Varying Degrees of Hopelessness

by Lucy Ellmann

  She was a mature student.

  She stared at him with big blue eyes.

  The sunlight shimmered in her hair.

  She looked very good in jeans.

  He said her splendidly romantic name over and over to himself.

  Isabella.

  Isabella.

  Isabella.

  He could hardly bear to imagine the calligraphic intricacies of her pubic hair.

  Prancing

  Nearing the dull grey building in its dull grey part of a dull grey city on this dull grey day is Pol, and she prances. It is a type of movement not often performed by English women these days. Women used to like themselves more. Before they were assured by feminists that men hate them, women used to prance more. You see them displaying their corsetwear in old magazines. They did not hate themselves. They did not even seem to hate their corsets. They did not mind if their breasts protruded with a lack of premeditation. Everyone was prancing in those days. Now models crouch and slink like girls pretending they haven’t reached puberty (perhaps they haven’t). They are not supposed to look happy. We are at the anti-climactic turn of a century.

  Or perhaps it’s just a matter of bad posture.

  Pol prances. She wears a tight pink and orange outfit that amply highlights her distinguishing sexual characteristics, her distinguished sexual characteristics – an abundance of unfashionable, unrequired flesh. Her breasts flop about, her nipples are far from erect. She has wide, rounded, ovalled, overlapping hips, complete with a revolutionary number of dimples. Her legs are not sticks. Her arms wobble. And the whole conglomeration is gyrating, caught in the widening gyre, as she prances. A blob of slithering, tremblous matter, Pol moves lustily through space.

  Pol’s Mother

  Pol had always been a nervous naked flame, trying to live. Every fire needs help, or luck. Her mother had loved her carelessly but well, like a well-fed cat is loved. A child’s life is so precarious: she was pleased to see Pol grow substantial.

  She had not realized her own beauty until she was thirty-eight, when it was beginning to wane. She was determined that Pol would not suffer the same fate. When Pol wanted to wear a bikini at the age of six, her mother refrained from saying that Pol’s proud baby stomach, sticking out between the two halves of the swimming costume, did not look sexy. Pol thought it did.

  The Seminar

  Syms was in fine fettle and full flow. His laces had remained tied for hours. His manly frame paced the room with manful stride, in jeans that called attention to his man-root. The hands clasped earnestly behind the back, the charming frown and the moussed hair all indicated that whatever his next ejaculation might be, it would be well worth inserting in one’s notebook. He tossed his head, not only with the intention of displaying his wavy blond curls to better advantage, but perhaps in an effort to dislodge yet another memorable thought from the grey matter encased within.

  Twenty eyes followed his movements back and forth, up and down, in and out of the ten feet of available promenading space, and added their assent, were it needed, to his high estimation of himself. Twenty bedroom eyes took him in from head to toe, caressing his every curve, his every lack of curve. Ten heads turned for him, and ten minds tried to hold on to his information for as long as they could.

  But there were eleven students in the room, and the eleventh jerked around in her chair, slapped her knees occasionally, let out low grumbles that could no longer be attributed to her digestive tract, and was generally proving an impediment to the smooth running of the seminar group situation. Taking things in hand, as was his wont, Syms turned to the source of the disruption and asked quite kindly, ‘Is there a problem of some sort?’ Twenty eyes reluctantly transferred their attention from him to the fat girl in the back row.

  ‘You bet there’s a problem, buddy.’

  ‘Well, what?’ he asked, with manly simplicity.

