Glitter
She had a commitment to magic, Tim thought, as he watched Gemma brush her hair; a commitment to glitter and sparkle, to pretty clothes, and looking pretty, and to the manufacture of pretty pictures. In his own way, he too was committed to fantasy and fabrication. They had little else in common, but that suited them. “We’re not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, you know,” she had said several weeks before. “I know,” he replied. “I haven’t got time for a boyfriend; it just complicates things.” Instead they had sex, animal and meaningless, regularly, at weekends usually.
It was Saturday morning. Her hair had recently been the colour of candy floss, and before that, shocking pink, but had since faded to the bleached milky hue of evening clouds. Several strands of it clung to the brush. She turned.
“Are you still here?”
It was a joke.
She plucked a tangle of hair from the brush’s plastic spines and nonchalantly let it fall from outstretched fingers into the bin. The previous night’s nail-varnish, chipped in places, still clung to her nails. She was beautiful; he was her audience.
“What shall you do today?” he asked.
Her reflection began to apply eye-liner, its eye very wide open, lashes fluttering slightly.
“I suppose I’ll meet friends in town, or I’ll do some drawing.”
The mirror was set into a dressing table that must be old, but he did not know whether it had come with the room or she had brought it from home.
“How about you?”
She put the eye-pencil down on the untreated pine, where it rolled against a pot of lime-green nail-varnish. She picked up a tube of mascara. The dressing table was integral to her, symbolic of her. It often appeared in her candy-gothic illustrations like a signature. In the drawings it was less cluttered.
“Write, or play videogames.”
He shrugged. Beneath his bare elbow the sheets were still warm, but he could not tell whether from only from his own body-heat, or from hers as well. They smelled of her, and when he moved, the scent was disturbed. Above the bed’s head was draped a line of unlit fairy-lights.
She looked at him, smiled. When he left they did not kiss goodbye. They only kissed when they fucked.
~ ~ ~
He picked at a foil tray of leftover Chinese takeaway.
“That’s been out all night,” Gemma said.
“I like it when it’s cold.”
Sometimes they watched films together. This morning she had asked to use his computer to do some work. He sat back on his bed and watched her. He often felt she worked harder than him, and he admired her for it. Sometimes her work would stress her, she would lose confidence in herself, but she never asked for his support, only his dispassionate love. He was drawn to her independence. He rarely thought of her when he wrote.
She frowned at the screen. Tim put down the empty tray, picked up a conker that lay on his desk, began to toss it from hand to hand. The sky through the window was clear, but the winter sun was weak. He frowned, the conker moved faster. She looked at him, then back at the screen. She was wearing strawberry-mousse coloured pyjamas. Her fingers tapped on the keyboard.
“There was this time,” he began, still looking out the window, “I went to my cousins’ house. They had just moved into this new house on this estate. The house was new, and everything in it was new. It smelled of plastic. I was in the living room and there were my two cousins there as well. I was about eleven and my cousin was five or six, and her brother was just a baby. We never saw them that often. I don’t know where my aunt or my mum were, but it was just the three of us in the living room and I was sitting on this new leather sofa.”
He paused, but did not turn from the window.
“My cousin used to like to sit in my lap, or maybe anyone’s lap. I was sat there, watching TV or something I suppose, and she jumped up and started bouncing and shuffling on my lap. I was kind of ignoring her, watching the TV or whatever, but it felt kind of weird. I guess I got kind of, we used to say a ‘stiffy’ at primary school, and it felt kind of good, then it felt like I needed to pee, so I moved her off me and went into this little toilet-room.
“The toilet seat was made of this really smooth varnished wood. I lifted it up and pulled down my pants. I had sort of a semi, and there was this sticky stuff at the end, I didn’t know what it was, but when I touched it it felt kind of tingly. I don’t know what I was thinking about, not my cousin, not anything really, but I started to rub. My hand was shaking. Then after a few minutes I came, into the perfectly white toilet bowl. But it wasn’t, like, proper, it just sort of dribbled out. I got some on my fingers. Then I washed it off, and I flushed, and I went back into the living room like nothing had happened, but didn’t let her sit on my lap again.”
He looked at Gemma. Her hand rested on the computer’s mouse. Their eyes met, then she looked back at the screen.
“I felt guilty as hell afterwards, like I knew I’d done something wrong, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. I was terrified my aunt or my mum would find out and tell me off, but at the same time I kind of wanted them to, so it was done with and I didn’t have to think about it any more. I really hate that feeling, that sick-guilt when you’re a kid, when you don’t know how the world or anything works and you’re terrified of grown-ups because they have all the power over everything. I didn’t stop being afraid of what would happen if I touched myself until years later. Sometimes I still feel guilty about it, like I did her wrong, hurt her somehow.”
He fell silent. Gemma turned off his computer and stood. When she left, she squeezed his hand. The walls of his room felt tight around him.
(The above illustrations can be seen full size at Victoria Stitch’s blog.)
Tags: childhood, declarative sentences, ennui, falsity, Fiction, newness, Relationships, sex, short story, washed-out
October 28th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
This story is obviously very short, and I turned it around pretty quickly, but, to me, it feels complete, like it doesn’t really need any more.
I was debating earlier over whether it has any real meaning or not, or whether it has too many contradictions. I also had some concern over the subject matter, since it’s most definitely about casual, meaningless sex and masturbation, and blends that with hints of pedophilia and incest.
Beyond the obvious though, and I’m not sure whether this is more my intention or my interpretation of the text, the two having become inextricably intertwined, I think it’s at least partly about falsity / artificiality, the pursuit and desire for beauty, and disillusionment, all of which are themes that are emerging in the extended piece I’m working on at the moment.
How they manifest here are in the goals of the main characters: Gemma has “a commitment to magic”, she’s an artist, perhaps a performer too (“she was beautiful; he was her audience”), therefore she creates beauty in her pictures, an alternative, prettier world. It could be suggested that this taste for false, pretty things, causes her to distance herself from reality, to only accept from it the few necessary or worthwhile parts, as in the way she forgoes a proper relationship with Tim in favour of casual sex.
I tried to create an interplay between falsity (or the fictional), beauty and artificiality/unreality/weakness. For example, Gemma’s dyed hair has faded and strands are discarded without care, her bright nails are chipped, the fairy lights are unlit. At other points, the natural beautiful fails or is disregarded: the sun is weak, the pine desk is cluttered, a conker, which could have been a great tree, is nothing more than a play-thing, a distraction, for Tim.
This general washed-out feeling of faded beauty and desire, is representative of a kind of boredom with real life as expressed in the disinterested way Tim says he will “write, or play videogames” to pass his Saturday. This stands in contrast to the very real, but conversely artificial, newness of his cousin’s house, which is associated with the ugly image of the semen in the “perfectly white toilet bowl”, and the ugly feelings it caused within Tim.
That’s my take on at least some aspects of the story, but if anyone has anything to add, a contradictory theory or a general comment, go right on ahead.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I think you know what I would say about this! I love the title! haha, but in all seriousness because (if I’m gonna be analytical) to me glitter is like a substitute for diamonds or crystals, not real, or a cover up, like the girl substituting the real things and feelings for the artificial ones. I esp like the bit when she plucks the hair from the plastic spines of the brush. I have this visual image of a piece of candyfloss in her hand.