— ‘I begged her to vomit on me, to sodomise me with any available object. She inserted the head of the champagne bottle into my torn anus but it gave her no release. Trite bourgeois, she screamed at me, capitalist corpse!’
With my fingers, so slowly, so secretively, I parted the panties from flesh and circled her salivating cunt lips and the mouth of her anus. A shiver ran through her as I teased her tiny clit, and pushed a finger inside her. As the wetness spread over my hand, with my soft movements, I brought it back to my face, feeling the texture of her juice, inhaling its scent, while Saul read on.
— ‘I am death, the redeemer, she shouted. Sign a blank cheque for me, open your veins for me.’
I caressed the inside of her thigh, as my thumb fucked her and my forefinger circled her clit. She started shaking and gasping.
Saul paused momentarily in his reading.
— I’m not boring you, am I? I heard him say.
— Nuh, no, no, I’m filming, don’t stop! she replied. — Please.
And so Saul went on reading as she went on filming him and although my cock was aching in my trousers and I was close to coming, I denied both her and myself the pleasure of a conclusion, got to my feet and stepped back from her. Dot seemed confused and disappointed, but I stood behind her, looking down at Saul, there, just ten feet away on his bed, raised her skirt and bared her buttocks. Her eyes shot at me to stop, but I did not. There, just feet from him, I stood back to feast on the shocking view: to my right, Saul, sat, as small as a mouse, studious with his spectacles on, reading from his book, while to my left, filling half my vision, was the immense close-up of my fingers sliding in and out of her tight pink lips. His face and her cunt like two obscenely different films running side by side.
We never saw the footage that Dot shot, but I doubt her hand was steady.
My testes were bursting and I knew Dot and I would consummate that very night but we had to wait then till Saul had gone to bed, so as not to arouse his suspicion. To that end, I whispered to her, as I left the room, — Stay here till he’s asleep. Come to me before dawn. She did not reply.
In my bed after hours of painful waiting I heard tiptoed footsteps down the hall, past my door, then the bathroom door opening and closing. I tiptoed to the door, put my face to it and whispered, — It’s me. Let me in.
A cough from inside. Saul’s gruff reply.
— I’m communing with nature, and your request is certainly most unnatural, but if you can’t repress your beastly needs, you’re more than welcome to join me urinating in the bath, the damned bog’s clogged with something again.
I ran back through to my room.
Days went by and each morning she was away before I woke and did not return till late at night. I worried that I had put her off with all my pussyfooting, that she had found me an even greater disappointment than him. All communications from her were about her art and Bug – the warehouse – Pierce – Emin – Dinos – videotapes. In her busyness to get everything together for the group show, she seemed to have forgotten of our intrigues. My heart and testicles were aching.
Abandoned, and crazy from frustration, I had taken solace in her panties yet again and had made such a mess of them that they were unwashable, irredeemable. I had some crazy idea that noting the brand and the size (Marks & Spencer, size 10) the colour and shape etc., I could replace them. It should be said that these were not my primary considerations at the time. No, in that week of rejection I had gone back to searching for more work and had even secured an interview with Riot magazine in Soho. A place that unfortunately, due to its nature as the sex district, only led me to further ruminations on my problems, my fixation with panties, etc., which then led me to spending an afternoon being interviewed, not by Riot magazine but by the Soho police force in a back room of the ladies’ lingerie floor of Marks & Spencer. Maybe, subconsciously, I had willed disaster upon myself. The new panties stuffed into my overcoat pocket, I had set the alarm off as I tried to exit. They held me for questioning, asked for my address then sent a cop round to confirm that I was who I said I was, so I had to spend a whole hour alone, locked in, staring at the magnolia walls and packing boxes while I waited for the pigs to return. I made many apologies and promised to reimburse them and had prepared a full confession, which I was thankful for not having let them hear. All of which would have been beyond their limited grasp – of how the situation in the flat and my infatuation with Dot had led me to seek a surrogate.
