Boy Parts(9)

It’s a slow evening otherwise. I aggressively encrypt Deaniel’s image files, and store them in an encrypted folder, deep in the bowels of my laptop, where all of my other dodgy shit lives.





I’m woken up early the following morning. B sends me a fat wad of cash by special courier, who leers at my dressing-gown-swaddled chest (despite my unbrushed hair and teeth) when I accept his package. At least B didn’t try to pay me in fucking bitcoin like last time.

I also get a text from Ryan, about midday – a pissy one, with no ‘x’s or emojis, asking me to ring him.

I’m on a six-week paid sabbatical as of today – Ergi insisted. No police, but I’ll have to sign an incident report. Ryan doesn’t even say bye to me when he hangs up.





The group chat arranges the night out for Monday – student night. Flo switches her day off to Tuesday. The students have a Tuesday morning seminar that they decide to skip, on my behalf. For about twenty minutes. Then they drop out, so it’s just going to be me, Flo and Finch. Finch is the least obtrusive hanger-on from that group, anyway. He’s quiet, he always has MD and tobacco, and he always shares.

I’m having a coffee at Pilgrim’s and looking through some old photos. I’m trying to decide what to do for Hackney. One of my models works here: Will with long, wavy hair and a pretty face. He’s a little more conventionally attractive than my usual boys, but he’s just enough on the feminine side that I’m still into it. A lot of fat on his thighs, which I like. Flo once said she thought boys’ bums look like they’ve been shrunk in the wash, and I haven’t been able to un-see that since. I photograph a lot of men other people think are ugly, or weird looking. But, I always try and find a proportionally sized backside – it just makes me sad otherwise.

Will brings me my usual before I get the chance to order it — black americano, two extra shots of espresso. He hovers at my table, trying to force some ‘flirty banter’. He’s asked me out a few times, and I always say maybe. Sometimes I bump into him on nights out, and he gives me drugs and buys me drinks.

I slag off his new beard. He has a sharp chin, a face shaped like an oval – the beard squares his jaw, and makes him look butcher, and older. He has big lips too, like a girl’s, and the moustache covers the sharp points of his cupid’s bow. I imagine this was quite deliberate.

‘You look like a proper bloke,’ I whine.

‘Yeah. Like a Viking, with the hair, don’t you think?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think Vikings wear side ponytails.’ He’s got his hair pulled into a pink scrunchy. It swings down from the left side of his head, to his shoulder. He makes a face.

‘It’s a joke,’ he says, as if he’d forgotten. He goes to pull it down.

‘Leave it. It’s adorable,’ I say. ‘When do you finish?’ I ask.

‘In half an hour.’

‘Come play dress up with me.’

I make him drive me home – barista to go.

He drives us back to mine in his new car, a black Beetle he seems very pleased with.

‘You can’t afford a new car.’ He’s a postgrad student. I can’t remember what he studies.

‘It was a birthday present,’ he says. When he’s drunk, his accent is very neutral – I think he’s from the Midlands, or something – but sober, he has a forced, cockney twang. I imagine he thinks it makes him sound more exotic, more working class, but he often over-eggs it and goes a bit Oliver Twist.

We get to mine.

‘Let’s just go straight to the studio,’ I say.

‘You mean your garage?’

‘No, I mean my studio,’ I say, with a sneer. I converted it when I got rid of the car. Garage. Fuck off.

He sits on the sofa – this kitschy vintage loveseat I picked up from the British Heart Foundation – and I start picking through the rail of clothing I keep for them. I have to keep a lot of costumes. Most men dress like shit, you see. I’ve had them turn up to shoots in cargo shorts and ask what’s wrong with what they’re wearing and I’m literally, like, lmao. I pick out a thin cotton vest, and a pair of shiny polyester short-shorts for him. He looks sporty, so I fold him into yoga poses, ignoring the cracking of his bones and the popping of his joints. I change into a sports bra and yoga pants and take a set of timed photos with me in them, snarling as I bend his soft/stiff body into improbable, uncomfortable shapes.

‘Where’d you get that bruise?’ he asks.

I’m surprised he can tell through the makeup.

‘I was trying to chuck out this drunk lass on the close, and she clocked me. It’s pretty cool, actually. I get paid leave,’ I say.

‘Really, a drunk woman did that?’ he says. He looks up at me, while I try and push his ankles to his ears. ‘You know, if a feller did it, you can tell me,’ he says. The bruise must be darker than I thought. Still, that was spoken like a man who has never gotten into a fight with a girl in a Bigg Market takeaway at three a.m. A lass half my size knocked out one of my canines when I was nineteen. My parents had to buy me a set of veneers.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I say. ‘I don’t know what you want to hear, mate. She was wearing rings.’ I snort. ‘What’s the rule about talking while we’re shooting?’ Don’t speak unless spoken to.