Coming home from Paris I went directly to do the Danish fashion week. Everything was less of a deal and my lovely mother drove me around for early call times, so I got to unwind and play some Playstation with my mates. Life was part super easy and super awesome. I was home for a couple of weeks before heading to New York again. Coming home was a peculiar transition. Several girls who hadn’t really been interested in me before were drunk dialling me wanting to hang out. Now that I was a model and had turned my pear-shape upside down I was interesting all of the sudden. I don’t want to come across as trying to sound like a “looks-don’t-mean-shit” touting saint, but I found this off putting even though it did give my ego a short boost. Mind you these girls were 7’s at best – had they spent some time in the gym and inherited better genes, I’m sure my values would have been a whole lot different.
I loved being back home for a spell. Pretty much most of my days were spent in the same way: sleep until I’d wake up, read books and have buckets of coffee, hit the gym and have a huge protein fluff dessert afterwards, while watching VICE documentaries or reading some more. Afternoons were usually spent with friends or running errands. This is pretty much my daily schedule when I’m at my parents’ place in suburban Copenhagen in between stints of work. I always love it for the first five days and then I start getting giddy and want to go travel again. (At the time of writing I am in Seoul, dying to go home to do just those things).
After a short and fairly uneventful trip to London to do some direct bookings for their fashion week, I hopped on a plane on my 22nd birthday back to New York.
New York was good to me. I was working for Calvin Klein and DKNY on a steady basis and shot some epic editorials. I found the people of New York and the city in general to be extremely inspirational. All the people I met had all these interesting endeavors going on and it was just really inspiring being around these people. Growing up in Denmark everybody I knew aimed for the same thing; go to school, get good grades and do what the Man tells you. Here people were doing stuff I hadn’t thought of before. Model friends were teaching fitness classes while trying to break in to acting, or starting their own company etc. Back home I had always thought that if you want to do your own thing you go to business school and then start your own company. Learning that this simply was not the case took a huge boulder off my heart, as I simply was not ready to sacrifice 3+ years and something I might not even enjoy.
In the beginning I was staying in a far crummy corner of Brooklyn. Being a 6’2 blonde male model I stuck out like a sore thumb out there. Somebody had told me our neighbors were gang recruiters and that I should be careful when walking around at night. Regardless I felt safe as ever. I believe in as long as I am good to others, others will be good to me, and that usually works. I haven’t been in any confrontation since I was a cheeky little fat kid thinking he was King Shit. I did eventually move out of that place though; the place was barely a step up from living on the street and the guy I was living with was not a fan of cleaning up after himself in any regard. One thing he was a fan of though was leaving spots of shit on the toilet seat. Yes, toilet seat, not toilet bowl. So I was glad to meet two awesome dudes who were living in the basement of a rich artist in Soho. They let me crash on their couch for cheap until the landlord found out. I had a great time staying with these guys. They opened my eyes to a lot of new things. These things mainly being spirituality and weed. I never learned to love the bud though, but life was good regardless.
At this point in my life I was the happiest I’d been in a while. My life was filled with good energy and I had great people around me fueling my success with work. I had perfected a pretty sweet intermittent fasting and training routine that allowed me to eat out at all the great and greasy joints of New York City. The food scene in that city is incomparable to anywhere on Earth, so me being a massive foodie, and fat kid at heart, I had to figure out a way to make that mesh with being a model – and I did. So almost every day I would fast up until noon before hitting my agent’s gym (Thanks Lana) and afterwards go have bison burgers and peanut butter milkshakes for lunch. Bliss.
The whole New York fashion scene was a completely new thing for me: crazy parties every night with a lot of free booze and food. I quickly found out that being good looking was a way bigger deal here as opposed to back home. I’m happy I got thrown in to all this at such an old age, compared to a lot of other models. If I had been exposed to all these potentially side tracking experiences I don’t know if I would have been able to stay down to earth, let alone sane…
