Fifteen Minutes in Retropspect

MAY 3rd 1965

With one leg propped up on the sink, I rest my arm on my knee to steady my hand as I apply my trademark flick of jet black eyeliner. My usual stance when getting ready for a night on the tiles. What does that phrase even mean? Looking around at the yellowing porcelain of the bathroom I can’t help but think the only action these tiles have seen is regurgitation. Really time for an upgrade I think. The contents of my make-up case are strewn across the small shelf underneath the mirror. Shit I look tired.

Reach for the foundation. ‘Always maintain the illusion’, a wise-man once told me.
The 8.53 tube passing beneath me makes the room vibrate. The lid of my mascara falls to the floor. I don’t notice. The 8.53 tube passing beneath me tells me I am running late. I sweep everything into my bag and make for the door. Quickly glance in the mirror. Mistake. My lipstick has already bled outside my bottom lip, my heavy fringe is tangled in my over-amplified lashes. I resolve to sort it in the car. As I turn to leave, I catch a flash of white in my otherwise entirely black outfit. The beginnings of a ladder in my left stocking. No time for new ones, so get my black nail-polish out the bag and dab it on the end. Hopefully that will hold it for now. No doubt they’ll be off before long. Smile at myself, ironing out imaginary creases from my Chanel dress. Leave.
                                                           
*

Margo’s shrill voice shouts something incomprehensible from the back of the packed car. Why she thinks anyone will be able to hear her is beyond me. Also, why don’t we just get two cars? I am wedged between Mick and the door. One leg on his, the other twisted beneath me, holding my entire weight. The feeling drifting out of my toes. Champagne and a powdered silver tray and credit card has already done the rounds. It’s 7pm. I already look like shit so I pass. The car slows and pulls in. We must be there because lights are already flickering outside in anticipation. Someone opens the door from the outside, I fall forward, slamming my leg down to stop me hitting the pavement. Reflexes like a cat. The blinding flashes of the camera illuminate the circle of white skin exposed by the ladder that worsened in the car when it got caught on Dylan’s jeans. Smoothly shimmy the dress down a fraction as I stand up. No one notices. We all walk up the stairs to the club door. Stars in our own minds.

Most people are already there. We do the usual mandatory ‘hellos’, air kisses, then sit where there’s space. He is sat in his usual tight black shirt, trousers a fraction too short (intentional) revealing a flash of white socks. “And there she is...” He says, standing up and offering an arm to help me climb over the cluster of stools around the tables. I smile and move past the kaleidoscope of girls surrounding him. Our black ensembles set against the pillar-box red upholstery make the perfect tableau. 
Someone takes a photo.


*

I often find that things only really make sense in retrospect. That you can only truly look back on a situation, understand how you got there, when you are fully removed from yourself. Once I realised this, it was exactly what I did.

APRIL 1964.

I moved to London to be with Jim. We’d met at a Velvet Underground gig, fallen in love over a pint and a conversation about Sartre after the gig when he said he was a writer and had a flat in Clapham.

Truth- he wrote reviews of dog shows for some local newspaper.

The flat rarely had electricity because turns out local journalists rarely get paid enough to pay bills. But by the time I’d carted all my stuff on the train from Leeds I thought I might as well stay. He would apologise every day, bringing me a new fashion or music magazine as though that was some compensation. And I would sit, like a child, in the middle of the floor and cut out the photos of girls in rising hemlines, with rising hair, and the bands being chased by legions of girls brandishing their admissions of love on home-made placards. And I would mount them on coloured card to paper the otherwise dull flat. He would come home from work and wearily offer some condolence that the reality was that this world didn’t really exist, Victoria. What he didn’t realise was I didn’t care about the reality.