  ‘Laundry lists! That’s what. All you guys ever seem to talk about is when and where and for whom the thing was done, you never talk about the painting itself. The closest you get to talking about the picture is when you’re maundering on about the various influences, how this painting looks a bit like that one. The only reason we’re sitting through this stuff is that we’re all waiting for the day you finally delve into why we have been moved by paintings. But you’re so scared of feelings like that you’d talk about anything just to avoid talking about them. I’ve been in this place for six months and I’ve never heard so much utterly useless data in my life. All you care about is crushing paintings, that is what you do, you sit around covering works of art with peripheral and BORING information, like the guy must have painted it in 1885 because he rented a studio and was seen in Paris in May. Here’s his bar bill, here’s the illegitimate child born nine months later to Marie Louise who lived down the road, here’s the washer-woman’s testimony. Who cares WHEN the fucking painting was done? Who the hell CARES? I want to talk about the thing itself. It’s only of value surely, and worthy of discussion, if the thing in and of itself expresses something, takes the viewer into its own territory, does SOMETHING, something new. Who cares that it’s a bit like this or that, if what it really is is NEW? Who cares whether it was Braque or Picasso who did all those crazy collages? THEY didn’t. A work of art should be able to subsist without any reference to the painter. If its only appeal rests on the fact that a famous guy painted it, well, what the fuck are we doing? Are we some sort of out-of-date fan club or what?’

  ‘Um, I’m not sure I quite –’

  ‘This is demeaning. I didn’t come here to belittle art, and belittle my own intelligence. What we need is art CRITICISM, like literary criticism. Why doesn’t art deserve the same kind of attention? When and where a picture was done is only worth even being curious about if you’ve already figured out WHY it was done. But with you, there’s no TIME to discuss the paintings because you’re always talking about the laundry!’

  This unbelittlable person seemed capable of going on all day. Syms had to do something. ‘I see,’ he began, with a slow and startlingly handsome nod. ‘You think we should be talking about how a picture makes us FEEL. Like, “Ooooh, that Renoir’s like a nice blanket, it makes me go all warm and tingly”, for instance? Or maybe, “Munch must have been feeling pretty awful when he painted that”? Don’t you think such a discussion might end up being a waste of time too? Everybody has a different impression. Where do we go from there?’

  ‘So literary criticism is merely boring?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you should throw the baby out with the bathwater. After all, this is Art History. That does mean that dates and places are going to be of importance, though I don’t say they’re of supreme importance. But it helps us to understand the work if we do know something of the man’s life,’ said Syms, throwing his head back in an effort to bedazzle his rather unprepossessing opponent. Taking a good look at her, he surmised that it was probably sexual frustration, the curse of all fat people, that made her so antagonistic.

  ‘That’s another thing,’ she went on. ‘When are we going to have a little talk about why all the pictures we’ve been looking at are by MEN? There were plenty of female Impressionists. You’ve been showing us one painting after another of Parisian prostitutes. When are we going to start talking about why men like painting tarts so much, and why other men like looking at paintings of tarts? You’re trying to turn something naughty and risqué and offensively sexist into something hygienic by getting all scholarly about it.’

  Syms considered repeating his remark about the baby and the bathwater, but he wasn’t sure of its relevance. No further comment was necessary however, because it was already well past the time to break up and repair to the cafeteria for elevenses. Disappointed and confused young things, as well as a troubled thirty-one-year-old member of the class, wandered out of the room, disconsolately trying to concentrate on the memory of the Splendid Young Man’s curls, or veering off on to the question of Twix or Penguin bar with their tea.

&nb
sp; Determined to secure the poor duck’s allegiance or at least silence, Syms sidled boldly up to Pol. ‘If you’d like to meet me for a drink tonight, perhaps we could discuss why men paint prostitutes,’ he murmured in her ear, past the outrageous ear-ring she’d installed there.

  ‘Trying to pick up the baby with soft soap, eh? Likely to slip out of your fingers,’ Pol admonished, though she was not immune to such an approach.

  Syms looked hurt. Syms definitely looked hurt. Lionel Syms was in fact easily hurt: somewhere deep inside Syms was an awareness that life could be painful and difficult. Pol felt sorry for the inner Syms.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Meet you at the Tunnel about eight.’ (The Tunnel being a Soho bar specializing in tequila and vaginal iconoclasm.)

  Pol on Men

  As Pol stomped off to use the Female Staff Loo, she contemplated the gender gap. Pol knew men to be weak, cautious and coy, needing to be courted, coaxed, cossetted, and then still completely undependable. So why does society humour them? Why is it that whatever men do seems more interesting and more significant than what women do? Even gardening and cooking acquire some credibility when a man is in charge. If a woman plants some flowers, so what? If a man takes to planting irises, the whole endeavour becomes poetic. It’s ART.

