I Was Friends With an Instagram Prostitute. Then She Became Famous.

The first time I met Tinsley, she was showing me a photograph of a man who wouldn’t marry her. “He’s not usually photogenic,” she said, enlarging his face with two fingers. He was handsome. They both were. In the photograph, his hand rested on her waist with the confidence of someone who had never wondered whether he deserved to put it there. We were on a flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. I had been hired to improve the atmosphere at a dinner full of old rich men. That was the actual job description. “You go to dinner,” my new friend had explained. “You look pretty. You get paid.” It was 2015, and I still thought Los Angeles was beautiful. Coming from rural Ohio, I was susceptible to things other girls had learned to find embarrassing: palm trees, valet parking, the breeze. I liked buying something small and unaffordable at Erewhon and carrying the bag where people could see it. I had a modeling agency, a boyfriend, and very little money. Tinsley was sitting beside me, and I was trying not to stare. Her hair was straight and almost black. Her eyes were green in a way that made me suspect contact lenses until she leaned closer to show me another photograph. She wore hardly any makeup. I had spent 40 minutes getting ready to look less attractive than she did in an airplane seat. Naturally, she may have been one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. “Have you done this before?” I asked. “A million times.” “And your boyfriend doesn’t mind?” She locked her phone. “Mind what?” “I don’t know. Is it cheating?” She laughed, but kindly, which made me like her. “We’re going to dinner.” “Right.” “The real money’s in other things.” I waited for her to explain. She turned her phone over in her lap. “How much do they pay for dinner?” I asked instead. She told me we usually got around $1,000 and a dinner at somewhere high-end like Spago. For a couple hours with some old people, it could’ve been worse. Then she told me what someone had offered her for a weekend. I looked toward the window. We hadn’t left the gate. “Who are you signed with?” She named a good agency. “Well. Was.” “What happened?” “Too short.” She was five foot six. In Texas she would have been the prettiest girl anyone knew. In Los Angeles, well, the standards were at their highest. “My agent said I should fix my nose .” “Your nose?” “I know. I thought it was fine, too.” She said it lightly, then opened the camera on her phone and inspected her profile. She sulked a little bit, and my heart broke for her. She was gorgeous, sweet. I hadn’t even noticed her nose, but I was convinced agents tried to make us insecure to control us. I showed her my boyfriend. Told her how we’d met, how he had pursued me, how I thought we would get married. “Does he say that?” she asked. “What?” “That he wants to marry you.” “Yes.” She looked back at his photograph. “Without you asking?” The woman who collected us at the airport was called Vanessa. She had enormous breasts, a small gold watch, and the irritated expression of someone whose luggage had arrived damaged. There were four of us, all from Los Angeles. She looked us over before saying hello. At the hotel, she stopped in front of my shoes. “Did you bring heels?” I looked down at them. “Higher ones.” Upstairs, the room smelled of hairspray and hot straighteners. Someone’s suitcase lay open across both beds. We stepped around it in our underwear, borrowing things, looking for outlets. Tinsley zipped me into a bandage dress. “Can you breathe?” “Enough.” “Perfect.” The girls began talking about their agencies. Then one of them mentioned a photographer. “My friend called her booker because he kept touching her while they shot.” “What did the booker say?” “Don’t ruin the relationship.” The girl applying lip liner paused to check whether both sides matched. “My friend had to give a guy a blow job to get booked for Veyre,” Tinsley said. The room went quiet except for the hair dryer. “The jean brand?” I asked. She nodded. I wondered if my parents would be sad if they could see me. “Did she get the job?” one of the girls asked. Tinsley looked at her. “That’s not the point.” But we found out she did. She picked up her lipstick, then put it down again. “Morally, I could never shoot for them. I don’t care how big the campaign is.” I believed her. Then the conversation moved to Dubai. Two girls had been. One laughed as she told a story I wished she hadn’t told us. The other stayed quiet, working a knot out of a necklace. “Was it worth it?” someone asked. The quiet girl pulled too hard. The chain broke. “Ugh,” she said. Vanessa knocked once and opened the door. “Phones away downstairs. And nobody needs to know how old you are.” Looking around, I’d guess most of us were 19 or 20. Surely old enough