Chapter 4 - the banquet

Josh first met Julie out in Tahiti. Ruby introduced her as a successful English businesswoman.
Josh shook her hand, smiled, pretended to be interested in her business, which was less designer, more retail as he understood it.
Julie had told Ruby she liked what she saw. She asked her to arrange a dinner with him... was this a date? Ruby asked
Dates were not something Josh did. He met with the most beautiful women every day. Sometimes he had to get very close, almost intimate with them, but he didn't do the girlfreind thing because he simply did not have time. It was so impractical too. He might manage two dates, then he'd be off to the other side of the world. Long distance relationships were impossible to maintain when there were other temptations closer to hand.
He still liked women though. He could appreciate his own and other men's beauty, but that did not equate to fancying them.
He'd had girlfriends in the past, but he preferred to be single.
Josh was not happy about Ruby organising him a dinner date, but if she was involved in fashion retail, he could understand why she might want to know him better, on a professional basis.
Therefore he was pleasant and polite with Julie, sat down to dinner with her. The restaurant was expensive, the food was exquisite, but Josh ate very little. He said he was not hungry, but in actual fact he was starving! He'd had a long day in front of the camera and eaten nothing since last night, but still he could not eat the restaurant food. It was not part of his normal regime. He did not know the nutritional content. He thought it best to have less than give in and have more. More led to weight gain and there could not be anything worse than that!
He staved off the hunger by drinking plenty of water, then excused himself between courses for a lavatorial visit. Another line of coke should see him through until he got back to the hotel.
He did not expect to see Julie again.
However, he was pleasantly surprised to see Ruby had included a two day appointment with her back in England at some country mansion in Sussex. He didn't know exactly what it was for, but it did not matter. He always turned up ready for anything, because he never knew what challenges he had to face next. He suspected it might be a photo shoot or commercial.
As the car approached the mansion he could see he was not the first to arrive. A transit van was parked directly across the entangle and someone was unloading kit from the back, mostly lighting rigs from what he could see.
He walked through the main entrance with Ruby in tow. He was greeted by Julie in the entrance hall with hugs and kisses. She was very excited to get this project underway. More models were going to arrive, but Josh was going to be her star.
Julie was very welcoming, offered him something to eat and drink. Did he want to have a walk around the beautiful gardens?
He refused everything she offered him, then apologised. He just wanted to get on with the job in hand. What was the shoot about? Did he have to get into character? Did he have lines to learn?
No, there was no lines. There was going to be a short film, but all he had to do was act naturally. She didn't want to tell him much more or he would overthink it, she told him.
Hair and make up we're not quite ready. Josh used the time that they were preparing fruitfully by going for a run around the expansive, neatly manicured formal gardens.

There was a definite medieval feel to the make up wand costumes, Josh learned. He was dressed as a late Medieval King, complete with a crown and fur edged coat. Some of the models were dressed as his ladies, others as serving wenches. There were other male models there as well, taking more minor roles as his barons and such.
The doors to the main hall were opened. Someone was busy. It had the look of a medieval banqueting hall complete with a balcony and rushes on the floor.
There were two long wooden refectory tables down each side of the room, with rough wooden benches in either side. They were set out with wooden bowls and wooden spoons. Raised up on a small platform along the short side of the room was another, grander table, laid out with jewelled metal goblets, metal plates metal spoons. The side of the table nearest the wall had chairs, not benches, some of them grander than others. Josh knew he would be sitting in the largest grandest chair. He was king after all!

Julie stood at the other side of the room with the artistic director, who was sitting at a computer, poised to see the pictures as the photographer took them. The photographer was a feminine gay man wearing outrageous vertical striped orange and black striped trousers that served to make him look even skinnier and lankier than he already was. He wore this with a white ruffled shirt. Clearly the man created his own fashion and did not follow the crowd. But could he take pictures?
He placed everyone in position and got them to interact with each other in a polite, reverential manner in front of their king.
The servants poured 'beer' and 'wine'. The guests were photographed pretending to drink the stuff. They wanted it to look authentic, so it was the real thing.
For the next scene, prop men, 'serving wenches' and anyone else not sitting down, brought in the feast, placing platter after platter on the tables for the feast that was about to take place. Josh assumed, at first, it was fake food, but it wasn't. Every bit of it was real.
He was hungry. He'd not eaten anything except protein shakes for over 24 hours.
Nevertheless as the delicious dishes were lain before him, he was sure he could act his way through. They wanted pictures of him and everyone else feasting at the banquet.
Josh was not the only model who was reluctant to imbibe on the delicious food. If they ate too much it could have an impact on their next job.
So at first, they took delicate slivers from the plates and pretended they were huge morsels of food.
They took several pictures before the artistic director told them it was not working. Julie had suggested they got the whole lot of them drunk for real. When their inhibitions were lowered, then perhaps they would devour the feast as she wanted them to.
She was advised that they could not do that. At least two of the models weee recovering alcoholics and the rest of them probably took other illicit substances.
She did not just want them to at least look like they were feasting, she wanted them to lose all of their control, forget the regular conventions and be debaucherous!

It was a recovering bulaemic who gave in first, as she grabbed handfuls of vegetables and pushed them in her mouth. That was more like it! She wanted them to make a mess. She wanted them to have bits of food on the floor, on the table, on their faces, in their hair!
Gradually they realised what Julie, the client, wanted. The client was always right, no matter how outrageous the request!
The 'queen' and a 'handmaiden' had a food fight. The camera clicked away getting some good shots, while Josh picked the fatty skin off a chicken breast. Once the skin was off and making sure the action was not missed by the camera, he picked up the chicken on the bone and took a big bite of the leanest white meat.
Hmm that was quite good, but there was an electrician's left arm in the shot behind him. Could he do it again?

It took a long time for Julie to be satisfied with the work. They tried everything to lighten the atmosphere, medieval music did not work. Modern pop music was better. They tried to create a party feel, get them dancing, relax, dance on the tables, crawl on the tables, through the food, smear the food over their costumes. Eat, or at least pretend to eat (there was a lot of spitting out) off each other's clothing.
Josh did what he could, but he found working with food so intimately more difficult than kissing a girl on set that he'd never met before. He would rather abseil down a building than have to go through all of this again!