Usually characters, as I'm writing them, are combinations of many people I've cared about in my life. There's a core personality, with the characteristics of other people who fit the same archetype layered on top. The character's face is usually slightly blurred in my mind as it shifts between two or three distinct people.
For Nobody, because her face is described so specifically, I had to have a very clear model in my mind and I immediately gravitated toward Amy Wesson, the model on the cover of the Smashing Pumpkins Ava Adore.
This album was one of very few I owned in high school, and I would put it in my Discman (!!!) that I'd saved up to buy and listen to it in the dark for hours, in what can only be called an ecstatic state.
At the end of high school, I spent a summer in California and worked a couple nights as a seat filler, including a memorable night at the Grammy's. While getting herded through the theater in an old bridesmaid's gown, head down, half-amused and half-ashamed by the situation, I looked up and locked eyes with BILLY CORGAN. Just the kind of innocuous eye contact you'd make with anyone on a bus: hi, we're both alive, carry on.
But it felt like a chainsaw going through me.
Anyway, here is Amy Wesson at roughly Nobody's age. Did I catch her vibe?
