‘That you’re a dick,’ I tell him. ‘And that latex catsuits are only sexy for one hour.’
‘I can’t say I agree with either of those findings.’ And then his hands are on my shiny arse and his mouth is on mine and the power is exchanged once more.
Chapter Four
I know the city better than I know myself. Sometimes I think its chaos and dirt are a reflection of me, feeding off me and me off it. At other times, I see its grandeur, its capacity to be everything to every person. It fulfils all dreams, including the bad ones. This is what I try to capture in my photographs: the Janus-faced metropolis, beckoning you in, spitting you out.
For every girl posing outside Oxford Circus TopShop, fake-tanned to the gills and scouting for model scouts, there’s a railway station bag lady.
Innumerable coins with innumerable opposite faces, this is the gold that paves the streets.
I’m out with my camera, down by the river, when I get the text.
Challenge Time. Wherever you are,
whoever’s around you, take off your knickers. L x.
Suddenly our little morning scuffle makes sense.
‘I think you should wear a skirt today,’ he’d said.
‘I’m going out, though. Pulling an all-nighter with the camera. Want to take some shots of the urban wildlife. I told you that yesterday, didn’t I? Since you’re working all night.’
‘Yeah, I still think you should wear a skirt. In fact, I insist.’
I turned around from the wardrobe, eyebrow poised for war. ‘You insist, do you?’
He approached me from behind, clasped his hands around my midriff and spoke into my ear. ‘I insist because I want to think about the night air circulating around your thighs and passers-by putting their hands up your skirt while you’re busy snap-snap-snapping.’
‘Oh yeah?’ My voice betrayed my desire for him to continue with this.
‘They’ll ask you what’s under there. Can they take a look. And you’ll carry on taking your photos and just nod. And while you’re capturing a pile of tyres on the canal bank or something, they’ll push their hands up your thighs and get your skirt all wrinkled and rucked until it’s right up under your bum. One of them gets his hand behind and squeezes your cheeks, nice and slow, while you work. The other person’s fingers creep inside your knickers and feel you up. They don’t ask your permission, they know it’s implicit, especially when they feel how wet and hot you are up there. “Mm, think she wants it,” he says. “I know that,” says his mate. “Dirty, dirty girl.” Their fingers meet and mix all over your cunt and your arse. They explore every crack, every space, every shallow little soaking wet fold. They carry on even when other people turn up, a bit tipsy from the pub, and form a little crowd. They make you come, over and over and over and when they’re done …’
‘Fuck’s sake, Lloyd. What’s the time? Have I got time to …?’
‘I’d say so.’
We fell back into bed.
So I’m wearing the skirt.
I’m wearing the skirt in the busiest section of the South Bank, surrounded everywhere by mooching culture vultures and pleasure trippers and fire-eaters and whatnot. I’m trying to shoot those precious minutes before sundown, trying to get the exact quality of light that signals the danger in the air, the approaching shift from benign tourist trap to grimy hustlers’ paradise.
Agitated, I text back: Must it be now?
Yes & I need photographic evidence.
I look around me. Nobody is paying me much attention. There is a lot of competition for that, something the pickpockets are ever grateful for. On the river, the pleasure boats cruise by, slow and stately, some of them trailing jazz music in their wake.
I let my camera rest around my neck on its lanyard and put my phone back in my jacket pocket.
I look around once more. A man dressed as Darth Vader has everyone’s eyes fixed in his direction.
I put a hand on the skirt hem and sort of pat it and flutter it for a few seconds, trying to work out exactly how long this might take. No. Thinking about it will just prolong the agony.
Facing the river, I lift the front of my skirt and take hold of the elastic so quickly my fingers seem to double in quantity. Looking fixedly ahead at the palatial facades on the opposite bank, I yank the knickers down, hoping that they’ll just fall themselves once they reach a particular region of thigh. They are stubborn, though, and I have to lower them to my knees before they oblige me. I shut my eyes as they drift to my ankles.
Stepping out of them, I’m tempted to just take off at speed and leave them lying on the bare concrete, but that won’t do. Photographic evidence, he said.