Boy Parts(27)

I drop David’s mid-fuck close-ups in the folder as well. They’re interesting failures, and very embarrassing for him, if nothing else.

My phone buzzes in the kitchen. I let it ring out, then go and collect it. It’s Flo again. I don’t ring her back, but I pick up her texts. She’s all apologies, and panic, threatening to come to the house if I don’t pick up in the next five minutes. I tell her to calm down, and that I just slept for twenty-four hours straight. She replies, whatever happens, you’re my best friend, and I love you. But then she asks if I’m sure about what happened last night.

The fuck do u mean am I sure

You know how you sometimes fill in the gaps?

Because i feel like we both know you do that

And sometimes when you embarrass yourself/get blackout you do like to blame other people??

Especially me???

Oh my god go fuck yourself lmfaoooooo



She doesn’t reply after that. I go back to the box. I don’t have the strength to speak to Will yet – the number by his name keeps ticking up and up.

I pick up another workbook, containing a number of photos of boys on my course (taken before the blacklisting) which don’t quite work, but they’re what I ended up putting together for Barely Legal. Nighties, glossed lips, a lot of pink. The aesthetically pleasing, retro, pastel erotica stuff with skinny, androgynous boys, selected for being both skinny and androgynous. At the time it felt revolutionary, but everything does when you’re twenty. They’re silly. If you were going to take the piss out of my work, and people who make work like mine, you’d make these photos. The proper prints are rolled up in a small poster tube in the box, which I’ll go through another day with gloves and hands that aren’t shaking quite as badly.

This is how I booked my first solo show over that summer, however. I put those up for our end of year show, and Anne Werner asked for my details, and rang a week later to offer me a solo show. She owned this little gallery in Peckham (The Werner Gallery, her own house with the ground floor converted into a gallery space), not huge, but it got me some attention, got me pegged as one to watch in a couple of little art magazines.

The show was in November. Anne wanted more work than I had, so she gave me the summer to produce something new for it, but my well of models had dried up. Flo kept trying to get me to photograph her, and I’d gone well off photographing women. I gave her this big spiel about the problem of the female form in visual culture, how it was impossible to divorce or protect it from the male gaze in the context of the western art world, yada yada yada.

My phone continues to light up insistently. There are notifications from social – Finch has uploaded some pictures from last night – but it’s mostly fucking Will. Will, Will, will you pay attention to me?

I pick up my phone with the intention of blocking his number. I read the texts instead, my thumbs overtaken with a toxic curiosity.

I let you BORROW my clothes because you were covered in sick :/



He insisted, yesterday afternoon. 12:32. But when I picked my top up off his floor in the morning, there wasn’t any sick on it. Not even sick that had been wiped, or washed off. It was clean.

At 13:04:

Hey sorry for the tone of that last message, i get that must have been weird to wakeup in my clothes and probably not remember why. Sorry

At 14:18:

Hey do you remember much about last night?? Stuff got pretty intense haha

Sorry if i seemed like i got the hump about you and Henson as well. If you fancy him that’s cool! He’s a handsome chap haha

That scots charm haha. He asked me for your number but I’m not giving it over bc you know privacy and consent and shit

At 14:36:

I mean I just sort of thought you were coming over for me but i obviously misread the situation and it’s fine so sorry for being weird

Not that you probably even remember

At 14:45:

Im also fine with you showing people my photos and i suppose i appreciate you might have forgotten about some of the more intense photos we took. Sometimes you forget things can mean more to you than they do to other people

At 15:05:

Sorry to lay all my cards on the table here but i did think there was a little more going on between us than just a model/photographer thing but ive been looking at your website today and it looks like you take those kinds of photos with lots of different men and hey i guess thats fine if thats your thing. Kind of stupid for me to expect loyalty from someone like you, i suppose

At 17:49:

Hey sorry again about that last message my feelings are just hurt

At 19:01:

I hope youre just sleeping and not ignoring me because after all the shit last night i think that’d be really bitchy of you fyi

At 19:26:

Im so sorry youre probably just sleeping

At 20:42:

I really like you?

At 21:12:

Just so weird that youd go off with henson like that its like you did it just to fuck w me. Im sure you didnt but thats how i feel. So id really appreciate some reassurance

At 21:39:

Not that you owe me anything sorry. I did a gender studies module in uni and im aware that men are trash.

Im trying my best and i really hope you dont hate me after this but you probably do :(

At 23:00:

Im really sorry ill stop messaging you now



But he didn’t stop. He sent me another text as soon as he woke up this morning, and has kept going in the same cycle of apologies, aggression and self-pity all day. It’s almost four, now. I read the texts through again, alternating between a smirk and a sneer.