Boy Parts E-Book

Eliza Clark

• Herausgeber: Influx Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 408

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

'Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp, Boy Parts is a whirlwind exploration of gender, class and power.'– Jessica AndrewsIrina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best-friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention….Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.

Leseprobe

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For my mother and father. Please don’t read this.

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Images which idealise are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness. There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.

– Susan Sontag, On Photography

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CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONEPIGRAPHDEAN/DANIELJUVENILIAWILLFRESHERSEDDIE FROM TESCOFRANKDENNIS345 BUS STOPEDDIE FROM TESCO, IITHE FALLOW YEARS29REMYGLASSACKNOWLEDGMENTSABOUT THE AUTHORABOUT THE PUBLISHERCOPYRIGHT

9

DEAN/DANIEL

I’m sick in my mouth on the bus into work. I swallow it down; the sandwich I ate at the bus stop is still identifiable by texture and flavour.

When the bus pulls over, I wobble on my heels. I imagine going over on my ankle, the bone snapping and breaking the skin. I imagine taking a photo in A&E and sending it to Ryan; yikes, guess I can’t come in! But I can’t make myself fall over. It’s like trying to keep your head under shallow water; you just can’t.

‘You alright there, petal?’ asks the bus driver.

‘Just about,’ I say.

I get to the bar half an hour late. We were supposed to open at twelve. Ryan won’t be here till one, at least. I press my 10forehead against the cool glass of the door, repeatedly miss the lock with the key, and leave behind a smear of pale foundation.

I do the bare minimum to open, and carefully sip water till Ryan gets in. He whines at me for getting makeup on the door (again) and for failing to take the chairs down from the tables on the mezzanine. He calls it the mez. My head throbs. He asks me what time I got in (four a.m. – I say two) and if I’m hungover (‘no’), then leaves me alone at the bar while he fannies on in the office.

I chop fruit in peace for an hour; I kill six lemons and flay a pineapple. I leave the limes, the taste of my last shot of tequila is still sour on the back of my tongue.

I hear them before I see them. Men in suits, marching down the street, twelve of them. They burst in, shouting, red-faced, thoroughly impressed with themselves, and I’m stuck mixing Old Fashioneds for half an hour.

They complain I’m taking too long. I offer them a Manhattan as a quicker alternative, and the leader of the pack scoffs. His designer tie is loose, and he flicks open the top button of a monogrammed shirt; an enormous watch cuffs his thick wrist. Great pains have been taken to appear visibly wealthy. Probably ‘Aal fur coat and nee knickers’, as my mam would say.

‘A bit girly for us, darling.’

‘It’s basically the same as an Old Fashioned, it’s just a bit quicker to make,’ I say, each hand twirling a bar spoon through two glasses. His eyes are fixed on my tits, so he doesn’t catch me sneering.

‘They’re pink, aren’t they? Aren’t those pink?’

‘No, it’s bourbon-based.’ I think he’s getting it mixed up with a Cosmopolitan; he doesn’t want it, regardless.11

They ascend to the mezzanine and complain loudly about how long they waited. They don’t tip. Of course they fucking don’t.

I’m praying it’s just going to be the one round, but they buy two bottles of Auchentoshan and I am in hell. It is an effort not to stand with my head in my hands, or sit down on the floor, or vomit into the bucket of ice they make me bring them. I try putting a Merzbow album on over the sound system to chase them out. It’s funny for about three tracks, but they just think the speakers are broken, and the noise makes my headache worse.

The leader separates from the pack. He comes downstairs and leans against the bar. I wait for him to buy another bottle, but he just starts talking to me. Talking, and talking, and talking. His slicked-back hair is thinning, and a strand of it keeps flopping in front of his eyes – he slaps it back into place as if he’s killing a fly.

‘I’m a partner, you see,’ says the suit. Received pronunciation – he can’t be local. A Home Counties transplant. A coloniser. He probably lives with all the footballers up in Northumberland and brags to his city-boy friends about how his Darras Hall mansion only cost him a million, how he lives next to Martin Dúbravka, and how, really, quality of life is just so much better up here, as long as you keep away from the rough bits.

‘My time is very expensive,’ he says.

‘So is mine,’ I say. He misinterprets this, and slaps a twenty-pound note on the bar, his meaty hands spanking the granite surface like it’s his secretary’s arse.

A woman has appeared behind him. She’s skinny, middle-aged and alone. Her fake tan is a nut brown, her 12dye-job is much too dark, and her teeth are stained. She’s shaking. I take her for an alkie.

‘Excuse me,’ she says. The suit ignores her – maybe he doesn’t hear her.

‘There you go, then, a nice little tip for you.’ Demeaning, but I pocket the money. ‘So, you’re mine for the day now, are you?’

‘Maybe the next five minutes.’ Another twenty on the bar, in my pocket. ‘I’m just going to serve this lady,’ I say.

‘How much to get you to sack this off and come home with me?’

‘It’s too early for this,’ I say. His expression has darkened in the time it took for my eyes to roll.

‘Excuse me.’ The alkie is barking now, but the suit blocks her out with his bulk.

He leans over and grabs my wrist, his belly pressing against the bar top. He snorts, his tiny, piggy eyes narrowed and bloodshot from an afternoon’s drinking.