They let me go with a warning that if any repeat behaviour was reported charges would be brought. My name was noted, they would be watching out for me. I thanked them profusely. When I left I heard them all sniggering.
— Pervert, idiot, betrayer. There were pills everywhere and hash in the ashtray! Police in my home! Double agent! Imbecile. Never darken my door again.
Thus spake Saul as he slammed the door in my face. Dot found it all very amusing and told me not to worry about Saul, he was a drama queen. And a reality check, once in a while, was good, she’d been in jail once for a whole night and she thought me rather cool.
— I had a fascinating chat with the PC. All about Neighbourhood Watch schemes and the understaffing crisis. He was really rather lovely and even let me film him talking.
She took me by the hand and led me to her room and closed the door behind me, a devilish grin on her face.
— So, panties? All you needed to do was ask, she said, chortling.
I could barely face her. She put one hand on my shoulder then balanced on one foot, reached under her leather skirt, then pulled her panties down, bunched them up and handed them to me as a gift.
— Sorry, they might be a bit whiffy. She collapsed in laughter as I sat there humiliated.
— Ah, poor you. I’m sorry. C’mon, let’s get out of here.
She led me down Old Street, by the hand, doing her best to cheer me up.
— It’s not fair of him to call you a pervert, he’s got a pair of silk stockings in his wardrobe, I think he pinched them from Save the Children, and uses them for filtering co-codamol. They’re covered in white stains!
She was in hysterics and got hiccups from laughing. We walked past the chippy and she hugged my arm. We headed down Old Street, like an old couple.
— Besides, you’re much braver than he is, he’s just all talk and books, while you’re the one that tries to answer all of his conundrums by doing something. People don’t see it in you, but really you’re the strong one, so open and brave and he’s all boundaries and defence and how could someone so defensive ever be an artist of any kind? He never learns anything, he’s so full of himself. But you watch and take things in. I see the way you study me and him, like you’re taking notes. Really, you’re quite special, even if you do screw it all up now and again.
I told her to stop. We should go home. The street was becoming dangerous. All these stoned clubbers and her wearing such a short skirt. She kept on and on.
— And he’s so jealous of you. My God!
Ridiculous, I told her so.
– No, no. He’d never admit it of course. But really I know he thinks you’re the one with the real talent.
— For what? I asked her.
— Well, I dunno, writing maybe . . . no, living . . . or . . . I dunno. He does put you down an awful lot, which can only mean that he really admires you. Everything means its opposite, that’s his line. I think he might be in love with you.
— That’s crazy.
She kissed my bowed forehead.
— Well, maybe he is. Don’t you think he might be? I mean mentally?
— Of course not.
— Or maybe he’s a closet gay, or maybe something in his childhood. You know, some trauma . . . maybe manic-depressive. Suddenly she announced: — Now I see why we can never have sex.
— What?
— He’s in love with you – and you’re in love with him too, aren’t you?
That was it, enough. A sudden rage overcame me and I pulled her to
me and covered her mouth with mine. It happened so fast, my hand on her breast, her gasps in my ear, us falling back against the wall, her hand up my shirt, her mouth on my neck. The alleyway by the Chinese place. Stink of takeaways, sweet and sour, us sliding by the bin bags.
My finger slid her panties to the side, and found the warm wet. Her fingertips touched my pubes. So soon again I was about to come. Too damn soon. I pulled away and felt the hot wet spasm inside my trousers. Her fingers just millimetres away. I yanked her hand out.
— It’s OK, she said. — I’m sorry, I won’t tease or come between you both again.
And I could not explain. Every time I pushed her away she thought it because I loved Saul but it was only because I feared revealing my premature ejaculation. What foolish tragedy was this?
She marched away. I called after her, but the clubbers came between us, staggering across the road. For minutes I searched for her, running, calling her name. Finally I found her standing by the bookies. She motioned for me to come closer. Took my arm and snuggled on my shoulder.
