The last two weeks have been incredibly busy and my ability to engage with any human being, via net or not, has been pretty much diminished. Somehow, this week, I have found myself at fashion week not really knowing why. Previous years I have been involved in the most peripheral ways, and because you aren’t in the thick of it and aren’t some dull, starved bitch, these ways usually entail party invites.
This year, aside from having to bear all the hype from friends or having to put up with street style bloggers roaming the streets (some of them seem to embody that same sense of entitlement and ridiculous celebrity that is usually associated with the likes of Paris Hilton or a Kardashian), I have had nothing to do with fashion week. In fact I have been trying to avoid fashion week like the plague, but I’m like a fly drawn to shit.
So last night I found myself at some warehouse show, after the sacrament of the clothes, with a guy I had encountered this time last year. A total cliché, I know, but let’s call him The Model. He wasn’t always the The Model to me, I had first seen him in at lectures at uni. And then he was in my tutorial. He wore jeans that usually would have been skin tight on any other man but his skinny legs made them loose. They had holes and dirt and were remarkably ratty. He wore oversized sweaters and he would walk into class, sit in the corner and put his backpack (that, of course, was covered with scribbling and holes) on his desk and spend the entire class with his head buried in him arms that rested atop his backpack. He didn’t make any indication he was listening the entire class, sometimes just a mumble for attendance. Then in class one day, our tutor announced that he, The Model, had received the highest mark in the course for his paper. After class when everyone was leaving he picks up a pen I had dropped on the floor and smiles. After that he stopped coming.
A few weeks later I was at the show some new celebrated designer. At the after party I see him. The Model. He was standing near the bar and his hair was styled and his pants were clean and even knowing he had, at some point, make up one was just so pathetic. Pathetic and desirable. He gave me this sad movement of his lips (not a smile, but an acknowledgement.) Like he was totally aware of how pathetic and fake and dirty this world is. I wanted to mess his hair and take him away from here.
Then I see me through his eyes. How I must look to him. There I am, standing in that season’s Chloe docs and oversized sheer sweater. I don’t get paid to be here. I have no reason to be here except to “enjoy” the company and gratify my own sense of self.
Sure this place and I, these people and I have had some good times. Hot tubs, beach parties with no bottoms, cask wine in back alleys and hidden in dumpsters, punch ups with drag queens and more beautiful clothes than anyone deserves. But as I stare at him and he stares at me, I think about how eventually our breaths might meet and become one joint channel of air and we will depend on each other for life. This place, contrasted to light, to day time, to a class, to knowledge, to some attempt at learning, has tarnished something between us. Something that might exist soon.
I know that if I walk outside I will have to walk past him. This fact does not elude me. So I begin to walk. I am nearly past him without any acknowledgment when he softly, barely touches my arm. I scratch the back of my bare thigh pushing my sweater up so it barely covers my ass. He notices. Not that I thought he was gay, but now I didn’t need to make sure. “You going outside?” “Yeah”
Outside we stand away from the crowd and share a cigarette. He takes a drag and I purse my lips and he slips the cigarette into my mouth. “How’s class?” he asks. “Not as quiet without you” I reply. As I hand him the cigarette we turn to look at the disgustingly vain and beautiful crowd sprawling around the entrance of the bar. Our fingers are still touching. “Let’s not talk about that” I think he is referring to them. We stand, sharing our cigarette in silence. I want him. I ask “Do you want to walk me home? I’m a few streets away” He throws the smoke on the ground and we start walking. “So waht did you think of Schopenhauer?” He asks.
We lay on my bed and his hand moves further up my thigh and he grabs it, hard. His nail sink into my skin and it hurts a little but I think I like it. His lips are not just on mine but all over my face and neck. I pull off my sweater and he takes off his shirt. His not as skinny as I imagined and has slight muscle and it’s not a turn off but it’s not a turn on. For a second we stop and we stare at each other. Till I tilt my neck and he bites it. He is in me and asks me to scratch him. I do. Harder. I scratch harder. HARDER. This time I think I draw a little blood and I think he likes it. This totally isn’t what I expected, but I go with it. I push him down and spit in his face and slap and he moans. I try to make sense of what’s happening, how and why, but it’s a nonsensical exercise and I realize there is no room for ego here.
I wake up with his arm softly around my waist. It is a surprisingly gentle way to wake up next to him. I manage to roll around and I see his pasty skin covered in bruises and scratches. My bruises and scratches. I kiss two fingers and place them on a yellow-purple blood smudge. I close my eyes and he grabs my two fingers and he kisses me. I open my eyes and he tells me he doesn’t want to leave this room. And I know it’s not because of me, I know it’s because of what’s outside of this room (I also suss out if it's because he needs a place to crash, but alas, this boy has his own abode.) So for the rest of that week, he would come back to my room smelling of new clothes, cigarettes and hair product. Then he left to go work or model or whatever it is models do somewhere in Asia and then to Europe and I didn’t see him again. Till last night.
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