‘You’re shaking,’ he says. Charming that he thinks the shaking is down to him and not the result of what I had presumed to be a visible hangover. He tightens his grip; I watch my skin turn white beneath his fingertips. The room is spinning. He’ll regret this when I vomit on him. It’s a shame I can’t make myself sick without sticking my fingers down my throat – it’d be a perfect way to get out of this without moving. I could scream, of course, but my voice is raw with the residue of last night’s cigarette smoking. ‘Are you frightened?’ he slurs. He is drunker than I initially suspected.

‘Let go of me.’ He doesn’t. I can’t reach the fruit knives. There is a line of pint glasses in front of me, and I grab one with my free hand. ‘I’m going to count to three,’ I tell him.13

The alkie pounds the bar.

‘How old do you think my son is?’ she asks. The suit lets go, dropping my wrist like my skin has burnt him.

‘Gary, what the fuck?’ Another suit descends the stairs, wobbly and embarrassed, in a cream summertime suit. He’s the same age, but better kept, though still red with too many tumblers of scotch and too many holidays without an SPF. ‘Sweetheart,’ he begins. The woman interrupts him. She isn’t an alkie, I suppose, just a rough mam.

‘How old do you think my son is?’ She thrusts her phone into my face. My website is up on the screen. She is showing me a black-and-white photo: a boy kneeling, his tongue between my index and middle finger, my ring finger digging into his cheek.

Ah.

‘He’s twenty. He signed a consent form and brought ID. I can show you.’

‘Bollocks,’ she says. ‘What a load of bollocks. Hew.’ She taps Gary on the shoulder. Cream suit asks what this is all about – Rough Mam ignores. ‘How old does this lad look to you? Does he look twenty? Does he fucking look twenty to you?’

Gary looks at the mam, looks at me, looks at the photo.

‘I think we should leave,’ says Cream Suit. ‘Chaps,’ he calls. ‘Chaps, it’s time to go.’

But Gary is still thinking. Gary is still looking at the photo.

‘He had ID,’ I say. I pull out my phone and retrieve a scanned copy of his passport. I show it to Gary first. ‘See. Twenty. Now go,’ I say.

Rough Mam wants the men to stay. Rough Mam wants a 14witness. But they’re gone in a puff of expensive aftershave, the smell so potent it makes my head spin. Rough Mam wants to see the ID.

‘That’s my older boy. That’s Dean, you stupid bitch, that’s my older boy’s passport. Daniel is sixteen. I’ll call the fucking police if you don’t take that down.’

I’d scouted him on the bus and suspected he may have been in sixth form. He’d been wearing a suit. He must go to one of those colleges with an officewear dress code, but you couldn’t expect me to know that just from looking at him. I’ve seen blokes in their thirties who look twelve. That’s why I ask for ID. That’s why I keep records.

Plus, no court could possibly convict me. The similarity between the brothers is so remarkable that only a mother could really split hairs over that passport photo. I can’t imagine a jury taking against me either: people always conflate beauty with goodness. I’m more Mae West than Rose. I can just cry a bit, talk like I’m daft, tease my hair up like a televangelist: the higher the hair, the closer to God, you know?

‘Well Daniel lied to me and brought false ID. And I took these on a school day, so maybe keep a closer eye on him?’ I boot the backend of my website in front of her (which takes ages on mobile) and delete the single photo of him from my main portfolio. ‘Gone.’

‘I want to see a manager.’

‘Hello.’ I gesture to myself.

‘I want to see your manager, then.’

‘It’s just me in.’

‘Right,’ she says. ‘Well then.’ She just stands there and glares at me. I come out from behind the bar, with the 15intention of opening the door for her, then she hits me. Like, hard.

She runs out of the bar, and I make a half-hearted attempt to chase her but I’m in a stiletto pump. As quick as I am in boots or platforms, I haven’t got a chance of catching her in these.

I spit after her. I’m fairly impressed with the distance, but it doesn’t hit her. She disappears around the corner.

I clomp back into the bar, out of breath, feeling sick as a dog. My face aches.

‘Are you okay?’ asks Ryan. ‘What the fuck was that?’ Maybe it’s the sight of him that tips me over the edge. He’s one of these short men that compensates by being extremely muscular. He’s got this big thick neck, and this teeny tiny pea head; thinning hair, bleached teeth, weak chin. Grotesque. If I open my mouth, I’ll vomit. I run to the disabled bathroom, and I smack my head on the toilet seat as I fall to my knees. The sandwich I have already regurgitated once today works its way back up my gullet, escaping in full this time. It lands in the water with a splat, like a slice of bread hitting soup from a height. Carbs are rarity for me, and, upon reflection, I should not be surprised that my body has rejected this floury Tesco baguette like a mismatched organ.

‘I just caught it on the CCTV,’ Ryan says, entering the bathroom and closing the door behind him. ‘You said you weren’t hungover,’ he says, betrayed, like he didn’t sell me coke about twelve hours ago.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Just got a fright. Did you see her hit me?’ I ask. I retch. He did see. He wants to know why. ‘What do you mean why? You saw her, she was just a mad alkie. I was talking to one of the suits, I wasn’t serving her, she lost her 16shit.’ I spit. I stick my mouth under the tap, and rinse. My body quakes, my skin flushes, and sweat oozes from every pore. I feel my hastily applied foundation begin to slide off my face, my cheeks streaked with mascara. There is vomit dripping from my nostrils, and I’m fairly sure that’s bile leaking from my eyes. ‘Give me some gum.’