— OK, she said, — maybe it’s best if we’re all like brothers and sisters and you can have my panties when you need them.
It was all going wrong. I could have wept with frustration and rage.
— Look, I said, but could not find the words. The tension was building in me, throbbing in my skull.
— I love you, I blurted out.
She seemed stunned.
I took her hand and placed it over my wet crotch. She felt the stain, confused.
— Oh, did you? Oh. Oh dear, oh, sorry. You are so, so sweet, she said.
She smiled compassionately and kissed my forehead. If I had expressed my love separately from exposing my ejaculation, I might have understood whether it was the declaration of love or the ejaculation that she found sweet. She held my hand as if we were siblings.
— What should we do? I asked, meaning with our lives, with my love . . .
— Well, I suppose we can fib a bit, tell him we fancied some Chinese, or some fags . . . maybe go back home one at a time, not together, like we both ended up on different walks or . . .
At the edge of the street I told her she should go first, but I was still craving more, a kiss to let her know all I could not say, a kiss to hold her there, pin her there, make her tell me she loved me. She pecked me on the cheek.
— And don’t worry about old bossy boots, we’ll have our little revenge on him soon enough.
Back at the flat, she tiptoed in before me and I waited a few minutes outside before entering, then went swiftly to my room, furious at myself for having failed her. Her door was only ten feet away. I fantasised about taking her by force but knew it too would end in another hilarious failure. I stood there in her doorway, watching her as she slept. Too scared to enter. Her face on the pillow, sweet sleeping face. And words came to me – Oh, Dot, you are my unfinished sentence, we will make up the words to fill the gaps between. My life sentence – my Dot at the end. I came again over her door, then wiped it off with her panties.
Sleepless, I heard footsteps by my door. It was Saul, looking round furtively to see if he was being watched, sneaking in like a spy.
— Shh, I have it!
— What?
— She’s to blame for the sorry state you’re in. I can see it now. Yes, I have it! I asked him what he had.
— A master plan, you fool. She’s always talking about her la-di-da parents – Yes? Well, I propose we pay them a little visit.
His voice heavy with phlegm, grinning Fagin-like.
— When we meet her beloved daddy I want you to be wearing my torn suit and I shall be sporting something profoundly revolting and possibly unclean.
— To what end?
— To what end? Can’t you see the genius of it?
All I could see were his bloodshot eyes and all I could smell was sherry-induced halitosis.
— So they’ll take her from us, of course! No doubt Daddy will be so glad to save her from us that he’ll overlook the nine hundred pounds I owe her! We’ll be rid of her craziness and debt-free! You see? Yes? Yes!
I had declared my love and come in my pants and now he wanted her locked in a padded cell. Dot seemed the only sane one among us.
fn1. The game is also known as the Rizla Game after the popular brand of British cigarette papers, commonly used for smoking cannabis.
fn2. A complex technical achievement in collaboration with Sony.
fn3. Barbara Kruger made a similar work in 2001 with four synchronised screens and ‘deliberately wooden acting’.
fn4. J. Kelly, ‘Massage ou Mensonge?’ in Oeuvres IV, Gallimard, 2001.
fn5. K. Colliers, Gender Fucking! Semiotext(e), 1996.
fn6. As part of the 2005 Turner Prize nomination show. The Sun ran a headline: ‘DOPEY ART – TURNER GIRL GETS HIGH’.
fn7.T. Schwartz, ‘YBA in memoriam’, Sunday Times, 12 August 2007.
fn8. M. Cartier, From Counterculture to Counter Culture, Chatto & Windus, 2003.
fn9. A notable difference in attitudes to celebrity in the last decade is what has been called the ‘democratisation of success’ – the claim being that stars were formerly ‘above us’ but that through mass television spectacles such as Big Brother, celebrities have become ‘real people’, ‘just like you and me.’ Counter-criticism to this highlights the fact that these mass cultural forms are sadistic in their viewing pleasure, creating new celebrities only to shoot them down, that this is in fact turning celebrity status into something ‘disposable’ not ‘democratic’, and Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame have turned into fifteen seconds. Ironically, Shears has, through commenting on this, sustained her career for fifteen years.
four
Leg Show. 1993. Video still from two-screen installation. Variable dimensions. Private collection.
