Strawberry Tattoo

With huge thanks to all the New York posse who so nobly kept me company on the various bar crawls, gorge-fests and clubbing required by the demands of research. Bini and Francis, the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of Cobble Hill; Aaron—Mr. Connected; Katrien; Tia; Kelle; Gay, not only the blading queen but a job hostess who came to my rescue when I
really
needed it; and everyone else who took me to parties and did their best to keep me amused. Special gratitude to Angela Westwater of Sperone Westwater, who kindly answered lots of obvious questions without sneering at me, and to Andy and Kay for putting me in touch with her. Big thanks to Adrian, who couldn’t do a better job as a publicist if I paid him in hard cash rather than sundried tomatoes, and to Margot and Sandy for their editorial comments. Lois and Michelle, you have really lovely flats. Apartments. And thanks, on that subject, to my New York dialogue coach.

There was a boy in it. As so often. He was very handsome and he was staring at me with flattering concentration.

I was enjoying this immoderately.

He was dark, which in general I prefer, with big dark eyes and full, pouty lips. But mainly I noticed his eyelashes. They were very long, and he was standing so close to me that I could almost feel the gentle whisper against my skin as he lowered them. He was looking at something below my line of vision, pointing at it urgently; I bent over to see what it was, rather reluctantly, because I wanted to go on looking at him instead. But all I could see was white, a shiny white surface stretching away into the distance, and I had no idea what I was supposed to be searching for. He was speaking, but despite the fact that he was pressed up against me, I could hardly hear him. I pulled back a little and was struck again by how dark his eyes were, how wide….

We were in a tiny narrow room, the walls painted a dull dirty yellow, flaking and peeling so badly I thought of something funny to say about them and then didn’t. That kind of restraint is highly unusual for me, and I started to wonder if I were feeling all right. But I was promptly distracted by a more pressing problem. Literally: the room was closing in on us, exactly like that scene from
Star Wars
where Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia are trapped in the rubbish compactor on the Death Star. Suddenly we were braced against the walls, desperately straining every
muscle to keep them from compressing us down into pulp. I looked around for the hairy one—what was his name? Chewbacca—to help, but he wasn’t around.

“Quick, you call him!” I said to the boy. “He might come for you. He’s very hairy, you know.”

But he didn’t know what I was talking about, and he started to bat his eyelashes, and suddenly such a gale blew up that the walls fell away and we were floating, caught helplessly by different multicoloured whirlpools and sucked down into their hearts, our limbs flung out by the wind. It was like being dragged into the opening titles of
Charlie’s Angels.
For a moment I saw us both, thrown apart, our silhouettes, black against the bright primary swirls of colour, dwindling into their centres….

“Goodness,” I said. “This has gone very Seventies all of a sudden.”

And then I woke up.

My eyes opened and I knew with absolute conviction that I had recently done something very, very bad indeed. It was one of those nebulous sensations where your brain, already clouded by heavy mists of alcohol and various chemical substances, struggles simultaneously to retrieve the information and shove it into the deepest darkest pigeonhole at the back of the skull. Unfortunately there was so much stuff in there already that this latest atrocity wouldn’t quite fit.

Damn. I could still feel it hovering in skull hyperspace. I sat up slightly, propping some pillows behind me, rather surprised that I wasn’t feeling suicidal with pain at the change of position. Oh, that’s right. Class A drugs. Always great for cancelling out the worst symptoms of the morning after. Which was another reason I wasn’t suffering too much physically: it was past two in the afternoon. People who complain about hangovers are always the ones who have to get up for work. I recommend simply cutting out the last part and sleeping through it instead. But then I can. I haven’t had a proper job for so long I can’t remember when.

By now the mental torment had cranked itself up several gears and was
giving of its best. I was still unable to remember the precise character of the abomination against nature I had committed, and the frustration was growing unbearable. As usual, I would rather know the worst than be tortured by endless speculation. That was me all over. Open the box even if the cat’s dead. At least that way you know what the score is.

Oh God, what if I didn’t manage to remember what I did last night without help? I shuddered, perfectly aware that blackouts were one of the main signs of alcoholism. Like most people who drink with gusto, I had lists of these memorised from various magazines, with the ones that didn’t apply to me picked out reassuringly in mental highlighter. No, I didn’t have blackouts (well, not if I could remember what happened last night under my own steam, I didn’t); friends of mine had never said they were worried about my intake (not being hypocrites); and, um, it didn’t impair my ability to do my job. Such as it was. Somehow the lists never included vomiting in your sleep, which I found perplexing. A friend of mine from art school did this once—it was spectacular, in a perverse, Tarantinoesque kind of way—and it had always remained for me pretty much the benchmark for when you were entering I Have A Problem territory.

In any case I would rather die than ring anyone who had been present last night and pump them for information. Hah! I thought triumphantly, effortlessly accessing that file. At least I knew who I’d been out with, which was a start. An embarrassing start, because it had been a group of young British artists, or yBas, a shorthand now adopted by some of the more fashionable art critics, and one I loathed. The sooner it was cancelled off the face of the earth the better. Not to mention some of the more pretentious antics indulged in by the leading yBas themselves.

That was a thought. Could I have put theory into practice and murdered some young British artists? I perked up immediately, toying with a series of exciting possibilities. Maybe I’d sawed someone in half and pickled him in a giant fish tank—or knocked someone else over the head and videoed her in a coma for an hour—or shoved yet another into a vat of concrete and let it set, then cracked it open and removed her, leaving only the space she’d made
(deeply
significant)…. My own fate would be
easy enough to work out: strung up on a chain like one of my own mobiles with lots of silver-sprayed ivy coming out of my mouth. Less meaningful, but then I wasn’t a conceptualist. And I wasn’t a young British artist except in the literal meaning of the word. I didn’t compact images of myself down into a garbage bag, or paint all the names of men I’d failed to get off with over gallery walls, or make fountains of chocolate that looked like rather dribbly poo. (Though actually I’d loved the chocolate fountains.)