39 East Broadway Suite #604 | Spike Art Magazine

Essay

39 East Broadway Suite #604

3 November 2023

When is a modeling agency more than a modeling agency? When “it’s a feeling.” Cara Schacter meta-texts a first-anniversary newsletter anthology from NYC’s cloutiest new logo.

You know that dream of Tolstoy’s where he’s in some sort of bed contraption suspended between the abyss below and the abyss above? You know that one? Well, I gave it to him, the Lord said.

– Joy Williams, “See That You Remember” from 99 Stories of God (2013)

It is almost impossible to urinate with an erection and it might be painful.

– WebMD

INTERIOR – EAST VILLAGE SHOP – EVENING

Supine at FUN CITY, @boobsandbeef is getting ‘NO’ tattooed in her mouth at the NO AGENCY NO EROTICA #3 party.

Guests celebrating the non-model modeling agency’s monthly newsletter’s spin-off tri-annual erotica have been invited to Manhattan’s oldest tattoo shop to get a tattoo of DEXEDRINE and/or other select motifs from an upcoming zine anthology.

On tonight’s flash sheet: a cat, a hat, a tablet of dextroamphetamine, and the silhouette of the brother-run Brooklyn-based strip club PUMPS’s dancer MARIAH MORVANT as seen in NO EROTICA #3’s centerfold – contrapposto on a fallen ceiling panel in a carpeted apartment near AU CHEVAL modeling opera gloves from VOGUE fashion fund winner ELENA VELEZ’s FW23 collection “How’s My Driving?: Romanticized Abstractions of Middle America.”

CHLOE MACKEY, standing by the cooler, sighs.

The party co-host – in conch-pink ostrich feathers from Milan and a vintage cheerleading uniform (satin) – stomps on an empty 4-pack of JIM BEAM Highballs in the flavor ‘Classic.’ The non-model modeling agent wants to flatten the cardboard (for recycling purposes) but her lip print PRADA heel only punctures the box.

So – notwithstanding the ready-to-drink cocktail packaging’s perturbed colorway (yellow is not a NO AGENCY color) – CHLOE (Alabaman Aquarius) flails her fishnetted leg to release the box, ever-prismic, in situ. “Yellow,” the agent coolly cerebrates, “....submarine?” A submersible, after all, is not not subversive. The agent reconceptualizes the hue. What’s more undermining-the-establishment than the deep sea?

CHLOE slips a tall can of seltzer-bourbon in her CHLOÉ and gets back to communing with young creatives.

Archivist-model AVA FERGUSON – recently shot by PETRA COLLINS in a puffy sleeved floral maxi for EVENING STANDARD’s cover story with CHLOË SEVIGNY – got her studded COMME DES GARÇONS bag from HEAVEN I STAY but HEAVY TRAFFIC magazine’s PATRICK MCGRAW hears “have a nice day” and turns to leave just as DEAN KISSICK materializes to explain to PATRICK that there’s a vintage showroom near the MAHAYANA BUDDHIST TEMPLE on Canal with a chic curation of rare 1990-2000 labels such as NOVESPAZIO by NOBORU YAMAFUJI.

OLIVIA KAN-SPERLING thinks PATRICK MCGRAW would slay in archival GIORGIO BRATO.

COBRASNAKE’s girlfriend MAYA photographs NO AGENCY’s intern EDEN’s hipbone where, moments ago, the young graphic designer had a phrase from podcaster-actress DASHA NEKRASOVA’s ex-boyfriend’s short story in NO AGENCY’s NO EROTICA #3 tattooed above her peasant skirt – “the ends justify the means” – a reference to MATTHEW DAVIS’s “The Gray Sweatpant Challenge'' wherein DASHA from RED SCARE looks so pretty that MATTHEW drinks KRATOM and ALEX and CHLOE make MATTHEW model a pair of gray sweatpants with “the ends justify the means” in a gothic font along each leg – which is a reference to the NO AGENCY x RED SCARE merch with “hi i’ve been making moves against you” in a gothic font across the chest – which is a reference to something CHLOE said she was going to say to someone she wasn’t looking forward to seeing at T.J. BYRNES – which is a reference to the echt Irish pub “somehow located in the interior plaza of a FiDi housing complex,” described by writer EZRA MARCUS for PERFECTLY IMPERFECT as being categorically unlike places “like, Ghosted & Fried that serve tuna poke wonton tacos and mexican street corn ravioli to Syracuse marketing majors in Allbirds” – which is not a reference to the “finance morons in box-fresh ALD 550s” EZRA described for NO AGENCY’s Newsletter #09: The Dinner Issue in which EZRA concludes FANELLI CAFÉ’s “jalapeño poppers ‘give’ Trader Joe’s” – which is a reference to the jalapeño poppers at TRADER JOE’S.

