by Eliza Clark
‘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. My 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. I 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 telly.’ 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.
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 me, 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 films 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.
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.’
‘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.
‘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.
‘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?’
‘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.’
