by Eliza Clark
I have an hour and a half to get ready by the time I get back. I eat half the cucumber, and half a tin of tuna, and one of the peppers like it’s an apple. I brush my teeth till my gums bleed. I shower again and shave my bikini line. I am too cavalier with the razor and almost bite through my tongue when I nick the left lip of my cunt.
I drop the razor. I gather myself, take a deep breath and watch a trickle of blood run down the inside of my leg and down the plughole, before I pick the razor up again. I finish my bikini line and give my legs and armpits a once over before climbing out of the shower to attending to my cut, pressing a lump of toilet tissue to it, and watching it slowly soak through with blood. I swear to myself. I smack the sink with my palm and grit my teeth.
I top up my face with BB cream, and put on a little mascara, not wanting to look like I’ve made an effort, and pack an overnight bag. I put on matching underwear: pink and frilly, because he seems like the kind of boy who probably likes women in pink, frilly things. I put my jeans back on and replace the T-shirt with a crop-top, also pink, with shiny buttons, and little puffy sleeves, cut in a way that shows off my cleavage and my neck, but not in an obvious way.
I look soft. I can look hard, if I’m not careful. Hard and cold and intimidating. I put my hand on my neck, and squeeze it, looking at myself in the mirror as I do. I play with my hair, putting it up, taking it down, brushing it, tossing it around.
I get stuck there, for a while.
The doorbell rings. I make him wait as I pack my laptop and my charger into my backpack. Unable to tolerate the thought of flat shoes, I slip on a pair of baby pink stilettos, answering the door as I put them on.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Jesus Christ, mate, is that your car?’
He looks over his shoulder at a battered, baby blue Micra.
‘I’m saving for a new one,’ he says.
‘It looks like a toddler’s shoe,’ I say.
‘It’s my mum’s old car.’ A little snappy, but then he pads it with a laugh, an admission that it’s awful.
‘I used to have my dad’s old BMW,’ I tell him, as I clop towards his stupid little car. ‘But I sold it. Living so close to town and stuff,’ I say.
‘Yeah, insurance is a killer. I only keep this because my parents live all the way up in Amble and they’d go crackers if I didn’t visit. It’s good to have the quick escape, you know?’
I hum, and get in the passenger’s side, my knees knocking against the glovebox. He joins me in the car, and puts the seat back for me.
We drive to his, which is in Walker. The journey takes five minutes longer than it should because he drives down the Coast Road instead of going down past the Biscuit Factory. I tell him as much, and he shrugs, and says he doesn’t know Jesmond very well. But he works here. Does he drive up the Coast Road every day? How much petrol has he wasted on that five extra minutes?
We arrive at his. A big detached house which, he explains, has been split into two flats. He lives on the top floor, above an elderly woman who bangs her ceiling with a broom if he watches telly past nine p.m.
‘It’s not as nice as your house, but, you know, it does me,’ he says, turning around on the stairs to smile at me. He lets me in his front door, and I am met by the smell of bachelorhood. Unhoovered carpets, unaired rooms and unbleached surfaces. Immediately, I open a window.
‘You should get some scented candles in here,’ I say. The air is clammy and stale. ‘Do you have a fan?’
‘In my bedroom. I’ll get it in a second,’ he says. He seems to notice my nose wrinkling as I run my eyes over his dusty telly and PlayStation. ‘Sorry. I guess… I mean, especially compared to yours, it’s a bit minging in here.’ He chews his lip. ‘Do you want me to hoover?’ Before I can answer: ‘I’ll hoover, and I’ll get the fan, just, hang on. Have a look round, if you like.’
He hoovers. I look in his bedroom. It is juvenile, but neat. If you told me this was the recently tidied bedroom of a thirteen-year-old, I’d believe you.
The walls are lined with bookshelves that seem to exclusively contain manga, graphic novels and comic books. There are figurines on his windowsill, and he has that Akira poster that everyone has, as well as a Bruce Lee poster, and a bunch of pictures of some idol girl group. There are stickers on the headboard of his bed. I imagine grabbing the headboard and feeling stickers under my palms.
I look closely at the manga. He’s filed all his porn onto the bottom shelf, as if he hoped no one would bother to bend down and look there.
