closed his eyes and laughed at himself over that little beat, that pause of reverence that was required, before stepping in and looking up at the screen.
The face – the hair was long, grunge-like; he’d been told often that he looked like Cobain, like Jesus. Anorexic, anaemic. A blur round his chin, that first growth of a goatee. His face covered in lipstick kisses. The light was bright in his eyes while all in the background was black. Every fifteen, twenty or thirty seconds Saul or Dot entered to kiss or slap him. The face twitching in anticipation.
What the other critics failed to notice was the smile. A smile you may have had to live through to understand. To be kissed and slapped by your secret lover and the man she said she loved, your best and only friend whom you had betrayed with her. To be at the heart of that love triangle, sitting in the dark, not knowing if it was she or he that would strike you, fearing violence. An hour the whole video had taken to make, the clip was thirty minutes long. The critics said the light-blinded man was a critique of consumerism, the stimulus-response model of taught televisual consumption. Pavlov’s Dog.
But the face, twenty feet wide, contorting in expectation. This almost static portrait of the act of waiting. Some audiences wept, it was said. Others jumped when the kiss or slap hit.
And your own face, Owen, if you could only see it now.
The camera had been turned on, she said, they were recording. He had to keep a straight face, no giggling. He couldn’t, was laughing at how the whole thing was absurd and sorry for spoiling it all. A shot broke the silence. A sharp noise to his left. He turned to see but his eyes were branded by the glow of the bulb. Dot’s command to face the light. Then a hand, so gentle, stroking his cheek, and the brush of a kiss. Then nothing, only the waiting for another kiss, but it was a vicious slap.
The noises echoed round the empty gallery. Owen guessed the tape had another five minutes to go. He’d stay for its repeat. He was trying to anticipate the next blow, but it did not come when expected and when the face was struck it was by a kiss. So out of sync. He edged closer towards the screen to see more clearly but got too close and the image broke into thousands of multicoloured pixels. He turned back and was blinded by the projector light, and then startled by a shadow on the projection screen. He apologised to the unseen person only to discover that the place was empty and the shadow was his own.
As he hit the street it was not the video but what happened just after the camera had been turned off that lingered: flashes of flesh, the sharing of her body in the dark.
Back on the Piccadilly Line at South Ken, he found himself staring at the reflection of his face upside down in the bevelled glass, between the shoulders of a man and a woman, above the empty seat between them. The skin was neon green, the features stretched, aged, ghostlike. He closed his eyes and waited, it would be another ten minutes till his stop. The Northern Line, the way it was really two lines that joined then split then joined then split. If you missed the change at Euston, you had to go to Camden then double back south to Angel before the long walk home.
He shouldn’t be here, he knows this. The choice of exits: Old Street, City Road North, City Road South – he picks the old one, passes a beggar dressed in red like a Hare Krishna with a chalk drawing of spirals beneath his bare feet. ‘True beauty only survives in the gutter, where the guardians of high culture have overlooked it,’ Saul once said. The old familiar street signs: Ring Road A11, A13 and A2. Finn’s Court, Hackney Housing, sixties mosaics and graffiti, just as before. The old high-rises to his left. To his right – a trendy skater shop. City Best Kebab where it was, then all the new FOR LET signs. Old Street Moroccan and Mediterranean Cuisine. He laughs to himself thinking of Edna and Dot and
The face – the hair was long, grunge-like; he’d been told often that he looked like Cobain, like Jesus. Anorexic, anaemic. A blur round his chin, that first growth of a goatee. His face covered in lipstick kisses. The light was bright in his eyes while all in the background was black. Every fifteen, twenty or thirty seconds Saul or Dot entered to kiss or slap him. The face twitching in anticipation.
What the other critics failed to notice was the smile. A smile you may have had to live through to understand. To be kissed and slapped by your secret lover and the man she said she loved, your best and only friend whom you had betrayed with her. To be at the heart of that love triangle, sitting in the dark, not knowing if it was she or he that would strike you, fearing violence. An hour the whole video had taken to make, the clip was thirty minutes long. The critics said the light-blinded man was a critique of consumerism, the stimulus-response model of taught televisual consumption. Pavlov’s Dog.
But the face, twenty feet wide, contorting in expectation. This almost static portrait of the act of waiting. Some audiences wept, it was said. Others jumped when the kiss or slap hit.
And your own face, Owen, if you could only see it now.
The camera had been turned on, she said, they were recording. He had to keep a straight face, no giggling. He couldn’t, was laughing at how the whole thing was absurd and sorry for spoiling it all. A shot broke the silence. A sharp noise to his left. He turned to see but his eyes were branded by the glow of the bulb. Dot’s command to face the light. Then a hand, so gentle, stroking his cheek, and the brush of a kiss. Then nothing, only the waiting for another kiss, but it was a vicious slap.
The noises echoed round the empty gallery. Owen guessed the tape had another five minutes to go. He’d stay for its repeat. He was trying to anticipate the next blow, but it did not come when expected and when the face was struck it was by a kiss. So out of sync. He edged closer towards the screen to see more clearly but got too close and the image broke into thousands of multicoloured pixels. He turned back and was blinded by the projector light, and then startled by a shadow on the projection screen. He apologised to the unseen person only to discover that the place was empty and the shadow was his own.
As he hit the street it was not the video but what happened just after the camera had been turned off that lingered: flashes of flesh, the sharing of her body in the dark.
Back on the Piccadilly Line at South Ken, he found himself staring at the reflection of his face upside down in the bevelled glass, between the shoulders of a man and a woman, above the empty seat between them. The skin was neon green, the features stretched, aged, ghostlike. He closed his eyes and waited, it would be another ten minutes till his stop. The Northern Line, the way it was really two lines that joined then split then joined then split. If you missed the change at Euston, you had to go to Camden then double back south to Angel before the long walk home.
He shouldn’t be here, he knows this. The choice of exits: Old Street, City Road North, City Road South – he picks the old one, passes a beggar dressed in red like a Hare Krishna with a chalk drawing of spirals beneath his bare feet. ‘True beauty only survives in the gutter, where the guardians of high culture have overlooked it,’ Saul once said. The old familiar street signs: Ring Road A11, A13 and A2. Finn’s Court, Hackney Housing, sixties mosaics and graffiti, just as before. The old high-rises to his left. To his right – a trendy skater shop. City Best Kebab where it was, then all the new FOR LET signs. Old Street Moroccan and Mediterranean Cuisine. He laughs to himself thinking of Edna and Dot and
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