to be carded, but I guess we order a Cosmopolitan and hope for the best. The restaurant had lighting that made everyone look expensive. There were about 20 of us at a long table. The men stood when we arrived, which relieved me until one put his hand on my lower back and kept it there while I chose a seat. Tinsley sat opposite me. Sashimi arrived on crushed ice. Then foie gras, then steak already sliced into pieces. A waiter replaced my napkin when it slipped off my lap. I thanked him too enthusiastically. The man beside me asked what I did. “I’m a model.” “Of course you are.” He smiled as though I had made a joke. He told me about his houses. There were three. When he mentioned the one in Texas, I said I was from Texas, too, and felt absurdly pleased to have something to contribute to a conversation that was otherwise out of my depth. Across the table, Tinsley laughed at something. She was good at this. She leaned forward when people spoke. Asked questions. Remembered the answers. I wondered if my parents would be sad if they could see me. Nothing terrible was happening. That almost made the feeling harder to explain. I was eating an extraordinary dinner, wearing a dress another girl had lent me, trying to keep an old man interested enough to justify the cost of my flight. Which they paid for, of course. “What are you thinking about?” he asked. “Home.” “You should come see mine.” Nothing terrible was happening. That almost made the feeling harder to explain. Near the end of dinner, a man asked one of the girls to go upstairs with him. “No, thank you,” she said. He asked again, more quietly. She shook her head. Vanessa saw. Her mouth tightened. In the ladies’ room afterward, I found the girl washing hands that were already clean. “Are you okay?” I asked. “He said I was wasting his time.” She pressed the soap dispenser again. “I thought we were here for dinner.” “So did I.” We looked at each other in the mirror. Without the men there, we both looked younger. As we left, the man beside me shook my hand. Something folded against my palm. A $100 bill. A business card. “Call me when you’re back in L.A.” I held both until we reached the elevator. Then I put them in my bag because I didn’t know what else to do. Tinsley watched the numbers rise above the doors. “Does it get less weird?” I asked. “Yes. The more you do it.” She said it so quickly that I looked at her. Her phone lit up. The boyfriend. She answered before the elevator arrived. “Hi, baby.” We stayed in touch. At first, it was coffee. Then it was messages because she was always somewhere else. Mykonos. London. Some boat in Ibiza. Her Instagram became beautiful. Hotel balconies, white flowers, a breakfast tray balanced above her knees. Women asked where she got her dresses. Men left little fire emojis beneath her photographs. Once, over coffee, she told me what the trips involved . I stirred a drink I had already stirred. “Does he know?” I asked. She knew who I meant. “He likes the holidays.” I looked up. She smiled, waiting for me to smile back. Another time she asked to see photographs of engagement rings. I thought she meant for herself, but she pushed my phone toward me. “For you. What do you want?” We spent an hour choosing one. She remembered it months later when I got engaged. He did good, she texted. Then: You look so happy. I was married when I saw her on La Cienega. She was 30 feet tall, wearing jeans and very little else. VEYRE. The name ran beneath her waist in white letters. I remembered the hair dryer. The lipstick she had put down. Morally, I could never shoot for them. I stopped beneath the billboard. People walked around me. Her nose was narrower. Her lips were fuller. Her boobs were huge. The green eyes were the same, though I had to look for a moment before I found the girl who had sat beside me on the plane. I remembered how badly she had wanted this. I opened Instagram. She had posted the campaign that morning. Somebody pinch me. A dream come true. So grateful to the entire team. There were thousands of comments. Flames. Hearts. Women calling her an inspiration. I scrolled back to the photograph. Her face was composed into an expression of perfect indifference, but I remembered how badly she had wanted this. I wondered if she had called her friend to tell her. I took out my phone. Just saw your billboard. You look incredible. Congratulations!! The reply came almost immediately. Thank you angel ❤️ A second message followed. Did you marry him? I looked down at my wedding ring, although of course I knew it was there. I did. Three little dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. I knew he would, she wrote. I stood there for a while, looking up at her face. Then I typed, What about you? Are you happy? Above me, Tinsley smiled into the afternoon traffic. On my phone, the little dots stopped.