Boy Parts

by Eliza Clark

Uncle Stephen tells me he complained about my cocktail, and got me a new one. The same one. I just don’t think I like yuzu. And when he tells me it’s unacceptable, with the amount he’s paying them, looking genuinely perturbed, I am reminded of the iconic scene from Keeping Up with the Kardashians where Kim loses her earring. They are on holiday in Bora Bora, and Kim is swimming in the ocean wearing $75,000 diamond earrings, and loses one. She loses one, and has a complete meltdown, ugly crying, and sobbing, and then, ever down to earth, Kourtney appears from around a corner, baby on her hip.

  ‘Kim, there’s people that are dying,’ she says.

  ‘Kim?’ says Uncle Stephen.

  ‘You know, when Kim K loses her earring. And it’s like… There’s people that are dying.’

  ‘Always good to have some perspective,’ he says. The first course comes. It’s sashimi. Uncle Stephen chastises me for taking a bite, rather than dropping the whole thing in my mouth. He eats loudly, reminding me of that bit in The Return of the King (the film) where Denethor is eating cherry tomatoes, and making Pippin sing for him. In this metaphor – allegory? – I guess I’m Pippin, which is strange because I’ve never identified much with the Hobbits before, and I’m actually a little annoyed that this is the position I’m in. Shocked to hear it comes in pints, and wondering if my simple Hobbit songs are good enough for these grand halls and their talking toilets.

  He talks to me about his job while he eats. He’s some sort of advertising thing? God, I don’t care.

  ‘Is this cocktail better?’ he asks.

  ‘I just… I don’t like yuzu,’ I say. He flags down the waiter.

  ‘You’ll drink a Bellini, won’t you? Bring her a Bellini, a strawberry one, and make sure you use champagne not that Italian twaddle. I’ll know.’

  They bring me a Bellini, and the smell of champagne makes my gut curl. But I drink it.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ he says. ‘I feel like we’ve only talked about me. I know you’re a photographer, of course, but what else is there?’

  ‘What else is there,’ I say. ‘I killed a boy, once.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ Uncle Stephen chuckles.

  ‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We both were. And he was covered in scars,’ I say. ‘And I put his skull underneath this tree, but now it’s gone. And it’s like… There were no missing reports, or anything, so did it even happen? You know, like? Did it even happen?’

  He laughs again, slapping his hand on the table.

  ‘I love dark, northern humour, I really do. Do you like The League of Gentlemen?’

  I do. So he talks about how he knows Mark Gatiss – did I know Mark Gatiss is from County Durham? He was in an excellent show recently. Do I like theatre?

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you hear what I did?’ He laughs some more, and ignores me, and talks about theatre. I’m starting to feel a little frantic. I squeeze the champagne flute in my hand so hard that it shatters. My palm is filled with glass, and my hands are sticky with blood and bubbles.

  I sit there, with my bloody hand, as he talks. I catch my reflection in my dinner plate, and there is glass in my eye, which I further inspect in the back of my spoon.

  ‘Your lipstick is fine,’ he tells me.

  I lift my fingers to my eye. Nothing. I feel nothing. My hand is dry. My glass is intact. I stare at the glass, and my uninjured hand, and I blink. Uncle Stephen’s face twists, and melts – he’s his nephew, he is Eddie from Tesco, then he’s my boy, lunging at me. I flinch. I crush the champagne flute into the side of his head, and a blood-curdling scream fills the restaurant.

  They’re all looking at me again. Uncle Stephen is Uncle Stephen again, and he is bleeding. My hand is bleeding. The waiters rush over, and they are so busy tending to him, they don’t notice when I slip out of the booth. They whisper as I walk by, but nobody stops me, nobody wants to stop me. I even hear a man saying, ‘Maybe they’ll comp us,’ and the blissfully unaware host hands me my coat, with a smile, when I tell him I’m going out for a cigarette.

  I walk. I take off my shoes and walk barefoot on the cold, damp street. I hear a bell, jingling behind me. I walk till I can’t feel my feet anymore, till it feels like I’m walking on a pair of fleshy sponges. I walk through Chelsea, down through Battersea Park. I wonder if anything will happen this time.

  I pull out my phone and tap out a text to Flo.

  Like 80% sure i just glassed my date

  And then:

  Lol.

  I send her a line of shrugging emojis.

  I spot a man on a park bench.

  He is small and large. He is wearing an expensive wool coat, a ratty T-shirt and a polo neck. He is skinny and fat. He has his head in his hands. He’s sniffing. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and rubs his eyes. I wave at him. I ask if I can sit down. I look at my feet. They’re bleeding.