NO AGENCY co-founder, ALEX TSEBELIS – dark Greek hair (shoulder-length waves that don’t respond to KERATIN treatments) and ‘WHAT PART OF NO DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?’ shirt (inside out because it is embarrassing to wear one’s own merchandise but ALEX got SANDWICH HOUSE on his original outfit and is anti-going-home-between-work-and-going-out, per episode #39 of the now-defunct podcast of star-studded creative director MATTHEW DANIEL SISKIN – who GLOBALGRIND says “built Bey?!” – wherein ALEX explained he doesn’t “go out” he just “is out” because ALEX doesn’t “go” ALEX just “is…”) – clears his throat.

ALEX: [reading from NO EROTICA #3] “My mind and body does a weird thing where it knows something is wrong.”

An accompanying diptych shows never-before-seen flash photos of mumblecore founding father JOE SWANBERG’s penis shot on expired film from POLAROID precursor IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT.

ALEX: “It doesn’t want to pee with an erection.”

Yet, a series of self-portraits show the micro-budget director who launched GRETA GERWIG’s career, not only navigate engorged micturition, but use the competing penile functions to channel inner peace.

ALEX: “It requires a mental reset point,” [ALEX hits the OXBAR G8000 vape hanging from an OXBAR lanyard in the flavor ‘Strawnana.’] “you’re like, no, no, it’s ok.”

ALEX shuts the zine to the slow clap of dimpled creative director BEN DITTO – who has worked with horse blood agar for LOUIS VUITTON, ponds for PUMA, and KIM PETRAS.

BEN: [British] It’s a sort of expression of the nihilism and aesthetics of nihilism which I absolutely love.

If INDIA SACHI could be any animal, the new NO AGENCY model (closing out NO EROTICA#3, toplessly holding a STIHL hedgetrimmer) would rather not say what animal she would be.

INTERIOR – EQUINOX – DUSK

Hazel-eyed writer CARA SCHACTER is listening to a podcast about brain damage in the north west corner of EQUINOX, doing donkey kicks with limited edition ankle weights in the color ‘Holiday’ (flecks of glitter suspended in translucent silicone-wrapped 1lb steel rods) when ALEX sends a voice note in his fabled “stimmed-up” staccato.

ALEX: CA-RA.

In the background, ALEX’s business partner and wife, CHLOE, is talking to someone about a West Village taverna with meatless keftedes and feta foam.

CHLOE: [in the distance] I went to Lola, and nobody knew who you were.

ALEX: [to CARA] Write a piece that’s a piece about trying to write a piece.

CARA has been trying to write a piece about NO AGENCY’s new book, “No Agency Annual: 2022-2023” – a 604-page anthology compiling a year of print-only newsletters with, for example: a pastel drawing by a WALDORF high-school senior of ADDISON RAE spitting blue saliva into KAIA GERBER’s hand as she stimulates herself through a JEAN PAUL GAULTIER chainmail tunic in the dressing room of JAMES VELORIA as CHLOË SEVIGNY, TARA SUBKOFF, and MICHAEL WEATHERLY from THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (1999) freestyle BMX bikes behind them, tiny MONSTER Energy Drink logos tattooed like freckles on their cheeks, whole scene the central element in an Indian Mujahideen flag, 16 x 9, orange, blue, cream, ocher, 30% in the style of EGON SCHIELE, 70% in the style of LISA FRANK (as prompted by actor-director PETER VACK’s “Banned Text-to-Image A.I. Prompts”); the number to call to talk to WADE about buying one of the original bistro tables from the-square-that-cannot-be-named’s eponymous eatery (D*MES); BRET EASTON ELLIS’s boyfriend TODD MICHEAL SCHULTZ’s bathhouse report (“the throating one never met his naïvety with anything so much as a pedagogically-adjacent interjection”); ANNA SUI’s niece JEANNIE SUI WONDERS’s photos of gallerist ALEXANDER SHULAN’s mom’s apartment; ancient Mediterranean lifestyle influencer PAUL SKALLAS on LINDY alternatives to ADDERALL (“Romans didn’t have tea or coffee, they used wine cut heavily with water. You can even drink this all day. Just make sure to monitor your BAC levels. Buy a little breathalyzer from amazon if you want. Ever been to Buenos Aires?”), etcetera… published by DITTO NATION, printed by DIE KEURE, out October 17, 2023 (with lenticular bookmarks by BELLA NEWMAN – the photographer HOMME GIRLS says said her friends say is hard to find – in limited supply).