He tosses me a little packet of bubble-mint – barely better than vomit.

‘You know, if someone who’s actually disabled comes in—’

‘Fuck off,’ I say. ‘Fuck off, Ryan. I’m not going to the customer toilets. I was literally just assaulted.’

Ryan wants us to piss with the customers, like animals. Ryan always thinks someone with a limp or a chair or IBS is about to barge into the bar, with the entirety of Scope’s advocacy board behind them.

‘I’m not ringing the police,’ he says. ‘FYI.’

‘Fine, whatever,’ I say. ‘You’re sending me home though, aren’t you?’

‘No. We’re short today,’ says Ryan. ‘I’m not sending you home for a hangover. How hard could she have gotten you? She looked skinny as fuck.’

‘Are you joking?’ I say. ‘She was wearing rings. And I’m not fucking hungover. Text someone. The new girl, with the pink hair. Carrie.’

‘Cassie,’ he says. ‘And no, it’s her day off.’

‘She won’t fuck you for this, you know,’ I say. ‘And you might want to knock that craic on the head. She looks pretty woke.’ I make air quotes, and sneer. ‘Time’s up, Ryan.’

I nod towards the ‘Shout Up!’ poster we have on the door of the toilet; the one that labels us a sexual-harassment-free zone. Ryan looks outraged. Ryan thinks it doesn’t count as 17harassment if you’re good looking, and Ryan thinks he’s good looking. Before he can argue, before he can remind me he went on the Shout Up! training day and everything, Ergi appears behind him. I didn’t know he was in today. He’s never in. We’re one of three trendy city centre bars he owns, and I think he often forgets about us.

‘What’s going on?’ he says, throwing an accusatory look at Ryan.

‘Nowt!’ says Ryan. I burst into tears. It’s easy for me to cry when I’m tired, when I’m poorly, when my eyes are already streaming.

‘Some mad woman hit me, look.’ I point to the red mark on my cheek. ‘And I got such an awful fright I was sick. And Ryan won’t let me go home.’

‘Why won’t you let her go home, man?’ he asks. His accent is strange: a mishmash of Albanian and broad Geordie-isms. ‘Call your new lass – pink hair. Carrie?’

‘It’s her day off, and Irina is out of sick leave.’

‘She just got fucking hit, man,’ says Ergi. ‘Are you okay? Why’d she hit you?’

‘I didn’t serve her quick enough. A man was grabbing me. It’s all on CCTV. It was awful.’

‘I’ll get you a taxi. I’ll sort it out, don’t worry,’ he says. He asks for my postcode, and orders an Uber for me. He says he’s going to check the CCTV and write an incident report, and that Ryan is to get me a glass of water and some tissues.

Ryan glares at me. When Ergi leaves, I stop crying.

‘It’s fucked up how you can turn that on and off,’ Ryan says, handing me the water, the napkins.

‘It’s fucked up that you sell coke,’ I say. ‘That’s all wrapped up in child slavery and shit.’18

‘Is it now?’

‘Google it.’

He walks me out, seething, assuring me he knows I’m hungover. He tells me he’s going to tell Ergi. I tell him I’ll dob him in for dealing; people in glass houses and all that.

Then the taxi is here, and I’m out.

While I’m in the Uber, I get a flurry of apologetic texts from Ryan. I’m sorry I was being weird, just sat and watched the footage properly, hope you’re okay, please don’t tell on me, etc., etc. I respond with some emojis. Pizza, shrug, smiley, facepalm, sunshine. Interpret these glyphs how you will, Ryan.

It doesn’t take long to get back to mine. Flo is still here. She’s wearing my pyjamas and hoovering. She beams when I get in, her teeth stained with coffee, her choppy bob in disarray.

‘I didn’t expect you back so soon!’ she says. ‘What’s with your face? Oh my God, have you been crying?’ I grunt, and kick off my shoes, landing on my sofa with a thud. I bury my face in my hands. The bubble-mint gum has gone sour. I recount the story to Flo, who gasps and OMGs as required, like a panto audience.

‘You could literally sue,’ she says. I left out the bit with the boy, the photographs. I say I can’t be arsed. ‘You know, if you get attacked at work, you’re meant to get six weeks off. Paid, and everything,’ Flo says.

‘No shit?’ I say. ‘Well, that’s a silver lining. Get my pyjamas and a makeup wipe.’ Flo does.

‘I’ve cleaned the kitchen,’ she calls from upstairs. ‘And I’ve scraped all the coke off your coffee table. I managed to salvage at least a bump, so I put it in a baggy for you.’

She delivers my only pair of tracksuit bottoms and an old jumper – reserved for the most desperate of hangovers. 19I change in front of her, dropping my clothes on the floor of my otherwise immaculate living room.

‘Cool,’ I say. I can almost guarantee she’ll be beating herself up about this on her ‘private’ blog later. Private, because it’s just for her and two hundred of her closest internet friends. It took me about five minutes to find it.

‘It was just minging in here, and I thought I might as well tidy while you’re at work.’

I groan as I wipe off my makeup, my skin stinging as I scrub.

