
And really? Twelve months ago I was looking at transitioning from high school and part-time college to full-time university and not having a clue in the world as to what I wanted to do.
Now I have what? Seven or eight major covers worldwide?
The Cosmos cover was huge, and now me on a horse at Worthington on Paris Vogue?
That is not supposed to happen. A few more and I will be classed as a supermodel.
Interestingly, there are criteria for that term, and that involves the cover history.
Different covers at different months get different numbers of copies sold.
Once you hit a total number of sold covers that is weighted by magazine and by region, then you are eventually considered a supermodel.
According to Ellen, I am close and can easily break into this level if I do what she wants.
And this is also where this discussion has been heading: what Ellen wants from the wedding.