The sun sets on EQUINOX.

ALEX suggests CARA do autofiction.

YOUTUBE’s “5 MIN | Underbutt | No Repeats” counts down five seconds of rest before CARA is due to start an interval of deficit reverse lunges.

CHLOE : [muffled, distant] Do you touch receipt paper?

5…

ALEX : Do like

4…

ALEX : a long ass

3…

ALEX : meta thing

2…

ALEX : for Spike.

A ray of fading light hits a sparkle in CARA’s ankle weight.

INTERIOR – APARTMENT – MORNING

CARA emails SPIKE editor GEOFFREY MAK – whose recent NEW YORKER essay explains being gay in Glendale and sinus damage from snorting ketamine in the shower in a hospital in Berlin called CHARITÉ – to explain NO AGENCY.

CARA : Technically, they’re a modeling agency but, ultimately, they’re a pulse.

CARA quotes elite podcasters: @themjeans on DAVID BOWIE’s mugshot being “like a NO AGENCY digital,” DASHA on NO AGENCY being “an intercessor between it girls with AMBIEN prescriptions and shopping addictions and online retailers.”

CARA: There is confusion about what/why No Agency is/ does.

Forward slashes point to a kind of nu-brutalism 2002-era nouveau basic International Swiss Style cassette futurism corporate grunge cyberdelic sensibility.

CARA: They do confusing things.

The email vibrates with a sort of rhythmically perverse cadence.

CARA: Like when they wheeled their blue leather Herman Miller Eames Aluminum Group Management desk chairs to Barneys and spent a day emailing and inhaling paint fumes inside Louis Vuitton’s display window.

Fumes in the context of BARNEYS can be read in the context of a kind of post-post-9/11 neo-no-aesthetic aesthetic.

CARA: Or when they mailed out 100 hats with the No Agency logo (Y/N in the typeface Prestige, a slab serif monospaced font chosen for its unique stems) and a sticker on the brim had a QR code to open an oral history of No Agency with quotes from key figures like the agency’s ur-co-founder Ashley Smith and the newsletter’s defected designer Richard Turley and @tom_tuna_tossed_salad, explaining things like:

“No Agency is one of those things that’s kind of difficult to describe, because it’s kind of marketed as a modeling agency, which it is….”
“Fine / still needs to be rounder, rounder head shape”
“A sort of expression of, you know…Somebody would, somebody would die at China Chalet and people would not realize and take pictures with them and step over them and whatever, you know.”
“Alex called his “paint specialist” that works at the Behr counter at Home Depot.”
“I’m trying to picture the Highline.”
“There were a couple cookies in the window and it was like either we buy the cookie or we buy something else.”
“I was wearing an OMIGHTY t-shirt.”
“Mouth looks a lil weird but ok-ish”
“Regardless of the truth, not only was I the first model at No Agency, I’m also going to be the last model at No Agency. You can’t kill me. You know what I mean?”

CARA: See attached, Paul Schrader in the No Agency hat. Ditto Zac Posen. Also their lawyer in Egypt.

Clipped sentences buttress turgid prose in a ricochet of void and substance tuned to a distinctly cosmopolitan frequency of unironically ironic clout capital minimalism.

CARA: No Agency’s favorite brands are the deli and ‘Made in Italy.’

A screenshot of a text from ALEX with a screenshot of a text from DASHA talks about a VERSO blog post talking about “the avant-garde today” that calls NO AGENCY “puerile narcissists approximating MACHIAVELLI.” (DASHA speaks of “the war with bourgeois order” and “tote bags.”)

A screenshot of a text from CHLOE with a screenshot of a text from OLESYA about being on a yacht with LEONARDO DICAPRIO and TOBEY MAGUIRE says the HOLLYWOOD actors bought two NO EROTICA #2s.

CARA: No Agency is – as No Agency said it is in response to a ‘Send Me Anonymous Messages’ message asking “what is No Agency?” – a feeling in your bones that things could be different.

Intensely poised M-DASHES fleck the email like a serge-stitched ECKHAUS LATTA baby tee – fast-casual connections are interwoven, against all odds, with artisanal intimacy and CAFÉ FORGOT.

CARA: As creator of No Agency’s logo, Nick Ace, put it: “it’s like Stardust Memories, and it’s like, Manhattan, and it’s Hannah and Her Sisters. And It’s sort of like the Gershwin with stained Tiffany glass, tavern style.”