  Why this engorged sense of their own importance? What fuels their self-love? BALLS. They’re all bursting with pride in their balls their whole lives long. Men derive a boost from having balls, their enthusiasm only partially quelled by the fact that half the world has balls.

  But this is why they die sooner than women. They’re exhausted by the effort to keep quiet on the only subject that really interests, astounds and forever pleases them: their bat and two balls. They talk on and on around the point – like a verbal wank – skirting with varying success the central topic, that from their bodies dangles some flesh that can extend or contract more or less at will. It makes them poor company. It makes them useless about the house. This love that dare not speak its name turns men into duplicitous beings.

  On this capricious contraption rests all sense of certainty. Syms was always talking about this or that artist having the BALLS to do something or other. He made it sound as if without balls, one would do nothing. As if ova and wombs were unsuggestive of creativity. And then, having claimed for balls this great significance, he dared to criticize people for not putting their balls ON THE LINE. What did this phrase mean exactly? Was it like trying to walk in a straight line when drunk? Sign on the dotted line? It surely had nothing to do with clothes-lines. Pol thought that putting a breast or an ear-lobe on the line might be equivalent. But she knew that for men, only seeing BALLS on the line would do. Men see no point in being female. There IS no point, no point like their point.

  The best solution would be to deprive men of distractions from their central theme and allow them to sit around all day studying their balls. Like drone bees, they could be shelved, to be used as mere genetic stock cubes. They are experts in uselessness. Women do everything better.

  Pol on Women

  Pol had learned to hate women. At the least provocation they were likely to report you to the police or the Inland Revenue. She was sick of their scowls and scolds. They wrapped you up in Brownie knots – moral strictures invented at a moment’s notice – and talked about you behind your back. The trouble with crossing a woman is you don’t know you’ve crossed her until months or even years later when everything pours out in some dreadful heart-to-heart. She wasn’t sure women were right that talking about a problem helps. In some ways, Pol appreciated the obtuse silence of men on most subjects of any significance. At least you know where you are. Women fight like cowards, always popping up out of the grass at you for some frank talking. Preposterous people.

  Pol had a feminist friend who had wanted Pol to meet a man she knew. She didn’t fancy him but hoped Pol would. Pol had duly consorted with the guy for a few weeks, and then dropped him. The feminist friend had then ostracized Pol on the grounds of her cruelty. But what business was it of hers? SHE’d found the guy totally unattractive. Pol had found him totally unattractive but briefly tolerable. Where did morality come into it? Guilt-mongers, that was what women were. Whatever happened to that feminist Utopia in which women would be free to do what they wanted? Instead the world was full of watchful women, still waiting to pounce on you if you didn’t baby a man.

  Pol didn’t trust feminists, or anyone else who declared a political position. They were badly toilet-trained. They used politics as a nappy, in case their baser instincts got out of hand. They wanted to see their own personal madness reflected in the misshapenness of the outside world – this made them feel on top of things. They were just looking for excuses to put down huge swarms of fellow beings.

  To trust anyone was madness indeed, concluded Pol, readjusting her pink and orange garb. And stomping out of the loo, she almost trampled Angelica Lotus, who had been waiting outside for ten minutes. She was fond of her loo, and would use no other.

  Pol Transported

  Pol, a woman without compunction and harbouring a hedonic hankering for raw fish, fumbled her way into a silver taxi and voiced her desire to be taken to the Scrimi Perturbi Sushi Bar in Covent Garden. She made the decision whether to ignore or fuck the driver (there were for her few interesting in-betweens) on the basis of the colour of his taxi. It was to ignore him.

  ‘WHERE’d you say you were going, Miss?’ asked the driver, enthralled by her, he knew not why.

  A silence ensued.

