30
When we arrived at the farm, it was pushing 6 p.m. We were hot, filthy of horse, exhausted, hungry, and happy. We had relaxed, enjoyed ourselves, made friends, and explored someplace new. That is win-win for me anyway.
Carmine saw or heard the rig coming in as we started unloading the horses to brush them out, feed and care for them before we took care of ourselves. She came over and said, “Your Dad needs to see us now, and he said it is about the wedding.”
“What? I have horses to care for…”
“Shannon, these three can do that. Your Dad is insistent, and your mother says that this needs to be taken care of now, and we all know that you are going to shower and straight into bed.”
“Carmine, I stink like a horse. Can I clean up first?”
“No.”
“But Mom’s rules for horse smell in the house?”
“Your mother said, get her and you two meet us in the farm office.”
The farm office is my dad’s home office, where he works as a lawyer. It was added by a previous farm owner as the business office for the farm when it was a working dairy farm some 30 to 40 years ago, and was the last addition added to the house.
“OK, but I am using the outside door.”
The office is accessible from the yard behind the house, where the help and visitors can check into the office without traipsing through the house itself.
Five minutes later, I allowed myself to enter and dropped into a chair across from my father. Carmine was on my side, and Mom was with my Dad.
“You know, Shannon, it is hard to buy your daughter, who has more money in the bank than you do, a wedding present.”
“I can imagine, and we told you that you do not have to pay for the wedding, but if you need any help, we will absolutely pick up the slack, but you two keep insisting…”
And Dad just tossed a FedEx packet, unopened, in front of me.
“Happy wedding, daughter.”
I looked at the packet and just stared at it. It was addressed to Shannon O’Connor. Nothing unusual about that. I get contracts virtually daily, sent the identical way, and yes, I have been paying my father what he will accept for his and his staff’s services. So do not get on my case, OK?
My mother said, “You may want to open it.”
So I did. It was from Dad’s Pittsburgh office, by the way, I looked. And inside I found a bunch of stuff, including a court order.
I grabbed that first, as somehow I thought that this was the key.
And it was. It was a court-ordered name and gender change to Shannon Gail O’Connor.
My original name was Shannon Gale O’Connor.
This feminized it, obviously, and the gender was now listed as female.
The reason was listed as “correction of the birth record of an intersexed individual to match identity.”
I looked deeper, and there were a dozen original copies of the Shannon Gail birth certificate.
A new driver’s license. They kept the old photograph, but hell, it looks like me and got me a modeling career.
I was pissed that day and had my hair down anyway.
So it is girl Shannon without makeup. But it said “female.”
And at the bottom, I found a new passport in the name of “Shannon Gail O’Connor” and “Female.”
“Dad, I don’t know what to say?”
“Shannon, this started with the revelation that you are intersex, and that got me thinking, and I got Adam on my staff to look into it, and Adam found that it is easy to get a court order for all of this when intersexuality is involved, and difficult when it is for transgender rationale.
Adam was assigned to handle it, and you have been signing the forms for two months. Shannon, you really, really need to read what I give you to sign and stop trusting me so much. I could be stealing your money.
Parents acting as business managers have done that in the past to child actors and the like…”
“OK, then this is all legal?”
“Yes, and I wanted to get to you today because I know you and Carmine have not applied for the marriage license yet.”
“Dad, we have not been in town when the courthouse is open, remember?”
“I am not harassing you, but the courthouse opens at 7, and you have an appointment at 9, and I will be attending with you, as will your mother, as witnesses. Bring both Kelley and Sarah, and you might as well bring Lowri. We want plenty of witnesses that you, this is legally identifying you as you;
your status is well known locally, I assure you.”
Later, when I got to our rooms, showered, washed my camping hair, and got into something comfortable, I looked at the new ID again. Then I pulled out my British ID and was surprised that it actually said “Shannon Gail” also. I assumed that it read “Shannon Gale.”
I have no bloody clue why my parents gave me androgynous names when I was born.
Claire and Angel, well, there are a few male Angels, but no male Angel Maries out there.
And Claire is “Claire Suzanne,” clearly indicating what gender the child was.
Then I got two names that really have haunted me most of my life.
I have always been assumed to be female when someone reads my name.
No one assumes male. It is always female.
And if the Gale was included, although Gale is a man’s name, it is assumed to be female because of Gail and Gayle.
Someone, when the British ID was created, made that minor change. And no one noticed it that I know of.
The gift. Mom and Dad gave me, and thus us, the gift of a safe ID, and it clearly now stipulates that yes, I am supposed to wear the gown, that the gown is appropriate for who I identify with.
Would I have asked for this as a wedding gift?
No. But then Carmine and I need nil, zero, nothing.
We can afford to live anywhere in the world that we want.
Our income is going to be what, twelve to fifteen million before the wedding for the year.
And next year will top that with no question.
If I start getting supermodel billing, I will be financially compensated, but at the same time, I am expected to reduce what I do.
That sounds strange, but this is the way it works.
Longevity versus fast and furious. Most modeling careers are fast and furious.
You come into the market, you are hot and burning, but you know that you are going to burn out in what, two to three years?
So you take every assignment you can because you can catch up when your career is basically over.
And you make fifteen to twenty million and try to bank half of that.
Taxes eat most of the other half. So you live on someone else’s credit, let everyone else pay for everything, and just bank what you can.