He catches me with my nose in a comic where, I gather, the protagonist is this boy who has been purchased by a MILF who dresses him as a maid and keeps him trapped in her house. I flip through and stop at a double-page spread of the MILF sitting on the boy-maid’s face. The proportions are bad, but the perspective is worse. Everyone’s hands are huge, and the MILF character’s back is twisted in a bizarre shape, so you can see her breasts and her backside at the same time. I snort.
‘What are you doing?’ asks Eddie from Tesco. I turn the comic round and show him.
‘Being nosy,’ I say. ‘The art in this one is shockingly shit.’
‘Did you look at anything else?’
‘No. Why, do you have anything worse?’ He does. I can tell by the look on his face. I stick the manga back on the shelf, and my knees click when I get up. I talk before he answers. ‘Thanks for hoovering.’
‘It’s fine,’ he says. He looks at me for a while, either waiting for me to apologise, or too mortified to speak. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Not really. I’ll have a drink, though.’
‘I picked up some wine? Red, because… you bought red before. I don’t really drink but I got myself a couple of beers.’
‘What? And you’re going to watch me drink a bottle of wine alone?’ I roll my eyes, grab his fan, and brush past him as I head into a freshly hoovered living room, and plop onto the sofa. ‘You’re trying to get me drunk.’
‘No! No, I just…’
‘Well, have a glass of wine, then. Make it fair.’
He doesn’t own wine glasses (I don’t know what I expected) so I drink out of a small plastic tumbler, and watch him do the same, wrinkling his nose with every sip. He chatters. He doesn’t really like wine, he doesn’t really drink, he feels like a proper grown-up with this red. I make him have another before he switches to beer.
‘Can I ask you something?’ His eyes are big, and brown, like a cow’s.
‘No.’ He looks stricken. ‘I’m joking. Ask.’
‘When we met at the coffee shop, you asked me why I wanted to do this. But… Why me?’ he asks. ‘I mean, like… Why are you interested in me? For photographs, for anything?’
I knock back the rest of my wine and mull it over. There are a few possible answers: I like curly hair; I like weak men; you’re well behaved.
‘You’re really cute,’ I say. He doesn’t believe me. ‘You are! Honestly, I can’t believe you’re single.’ I smile. I’m half telling the truth – he seems like the kind of man whose girlfriends are perpetually younger than him. Like he dates fourteen-year-olds when he’s seventeen, eighteen-year-olds when he’s twenty-five – never enough that it’s illegal but enough that it’s weird. I can also see him with some bossy, frumpy pony-club type or an adult-emo with a dated haircut and a lot of Joker merch. He smiles, just a small smile, but then it drops, and he starts chewing his fingers.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘If you say so.’
I ask him to show me his camera. He gets it for me, apologising as he does, because it’s just a hobby, and it’s his brother’s old camera, and it’s not very good, and neither is he. It’s a digital Nikon, maybe five years old. I’m a Canon girl, myself, and I tell him, prompting another apology. I flip it on, and immediately go to his photographs. A lot of squirrels, in black and white, and macro shots of leaves. There’s a shot of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, so he must have taken these on a trip to London. They’re all a bit too dark. Like he’s tried to do something with th
e settings, but he’s just cocked-up the exposure instead.
‘This is Hyde Park,’ I say. He nods. ‘I used to live in London,’ I say.
‘I know. Your website says you went to Central Saint Martins and the Royal College? Amir – my brother – did London College of Communication. That’s like, the same uni group thing as Saint Martins. Isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. The LCC photography course always read as really commercial. Your brother does, like, photos of food and stuff, doesn’t he?’ And the checkout boy nods. ‘Mmm. I couldn’t do that. I mean, obviously I’ve done my share of freelance commercial stuff, but usually it’s fashion photography, so you get a lot more artistic freedom.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He shrugs. ‘It pays the bills for him, I s’pose.’
‘My work pays my bills,’ I say. ‘Not having a go, I’m just saying, like, I couldn’t do that. And, like, fine art photography can be very lucrative. So, you can make money and have some integrity at the same time.’
‘He hasn’t… sold out or anything it’s just… his job.’