‘That’s better,’ says Flo. She plucks the dirty wipe from my hand, and holds it up, examining the impression of my face wrought in foundation, mascara and brow-cake. ‘Ah, look at that. Like the Turin Shroud, that is.’ Her phone is ringing; the right pocket of my pyjama bottoms is lit up. She picks it up and cancels it. ‘It’s just Michael. I’ve told him I’m at yours. He’s probably just wanting to know about dinner. He’s so fussy sometimes! Like, chill out Michael!’ Then she turns her phone off, which is really a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. ‘Do you want some ice for your cheek?’

I do. I get her to bring my hangover kit, and two glasses of water. The kit is a Tupperware box full of over-the-counter painkillers. Flo brings it to me, then the water. Boots own-brand effervescent paracetamol and codeine (with caffeine) in the first glass of water, Dioralyte in the second. I drink the Dioralyte while the painkillers dissolve. I wash down two antihistamines (they’re an anti-emetic, and a life-changing addition to the hangover remedy), two 342mg ibuprofen lysine (the good stuff, the period stuff) and an Imodium. By the time I’ve swallowed the paracetamol and codeine, I feel almost human again. Flo presents me with a handful of ice wrapped in a tea towel, which I press to my cheek.20

‘Do you want me to nip to Tesco? I could get us some hangover wine? And better food? I went into your fridge. All you have is a big bag of ice and some salad.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ I say. She toddles off to the shop, still in my pyjamas.

The remaining bile in my stomach curdles at the thought of putting more wine into it. I take a second Imodium.

I sit with my laptop and scroll through the pictures from Dean’s shoot. Daniel’s shoot. Whatever his name was. He was very cute and very excited that I approached him on the bus in front of his friends, very excited to get my card and very excited when he emailed me twenty minutes later asking when he could come to my studio.

He came in his underwear during the shoot and thought I didn’t notice. Honestly, I did have an inkling he wasn’t twenty, but he consented, you know? He signed his forms, and he gave me a very convincing passport.

The photos are cool. Kind of grungy. Black-and-white, but he still looks flushed. The freckles on his nose and his shoulders pop. I already sent some preview shots to a few private buyers – the few big spenders who like large-scale prints and originals. No one has responded, so far, but I figured he was going to be a hard sell. He’s not the best-looking lad, bless him – a big nose, and a lot of pitting on his cheeks. I think he has character, but I’m a broad church.

I’ll hold off on deleting them, for a bit. I probably should, but what’s his mam going to do now she’s clocked me on CCTV?

Flo is back, announcing her return in a sing-song voice, accompanied by the telltale rustle of bags-for-life. The ice in the tea towel has melted, and I fling it into the kitchen. 21My hand is numb with the cold, and I wedge it between my warm thighs.

‘I got you some carbohydrates and tins and stuff while I was there.’ She walks past me (shoes on my carpet), picks up the wet tea towel as she goes, and starts putting the shopping away. Carbs. I curl my lip.

‘Gluten is the literal devil,’ I tell her. She never listens to me about food and she’d still be skinny if she did. She posts on her blog about my disordered eating. How it bothers her, how she’s always trying to feed me bread. ‘And take your shoes off.’

She apologises. She tells me about a new boy at the Tesco. The same handful of staff have worked there the entire time I’ve lived here, so he stuck out to her. She tells me he’s really cute, but she has such bland taste in men. She likes the men she thinks she’s supposed to like. Her boyfriend has a big beard and an undercut, because when they got together that was the in thing. The boyfriend she had when we first met was this NME-cut-out, landfill-indie looking cunt with a porkpie hat and a huge fringe. She liked Harry Styles a few years ago, and now she likes that white-bread, absolute fucking baguette of a lad from Call Me by Your Name.

‘I swear to God, he’s adorable,’ she says. ‘He looks like the main guy from Mr. Robot, the one you fancy.’

‘Rami Malek.’ I roll my eyes. Flo thinks every short, ambiguously-brown man looks like Rami Malek.

‘I promise he’s cute. You’ll know him as soon as you see him. Trust me.’ She brings me a glass of wine and sets down bread and hummus that she must know only she will eat. She picks up my ankles, sits down next to me, and places my feet in her lap. ‘Do you want to watch a film?’ she asks. 22I nod. I hand her my laptop, and she compliments my photographs before going to my downloads folder. If she notices anything amiss, if she thinks the model looks young, she doesn’t say anything. She flicks through the films I have on my laptop and googles a few.

‘Oh!’ she says, pointing at the screen. She turns to me with her bottom lip jutting out. ‘Fritz the Cat! Oh my God!’

She’s pointing at the file for the film Fritz the Cat, but she means our Fritz.

When Flo and I lived together during uni, Flo fed a stray cat. A big, ugly, ginger tom, with the biggest pair of balls I’ve ever seen on a cat. I named him Fritz. Flo bought him a collar with this annoying fucking bell on it and everything. I lost him when I was living by myself during my MA. Flo saddled me with him and fucked off to an internship in Leeds.

‘I miss Fritzy,’ she says.

‘Well, you should have taken him with you,’ I say, shrugging. ‘I take it you won’t watch the film Fritz the Cat.’

‘Absolutely not.’ She gives the laptop back. ‘I’m not watching any of these.’

‘Your taste is so basic.’ She won’t watch anything remotely challenging. She made me turn off Nekromantic, Vase des Noces and Irreversible; she even made me turn off The Poughkeepsie Tapes. And that’s just a found-footage horror, you know? Practically mainstream: with a linear story, and no subtitles and dialogue and everything. She asks if she can flip through the dusty case of DVDs behind my television.

