“Hey, over here, Terrance,” Marcus Vissel called me.

He was sitting with an elderly white man at a table near the kitchen area. I walked over to them and Marcus introduced me to his old friend.

“Terrance, this is Peter Hausted, part-owner and manager of the Pacific Grille. He’s been running this place as a family business for the past thirty years. Our whole plan now is to take this operation national. So we want to place a few ads in national magazines, call up a few editor friends of mine for write-ups, and scout our first locations for other restaurants—Miami, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and maybe Dallas.”

I guess Mr. Vissel was taking the term boss seriously. He was a pure artist when I first met him. It was all about his camera. Now he had a lot of new business ventures in mind.

I reached out and shook Mr. Hausted’s frail hand. He was a small wiry man with fuzzy gray hair, eyebrows, mustache, and beard. He looked strict, too, a no-nonsense kind of guy.

“How are you doin’, Terrance?” he asked me. “Do they ever call you Terry?”

I didn’t even want to answer that question, but since it was asked, I told him, “I prefer Terrance. Terry sounds feminine to me,” I explained.

The old man smiled. “If you don’t know that you’re a man by now, then a name’s not gonna make any difference. I grew up in Brooklyn sixty years ago with a guy named Marcy. He was the toughest son-of-a-gun I ever knew.”

I joked and said, “Yeah, probably because he didn’t want people teasing him about his name.”

Peter laughed and said, “You’re right, he didn’t.”

I changed into my white clothes and had my makeup done before I was ready to shoot. As I watched the other guys, I wondered immediately if Peter Hausted had paid any attention to them. Seemed like I was the only masculine guy in the room. It had been that way in the business with a lot of the male models. But like I said, I didn’t hang out much with them anyway. I would take my pictures, make my money, and then leave with a woman. Now I was thinking about leaving with two.

As Marcus snapped my pictures like old times around the restaurant, I wondered if any women would be featured.

“So, this place doesn’t have any female waitresses?”

Marcus said, “That’ll come later. First we want to get the big-money spenders. Then we’ll come back down to the average guys.”

I thought about that for a minute.

“Are you saying that the average guys respond more to women than big spenders do?”

Marcus continued to snap his shots while I worked my poses.

He answered, “Absolutely. Big-money spenders are used to the male fraternity. It’s like a golf course. You’re not looking for women out there. You’re looking for other rich men. You wanna strike deals. But the nine-to-five guys are always looking for beer and pussy.”