Last night: Siobhan O’Malley!

So last night was my sister’s gig at a very cool mid-town club called Downtime.

She was awesome – she did a great job, sold a CD, and conquered her own nerves enough to play a great and relaxed show. I was proud of her! She even dealt with the hostility of a Yankee fan screaming at her from the back, as she introduced “161”. She looked beautiful, she sounded great, and I was really proud of her.

The band that went up after Siobhan (and she was just up there solo, Siobhan and her guitar) had as much equipment as if they were going on tour for 5 months. They were three guys, and they had dollies, and cases, and trunks, etc. Siobhan, holding her guitar, came down the steps, and they hauled their 2346 tons of equipment up the 3 steps – and Rachel and I burst out laughing. I have to admit, it seemed a bit like Spinal Tap.

This 3-person band was so loud that I literally had to do caveman sign language to the bartender. “Here is what I want…”

“WHAT?”

Even screaming at the tops of lungs made no sound.

Here is how the chorus of one of their songs went: (Imagine loudness so loud that you feel like your body is going to shatter into 5 millioin pieces):

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

I mean, over and over and over with the “why”s.

Later, when we finally escaped, and moved, as a group to a quieter bar, we all started howling with laughter about it. About the “why’s”.

I was saying, “Why? You ask why? Just BECAUSE. Okay? Just BECAUSE.”

There were 7 or 8 of us, hanging out at a bar around the corner, which was great fun. One of the girls, a friend of Siobhan’s from college, was sipping her cocktail, and she was wearing these odd little black cotton gloves.

I didn’t think anything about it, really – but then Siobhan said, “If you’re wondering why she’s wearing gloves like that – it’s because she’s a hand model.”

This seemed unbelievably fascinating. I mean, I had HEARD about them, I had HEARD about these models who wear gloves 24/7, and who are highly prized – because beautiful slim fingers are very very rare. Hand models get work all the time, because there are so few of them.

But I had never met one.

She was this adorable young woman, with a ponytail, wearing plaid pants, big high-top sneakers, and black cotton gloves.

I said, wondering if this was inappropriate, “Could I see your hands?”

“Sure!” she said.

She drew off one glove, and displayed the most perfect most beautiful hand I have ever seen up close in my life. All of us, men and women, exclaimed, “Wowwww.” (Which is kind of funny, when you think about it.)

We all recognized the difference between her hands and ours instantly. There is no comparing. Her fingers were slim, absolutely perfect, tapering – her skin was even – and smooth – her hand was perfectly white – They blew us away.

“How did you become a hand model?”

She’s an actress, and she said that when she first came to New York, she met with a casting director, and she was sitting there, talking about herself, and her acting, using hand gestures, of course. The casting director interrupted her monologue and said, “Let me see your hands.”

Within a week, she had her first modeling gig. And it hasn’t stopped since then.

I just found the whole thing fascinating.

She said, “It’s weird – but there is a weird skill to it. Like – I have to practice stuff like being able to move JUST my pinky finger a quarter of an inch up or down … Like the photographers will ask you to do weird stuff like that. So I have to be able to isolate my fingers …”

She treated the whole thing with humor and a kind of: Jesus, look at my good luck! Which was very cool. She didn’t take it too seriously, although she took it seriously enough to wear special cotton gloves at all times (even when sleeping) – and she has refrigerator magnets as business cards, with a picture of one of her hands on it. She passed them out to us, and we all were just laughing at the whole thing.

After she left, we all sadly checked out our own hands, sitting in a circle, holding out our imperfect specimens for the group to see. We could never compete.