by Eliza Clark
I pick up my phone with the intention of blocking his number. I read the texts instead, my thumbs overtaken with a toxic curiosity.
I let you BORROW my clothes because you were covered in sick :/
He insisted, yesterday afternoon. 12:32. But when I picked my top up off his floor in the morning, there wasn’t any sick on it. Not even sick that had been wiped, or washed off. It was clean.
At 13:04:
Hey sorry for the tone of that last message, i get that must have been weird to wakeup in my clothes and probably not remember why. Sorry
At 14:18:
Hey do you remember much about last night?? Stuff got pretty intense haha
Sorry if i seemed like i got the hump about you and Henson as well. If you fancy him that’s cool! He’s a handsome chap haha
That scots charm haha. He asked me for your number but I’m not giving it over bc you know privacy and consent and shit
At 14:36:
I mean I just sort of thought you were coming over for me but i obviously misread the situation and it’s fine so sorry for being weird
Not that you probably even remember
At 14:45:
Im also fine with you showing people my photos and i suppose i appreciate you might have forgotten about some of the more intense photos we took. Sometimes you forget things can mean more to you than they do to other people
At 15:05:
Sorry to lay all my cards on the table here but i did think there was a little more going on between us than just a model/photographer thing but ive been looking at your website today and it looks like you take those kinds of photos with lots of different men and hey i guess thats fine if thats your thing. Kind of stupid for me to expect loyalty from someone like you, i suppose
At 17:49:
Hey sorry again about that last message my feelings are just hurt
At 19:01:
I hope youre just sleeping and not ignoring me because after all the shit last night i think that’d be really bitchy of you fyi
At 19:26:
Im so sorry youre probably just sleeping
At 20:42:
I really like you?
At 21:12:
Just so weird that youd go off with henson like that its like you did it just to fuck w me. Im sure you didnt but thats how i feel. So id really appreciate some reassurance
At 21:39:
Not that you owe me anything sorry. I did a gender studies module in uni and im aware that men are trash.
Im trying my best and i really hope you dont hate me after this but you probably do :(
At 23:00:
Im really sorry ill stop messaging you now
But he didn’t stop. He sent me another text as soon as he woke up this morning, and has kept going in the same cycle of apologies, aggression and self-pity all day. It’s almost four, now. I read the texts through again, alternating between a smirk and a sneer.
The first draft of a reply is aggressive, accusatory, (My shirt was clean you flaccid rapist fuck), the second is too breezy (lol it’s cool chill out omg) and I settle on making him feel guilty, delaying gratification, twisting the knife. I think I’m going see if I can get the pic of him wanking in the photobook.
Okay! Hey it’s fine, don’t worry about it. Thanks for reassuring me. It’s really scary to black out like that, it’s all wrapped up in some childhood trauma stuff I don’t really want to get in to.
But yeah, the other night I went to fucking space mate so thank you for looking after me. Soz if it felt like I was being inconsiderate of your feelings, it honestly just didn’t cross my mind you’d feel that way about me. If it makes you feel better, I did just genuinely click with Henson, and I’m a little ??confused?? that you’d assume I was chatting him up to ‘fuck’ with you?? I also don’t appreciate being called ‘bitchy’ even if your feelings are hurt.
I really was just sleeping…
I had kind of a rough night, idk if you noticed haha.
Feel free to pass my number on to Henson.
No hard feelings?
The response is almost instant, as if he’d drafted it.
None at all! Sorry for all the psycho messages. Comedown and bruised ego. I passed your number on to the big man. He’s over the moon, glad you guys clicked! I hope we can still be friends. Honestly if I could delete stuff I already sent… I am such an idiot tbh, I wouldn’t fancy me either lmao!!!!
I roll my eyes and reply with a smiley face. I go back to my archive.
