Boy Parts(71)

‘I’ll go and get Jamie,’ Sera says. She’s sniggering as she walks away.

‘I’m going to call my uncle, and there’s nothing Jamie can do about it!’ he shrieks after her.

Cute: he’s shy enough about his privilege to cosplay as someone picking up methadone from a pharmacy on Shields Road at twelve-thirty on a Tuesday, but not so shy he won’t scream about how big his uncle’s dick is in front of professional colleagues.

I get a closer look at him while he furiously stabs at a brand-new iPhone XS and waits for his uncle to pick up. He’s white (shock), and we’d have to guess straight, from the skinny lassies in the photographs. He is dripping in retro sportswear, each article of clothing a different brand, and dreadfully well spoken. He’s wearing round, ultra-trendy glasses, and an ugly toothbrush moustache.

I wonder, what do charvas in London wear now? Now that their whole craic has been gentrified. Full suits? Quirky tweed? Joy Division shirts? Is goth the new chav? I’m genuinely interested.

I look for his exhibition text – he’s getting a little card. I’m getting something printed right onto the wall.

Remy Hart. Born 1995, UK, Hertfordshire

Polaroid Collections 1, 2, 3, 2018

Little Home Counties prick. I bet daddy is a banker, and mummy has a column in the local paper. I bet they moved out of the city before he was born, to make sure he grew up safe and sheltered and racist in a constituency where everyone votes Tory but pretends that they don’t. I bet everyone shops at Waitrose and has a gilet and wellies and weirdly strong opinions on fracking.

On the phone, he’s asking why some woman he’s never heard of has space for large-scale work and a film. He asks why his work has been placed next to mine – but it’ll distract from my piece, I’ve been shoved next to the door – she has a whole wall – who even is she?

I point to where they’ve got my name and my bio on the wall. I give him a thumbs up.

It’s almost as if life isn’t fair, Remy. It’s almost as if it’s not fair that you’re in this show at all. His work is very first year of uni, honestly – I wonder where he went? Did his ego deflect any useful crit he got, or did he just… not turn up. He wouldn’t have even gotten away with this shit at CSM (home of pictures of skinny white girls and their nipples) while I was there, and I’m surprised boys like this still exist. Still this entitled, still this generic, still this wealth of privilege and connections filling a void where there should be talent. I blame the adjusted uni fees for this shit.

I’m so angry I can feel it in my cunt; muscles twinging, balling up like a fist. My acrylic nails are digging into the meat of my palms. I could slap his phone out of his hand and stamp on it. I could slap him. I could yank his fucking Umbro cap off and stuff it in his mouth.

I don’t need to slap his phone from his hand, because he throws it at my photograph – the one they’ve hung. He damages the glass on the frame.

‘What the fuck.’

‘This isn’t fucking fair,’ he squalls. ‘Jamie. Where the fuck is Jamie? I want to be moved. I want more space.’

My acrylics are filed to a point – I could drive them into his eyeballs. I could run across the room, and I could drive my fingers into his eyes, or into his neck and pull out his throat.

I just spit in his face instead. He squeaks, and a moment later Jamie and Sera arrive on the ground floor.

‘Oh, what the fuck, Remy?’ Jamie whines. He storms out, wiping his face.

I recount the story, down to me spitting at him, because I don’t need to lie about it, (‘You spat at him?’) and I demand he’s removed from the exhibition. He hasn’t fucking earned it, anyway. He doesn’t even have a Masters, and I went to the fucking RCA. You don’t just get to mince out of fucking uni into fucking Hackney fucking Space.

‘We can’t take him out. I don’t want him here either, but his uncle, Stephen Hart – lovely man by the way – he’s a major donor. We can’t… We can’t pull Remy. We just can’t.’ Jamie shrugs.

‘He just threw his phone at my work.’ My jaw is clenched, I spray spit. She wipes her face. ‘Look! You haven’t even looked at it yet!’

Remy’s phone lies in the middle of the floor, the length of the display boasting a huge lightning crack bursting from a spiderweb of shattered glass. My photograph has a matching wound on its frame: dead centre, a hole, with cracks erupting from it, all the way to the corners.

‘Shit,’ Jamie says. ‘No one comes anywhere near that frame, in case the glass falls out.’ She runs her hand through her hair. ‘The photo doesn’t look damaged, at least.’

The frame gets replaced later in the day with great fanfare. Uncle Stephen himself comes into the gallery, practically dragging Remy by the ear.

He makes the boy apologise to me. I accept, with my arms folded and my lips pursed. Uncle Stephen informs me that Remy has had a lot handed to him, and sometimes doesn’t understand that larger work and larger gallery spaces are earned.

He’s still fucking here, though, isn’t he?

I’m less angry when Uncle Stephen makes a show of flashing his big fat wallet. He already paid for the new frame, but he wants to know how much each photo is worth.

I do some quick maths, and then I decide to take the piss.