Stir-crazy one day, I grabbed that fateful purple mac and walked down to the high-street. Something had infiltrated the usually banal scene. A neon cardboard sign hung from a shop window with the simple stencilled word “ART”. I followed its arrow down the worn stone stairs. Into the rabbit hole. The walls were painted a luminous white, strings of fairy lights hung from corners to meet in the middle of the ceiling. Immaculately beautiful people drifted around the room, looking at the black and white prints that covered the walls, holding white tea-cups. I only realised I’d been staring when a girl, white blonde, holding a teapot, broke my line of vision. Black and white, cut out of my magazine. The sweet Caribbean scent from the teapot would soon come to be a highlight of any 2pm tea-party.

I was transfixed by one photo, a girl, close-up, her eyes piercing the lens, her lips slightly parted. So simple yet breathtaking. A woman next to me with ruby-red hair, even more vibrant in contrast to the subdued hues of the rest of the room, gestured to the model stood on the other side of the room. But my attention was caught by a man in black, standing alone in the corner. The white rabbit. I asked ruby-red who it was, she simply said the Artist.

“Nice coat. Violet. People are so afraid to use colour these days”. Unsure whether he was laughing at me I suddenly became aware of my awkwardly clashing violet coat and green skirt. My imperfectly applied make-up copied from magazines. A reverse negative amongst the perfect monochrome background. But he continued to stare.

“How would you feel about coming to a party at my studio tonight?”

In retrospect, I should have declined.

MAY 3RD 1965.

Margo was going on about Warhol’s ‘Shot Marilyn’s’ and the woman who’d got her wish when she asked to shoot them. Apparently some feminist protest against his objectification or something. Call me counter-productive to the cause, but if an artist like Warhol asked to paint me, I would welcome a bit of objectification. Thankfully, that attitude rode well with the Artist who had taken a likening to objectifying me on a regular basis after the success of the first exhibition. The anniversary of which we were celebrating that night. The retrospective of which was the following day. I still don’t really understand why he’d need a retrospective exhibition for a year of work.

MAY 19th 1964.

We’d been working together for a few months by this point. Him taking photos, me enjoying the escape from Clapham and Jim. His lack of questions when I rolled home at 4am, or not at all, irritated me almost as much as his “I’m so happy you’re finally happy” and other such epithets.

But he came to the exhibition opening, eager to meet these people who entertained me so. There’s something disconcerting walking into a room to be met by your face, 12ft tall projected onto a wall. It’s perversely voyeuristic seeing yourself enlarged beyond proportion. Your projected self is at once watching you watching others watching you and watching you watching you.

Jim stood between my face and a collage of various blurred Polaroid’s of indiscernible shapes. I watched him lean closer then recoil, assaulted. Frontal nudity always made him uncomfortable unless it was mine. If only he’d stuck with it, I’m sure there was one of me in there somewhere.

He looked so uncomfortable, still nursing the champagne he’d been given on his way in, probably now flat. We laughed at him nodding to everyone who walked past.
Pretending he belonged. “Always maintain the illusion”, the Artist said, “even if it is just for yourself”.  Another of his strange haikus that would only later make sense.

Jim must have left early because I don’t remember seeing him when we all left for the after-party.

The next day, the Artist met me outside Chanel on Sloane Street. Our tradition. Chanel was my Tiffany’s. We would take our coffee and stand and watch the black satin, backless dress with the graduated hem as though it were a caged animal, too rare and delicate to be let out of its window display. But that day, the cage was empty.

He emerges from the shop door, removes his sunglasses and hands me a black bag. Stunned.  A black card, marked in silver pen says “Thanks for the exhibition, Violet”. He leans in, his lips gently brushing mine and he says “Leave him”. The two single most damaging words I ever heard.

But I did.

MAY 3rd 1965.

The bar had started to quieten as people began to leave or retreat to curtained rooms. I waited patiently for the Artist to come back from saying his goodbyes, hoping for a bed for the night. But an overheard conversation told me he’d already left, something about an early press call tomorrow. A relationship communicated through hearsay. Raging, and aware of the panic that was threatening to penetrate the haze of alcohol and whatever else had been passed around that night, I angrily pulled my bag from behind the feet of a rutting couple on the sofa and made my way to the door. Clara intercepted, extending an invitation.

