Boy Parts(70)

Sera buys us a bottle of champagne at this nice bar in Soho. We’re reminiscing, laughing. I can’t quite shake the last of that feeling in my stomach, though. It lingers, like flu.

‘If you tell anyone about getting me this, or about before, I’ll kill you,’ I say. I’m laughing through my teeth, and she laughs too. ‘I will literally kill you.’

‘I know you will,’ she says. She taps her nose. ‘Our little secret.’





‘I like the bunny head, the bunny head’s good,’ says Jamie. We’re in her office – the film playing in the background while we talk. I suspect she hasn’t watched it the whole way through yet, because she keeps catching it out of the corner of her eye, and then looking away from it very quickly, and staring me right in the eye. She’s very vanilla-looking. A bog-standard posh bitch, with long, brown ombre hair and a Zara cardigan. The accent says Sloane Ranger, but the lack of second-hand sportswear tells me she’s at peace with that. Sera did say the training wheels have only just come off, and, fuck me, you can tell.

She’s pulled me in to tell me my film will be showing in a room with one of Cam Peters’s shorts – they’re well suited, apparently. His is like a Gilbert & George-esque, cottaging thing. There’ll be headphones, which we agree is better for me, so you’ll pick up on all the little sounds.

‘I hope you’re not disappointed. To be sharing the screening room,’ she says. I shrug.

‘You’re the junior curator.’

‘Your accent is very charming, you know. You’re from Newcastle, aren’t you?’

‘Born and bred.’

‘I went once; there was a thing on at the Baltic. It was actually quite nice there, which I was really surprised about.’

‘Mmm.’

‘I bet you’re so pleased to get this. The opportunities are so… limited up there.’ She’s looking at me like I clawed my way here out of a fucking coal mine. ‘What year did you finish at CSM?’

‘2012.’

‘I was at the Slade for undergrad about the same time you were at the RCA then! 2014?’

‘Good for you.’

I used to laugh at people from the Slade. They’re all a bit like this. I used to call it the Suh Lar Day, in a faux posh accent whenever someone told me they went there.

Jamie closes her laptop when the film is done.

‘I’m so excited to show this. And I love the photos as well.’

‘Yeah, I’d better go get on with hanging, actually,’ I say.

‘Oh, someone will do that for you, darling.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, with a tight smile. ‘I know, I meant… to direct it.’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Well, I mean… I’m curating, obviously. It’s not like a uni show, or a solo show. Everything has already been decided. You can watch, though, I mean…’ Jamie shuffles in her desk chair. ‘I suppose you can make some suggestions about the placement of the photos, if you have any.’

‘Sounds good. I’ll go down now, then, yeah?’

‘If you like,’ she says.

Sera is downstairs. Her work is on the first floor, but I find her walking the ground, watching a man hang my photographs.

‘That one is really grotty,’ she calls to me. ‘I love it.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Excited to see the film, too! I thought you’d kind of dropped out of filmmaking.’

‘I had but…’ I shrug. ‘Jamie said they wanted a film to show, so I made one.’

‘You’re showing a film and photographs?’ says a little boy. He’s dressed like an eastern European crackhead circa 1997, so I’m going to assume he’s someone’s assistant. ‘That’s not fair. I wanted to show a film, but Jamie said the only person showing a film was Cam.’

‘You’re in the show?’ Sera says. We exchange a look.

‘Obviously,’ he says. With me. On the same floor. He points to his work, some stuff in the corner I hadn’t even noticed. A few cork noticeboards and a piss load of Polaroids pinned to them, of what could be the same skinny naked white girl over and over again, or could be several skinny white girls. Some of them are tied up, so I guess that’s why it’s fetish art? ‘I’m Remy Hart?’ he says, like we’re supposed to know. Sera and I look at each other again. They’re not good photos. He clearly hasn’t kept his film refrigerated – they’re already sun damaged, with extra little pinholes where they’ve been hung elsewhere before. He’s hanging them right by the door, too. They’ll be bleached to shit by next week.

He walks over to my photos. Only one has been hung, so far. A photo of Eddie from Tesco’s bruised backside, with the offending wine bottle wedged between his cheeks. They’re all a little over a metre long, all in portrait. The other five are stacked, waiting to be hung. The boy creeps behind me, and hovers. I know he’s there, because I can hear his tracksuit.

‘Six? They’re letting you have six?’ He snorts. ‘Who even are you?’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘I didn’t even know we could bring work this big,’ he says. ‘I’m so fucked off. This is so unfair. Like, who is she?’ he asks Sera, and points at me, sticking his finger right in my face. I slap his hand.