It’s more than just a job, I think. But I realise I’m being hostile. He’s frowning at me, so I relax my face, smile, shrug. Hey, if he wants to take photos of M&S roast chickens, and he’s good with that, then whatever.
‘Do food photographers really microwave tampons to make the food look like it’s steaming? Like, does your brother do that?’ I ask. Eddie from Tesco colours at the mention of tampons.
‘Erm… If he has, he’s never mentioned it.’
‘Ask him for me.’
‘Okay.’
There’s a photo of the back half of a dead rat on his camera. Still in Hyde Park, I think, next to a clump of dandelions. Just its foot, its tail, with a clump of flies bunched at the edges of its flesh. It’s good. Well composed, and there’s the rat, the flies, the dandelions: all pests, all living and dying together. It’s also a bit A-level, but it’s like… edgy A-level, like you see that sketchbook and you think, aye I’d give this a B, that’d be fair.
‘This one isn’t bad,’ I say. I turn the camera to him. ‘It’s the first one where the exposure’s right.’
‘Ah. Amir took that one. He fixed the settings on it for me. He said I’d messed up the aperture, or something.’ He looks embarrassed, again. ‘It’s… stupid. I wanted it to be high contrast, so I… fiddled around with it, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’m a bit frightened to touch it now, to be honest.’
The rest of the photos are fine. A few more in the park, then a portrait of a man who looks like Eddie from Tesco, but a little older and quite a lot bigger. Bigger nose, bigger shoulders and, overall, not quite as good looking; he’s missing the cleft chin, the dimples, the freckles. Just a normal alright-looking bloke – he wouldn’t turn my head. Amir has a better haircut than his brother, though, it must be said.
‘Is this your brother?’ I ask. ‘Is he quite tall? He looks big.’
‘Yeah, he’s over six foot, actually.’ Eddie from Tesco clears his throat, shoulders hunching up to his ears. I watch his hands clench and unclench. He’s thinking giving me the camera was a mistake – that I prefer his brother now. I’ve seen Flo look like this before. She’ll introduce me to someone, then I’ll watch her get stiff and sad out of the corner of my eye, because now she’s the Ugly Friend.
‘Genetics are a funny thing, aren’t they?’ I say. ‘My mam’s only about five foot tall.’
‘Yeah… Our mum is tiny, too. I always used to say, when I was a kid, I used to say that Amir shouldn’t pick on me, because I’d be bigger than him one day and like… it just never happened,’ he says, forcing a laugh. ‘He still picks me up in front of people.’ He cringes. ‘I don’t know why I told you that.’
I smile. I go to tell him it’s okay, it’s cute, even.
Then he says: ‘Do you think you could pick me up?’ His voice cracks. ‘Not in a weird way, just…’ I make a face at him. ‘That was stupid. A stupid joke.’
I smile at him, and I think I do it wrong, because he shrinks like I’m glaring, or staring, and there is a long, heavy silence. I forget to keep smiling, because I’m watching him watch me. His eyes dart around, and he stammers, like he wants to speak but can’t. He mustn’t like being looked at, but he stares at me all the time. I like looking at him.
‘We’ll look at your pictures,’ I say. He balks.
‘Oh. No thank you.’
‘You should look at them. They’re good.’ I open my laptop and pull up his photos, cycling through them. He flinches, now avoiding both my eye and the laptop, eyes up to the ceiling.
‘I’m sure they’re great! I’m sure they’re really great. You took them, after all; they must be really good. They’re just embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to see photos of yourself. Photos like… that.’ He apologises. He tells me he’s shy. He’s not used to it. He hates looking at photos of himself. I don’t get it. I tell him I don’t get it, that he’s talking shite.
‘Come on, look.’ I put the MacBook on his lap.
He looks. When he looks away, I tap the screen with my nails. I tell him I’ve barely deleted any; I like them so much that I can’t choose favourites.
‘On your website, I noticed you’re in some of the photos. Your hands, and your shoes and stuff…’ He says. ‘Could we take some like that? Next time? I think I’d like that.’
‘You’re into that shit, are you?’
‘Oh. No. Just for the art. I think those are your most dynamic photographs.’
‘Right.’ I snort. ‘So, what was that comic all about?’