‘Don’t,’ I say. She asks why not. ‘We’ve been over this like… fifty times. I’m hanging on to them just in case. Nothing in there is HD and they all look like shit on my 23telly.’ I stab a finger at my downloads folder again. ‘Look, Pretty Baby is quite normal.’

‘Isn’t that the Brooke Shields paedophilia film?’

‘Anything would sound bad if you put it like that, Flo. Oh, Jurassic Park, is that the Jeff Goldblum dinosaur necromancy film?’ I say, doing my impression of her. She puts on this nasal, babyish voice, and a little lisp. Even with me. Sometimes, when she’s drunk, she forgets to put it on. I don’t know why she does it.

‘Christ, can we just watch Moana, or something?’

‘I haven’t got it. Can you be bothered to wait for a download?’

She can, but I can’t. I talk her into Blue Velvet, because she knows she’s supposed to like David Lynch, even though she doesn’t. She cringes and hides her eyes during that first scene with Frank. She tells me it’s horrible.

‘It’s not that bad.’ I elbow her. ‘Drink your wine.’

I get a text from my mam, who wants to meet for lunch tomorrow. I agree. She knows I’m off (scheduled, not because I got hit), and there’s no point in arguing, or trying to get out of it. She came to my house the last time I said I was busy without an airtight excuse – I was literally just sat in my pyjamas and I had to pretend I was ill. The quicker I respond, the less shit I get when I inevitably have to see her again.

Flo complains every time Kyle MacLachlan speaks (‘he’s so slimy!’) and whines like a stuck pig whenever Frank is on screen. Though she sings under her breath when ‘In Dreams’ plays – having somehow managed to arrive at Roy Orbison’s back catalogue independently.

I drop off to sleep at some point and wake up to an empty house. Flo has sent me a text.24

Forgot I had to go home, lol! Couldn’t stay all night, bae was getting lonely. Had a lush hangover. See you soon x

I’m checking her blog in the morning in case she’s feeling confessional. I genuinely don’t trust her not to brush my hair and finger me while I sleep.

Ugghhhh coming at you all with a SadGay (TM) post again. I’m really struggling with Rini. I felt like I’d weened myself off and I’m rlly trying to focus on Michael and how well that’s going, but I think about her all the time. It’s hard to tell if this is just like something my brain is cooking up as self-sabotage or if I’m still fucking pathetic and in love with her like I was during foundation and in uni. Jeeeeeeezzz it’s been nearly 10 years now.

I wonder if I’m just literally never going to get over her or what and I know I’m about to cue like 10 of you coming in like SHE SOUNDS TOXIC yada yada yada and I swear she isn’t as bad as it sounds on here sometimes!!! but there’s just loads of shit in her past I’m not going to share on here, and like she is really really not this awful like Monster i think sometimes you all seem to think she is.

I *really* think she has undiagnosed bpd and she doesnt have many real friends, she’s like INCAPABLE of healthy relationships and she really needs my help?? I did her shopping for her yesterday when we were hanging because if I didn’t do it for her she’d lit just live on water and salad. This isn’t a problem with Rini it’s a problem with 25me, but I appreciate that you’re all so concerned for me and that you’ll listen to me vent.

I read it on the bus. Flo’s theory about me having Borderline Personality Disorder is this weird long-standing thing, and I’m sure if someone else tried to give me a diagnosis without being qualified to do so, she’d be the first person to jump in with accusations of ableism.

Plus, if anyone’s borderline out of the two of us, it’s her. And I hate it when she calls me Rini. Jesus. Mam is texting me to tell me she’s already in town, and I get an email.

Dear Irina,

This is Jamie Henderson – junior curator at the Hackney Space gallery. I had the pleasure of meeting you at one of your MA shows a few years ago (while I was still a student myself haha!) I’ve been keeping up with your website, and we’d be very interested in showing some of your newer work as part of an exhibition on Contemporary Fetish Art. We have a couple of other artists of your calibre on board already (Cameron Peters, Serotonin, Laurie Hirsch to name a few!)

We’d be interested in showing a collection of 5–6 of your photographs, large scale and preferably stuff you haven’t shown before. No pay, but we’ll cover expenses and we’re expecting a lot of buyers to attend, and I’m sure your work sells well.

We’ve also had a look at some of the older 26films of your MA shoots (those are really buried on your website ha ha!) and we read your interviews in Vice and Leather/Lace. Groundbreaking stuff. We think your shoots sound really amazing and we’d actually be really interested in showing a film of your process to show as part of the exhibition, if that’s something you’re still interested in. If you don’t make films anymore, it’s fine.

We’re also producing a limited run of photo books for the photographers included in the collection. A print run of no more than a hundred or so, but it’d be great if you could dig through your archives and send us originals/copies of a broad selection of your work, from your earliest stuff to the works you’d like to include in the main exhibition.

Looking forward to hearing back from you,

Jamie

I have zero recollection of this bitch, but I grin. From ear to ear, it splits my face. My heart flutters, and stomach flips.

I take a moment to collect myself. I mean, of course they want me – who else would they get?

