Boy Parts(6)

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.