‘It’s actually part of a series? Um… The plot is a whole commentary on exploitative labour and sexual harassment, and the way that society devalues service workers, actually…’ When he sees that I’m smirking, he raises his voice a bit. ‘It’s not a sex thing. I can have some… explicit manga, it doesn’t have to be a sex thing. Like… I mean, your photos. You can’t want to… every single model you shoot, can you? You’ll just pick some because they’re best for the idea you have, or whatever, you know?’
‘Are you asking me if I want to fuck every model I use?’ I shrug. ‘Well, sort of. Why else would I want to take their photos?’
Eddie from Tesco looks horrified. Like the possibility was so absurd, he hadn’t even considered it. He asks, ‘All of them?!’ like I’ve actually fucked them, or something, like my artistic practice is this non-stop, record-breaking, Annabel-Chong-style gangbang. The checkout boy wrinkles his nose. I try to work out what that means: if he’s disgusted, or if his ego is a little bruised.
‘Do you actually think I sleep with them? All of them?!’ I ask, mocking his intonation from before. He screws up his mouth, and shakes his head, shoulders hunching up as he tries to edge away from me, to take me out of his personal bubble.
I roll my eyes, and I explain to him that I generally don’t shit where I eat. Sexuality is obviously important in my work, and there needs to be chemistry, but that doesn’t mean I’m opening my legs as soon as I pop off my lens cap.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Eddie from Tesco. ‘I made an assumption. Stupid. Really stupid.’ He wriggles on the sofa, going red again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone blush this much, and then I remember when my mother went through menopause. I remember her hot flushes, her face turning beet red at the drop of a hat; ripping off her coat on the high street in January and rubbing ice on her chest in restaurants.
‘Stop blushing,’ I say. He can’t help it, he whimpers, like a kicked dog. I’m irritated. I’m so annoyed I can feel it in the pit of my gut. My cunt clenches like a fist. I snap my laptop shut and place it on his grubby coffee table. ‘What assumption did you make?’
‘I thought… I suppose I thought you liked me. I didn’t realise that was part of it with everyone.’ He thought he was special. His lip trembles. Is he going to cry?
He’s wringing his hands, and even though he’s looking down at the floor I can tell he’s grimacing. He glances at me, his eye line
slipping into its comfortable rhythm, darting between my cleavage, my face and the floor while he waits for me to say something else – to confirm or deny that I like him. I let the words hang between us, like a body.
‘Maybe I do,’ I say. He looks at me, properly. Not in the eye, but in the face, at least. He leans in, lips puckered, eyes closed, and I lean back. When he doesn’t find my lips, he opens his eyes. ‘Not on the mouth,’ I tell him. I get off the couch, and nod for him to follow. ‘Bring the camera.’ I hear him scrambling behind me. I poke my head into his bedroom: the figurines, the idol posters. ‘Actually, I can’t do it with all those skinny Japanese girls looking at me. We’ll stay here.’ I march back into the living room, finally kicking off my shoes.
‘They’re Korean.’
‘Same thing,’ I say. ‘I’m allergic to latex, FYI.’ I direct him to my purse in my backpack, where he finds the latex-free condoms, in a variety of sizes.
‘How did you find that out?’ he asks. ‘That you’re allergic.’
‘The hard way.’
He looks a little offended by the ‘trim’ packet, and I tell him not to take it personally, that I always carry them, that you never know. ‘Trim’ is placed to one side, and ‘King’ and ‘King XL’ are considered. I always wonder why they don’t do condoms like cup sizes – A, B, C – rather than letting people guess what size they are based on what euphemism they feel most appropriately describes their dick. I know I’m not Trim — but am I King-sized? Could I even be King XL if the next one after Trim is King? What if this is a big brand? Maybe I am Trim after all?
‘Erm,’ he says. ‘Which one is just… the normal one?’
‘Left hand,’ I say.
‘Cool,’ he says. ‘Cool, cool, cool.’
I pick up his camera while he juggles johnnies. I take his picture. The flash is off, so he doesn’t even notice. He stops looking at the condom and starts looking at me. Staring. ‘What?’
‘You’re so pretty,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘I mean you’re like… You’re properly beautiful, aren’t you?’