INTERIOR – NO AGENCY OFFICE – DAY

Six floors above the dim sum restaurant formerly called DOWNTOWN YUMMY is NO AGENCY.

CARA: I’m turning on my tape recorder.

ALEX wears a white shirt, jeans and a ROLEX. ALEX always wears a white shirt, jeans and a ROLEX.

CHLOE wears a denim skirt and black shirt by A BATHING APE. Her kitten heel broke but she can still walk from SoHo to Two Bridges smoking an AMERICAN SPIRIT BLUE (not her first choice).

CARA wears a navy shirt, DIESEL swim shorts, and the just-dropped two-toned NO AGENCY hat – blue and darker blue, brim freshly creased to form an A-line overhead as if part of a YMCA-style dance spelling out NO AGENCY’s friend KYLE BROWN’s bicep tattoo of ‘JOAN DIDION.’

A puff of ELFBAR floats by in ‘Triple Berry Ice.’

CHLOE: [closes embargoed email] Before anyone says anything, [REDACTED] is rebranding.

ALEX: Ok. Well. [Opens embargoed email on curved ultrawide desktop monitor with LOGITECH vertical mouse] Before anyone else says anything else, [REDACTED] is doing a collab with [REDACTED].

CHLOE: a.k.a. [REDACTED]’s new streetwear brand.

CARA: That’s that girl, [REDACTED]. Doesn’t [REDACTED] work for [REDACTED]?

CHLOE: She’s with [REDACTED].

ALEX: Which is completely different and like don’t get them confused.

CHLOE: Like they’re totally different and we definitely need both, [ to CARA ] delete that.

ALEX: [to CARA] Do not use any of this.

CHLOE: Like…Flamin’ Hot UniversityⓇ by Flamin’ Hot CheetosⓇ will be out in the world by the time this comes out.

ALEX: Say we said to say redacted.

ALEX tells SIRI to play “Baby” by LIL BABY feat. DABABY.

DABABY: …baby putting on for the city…

EXTERIOR – D*MES SQUARE ADJACENT ALCOVE – NIGHT

Two CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE MEN walk into a verdant interstice between a shuttered paint store and a condo in Lower Delancey looking freshly shampooed and confused. They don’t know they’re at VIAL THURSDAY hosted by NO AGENCY at the rare cactus store run by JOE VALLE of the pop band WET.

The rogue mesomorphs are unaware of the guest list never mind that they are not on it. That they are not, for example, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author CAT MARNELL whose essays like “The Art of Crack-tractiveness” have been described as “irresistible and appalling” or 2022 CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year, ELENA VELEZ, whose “non-traditional synthesis of metalsmith and high fashion” worn by SOLANGE, CHARLI XCX, ARIANA GRANDE, RICO NASTY, etcetera, had her profiled by NYT as an “urgent,” “provocative,” “delightfully deranged,” “rare talent,” “headed for bankruptcy, cancellation or glory.”

The CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE MEN approach NEURODIVERGENT BRUNETTES by a tarp.

MAN 1: What is this? [teeth glisten under fairy lights].

BRUNETTE 1: [in an Edwardian nightgown] An event.

MAN 2 : [head, neck, and shoulders aligned] What for?

BRUNETTE 2 : Like [sees MARBLES, manicurist to ICE SPICE, looking for a cup] vibes mostly. There’s usually cacti here but they basically hid the succulents for liability.

Everyone smells like petrichor, split flower, wet concrete, ambrox, and colonial nagarmotha. This is because model-DJ DAGSEN LOVE knows a guy who makes fragrances who said he’d custom blend a party-exclusive NO AGENCY fragrance/ did.

DEPOP-mogul-turned-meatfluencer MIKA KOL pulls a vial from her YVES SAINT LAURENT Mombasa – one of “like 40” of the horn-handled Kenya-inspired TOM FORD bags in her apartment (the ruffled taupe version listed @trustfundgoth is available for international shipping “because deer isn’t on the CITES list.”)

MIKA: [wafting] Smells dark.

(“She’s very Celiac,” CHLOE later tells CARA, noting they might help MIKA pivot to swimwear.)

DRYDEN BROWN of PRAXIS could be in the shed talking to Serbia and/or Croatia. Last night, PRAXIS definitely rented THE YALE CLUB for a steak dinner. On cityofpraxus.com a quote by JOHN LOCKE quotes CICERO: “salus populi supreme lex.”