  “Scuse me, Miss, but I didn’t quite catch –’ But he did catch Pol’s discouraging glare in his rear-view mirror, so he took her to the Scrimi Perturbi Sushi Bar in Covent Garden without further ado. Left in comparative peace in the back seat of the swerving vehicle, Pol squirmed out of her blue-and-green spattered tights and various other garments within reach that had been contributing to a certain over-heating problem all morning, and soon arrived at her own approximation of stylish disarray.

  Chris was already engrossed in a ball of sticky rice encrusted with abalone and seaweed, with the nonchalant notion of a carrot amid a smudge of green horse-radish sauce at its apex. But he managed to acknowledge Pol’s arrival by a slight but definite alteration in the alignment of his eyebrows. She plonked herself down on a stool, poured more sake into Chris’s cup and drank it down.

  ‘Order more stuff,’ said Chris hospitably, when he was able. The sushi chef was soon despatched with Pol’s order, which involved his chopping raw tuna, distending king prawns, coagulating rice particles and generally decimating the vegetable kingdom while a decorous, deferential, kimonoed girl bustled about with great authenticity and some ineffectuality before finally coming up with another tiny vase of sake and a cup.

  Putting a hand on Chris’s thigh, Pol nibbled some pale pink pickled ginger, her eyes twinkling – having suddenly felt like nibbling and twinkling. Chris stuck a spare finger into her skirt against her spine. He was enjoying the recent spate of assignations with Pol. They were meeting for lunch almost every day, sometimes skipping lunch altogether to go fuck in the loo of some pub like the Porcupine, where they’d stood straight as two quills, or the Dog and Bone, where Pol had gone down on all fours before him and he had yelled, ‘Bow-wow!’

  The Tunnel of Love

  Lionel Syms dressed casually for his date with Pol: a voluminous white eighteenth-century blouse so that she would not feel too out of proportion next to him, tight green corduroy trousers, and a red bandanna around his fairly athletic neck. What would the poor girl herself wear? Something black and baggy to hide the flab, he would imagine (he hadn’t taken much notice of her or her sartorial preferences up until that day). But whatever she looked like, he would have to make an effort to give her a good time. He did not appreciate having such a destructive element in his seminars.

  Big though she was, there was no sign of Pol in the Tunnel, even after his eyes had adjusted to the gloom and the degenerate crowd. The place was not quite his style, as h
e knew already from previous rendezvous with female students there. Inhabiting an abandoned stretch of the Piccadilly Line, the Tunnel consisted of one long tubular room. The curved walls were covered with day-glo paintings of female legs wrapped around dark geometrical shapes. The furnishings were rough things made of wood, there were no hors-d’oeuvres accompanying the drinks, and the atmosphere (though Syms would have denied going anywhere for the atmosphere) was disagreeably dissolute. It smacked too much of underground notions for his taste.

  He ordered a jug of margaritas with two glasses and sat down at a central table. He had no doubt that she would come – very few young women missed a chance to be alone with Lionel Syms. None the less, halfway through the jug, he did begin to feel stood-up, but was unable to stand up himself and depart. He was further stunned by a drumbeat which shook the floor. Or was it a person that, in time with the drums, was causing the floor to shake? He was thinking he would have preferred them to put on a Frank Sinatra record, when a red eye winked at him. There was no doubt it was winking at him, although he could find no face to go with it. On further investigation, Syms was appalled to see that the eye was completely surrounded by wiggling white flesh, and that the whole obscene and hideous invention was actually a frontal porcine portion of Pol, who danced half-naked close to his face before jiggling off to confront some other table. It was the jewel in her belly-button that had winked.

  It was definitely time to go, but he couldn’t move. The drum-beat rocked him as she rolled, until he longed to clutch her just to make her still. She ascended a nearby table-top and started undulating. The coital movements of her pelvis, or what he had to assume must be her pelvis, astounded him. He associated coital movements with sex, and sex with thin people. He was not used to fat people moving forwards, backwards, sideways, or in any other direction, with flamboyance. And in all this iconoclasm, he found himself wondering just where Pol’s vagina might be.