My first, and come to think of it, only job in SL was as a latex model at Kai Heideman’s shop Powers of Creation (POC).

Kai was a very large “Arnold Schwarzenegger” of an avatar man! I wonder if someone’s size would still have the same impact on me today after years of SL experience? It might! For sure, back then, as a noob, I was intimidated by this hulking boss! He was nice enough. But really big! And this was long before mesh. Today he’d be wearing an Initihum Kario body. Back then it was a System Body maxed out on the sliders. Many SL Shape sliders don’t entirely work at 100 and you got these awkward rough angles in your body, but that only seemed to make him more intense!

Besides being the largest humanoid avatar I’d seen, Kai had also cracked the code for designing shiny PVC, latex, and rubber. For a while his catsuits, fashionwear & fetishwear were all the rage on the grid. When I met with Eclectic Randomness designer Honey Puddles, I learned that Kai had given her his master color list so she could make her breast implants and isolation hoods to match his catsuits.

My modeling days ended long before mesh came in. It seems like Jackie Graves made a good transition into mesh. Eric Hugo is still making but mesh, or the PW or whatever, slowed him down a lot. Kai never went mesh and POC faded away at some point. Then with the introduction of BOM, Kai’s “old” system catsuits are now shiny “new” skintight BOM fashion. He’s on SL Marketplace and I think I’ve seen a vendor or two around the grid, but IDK if he’s got a shop these days.

Modeling for Kai was the most fun I’ve ever had in SL. Not that standing like a frozen ice sculpture was my dream job. More that the fashions were fun to wear. And mostly that the other models, the wacky customers, and especially my BLFF Charly and I had so much fun with stupid antics. I knew it was a good gig at the time, but I didn’t realize how truly exceptional that experience was till after I’d left.