(ALEX, later, to CARA: “If there were other entities at VIAL THURSDAY, we have no affiliations with said entities.”)

A man in an ‘I <3 PRAXIS’ shirt explains the Mediterranean to CARA. The man does air quotes around ‘Balkans,’ splashing MODELO on CARA’s PHILOSOPHY DI ALBERTA FERRETTI bolero from THE REALREAL.

(CHLOE, later: “Were there, hypothetically, to have been other organizations at THE CACTUS STORE, we would have ghosted all venture capital funds at this point…in that hypothetical situation.”)

INTERIOR – NO AGENCY OFFICE – DAY

39 East Broadway suite 604 used to be the office of CRAB DU JOUR, a Cajun seafood chain whose shuttered Manhattan location has outstanding bills.

CHLOE: [to DEBT COLLECTOR] This is No Agency now. We literally can’t help you.

CHLOE taps a black ballet flat. She doesn’t have time to explain RICHARD KERN-adjacency to a DEBT COLLECTOR.

NIKE wants “girl-on-the-go,” no eyeliner. So model-singer ANAJAH HAMILTON is six stories down at the crosswalk between MEAT MARKET INC. and UNIVERSAL OPTICAL INC. barefaced in high-performance ski pants.

ANAJAH already took 0.5x selfies in a broken elevator, now CHLOE has to take 3x zooms of ANAJAH lingering outside HWA YUAN SZECHUAN from the POV of a sniper, and they can call it a carousel.

CHLOE: I don’t know if you saw our tweet of a screenshot of Alex’s status as a registered Democrat but we would never boil lobster on stolen gas.

DEBT COLLECTOR holds forlorn CON-EDISON bill. The limp envelope arches like the brim of a NO AGENCY hat.

CHLOE: If you get your clout up, maybe we can send you an ashtray at Christmas.

DEBT COLLECTOR looks disappointed. CHLOE looks like AUDREY HEPBURN with baby bangs.

CHLOE: [waving bye] If you have more questions, we do NGL AMA on IG [shuts door with a force causing a nearby 3D-printed pink plastic sculpture by GENEVIEVE GOFFMAN – whose oeuvre ARTFORUM calls “deliriously artificial paradises and stately pleasure domes with heady amalgams of Baroque style, chinoiserie, and Disneyesque whimsy, peppered with stray bits of Brutalism culled from Yugoslavian war monuments” – to wobble].

EXTERIOR – THE ODEON – DINNERTIME

Outdoor dining before NO AGENCY’s afterparty for TIM BRAWNER’s “Glad Tidings” opening – where “saturated psychedelia defamiliarizes the compositional playing field,” said MANAGEMENT gallery,“in the way Mark Fisher invokes Lacanian jouissance in his discussion of H.P. Lovecraft’s brand of weirdness, where the sublimation of negativity is accomplished through the transformation of ‘an ordinary object [which causes] displeasure into a Thing which is both terrible and alluring, which can no longer be libidinally classified as either positive or negative’” – NO AGENCY’s former Senior Talent Coordinator NASTASSIA CARRASCO and CARA share buffalo chicken dumplings with blue cheese dipping sauce per NO AGENCY’s former friend’s recommendation at last year’s NO AGENCY’s Boys v.s. Girls Debate at T.J. BYRNES.

CARA cannot get over how much the server with the hairband looks like MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH’s daughter if MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH’s daughter were a man in a hairband.

CARA: I’ve been meaning to ask [pulls up a PRADA on POSHMARK] if you think this purse takes itself too seriously.

NASTASSIA: [considers PRADA] It’s trying to be Prada.

CARA: It is Prada.

NASTASSIA: Exactly.

INTERIOR – NO AGENCY OFFICE – DAY

ALEX is in Create Mode with serif font, story-ing: “Am I just autistic and my special interest is lamps?” when CHLOË SEVIGNY calls…again.

The GOLDEN GLOBE winner saw the RICHARD KERN shoot in KALEIDOSCOPE of NO AGENCY talent holding weed and weapons, half-naked, upstate.

The INDIE SPIRIT AWARD winner was smitten with new NO AGENCY talent ALEAH TILLIS crouched against a wall smoking a joint in waffle-knit long johns.

The SATELLITE AWARD winner is about to ‘drop’ a skateboard and wondering if ALEAH is available to model booty shorts that say ‘FUCKING AWESOME’ in a melty screamo font.

ALEX: Let me check with Aleah and get back to you, Chlo.

ALEX hangs up on the ACADEMY AWARD nominee and rushes to a stainless steel table. He stretches his fingers.