Hi Jamie,

It’s great to hear from you! I’m very interested in taking part in the exhibition. I also have some recent film work I can send. I’ve worked with Serotonin before, actually, a six-week course of it.27

Seriously though, I actually have, we were at the RCA together (older than me, obvs) used to go out together all the time. Is she performing? Or just showing film.

Photo book should be fine as well, my personal archive is v extensive.

Irina

I read the email again. Groundbreaking. I like that. I send a screencap of the email to the group chat Flo and I have with my various hangers-on.

Night out soon to celebrate plz!!! I say, and the congrats start pouring in. There are three of them, aside from Flo herself – her ex-students from the college. They’re awful in a very specific art-undergrad way, but you can only drink alone to a point.

I get off the bus and Mam is waiting for me. We look nothing alike. She is a literal foot shorter than me.

‘For goodness’ sake, Rini,’ she says, pulling me down, smearing a sticky lip-glossy kiss on my cheek. ‘Do you really need to wear heels? It’s no wonder you’re single if you spend your life looking about six foot four. You could at least have your hair flat; you don’t need the extra height.’

It takes her a moment to notice the bruise on my cheek. I tried my best to colour correct it; I used an industrial grade foundation in the hope of covering it. It’s the foundation she goes to complain about first, asking me if I’m going to my own funeral, before clocking the red mark on my cheek glowing through the makeup.

‘What on earth have you done to your face?’ she glares. ‘You are far too old to be getting in fights, Irina.’28

‘A drunk woman got me at work. I was trying to throw her out.’

‘What, yourself?’ I try to walk a few paces ahead of her, but she always catches up, even with her daft little legs. ‘That was stupid of you, Irina. You’re not a bouncer! Where were your bouncers?’

‘Well, I was in on my own. It was yesterday afternoon, Mam. We’ve not got any bouncers during the week, never mind during the day.’

She’s not satisfied. On the walk to the branch of Ask Italian she likes to eat at, she says I shouldn’t get involved with unstable people. She complains that it’s embarrassing her: me, walking around, with a bruise like this. She says I look like I’ve been fighting, or battered, and either way that’s common.

At the restaurant, she’s unhappy with our seat by the window; she doesn’t like being seen to eat. We share an antipasti board; she eats the meat and cheese, I eat the vegetables. She tells me she hates my nails. They are long, red and filed to a point.

‘Now they are common. With the bruise, as well. People will think you’re a working girl. And a sad one, one that gets hit.’ A beat of silence, while I watch the gears turn in her head, searching for a final critique. ‘Plus, you’ll take your bloody eye out.’

I imagine myself as a sad, one-eyed working girl. Mam says my name. She demands a response, like there’s anything I can say to that she won’t use to drag me into an argument.

‘Well, I just had them done, so I’m keeping them like this.’

‘I didn’t say you can’t have them, I just said I hated them. Am I not allowed an opinion?’ she asks.29

‘I didn’t say you weren’t. But they’re my nails, and—’

‘I know they’re your nails, I just hate them, Irina. Why are you arguing with me?’

‘I’m not fucking arguing with you!’

‘Well, there’s absolutely no need to lose your temper. You’re spoiling lunch,’ she says.

I feel warm, and jittery. I stammer, and fail to say anything, knowing that trying to get the last word in will just make it worse. I nod, and I sneak my fork under the table and jab myself in the thigh with it. My breathing evens out. I change the subject.

‘How’s Dad?’

She rolls her eyes.

‘Sunderland were relegated last week, so you can imagine.’ We laugh at him. ‘He threw one of my good candles at the telly.’

‘Serves you right for marrying a Mackem, doesn’t it?’

She agrees with me, and does not speak for a moment, instead treating me to a glimpse of that glazed, thousand-yard stare she sports when she remembers she’s going to die having only ever been married to my dad. Sometimes, when she drinks, she tells me about the other (poorer, but better looking) bloke she was seeing when she first started going out with Dad. She refers to it as her Sliding Doors moment, even though her relationship with my father significantly predates the release of the film.

I fiddle with my belt. Mam snaps out of her fantasy timeline with the handsome husband.

‘You should have gotten the next size up in those trousers. I thought before, they look really tight on your bum,’ she says.30

‘They’re supposed to be tight. And if they were looser on my bum, they’d be very loose on my waist.’ She doesn’t admit that I’m right – she has been distracted by a woman she has seen out of the window, limping out from a Brexity pub called The Dame’s Garter with a vape dangling from her puckered lips, which are as brown and wrinkled as an unbleached arsehole. Her hair is scraped back from her forehead, silver roots and brassy red ends, which are thin and stringy. A clown dangles from a gold chain on her leathery neck.

‘Did you see her?’ says Mam. ‘I went to school with her. She’s younger than me. Can you believe it?’

‘Really?’

Mam is well preserved, well dressed, and skinny. She sports a permanently unmoving forehead, and lips as plump as my own. She had worry lines for about a week in 1997, and put a stop to that very quickly.

‘That’s what happens when you smoke, and you don’t moisturise,’ Mam says. ‘She was always dead common – the whole family. They lived on my estate. Even by our standards, they were scum.’

Mam is rude to the waitress when she brings our salads, and I pierce the fabric of my trousers with the fork. She complains about everything in front of her. The salad is too oily, her lemonade is too sugary, her friend has cancer and keeps posting about it on Facebook.

‘Wow, what a cunt,’ I say. I’m too exhausted, too irritated, to keep a lid on it now. I drop my calm-down fork.