I loved my next project. I still love it. It’s this video/photography combo project called What would you do to be my Boyfriend? I screened the film at uni before Christmas and my tutor had this massive whinge about how the project was really exploitative, and how I’d put my safety at risk, and how she refused to mark it in case it encouraged me to do something like this again. I just asked to be moved tutorial groups. They put me with a good, unscrupulous male lecturer who gave me a distinction for my bold, risky work.
I spent the summer of 2010 picking up strange men, taking them back to halls, stripping them down to their underwear, and photographing them. I filmed and interviewed while I photographed, and asked them various probing questions about their personal lives, finishing on do you want to be my boyfriend? And what would you do to be my boyfriend? This is when I started experimenting with street scouting and photographing different kinds of beauty in my work. Less traditional models. No out-and-out monsters, mind, but some interesting faces, if you will.
The accompanying photobook I made is actually a really beautiful object. I had it printed and bound properly. I made five copies; four were on sale at the solo show for an obscene price (all of them went, and even after Anne’s cut I made about a grand) and one stayed with me. I have three or four photos per page, with the full interview transcript accompanying them; the DVD of the film is tucked into a sleeve at the back.
I flick through the photobook. While I did sneer when my original tutor said I’d put myself in danger to make this, things did get a bit dicey on a number of occasions. I rang building security three times, and on the third occasion, the security bloke came back up to my flat to tell me he wasn’t going to throw any more weirdos in their underwear out of the building for me.
I find the diciest bloke on pages 21–30. He was such a fucking serial killer. Credited here only as ‘Forbidden Planet’, named for the hunting ground where I acquired him.
Games Workshop, Travelling Man, miscellaneous indie comic shops, were all great for finding weird blokes, but I’d actually gone to Forbidden Planet that particular afternoon for personal reasons. I’d intended to pick up Kitty Media’s recent unrated Blu-ray/DVD combo release of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend. They had it in stock, but behind a glass case, locked, like jewellery or something. I got a member of staff to grab it for me and ended up talking with him. Tall bloke, blond, very blond, hard bone structure, his face almost like a skull. With a little more weight and a box of dark hair dye he’d have been handsome, I think. But with that Children of the Corn aesthetic, you’d never give him anything past striking, and striking would be generous. He had a blue vein which ran from the corner of his mouth to his neck, like a fat drop of ink.
I remember licking the corner of my own mouth, chasing an imaginary vein with my tongue.
He raised his barely-there eyebrows at me, and said, ‘Huh, hardcore,’ when he passed me the DVD. It isn’t a good film, more of an interesting artefact. Urotsukidoji was one of the first anime to get an English language release, so there are lots of reports of parents renting the video for their kids, not realising it was super violent and full of fucking.
I remember him saying, ‘You do know what this is, right?’ I told him to get someone else if he couldn’t sell me tentacle porn without patronising me, and he apologised, and started making desperate conversation with me: do I like any other anime? Do I like other tentacle stuff? Am I into comics, etc., etc.; each answered with a shrug or a not really.
He followed me out of the shop. He really was sorry. Could he get me a coffee, to make up for it? I told him he could let me take his photograph.
Still no business cards, so I gave him the address of my halls. I found him outside the gate later the same day, grinning, like he thought he’d just stumbled into the meet cute bit of a rom-com that reviewers would describe as screwball and edgy. Being mistaken for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl has served me well over the years. I’d go out disguised in a non-threatening sundress and flat sandals, slouching and leaning heavily on my left hip, shrinking myself down to a less intimidating height. Drop a niche interest here, and a little sass there, and they eat me up, every single time.
I had the man from Forbidden Planet sit on my bed, in my tiny box-room in halls. I switched on the camcorder I’d bought recently and stuck my brand-new DSLR in his face, both purchased with the small pot of inheritance I’d gotten after my grandmother died. I started taking test shots.