It is NO AGENCY-coded to typewrite something, scan it, print it, scan the scan, then send that.

ALEX sits down at his IBM Wheelwriter 3000. They used to have a second Wheelwriter but they gave it to RACHEL RABBIT WHITE’s war hero novelist husband NICO WALKER to remind him of jail.

CHLOE, digging through 20-gallon tub of Hydro-StarTM hydrocolloid pimple patches STARFACE sent for THE GIRLS, asks ALEX what he’s doing.

ALEX: Typewriting a text to scan to print to scan to text to Aleah.

CHLOE nods, dusting the protective cellophane case of her MARC JACOBS x SOUTH PARK plushie.

“wyd wed?”ALEX types, in low caps, and then stands up, pulls the load lever open, pushes the paper release lever forward, and shuffles over to his EPSON Perfection V39 scanner wearing MERRELL suede clogs in the colorway ‘Gunsmoke.’

Courtesy: @richardkernstudio

INTERIOR – TOYOTA – EVENING

In an UBER going to RED LOBSTER in TIMES SQUARE to see if the gloryhole someone at KERRI “The Hipster Grifter” FERRELL’s birthday said someone said was in the bathroom at OLIVE GARDEN but isn’t is maybe in the bathroom of the casual dining chain headquartered in Orlando’s MIDTOWN location, it’s ALEX and CHLOE and intern ALICE MCNALLY.

ALICE is in the middle seat, flanked by THE AGENTS.

THE AGENTS, lit from below by his and her respective IPHONE, are not unlike the top of the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.

CHLOE, in a strapless AGNÈS B. dress with an EIFFEL TOWER graphic, is buying fake followers for a skincare company she doesn’t like, as a prank.

ALEX, in gray SAS Journey Mesh Everyday Sneaker sneakers, scrolls his Explore, bored.

A reel plays.

BAGEL RESTAURANTEUR: We’re dropping this new bagel! There's a crazyyy line to get our bagels! I’m from New Jersey and I just care about making bagels!

ALEX sighs.

When ALEX was ALICE’s age, cream cheese was for real not for reels. Back when LIL WAYNE did JELL-O shots at ALEXANDER WANG parties….

ALEX: [trance-like] Q-Tip listening to Yeezus at Milk Studios….Opening Ceremony …A$AP Rocky…Shane Oliver…Tyrant Books…Been Trill…Matthew Williams…me working the door at The Jane…Virgil Abloh…Heron Preston…

CHLOE: [to ALICE] He does this sometimes. He probably saw Bojangles shitposting. Or maybe NASA tweeted about “their intern” fucking up. He’ll be ok. [To ALEX] Babe, think about the deli.

ALEX: [rocking] The deli doesn’t have a brand deck. The deli doesn’t need a brand deck. You can just go to the deli.

CHLOE: That’s right, honey. Go to the deli. [Reaches over ALICE to pat ALEX’s leg consolingly.] Now do Google Drive.

ALEX: Google Drive doesn’t try to be Google Drive Google Drive just is Google Drive because Google Drive doesn’t try to be because try just is to be doesn’t need to have a brand deck because you can just go to the deli Google Drive Virgil Abloh Boom Boom

The UBER passes ALICE’s dad’s restaurant BALTHAZAR where CHLOE spots the skinny necked guy from SUCCESSION with whom, circa 2015, she shared a PIERRE JOUETTE BELLE ÉPOQUE during ALEX’s last shift working the door at THE JANE which was not the shift when ALEX saw a guy jump off the balcony and tried to call an ambulance but the guy refused on account of him and his friend being divers.

FISHER STEVENS seems to be eating baby beet salad.

ALEX: [crescendo] Purple Mag Olivier Zahm Flickr

ALICE: Uh maybe I should hop out? Catch up later?

ALEX: VFILES.

ALEX gets a text.

ALEX: Wait.

ALICE: [can't help but see ALEX’s screen] Is that Emily Ratajkowski and Eric André…naked?

ALEX: Yes. In my old apartment.

CHLOE: The Astor Place Loft??

ALEX: Yes. The loft I shared with the Burmese catering company.

ALICE cranes to assess how far they are from BALTHAZAR.

CHLOE: [to Alice] It was so sad when the catering company’s niece from Burma got into Gallatin [shakes head] they had to give her Alex’s room so she could major in The Cherubification of Gluten in Chloe Wise Paintings.

ALEX: [zooming in on a sock, balled up on a tile by the fireplace] They renovated. It didn’t used to be porcelain like that around the hearth.