‘Irina.’

‘No, I’m serious Mam. What a cunt, talking about her cancer on Facebook. She should just fuck off to Dignitas and get it over and done with, shouldn’t she?’31

‘You always have to escalate everything, don’t you? You can never let anything lie; it always has to be this big drama with you. You’re very extra, Irina.’

I’m extra. She’s extra. And if I’m extra she’s the reason I’m so fucking extra. I no longer want to eat my own salad (which is, admittedly, far too fucking oily). She has this shitty look on her face now, like Ooo, I’ve got you, that’s shut you up!

‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘how’s work?’

‘Fine.’

‘And the photography stuff? How’s that?’ she asks, sounding bored. I smile. ‘Well, don’t just sit there looking smug, Irina, what is it?’

‘I got invited to take part in a pretty big exhibition today. Hackney Space want my photos and a film as part of this big retrospective they’re doing on UK fetish art. So, you know, all that hard work finally paying off I suppose.’

‘Is that what they call hard work nowadays? Fetish art.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Honestly, Irina, I wish you’d take some photos I could hang up.’

‘Lots of people hang up my photos.’

‘Yes, lots of strange gay men, and sorry if it makes me a homophobe for not wanting photos of willies all over my house.’ I feel like I’m at lunch with a fucking Daily Mail comments section. ‘I miss when you did your nice drawings, Rini. You’re so good at drawing.’

This is something she’s totally made up: that I used to do nice drawings, and that she ever liked them. She told me once that a picture I drew of Galadriel looked like a burns victim (I was, like, twelve). She told me if I was naturally gifted, I’d be better at drawing, and you can’t really do anything with art if you’re not naturally gifted with it.32

I grafted my arse off through GCSE, and she was shocked at how much I improved. Like yeah, no shit, when you put loads of work into something you get better at it. She was always like, Irina, you just give up if you’re not good at something straight away, as well.

The shit with Lesley absolutely would not have happened if I’d had a little bit more encouragement at home. My therapist at the time said so, more or less.

‘Yeah, well, Hackney Space is a pretty big deal, anyway. It’s good news.’

‘I suppose. It’s been years since you had an exhibition. I’ve never heard of them, though.’

‘I have print sales. I don’t need an exhibition it’s just… Well, it is a big deal.’

‘It can’t be that big of a deal if I haven’t heard of them. I’m not stupid just because I don’t know all the weird little galleries in London.’

‘I never said you were stupid, I just said, it is a big deal. Because it is.’ I hiss, ‘What is your problem, Mam?’ I’m furious again, and she’s just sat there. She lifts an eyebrow, with great difficulty.

‘Problem? I’m happy for you, darling. You needn’t take everything so personally! I just said I haven’t heard of the gallery.’ I sulk in my seat.

She offers to buy me an outfit as a treat. I accept, begrudgingly. A lifetime with this woman has taught me that I can be bought. Quite easily, in fact. She treats me to a little black dress from the sale at the soon-to-close-down branch of Westwood, and I’m just as giddy as a schoolgirl by the end of the afternoon.

I get off the bus a stop later and go to Tesco. I imagine I 33cut a strange image, with my Westwood bag and my basket full of red wine and bag salad.

There’s a new boy. He’s sitting behind the counter – staring.

Eddie

Customer Assistant

Checkouts

Joined the team in 2012.

He must be new to this store. Perhaps they were hiding him in Kingston Park or Clayton Street.

He has a gap between his front teeth – his tongue winks through when he smiles at me. It’s awkward. I smile back, but I’m not good at smiling off-hand like this. I generally need more prep, a moment with a compact mirror to practise.

He has curly black hair, brown skin, freckles. An earring – I love girly shit like that. He’s a vision in polyester, a checkout movie star; he’s the Oscar Isaac of random boys who work in Tesco. He reminds me of someone else too, an old model.

Eddie from Tesco has a little anime clip on his keychain, one of the characters from Madoka Magica – which I remember Flo being very into.

I drop some phallic vegetables into my basket, for the sake of it, and approach him at the counter. He says hullo and stares directly at my tits. He doesn’t make eye contact, and his eyes flick from my tits to my lips, to the boxes of tampons over my shoulder. He makes pleasantries, and he has quite impeccable manners, but he is still looking at my tits every few seconds.34

I’ll scout him. I’ll be able to get him to do some weird stuff – beta males like this are usually nasty. When you don’t get any pussy and spend your teens falling down the free porn rabbit hole, you end up like one of those freaks with an ahegao profile picture on Twitter and an internet history that’s seventy-five per cent bukkake, twenty-five per cent tragic Google searches.

How do you know if a girl likes you?

How to casually flirt with women.

How to make a lasagne for one person.

How to feel less lonely.

Gokkun schoolgirl.

How do you get semen out of your carpet?

I realise he’s just asked me a question.

‘What?’

‘I asked if you live nearby,’ he says. Which is a good sign. It’s definitely a weird thing to ask a customer, so that implies he fancies me enough to risk asking me inappropriate shit. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I just feel like I’ve seen you around.’

‘I’m in here all the time. I live just round the corner.’

‘Cool,’ he says. ‘I— I like… your shoes.’

I hope he doesn’t have a foot fetish. Maybe he’s just into high heels, or huge women – possibly both. I hand him my business card, give him my spiel – blah blah blah photographer, blah blah blah street scouting.