“Just a few girls, few guys and a few...” She shrugged exaggeratedly as she moved the lapel of her blouse to reveal a small white packet tucked into her bra-strap.

Persuaded. 

She’d lied, the flat was rammed before we even arrived. A miasma of smoke and perfumed incense carried us up the stairs. The air was so sweet with apple tobacco and sweat I could taste it in my throat as I entered the room, full of bad consciences. I crossed the bodies that lay on the ethnic rugs and cushions lining the floor. Another souvenir from another of her flatmate’s quests to find himself in some distant land. How could anyone get so lost so often? The combination a cushioned floor and the low lying smoke posed a challenge to walking in heels. My decision to kick them off is met by a yelp before I find myself pulled down onto what appeared to be a chaise-longue. My assailant smiles apologetically, revealing a small ashtray with two sugar cubes onto which drops some acid from a pipette from his pocket. I watch the liquid seep through the crystallized square before graciously accepting his apology.

He starts talking about some band he saw on Ready Steady Go! the other night. A guy wearing crop-tops? He resounds he too could pull off the look, should it come into fashion, and proceeds to lift his shirt to reveal a toned stomach. I widen my eyes in a vain attempt to focus but my attention has moved to a rogue spring that persistently digs itself into my rib as I shift my weight. Moving my leg, the velveteen grass of the chaise-longue caresses the naked skin that peeks out of the growing hole in my stocking. Revelling in the new sensation I sit upright.

“Cool, let’s go then”. Unaware of what I have inadvertently agreed to, I let myself be led out of the flat.
                                                           *
A slit of light cuts into my eyes as I try to open them. An unfamiliar room. Roll over. An unfamiliar face. Shit. I slide off the throw-covered mattress that lies in the middle of the floor, a hasty manoeuvre that results in the violent rotation of the room. I put my hand on the edge of the bed to steady myself.

It is now I have what some might call an epiphany.

Lying atop a stack of books, a make-shift bedside table, next to my discarded stockings, I find a wad of rolled money. A post-it saying “Thanks”. Aware of my own nakedness, and his, a noise escapes me but the fear of waking my apparent business partner suppresses it. I contemplatively hold the money for a while. Wondering how much is there, how much I was worth. I place it back on the stack. My Chanel hangs from the record player needle, a faint pull down the back. This time I’m not so good at suppressing my rage. He stirs. I grab his black shirt from the floor, belting it with a ribbon I find tied to the television aerial. Probably a souvenir from last week’s purchase.
He can keep the Chanel.

The black stain from my earlier repair job exposes itself under the shirt’s hemline.

I make a run for the door. Hesitate. Have a change of heart. Run back for the money.
Run to the street, still reeling from a last nights’ lethal cocktail and the resultant impromptu business transaction. I feel that overwhelmingly frustrating, suffocating sense of déjà vu. I’ve been here before.

DECEMBER 13th 1964.

Blindfolded, he led me down Regent Street. People laughing and talking around me. Didn’t care. We were the happy-go-lucky stars of an exhibition that had just been commissioned for a book. One of those stylish coffee-table types. The flat he’d promised me, us, after I left Jim was in the pipeline (allegedly) awaiting a final payout from the gallery from the profits of the exhibition. His hands on my shoulders stopped me. Light flooded my vision as the blindfold fell from my eyes. My knees buckled slightly as I was met by my own face, plastered on the side of the building opposite.
He was laughing and revealed a bottle of champagne. He fired the cork into the middle of the road, the spray catching several disgruntled passers-by. They shook their heads. Tutting as they associate the faces on the poster with those in front of them. We walk down the road passing Denny’s mural at Austin Reed, “Great Big, Biggest, Wide London”. In that moment, I thought I finally understood what it meant. London was mine for the taking.