INTERIOR – NO AGENCY OFFICE – DAY

CHLOE is doing a sigil in a LOVESHACKFANCY camisole.

ALEX is scrolling Twitter in Japanese denim.

CARA is on the window seat in a tennis skirt.

CARA: I think public perception of the agency is that you’re intimidating.

ALEX: Mmhm. [Sips kiwi strawberry SNAPPLE.]

CHLOE completes step 1 of her special sigil process: write your desire.

ALEX: The scarier you are, the nicer you can be. [Exhales BosVape HS5000 in the flavor They/Them.]

CHLOE: ‘No’ isn’t about shutting you down.

CHLOE crosses out all vowels and any letter she is not vibing with in the sentence: “The CEOs of Praying will bleach their eyebrows and get an adverse skin reaction as did I when mine were green circa 2014.”

ALEX: Why is everyone obsessed with denouncing? I love everyone so much. [ALEX mints an NFT of a screen recording of himself liking CHLOE’s tweet about how “the no agency hat is a type of STD if you really think about it”]

Step 4: CHLOE rearranges the remaining letters of her desire to create a unique shape.

CARA sips an electrolyte beverage called GLOW in the flavor ‘Tiger’s Blood’ and looks outside.

CHLOE: [singsong] Cope of the day. [pours CLUB SODA on her shape to activate her desire (step 6).]

Down below, pedestrians pass US WOK TRADING CORP. where BEAUTIFUL LIFE SALON INC. used to be.

ALEX: [tweeting “I hate my vertical mouse”] ‘No’ is about standards [tweets “So?”] Did I tell you Chloe Surreal might come to dinner at The Standard Grill?

CHLOE, ripping a fresh page off the NO AGENCY 2021 notepad letterpressed by PUBLICIDE with an illustration by LIZ PEPPERELL of the NO AGENCY office door printed on 80# COUGAR TEXT natural paper with a custom brown glued edge and type set in FRIZ “the LAW & ORDER font” QUADRATA , sigils anew: “The girl who took *my* pink robe at Wall St. Baths will never appreciate The Tin Building,” CHLOE writes using a PILOT G2 Retractable Gel Pen, 0.7mm.

INTERIOR – SHOWER – NIGHT

It’s Thursday October 12.

The NO AGENCY piece for SPIKE is 12 days late.

CARA is doing a celery seed extract pre-shampoo micellar rinse when ALEX texts to confirm CHLOE SURREAL is coming to Monday night’s pre-book-launch private dinner at THE STANDARD GRILL by THE HIGH LINE.

ALEX: Maybe you want to write a dinner fantasy sequence.

CARA, unfamiliar with CHLOE SURREAL, listens to PRIVATE TALK WITH ALEXIS TEXAS’s Episode 140: Chloe Surreal (After Dark) on her portable JBL while she micro-exfoliates her scalp.

Binchotan charcoal proprietarily blended with hydrogenated castor removes buildup without stripping natural oils while CARA learns CHLOE SURREAL has always had large natural breasts but was going to go to law school originally.

THE RENAISSANCE CIRCLE Hair Mask coats CARA’s type 2 waves.

Curvature differentials vary twin to twin but CHLOE SURREAL guesses unique stroking habits can make brothers’s penises deviate in non-identical ways.

DR. AGUSTINUS BADER’s Leave-In Hair Treatment is powered by TFC8®.

Before pivoting to porn, CHLOE SURREAL had recreational (“civilian”) sex with three sets of identical twins. The first set competed in college hockey at a national level, the second did motocross, and the third…CHLOE SURREAL said, “let’s just say you never want to feel like you are interrupting brothers.”

Courtesy: @iamchloesurreal

Deep conditioning with Italian tomato extract, CARA considers the horses in the background of CHLOE SURREAL’s first anal scene for BRAZZERS. Perhaps there is some kind of bow that can be tied with the AU CHEVAL non sequitur from the opening at FUN CITY.

Using a wide toothed comb to evenly disperse product, one wonders if an anal-TriBeCa connection is too bilingual. Is it safe to assume everyone knows French for horse?

CHLOE SURREAL has a tattoo of a bee on her ribcage and doesn’t want kids.

Ultimately, CARA already wrote a fantasy sequence and probably doesn’t need two.

“When a dude impregnates you, some of his DNA gets transcribed into your genetic code, so,” CHLOE SURREAL explains, “you might be uglier.”

INTERIOR – LOFT – NIGHT

EMILY RATAJKOWSKI stands between a ficus and money tree in an aubergine FLEUR DU MAL balconette bra.