And if you do it right, you never work again.
The top model can or can not follow that pattern.
Some burn fast; some, like Evonne, simmer a bit slower.
Now, a supermodel does not burn and crash unless they allow themselves to do so.
You make so much more that you slow down so that you first do not burn out doing crap work, which pays well, but does nothing for your career.
But if you never fill the demand, then you do not burn out.
The demand for you is continual, and it grows as you stay in the market, in modeling.
You do less, but make more and leave a craving in the market for your services, which then drives the next stage of time offering, when your agency starts to book you for the next round of assignments.
The less of you there is, the higher the demand, and that means higher rewards, but continuing demand.
That is truthfully what a supermodel is.
And the best can last thirty to forty years by selecting only assignments that build brand, and not assignments that capitalize and burn brand.
Carmine is a typical good model. She can model for five to ten years if she takes it at her own pace and makes a good living.
But she will never be a top model. Angel has a brighter career than Carmine.
Her income is based on mine. Angel is not building a brand but contributing to mine and taking the work I would never take, and that does not hurt me, because those using Angel know that she is not me, but a stand-in, a double-ganger.
And she will do very well as long as there is an excess, and catalogs are her mainstay.
Campaigns that want my look, but can never afford me.
However, there remains something between Angel and myself, the unwashed, as Evonne calls it, those who want me, not Angel, but me, but came up short this time.
And that drives next year, next season, the next open round.
Having an exclusive with KK Brands means that I do not have to worry about not having enough. KK Brands is committed to keeping me scarce on the market, and that drives the price and demand.
So, the long and the short is that I have a long-term future, as long as I do not fuck it up with booze, drugs, or scandal.
This wedding rules out a lot of scandal. Carmine and I became a known A-list couple. And as long as we stay in our own beds, that means we are not at risk of that type of scandal. And I, since I am out and have been since the first Bryant Park show, that scandal also does not exist.
So I am clean scandal-wise, and that means I am worthy of investment. I show when I am supposed to, and I give 120%. I never fight with anyone on a shoot. Frankly, I really do not want to fight with anyone. We are all just doing a job.
And I am not, I repeat, I am not building a reputation.
Back to the ID. Dad took away one possible route of a scandal. He took away any doubt of who I am and why I am. We are not hiding anything. I changed my ID because I am intersex, and that is legally and medically the appropriate thing that an intersex individual can do.
Dad just secured our, Carmine’s, and mine, along with Angel’s, futures. No one can now question “who is this person, are they male or female?” And I do not get stopped at the airports. I can drive into the States from Canada, and I do not get thrown into jail when I am the victim of a sex crime.
That is what my parents gave us for a wedding present.
In the morning, all of us, everyone who wanted to come and to celebrate, drove down to the Butler County Courthouse and were admitted for the 9 a.m. appointment.
And by arrangement, there were our photographers there and the press.
Everything was above board. Everything was shared.
Nothing was in any manner not legitimate.
I presented my ID, two passports, and a driver’s license.
Carmine only had a valid passport and a driver’s license.
We were asked if we wanted, our choice, to submit birth certificates.
We did, and copies of all of this were made available for everyone to see, not to take or to photograph.
That is illegal to do so and can constitute identity theft, but you can examine them under watch.
And with plenty of witnesses, the clerks filled out a wedding license, and we paid whatever it cost in cash, making sure that everyone saw that we were paying cash.
Dad said that this was the best. No one can question a cash transaction as being fraudulent.
And at 10, we were at a nice restaurant for a public celebration.
And again, we allowed ourselves to be photographed.
Look, why not? If you are not hiding anything, the secrecy only implies that you are. And Dad was making sure Carmine had asked that I be sure that nothing about this wedding would haunt us.
After the luncheon, Carmine, Sarah, Kelley, and I were driving my Land Rover, so all four of us could fit in one vehicle, and we drove first to the facility where Carmine’s mother was a patient.
I had met Carmine’s mother twice, and that was before she was institutionalized.
Carmine had her own reasons for this, and I respected them. I let her know that I would do what she wanted, when she wanted. Today, she asked that we visit her mother.
It was a difficult visit. Her mother is dying. That is clear, but dying very slowly. Mentally, she is barely functioning and does not recognize Carmine.
What Carmine wanted was for us to talk to her mother, even though she was not capable of understanding, and tell her about us, about our careers, and about the wedding.
The staff pretty much stopped what they were doing, stood in the door, and listened. Again, nothing, not one thing here that was not public. Just us. And that is one of the reasons we wanted the farm wedding.
The truth that we share.
And a lot of tears were shed by the four of us.
I had never seen Kelley cry before, but the staff did, too.
Carmine broke down more than once. But she refused to stop.
This was her truth, and she needed to share it with what was left of her mother.
And for no other reason than that it gave Carmine closure and a belief that her mother knew and approved of our marriage, the following Saturday.
And then we left and allowed Kelley to drive so we could just cry.
But, and this was deliberate, we did not drive home.
We went to the bar or club, the place that Carmine had been raised and her mother worked, to drop off twenty-four invitations to the wedding.
They, the folks at the bar, knew that these were coming, but without them, you can not enter the property on the day of the wedding, so they are necessary, and it is one per invite, not one per family or car.
We may be open, but we are security-conscious, and we will be well-protected. We know that there are threats at the wedding.