It was an unremarkable shoot; I couldn’t even coax him out of his shirt and he went to the bathroom before I got to the uncomfortable questions. The transcript is the driest one in the book, versus some of the absolutely wild shit some of the other blokes said. He went to the toilet, and I remember thinking what a fuck-up this was. He was just a dork, not a weirdo like the others had been. He’d been in there for fifteen minutes or so. I couldn’t hear anything through the paper-thin wall, so I nudged the broken door open, and found him perched on the toilet lid, chewing a used tampon he’d fished out of my bathroom bin. One hand in his jeans, eyes half-shut, head tipped back. He didn’t notice me till the flash went off on my camera.
He spat the tampon out and lunged, fluff all over his teeth, and I took another photo before cackling and legging it out of my room.
On the DVD, you can just hear him shouting, ‘Fucking delete that,’ and doors slamming. His section of the book closes with the photos of him with the tampon in his mouth, and then Subject disappeared to bathroom for fifteen minutes, whereupon I found him chewing a used tampon and wanking.
I sigh and close the book. I have a text from a new number.
Hey! It’s (jack) henson from Monday night.
Hope you’re feeling okay/cool with me texting you. Also, I don’t know if you remember, but I’m sorry for going to bed and leaving you with wee willy when he seemed so pissy about us craicing on, he was very insistent that I should eff off because you were his guest…
For what it’s worth hes harmless? But i think it was just a bit of a shock to his ego, so sorry on his behalf if he upset you. Hes used to me being his fat sidekick/wingman and he can be really immature when he doesnt get what he wants. I think he has a lot of growing up to do with girls and i hope he didnt make you feel bad. I know hes sent you some pretty whacky shit in the last day or so. Hope youre okay xx
I know I said i hope youre okay twice! I doubley hope youre okay haha xx
Cute. I think about how best to play this.
Hey you!
Yeah will has been pretty whacky… Not sure how harmless he is either.
This is weird, i know you said you went to bed, but do you remember Will doing anything weird to me? I just remember him being a bit rough with me and stuff.
I’m actually a bit freaked out.
Again, sorry if this is weird. Does he have a history of behaviour with women which is… Not great?
I also woke up in his clothes. He said I’d thrown up on mine but I definitely didn’t. I’d be able to tell.
Don’t tell him I said this.
Henson says he won’t. He says he’s not aware of Will doing anything bad with women, really, before this. Henson says he’s sorry this happened – whatever Will did, he’s sorry. He hopes I remember.
No attempt to defend Will, I see. No he doesn’t have it in him, or he’d never.
I talk to Henson for a while and sit up late into the night with my photos, going over and over the first box of stuff. I find myself lingering on What would you do to be my boyfriend?. I’ve read it through a few times now. There was one man who said he’d cut off one of his toes to date me – he was quite graphic about it.
I get an email at two a.m. from a [email protected]
Hi!
Sorry about my email address I’ve had this account since 2005 and it’s too deeply entangled with all of my other accounts to change now. This is Eddie – from Tesco? I have been thinking about modelling for you, but I’m not sure I can. I like the idea of it, but the stuff on your website is a little blue (which I am personally fine with) but I start teacher training for primary in september. Is there a work around? I like your stuff a lot, but i really really can’t impress the importance of how much my face can’t be in the photos if you decide to use me. I’d also really appreciate being able to discuss it first. Maybe over coffee, if this doesn’t sound too much like I’m trying to take advantage of your artistic practise to hook a date? Feel free to tell me to bugger off! I know I’m being awkward.
I do some (embarrassing) photography as well, but it’s mostly just trees. I like a lot of the stuff you like, though. Arbus, Mapplethorpe etc. In terms of Fetish stuff, it is something i’m interested in more academically than anything for instance i read the marquis de sade for an essay in uni, and I’m interested in some ero anime such as Urotsukidoji and Belladonna of sadness (which you should definitely check out if you haven’t!). My brother is also a professional photographer but he just takes photos of food for magazines and packaging and stuff, which pays very well so he lives in London now – so he lets me have his old lenses and stuff for my daft hobby.
Eddie (from tesco)
Is it weird to reply instantly to an email sent at two a.m.? Do I care? Shy bairns get nowt, as the saying goes.