ERIC ANDRÉ, naked, lies right lateral decubitus on a kidney-shaped Berkeley-blue velvet sofa.

EMILY: I have to take this picture. This is iconic.

EMILY fetches her iPhone from a marble slab.

Quick, EMILY tries to remember the point of the FIBONACCI sequence. She wants to frame the shot with her bum reflected in the tri-fold mirror behind ERIC’s head. But which panel is most Rule of Thirds for it to be in?

EMILY: [buying time] ugh iconic.

The fiddlehead greens HARRY STYLES used in a quiche one time – she wonders – were those “giving” FIBONACCI…or was she just wearing FIORUCCI?

“This” – EMILY chides herself in the third person – “is precisely the type of aesthetic philosophy nugget EMRATA should be able to casually serve SYLVESTER “SLY” APOLLO BEAR, whipped out offhand when, say, faced with an artichoke at VIA CAROTA.” EMILY shimmies to distract ERIC from her muttering. “The London-born Cali-raised Polish-Israeli essayist-model,” she sibilates, “ought to be able to dip a grilled bract in aioli for her son and explain why linear recurrences with constant coefficients just ‘look right.’”

Looking in the mirror, EMILY worries for a split second about something she heard on a podcast.

“When a dude impregnates you,” EMILY remembers hearing, “some of his DNA gets transcribed into your genetic code…so you might be uglier.”

No, no…EMILY reasons, recalling something she read in a newsletter spin-off erotica someone left on a table at PASTIS…something JOE SWANBERG said….

When JOE feels his body is doing a weird thing, JOE channels nature’s propensity for harmony and balance. JOE has this saying he says, which, EMILY now realizes, is not not the same thing HIPPASUS was saying in 5th century B.C. when HIPPASUS said divine proportion is neither a whole number nor a fraction, which, EMILY also recalls, upset PYTHAGORUS who didn’t believe in irrational numbers even though EUCLID confirmed that a + a is to a as a is to b, a.k.a. THE GOLDEN RATIO, is not not like saying,“no, no, it’s ok.”

ERIC puts a finger to his mouth.

ERIC: Shhh.

Has EMILY been shouting “no”?

EMILY: Iconic.

Back arched like a seahorse, soft bend at the knee as if to downhill ski, hip cocked in the manner of a skeptical eyebrow, the model-artist strikes a pose.

INTERIOR – BOOKSTORE – DAY

CARA is picking at ingrown hairs along her bikini line in the bathroom of MCNALLY JACKSON when ALEX sends a voice note to ask CARA to send a screen recording of a transcript of the NO AGENCY x SPIKE interview audio to mint as an NFT. In the background, CHLOE is talking about the leather-banquetted brasserie that serves oysters with mini sausages.

CHLOE: [faint, to someone else] I went to Frenchette with Rachel Rabbit White and everyone asked about you.

ALEX: [to CARA, on DEXEDRINE] Cara. [Two stressed syllables teeter on the precipice of potential like the piano notes at the beginning of KANYE WEST’s “Runaway” featuring PUSHA T that u/hamiltonscale on r/kanye doesn’t think can possibly contain two E flats though u/camaileon’s musical theory background suggests it's actually more reasonable to use the flat of the same note rather than the sharp of the note before it when descending – to which u/altruistic-fuel4233 says, just, “look at you.”]

INTERIOR – BEDROOM – BEDTIME

A MacBook Air hyperventilates on a glass table in a walk-up nigh HAIR OF THE DOG. Too many tabs are open, etcetera. CARA needs to shut it down. She sends a GOOGLE DOC to NO AGENCY with her SPIKE piece and crawls into bed with pineapple-flax tea a nutritionist on TIKTOK named DAPHNE heard about from a Hispanic nurse at a hyperbaric chamber center.

CARA is applying a coat of see-through salmon colored nail polish and watching a YOUTUBE short about adrenal fatigue by THE MEDICAL MEDIUM (who, per his website, has, since age four, had access to “extraordinarily healing information that’s far ahead of its time”) in which he raises up a butternut squash and says gashes on squash come from farm equipment; that gashes are signs of invisible toxic grease smears; holes are suspect; we must remove all holes – when CARA gets a duet of texts from NO AGENCY with THE AGENTS’s two most commonly texted texts. Which is to say, “i’m dead” and “that’s beautiful.”

___

NO AGENCY NEW YORK is a talent management company and agency representing female and gender-non-conforming artists. No Agency Annual: 2022–2023 is published by Ditto Nation.

Cara Schacter is a writer living in New York.

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