The Little White Ribbon (Excerpt)

Henry and I met in New York City a little over ten years ago. At twenty-two years-old we had both just finished college at two of the most rivaled schools in the nation. Me, at UNC-Chapel Hill and him at Duke. And everyone knows there is no love loss between a North Carolina Tarheel and a Duke Blue Devil. The only other rivals that even come close to comparison are Ohio State/Michigan and Red Sox/Yankees. So, that added element definitely contributed to our hot, fiery passion, especially during college basketball season.

Interestingly enough though, Henry and I had also both graduated with degrees in fine arts management and had dreams of one day becoming high-powered talent agents in New York City. Let’s just say, our goal was to give Ari Gold a run for his money. Luckily, as fate would have it, we both ended up landing entry level assistant jobs at Paradigm, on West Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan.

The rest as they now say, is pretty much history.

My work at Paradigm had started a few weeks prior to Henry’s. It was about mid-June back in 1998 and I was placed as an assistant agent in the models department on the fourth floor. My initial hope was to get an apprenticeship on the acting side, but just getting my foot in the door of such a cut-throat industry was step one.

Assistant agents at the time were only making about $18,000 a year. Seriously, how did they expect one to live in NYC on what was considered minimum wage? I contemplated working nights at a strip club, but I didn’t think my pole dancing skills, or healthy size 10 frame would qualify me. It was a tough realization that after four years of college, I still couldn’t afford to buy myself a slice of pepperoni pizza. And, unlike being back in North Carolina, nickel beer nights in NYC were scarce to be found. My Dad always said though, “Hey, we all have to start somewhere. As long as you’re learning, that’s the most important thing.”

“Well, did learning involve starving?” I thought.

I vividly remember being in my interview with head modeling agent, now former boss, Lisa Leone, when she offered me the job.

“Kate.” she said.

“The pay is $250 per week and with that comes the invaluable bonus of learning from me. The Lisa Leone. There is nobody better in the biz. Tyra, Christy, Elle, Heidi. I found all of them. They owe their careers to me and some day you will too.”

And looking back, she was right.

I quickly accepted Lisa’s offer, as she did have quite an impressive resume and a lot to teach me. I always wondered though why ninety percent of talent agents had this pretentious, cocky-like aura about them. It must be their way of scaring the “little people” off. And when you first start in “the biz” that’s exactly how you feel ~ little. Adapting to that type of persona was something I eventually had real difficulty succeeding at.