Hi Eddie (from Tesco),
Great to hear from you. Not much of an anime gal myself. Have seen the stuff you mentioned there, but I’m not really big on anime. Also not much of a reader. LOVE salo tho, as you mentioned marquis de sade. I do like j-horror/pinky violence and I’m big into extreme cinema in general, if any of that is your bag.
Anyway, I have a few props I shoot with on occasion. I prefer to have a clear view of a model’s face for the most part - but masks and stuff are kind of part of the territory with my work. I have a few options we can look at – I have a giant bunny head (has a tail too – kind of cute!) and a couple of gimp mask things, which are a little cliche; its not really my taste so I try to make those photos a bit more creepy/less sexy in tone. I have some masquerade things too and one of my old friends makes masks with old porcelain doll faces – she sold me a few.
Let me know when you’re free, and I’ll give you my address. We’ll have some fun with disguises.
Seems a shame to cover up such a good face, but oh well :(
I generally get my models to sign a consent form, so I’ll make sure there’s an anonymity stipulation in yours, if that makes you feel more confident. I’ll treat you to a coffee and we can talk it through.
Irina x
When I’m brushing my teeth, cleaning my face, moisturising, etc., I spend a little time in front of the mirror rehearsing. I try to smile, naturally, nicely. I pull the corners of my mouth into place with my fingers and see what it looks like when I show my teeth. It always looks a little smirky or sneery, I think, or like the anxious grin of an agitated chimp. I’ve never had a nice smile. A shame – you spend all that money on a set of veneers to find out your teeth were never the issue. I try looking sad. I try twisting my mouth up the way Flo did Tuesday morning, forcing my eyes to well up, looking down at the sink, furrowing my brow. I’m better at sad.
I let the skin of my face relax, and gently massage in my night cream.
‘Hi, Eddie from Tesco, is it?’ I stick my hand out at the mirror. We won’t shake hands. ‘What do you drink? What do you want to drink?’ I try smiling. I think if I smile at him like this, he’ll leave. I look like I want to skin him and wear it.
EDDIE FROM TESCO
/> Eddie, Eddie, Eddie from Tesco, shall I compare thee to a heavily discounted piece of meat on the reduced shelf at the end of the day? Thou art cheaper and, hopefully, fresher.
I smooth my skirt down – the denim is damp beneath my palms. I’m distinctly aware of a rash forming on the insides of my thighs, a combination of razor and friction burn exacerbated by sweat and the day’s heat. I squirm. I’ve gone without foundation today, knowing it would melt straight off my face. Sweat gathers on my forehead, melting my SPF.
I should have worn bike shorts under my skirt, but it’s almost thirty degrees outside, and it’d be another layer. I suck on my iced coffee, absently scrolling through some old photographs. I peer over the rim of my MacBook; no sign of him yet. We still have ten minutes, which means he’s just not an early bird. Will isn’t working today, which is a shame. I was hoping to ignore him, to rub another, shorter, man in his face.
Eddie from Tesco stumbles in, drawing my eye by tripping on the door frame, and going ‘Oopsy!’ as he enters the cafe.
He’s just as sweet outside of the supermarket. I make him five foot five (if he’s lucky) and nine stone (if he’s soaking wet). I wave, brightly, from my table, with a big, white smile so he knows I’m happy to see him. He waves back and shuffles over. He’s wearing a slightly-too-tight T-shirt and skinny jeans. He carries his weight on his tummy, his backside and his thighs, like a girl. His arms are like toothpicks, and his thick thighs taper into calves as thin as a bird’s. He has a high waist, and an effeminate swing to his hips. With the freckles, the curls and brown summer skin, I’m smitten. Dimples when he smiles, too, and a little chest hair peeping over the collar of his T-shirt.
‘Hi,’ he says. He can’t meet my eye. He’s looking back and forth from the chalkboard menu behind me to my tits. Still, he’s got this look on his face like he can’t believe his luck. He takes a seat, cheeks reddening, and hides his face in his hands. ‘Did you see me trip?’