‘I don’t pay, but, if you’re interested, I need models for a new show I’m doing. Heard of Hackney Space?’

He has heard of it. Which surprises me, on account of the fact he’s about my age and he works in a fucking Tesco.

I have an email from Mr B when I get in. He’s one of the private buyers I sent the previews of ‘Deaniel’ to. My best customer, in fact. I groan. The subject line reads: More? And he’s asking about the little redheaded creature. He has noticed those same teaser shots are gone from my website. I groan again.

Mr B just popped up one day – he got my personal email, and I still have no idea how. His custom is always generous, if slightly sporadic. He buys originals and large-scale prints, and he always tips. The more explicit the image, the more open his hand. He likes younger men, feminine men. He likes it when I’m in the photos. It was stupid to think he might not take me up – Deaniel’s photos tick all his boxes.

B,

Yeah, about him. Found out he gave me a fake ID. Already dumped the files and the stuff’s obvs off the website, (even the stuff behind the paywall) ((especially the stuff behind the paywall)). I’ll hit you up w my new shit soon. Sorry.

I have an exhibition coming up soon – Hackney Space. Very exciting.

Irina x

His replies are automatic. My phone buzzes before my shopping is even away.

Dearest Irina,

First of all, my darling, let me congratulate you.36

Now, let me decry this sudden showing of a dark-ages morality. We should align ourselves with greater men than fuddy duddies in robes and wigs. Hadrian, Confucius, da Vinci. Why deny Zeus his Ganymede? Olympus is so heavy with treasure.

Alas, it is illegal. I will mourn for my Antinous.

Mister B

B,

Sorry. I’ll send you some freebies? Outtakes from some of the experimental webcam photos i took w that blond, skinny, girly looking boy frm April? Can’t remember his name but attached as an apology. Panties! V cute.

Irina x

Dearest Irina,

As lovely as you are fair. You are an artist in your photography as much as your seduction. Remember: Mister B is an omnivorous creature, and he delights in your participation as much as theirs.

Mister B

I sort out ten prints. Flo sneaks me into the college after hours, and lets me use the big, fancy printers there. I handle the photos with a pair of latex-free gloves, and post them on 37my way to the bus. I’m sending it first class to his ‘contact’ address: a Benjamin Barrio in Belmopan, Belize. Stupid. He generally pays as soon as he knows something’s in the post, so I drop him a cryptic email.

I shop around for a while and end up giving my card to a Hot Dad on the bus.

It’s a slow evening otherwise. I aggressively encrypt Deaniel’s image files, and store them in an encrypted folder, deep in the bowels of my laptop, where all of my other dodgy shit lives.

I’m woken up early the following morning. B sends me a fat wad of cash by special courier, who leers at my dressing-gown-swaddled chest (despite my unbrushed hair and teeth) when I accept his package. At least B didn’t try to pay me in fucking bitcoin like last time.

I also get a text from Ryan, about midday – a pissy one, with no ‘x’s or emojis, asking me to ring him.

I’m on a six-week paid sabbatical as of today – Ergi insisted. No police, but I’ll have to sign an incident report. Ryan doesn’t even say bye to me when he hangs up.

The group chat arranges the night out for Monday – student night. Flo switches her day off to Tuesday. The students have a Tuesday morning seminar that they decide to skip, on my behalf. For about twenty minutes. Then they drop out, so it’s just going to be me, Flo and Finch. Finch is the 38least obtrusive hanger-on from that group, anyway. He’s quiet, he always has MD and tobacco, and he always shares.

I’m having a coffee at Pilgrim’s and looking through some old photos. I’m trying to decide what to do for Hackney. One of my models works here: Will with long, wavy hair and a pretty face. He’s a little more conventionally attractive than my usual boys, but he’s just enough on the feminine side that I’m still into it. A lot of fat on his thighs, which I like. Flo once said she thought boys’ bums look like they’ve been shrunk in the wash, and I haven’t been able to un-see that since. I photograph a lot of men other people think are ugly, or weird looking. But, I always try and find a proportionally sized backside – it just makes me sad otherwise.

Will brings me my usual before I get the chance to order it — black americano, two extra shots of espresso. He hovers at my table, trying to force some ‘flirty banter’. He’s asked me out a few times, and I always say maybe. Sometimes I bump into him on nights out, and he gives me drugs and buys me drinks.

I slag off his new beard. He has a sharp chin, a face shaped like an oval – the beard squares his jaw, and makes him look butcher, and older. He has big lips too, like a girl’s, and the moustache covers the sharp points of his cupid’s bow. I imagine this was quite deliberate.

‘You look like a proper bloke,’ I whine.

‘Yeah. Like a Viking, with the hair, don’t you think?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think Vikings wear side ponytails.’ He’s got his hair pulled into a pink scrunchy. It swings down from the left side of his head, to his shoulder. He makes a face.39

‘It’s a joke,’ he says, as if he’d forgotten. He goes to pull it down.

‘Leave it. It’s adorable,’ I say. ‘When do you finish?’ I ask.

‘In half an hour.’

‘Come play dress up with me.’

I make him drive me home – barista to go.

He drives us back to mine in his new car, a black Beetle he seems very pleased with.

‘You can’t afford a new car.’ He’s a postgrad student. I can’t remember what he studies.