Boy Parts(43)

When you’re that age, it takes a lot to make you feel young – or to realise how young you are – and I spent the whole journey, the whole walk to her studio, feeling silly, trying to impress my fucking teacher. My nails and thumbs were bitten bloody by the time I actually got to Frank’s studio, and I had a face like a smacked arse. That’s what Frank said, when she let me in. She asked me if I was okay, and I snapped something about how I hate being dressed down, and I hate going out without makeup on.

She laughed at me, and said I looked fine.

The first set of pictures in this box are pictures Frank took of me. I made her give me copies, and I bought this scrapbook with black pages to glue them into. First picture, I’m just standing in the jeans, the T-shirt, no makeup. My hands are by my sides, and I’m staring down the lens, trying to look anything but uncomfortable. I think I was aiming for defiant, but I landed on stiff and weird. Jesus. That face. I trace the line of my skull with a long, acrylic fingernail. I still have puppy fat on my cheeks. I hadn’t quite filled out around the hips, either, so I’m all limbs, all legs and arms and ribs with these disproportionately large tits that look like someone stuck them on with an ice cream scoop.

Frank had me get changed, and watched me while I dressed, and told me I looked like something a little boy drew in the back of his notebook.

I finally flip the page. The next shot I’m wearing this dress I used to love. This horrible nylon, A-line mini dress. Vintage, bright pink – it clashed with my hair and squashed my chest. I’m all legs in it, with these nasty white platform boots, plasticky and skintight. Frank asked me, ‘Do you only wear this retro shit?’ so I’m sneering at her in the next picture. Frank was dry. I’ve never had much of a sense of humour. I took the dress off. I shrugged at her, and asked her if she was happy, like a child snapping at her mother.

‘I was just joking, Irene,’ she said. And then she fired off a self-deprecating quip about how she goes to Topman with a photo of Marlon Brando for reference, her big white teeth flashing like her camera. On the next page I’m pouting in my conspicuously matching underwear, arms folded over my chest, my mouth half open because I was in the middle of telling her my name was Irina, not Irene.

The next picture ended up in a gallery when she showed. Underwear and boots, hair almost hanging down to my waist, brows raised, hands on hips, left foot in front of right, eyes rolled back, lips twisted. I’m sucking my stomach in hard, so you can see my whole ribcage. Breathe, sis, is what little cunts on Instagram drop on each other’s pictures now — breathe, sis, when you’ve spotted someone sucking their stomach in like that.

I take a picture of Frank’s picture on my phone and upload it to Instagram. I caption it: RARE FACE PIC. This is me by Frank Steel, circa 2011? In b4 ‘Breathe Sis’ because I’m literally 21 here. Still have the waistline, still have the bra, lost the pants and the boots moving, gained about 5 inches on the hips.

I have over fifty thousand followers on Instagram. I don’t really use it that much, as I can barely post any of my shit on there on account of ‘community guidelines’.

Frank told me she was sorry for getting my name wrong, and she was just kidding, honestly, and put your fucking dress back on, come on. So, I took off my bra. I remember her sighing, her finger hovering on the shutter release. I remember her pinching the bridge of her nose and looking down at her shoes, and telling me to put my dress back on again. I told her to take a picture, because it would last longer. The next photograph’s framing is off, because she took it without looking at me. But she took it. There I am, smirking, tits out, left arm cut off, pushing my hair off my face. I run my nail along the line of my round breasts, my concave stomach, my hipbones.

And that’s the last one. She murmured something about students, and straight girls. Then I don’t do this, but… I smiled, always happy to be the exception to a rule.

I peel the previous photo out of the book, the one I put on Instagram. Not one of mine, but maybe it’ll be good for the book. They’ll have to drop Frank a line – I’d get a kick out of that.

I grab a glass, some ice and a generous splash of vodka, before I open the next book. Intimate photos, a mix of mine and ones Frank took, mostly Polaroids and disposables. Lo-fi, pretentious. Frank grimacing in red lipstick I drew on her with her pinned down and struggling; me wearing one of her jackets and nothing else; Frank wrapped up in my Ikea bedsheets; me sitting on her kitchen bench in pyjamas, eating cereal from the box. I look very young in all of these.

She only sat for me properly once and told me she’d probably never work at the uni again if I showed them. I took the photos in her studio, with her camera and her lights. I made her wear this shirt, the same shade of blue as a Tiffany box, Open Me blue. Her body was flat, shapeless and bony. Her breasts were too small to grab (in what she’d call my big snatchy spider hands) so I’d always end up scratching her chest, looking for something to hold. She has one of my scratches in these photos – you can just make it out, on her sternum once I’d gotten her to pop a few buttons.

They’re not much like any other photos I’ve taken. I guess because I did have a thing with Frank. An okay thing, too. You compare these to the What would you do to be my boyfriend? photos, the pictures of boys in nightgowns, the stuff I do now – it’s like a different person took them. These photos feel warm. She’s smiling in them, having fun. There’s no weird power dynamic, just… Frank. Her grinning with her hand on her stomach; her slipping her shirt off her shoulder, unbuckling her belt, laughing. There’s one where half her head is cut off because she’s coming towards me, because I whined about the white balance being off, come fix it for me, but I just wanted to kiss her. Her lips were always chapped.