MAY 4th 1965.

The sharp jab of an elbow in my spine and a profanity brings me back. I’m stood in the middle of the pavement. Across the road is a huge white poster, emblazoned with bold black letters, “Your Face, Your Business Here!”. While I enjoy the ironies of life, to borrow from the clichés, this one was hardest to swallow as it bruised all the way down. My face has become my business, one that is now apparently payable by the hour. The mural flaunted its promise of a ‘great’ London in bold pop-art, each disjointed letter ridiculing the naive girl swigging champagne from a bottle in the street only a year ago.

Realising it was already 5.30pm, and the exhibition starts at 6pm, I quick-step to Piccadilly Circus tube. Head straight for the bathroom, balance my hold-all on the sink, rummaging for my make-up bag.

I look tired.

I reach for my mascara. Notice its missing lid. I cannot afford for this to dry up. I say this aloud. Empty the contents of my bag on the floor and I try to remember what station I was getting ready at last time. The floor vibrates violently as the world beneath continues without me. Looking to the far-end of the sinks, I see a small black cylinder rolling idly towards me. Lean back on my knees and dust it on my shirt-cum-dress. How very bohemian. I haul myself up by the sink. Pull out a black and white checked Mary Quant dress, stolen from Pauline last week. Look over my shoulder to check for visitors to my bathroom but I have no shame. Step into the dress and step out of the door.

One day I will have a bathroom of my own again.

The cashier looks at me strangely as I hand her my twenty note to pay for my tube ticket. I just want to get rid of any evidence from last night asap, the wad burning a hole in my purse. Tube to Oxford Circus. Eyes forward. To my right, a strip-light flickers. A woman sat opposite shields her eyes as she tries to read her book before giving up and moving seats to one at the other end of the carriage. To my left, a less than fragrant presence is sat a little too close. Eyes forward. Breaking my self-hypnosis from the passing lights in the windows, I lean my head back. Glancing upwards to the gentle curve of the carriage I am once again faced with me. Upside down. A crease across my mouth, a twisted smirk.  I wish she would stop looking at me like that. Shoddy sticker application.

I reach my stop, get up. The man next to me makes the comparison and shouts “Hey! You famous?!” I shake my head. 

*

The loft, above some boutique on Carnaby, was buzzing. The fairy lights have been upgraded into huge halogen lights that flood-light the room. On one wall, dark silhouettes danced, martini glasses in hand. Their tasselled dresses stretch tentacled shadows across the room. A burlesque shadow-puppet show. And there I was on the opposite side.

An arm snakes it way round my back. “Hey, babe. On again for tonight?”

Turn. Recoil as I see the face I abandoned in bed earlier today. How could he be here? But my signposted face around the city offered an all too easy explanation. The Artist appears. To my rescue? “Everything ok, Vi?”

“Yeah mate, no problems.” My business partner replies on my behalf. “Paid a fair price. Consenting adults and all that”.

The Artist’s face furrows. He bites his lip. “Consenting?” The swell of the crowd knocks some drunkard into my back. Drop my bag, the clasp opening on impact. His eyes flick over my life’s possessions.  “Well, Vi, how much can change in our fifteen minutes”. He didn’t wait for a response as he walked back into his crowd. Laughing. Each laugh severed another string tying me to that girl projected on the wall.  Can’t cry. Couldn’t afford waterproof mascara.

A tap on my shoulder.

Are you serious? I turn to see Jim. Holding a garland of lilies. My favourites. He’d been waiting. He hasn’t moved my things from where I left them in the flat. There’s always space for me. When I come home. Tell him I’m damaged goods. There’s no place for Violet in Clapham. He shrugs. There is for Victoria.

He is immovable. So I move.

Clara notices my hasty exit and comes over. “Let’s go, Vi. You don’t have to be here anymore”.

*

And I believed her. That night, the company of a cold bath and sedatives was more appealing than another night spent in the company of myself.