Leg Show. 1993. Video still from two-screen installation. Variable dimensions. Private collection.
ON TWO SCREENS two figures in women’s clothing strike poses. Faces are never seen. It is possible, however, to infer from their appearance, and from the amateur nature of their attempts, that they are, in fact, men ‘in drag’. Throughout, a female voice from behind camera makes commands: ‘Lift your leg higher’, ‘Stand on one foot’, ‘Show me your stockings’. She also compliments the two figures on their performance. ‘What a pretty girl’, etc.
The audio is out of sync with the actions on both screens, so at times the commands and praise do not co-incide with the events on-screen. This creates a sense of estrangement.fn1 A gap between sound and image. Command and reaction. Action and repercussion.
The work is largely seen as being comical, as the two male figures stumble around in high heels and strike poses, in competition with each other, for the attention and praise of the unseen female ‘director’. Feminists have seen this work as a radical reversal of the ‘male gaze,fn2 claiming that the process for the artist was one of ‘deconditioning’ the uncultured femininity she had experienced as a girl, and strategically (and with a sense of vengeance) reversing it back onto the bodies of men. As usual, more mainstream critics have claimed that the work is not in any way serious and has nothing to say at all about any of these issues: ‘It’s just a couple of TVs on the TV.’fn3
It is worth noting the recurrence of the number 3 in Shears’s work. The artworks are always about threes – a third element always enters which breaks down the dualism of object and subject. The third interacts with both – for example, the presence of the director in a film with two actors. Or: image, sound, installation; director, performer, viewer. The three elements are often in conflict with each other. The audio may contradict the picture, creating a third experience for the viewer.
In Leg Show there are three people: the two performers (victims, actors) and the woman behind the camera (Shears). There are two screens and one source of audio. The viewer places himself between three pieces of stimulus. Some have found this disorientating. Certainly, those that seek a clear s
ingle message from a work by Shears will be confounded. The way to read her work, P. Jennings claims, is to throw oneself into ‘the confusion of the triad’.fn4 The actors, and indeed the viewers, are complicit in the work, there can be no objective overview. Even in describing this artwork now, this text cannot exist in one form. It is reportage, theory and image. The three overlap but each form is inadequate in itself, while at the same time depending on the two others. Shears’s work for certain deconstructionists has a political dimension, not in its manifest content but in the form of its reading and interpretation – ‘The works suffer from the same problems that beset democracy’, ‘We must move beyond the single goal and the opposition with the enemy towards the polyphony of the third voice. In it lies confusion but also a way out of the impasse of the old entrenched dualistic oppositions.’fn5
Certainly, many comments by Shears would seem to imply a fascination with threes. ‘Three’s company, two’s a crowd.’ She has said many times in interview that she feels she is not one artist, or even two, but three artists all struggling for dominance. Whereas some have seen this as just another attention-grabbing line, others such as Jennings claim that this ‘not one but three’ forms the basis for a critique of the role of the artist that runs through Shears’s work. From this perspective, we can read a cleverly aimed set of challenges to the male-dominated cultural hegemony of one and (cultural) other.
The bisexual role play and suspension of identity in this work has proven offensive to both straight and gay sensibilities, suspending, as it does, any notions of fixity or resolution over the idea of sexuality. A position that problematises the so-called radical stance of so many brands of ‘identity politics’. What has been so problematic to such viewers is that Shears does not ‘come out’, and declare a fixed identity (hence political position), that the work is really just a game, thus suggesting that gender questioning is a phase to be moved through, as traditional reactionary psychological models suggest.fn6
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