  ‘Rough night?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  I pick up my feet and inspect them. They are peppered with gravel and blood, and pieces of glass which I pluck out, one by one, with my fingernails.

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask. He tells me a story I don’t listen to. His lips are dusty pink in the moonlight, the streetlight. His skin is freckled, and brown and white and red and wet. His hair is dark and curly, and blond and straight. I run my bloody knuckles down his cheek, which is soft and peachy. I tell him he’s going to be okay. I tell him not to worry.

  I explain to him that nothing matters, and nothing lasts. Everyone forgets, and everything disappears. The things you do, the things you are; it’s all nothing. Would anyone miss you, if you went away? Would anyone look for you? Would anyone listen, or even care, if I hurt you? If I put my hands around your neck and crushed your windpipe and chopped you up, would anyone find you? And if it’s a no to any of these, did you even exist in the first place?

  The man gets up, and tries to walk away, but I trip him. I sit on his stomach. I look into his face, and watch it melt from my boy, to Eddie from Tesco, to Will, to Lesley, to Remy, all with glass embedded in their eyes, all blood-spattered and knotted together. A rat king of boys in the face of this stranger, who is struggling and frightened.

  ‘Have you ever modelled?’ I ask him. He doesn’t respond. ‘Have you ever modelled?’

  I take a business card out from the cup of my dress and put it in his mouth. I get up and walk away. I pass a homeless man with the boy’s face, but I don’t stop to look when he calls out to me. Am I okay? Do I need help? Where are my shoes?

  I walk deeper into the park and arrive at the pond. I take off my coat and my dress, and get in. I expect to feel cleansed – to drop into the cold water and re-emerge with clean skin, filling my lungs with fresh air. But I’m just cold. I can feel a beer can by my elbow, and something soft under my feet. When I look down into the black water, I see the milky-eyed face of my boy, his head bobbing to the surface. I pick it up by the hair and find a knot of plastic bags and pond weed in my hand.

  It isn’t him. It never is.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have enormous gratitude for the staff at New Writing North. Without their generous Young Writers’ Talent Fund it is highly unlikely this book would have been written. In particular I would like to thank Matt Wesolowski who served as my mentor, and whose expert assistance and encouragement helped take Boy Parts from a bloated short story to a fully-fledged novel.

  I would also like to thank the staff at Mslexia magazine, where I was employed during the majority of the writing of this book, and which served as an excellent crash course in the world of UK publishing. It is perhaps worth noting that this novel was impulsively pitched by one of my ‘Sock Puppet’ accounts to Influx Press at a Mslexia Max pitching event I had organised, and was moderating. A testament to the adage that ‘shy bairns get nowt’.

  Which brings us to Gary, Kit and Sanya, the stalwart team at Influx, vanguards of independent publishing and a great bunch of lads, without whom none of this would be possible.


  I am grateful to my parents, Ken and Wendy, and my extended family for their support – and am likewise indebted to an anonymous group of intellectuals known only as ‘The K Hole Flirters’ for facilitating much of the research that went into this novel. Additionally, I’d like to thank my earliest readers, among them my partner George. George’s unconditional love and support was imperative to the writing, editing and completion of this book, and will be to all further projects. Unless we split up, in which case, what a massive gaffe this will be, eh?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Eliza Clark has relocated from her native Newcastle back to London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. She works in social media marketing, recently having worked for women’s creative writing magazine Mslexia. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s ‘Young Writers’ Talent Fund’. Clark’s short horror fiction has been published with Tales to Terrify, with an upcoming novelette from Gehenna and Hinnom. She hosts podcast You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? with her partner, where they discuss film and television which squanders its potential. Boy Parts is her first novel. You can find her @FancyEliza on both Twitter and Instagram.

  Influx Press is an independent publisher based in London, committed to publishing innovative and challenging literature from across the UK and beyond. Formed in 2012, we have published titles ranging from award-nominated fiction debuts and site-specific anthologies to squatting memoirs and radical poetry.

  Lifetime supporters: Bob West and Barbara Richards

  www.influxpress.com

  @Influxpress

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Influx Press

  The Greenhouse

  49 Green Lanes, London, N16 9BU

  www.influxpress.com / @InfluxPress

  All rights reserved.

  © Eliza Clark, 2020

  Copyright of the text rests with the author.

  The right of Eliza Clark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Influx Press.

  First edition 2020. Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International.

  Paperback ISBN: 9781910312636

  Ebook ISBN: 9781910312643

  Editor: Gary Budden

  Copyeditor: Ella Chappell

  Proofreader: Dan Coxon

  Cover design: Luke Bird

  Interior design: Vince Haig

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.