Eat My Heart Out (18 page)

She was a spectre. Her skin showed no sign that anyone lived inside it. Everything on the outside had been changed. She looked like a 3D dragon touched by the old-world glamour of Elizabeth Taylor. Her cheekbones were like rocks, her lips like wet, full slugs. She was dressed like a French provincial housewife, but her accent was English.

When we had all finished our cigarettes, Gabriella said: ‘And is this your new daughter?'

‘She's a friend,' said Steph.

‘Oh, we're all friends,' laughed Gabriella.

Her eyes were the same technicolour blue as the eyes in the photos. Was she wearing contacts?

‘And what are you doing here, Mummy?' Gabriella asked Steph.

‘I thought you might like to tell Ann-Marie all about your beginnings!' Steph turned to me. ‘Gabriella has got a midcareer survey coming up at MOMA. She's doing just great.'

‘Yeah, I'm great,' said Gabriella. ‘My beginnings? Wow. OK.' She hobbled over to a filing cabinet. Her legs seemed to be fitted at awkward angles to her upper body. She selected a white folder. ‘At first, I was looking for something,' she said.

‘You see?' Steph turned to me. ‘We're all looking for something!'

‘But I was looking for something real,' said Gabriella. ‘The Lacanian Real, more precisely – which isn't real, of course. But The Unnameable darkness. And all the more powerful for it.' She sat down on the edge of the desk and winced. ‘Something that I could
feel
, in any case. Not some bullshit quasi-spiritual mantra in India. Like Marge Perez. Patronising the shit out of the Indians.' She opened the folder and tossed a handful of stills on the desk. ‘This was the King Cake project. My first art installation. 1993.'

The image showed a much younger, plumper, and more natural Gabriella prone and naked and covered in what looked like icing.

‘Explain how you did it, Gabriella,' said Steph.

‘Yes,
Mum
.' Gabriella laughed. ‘The King Cake is a cake that is traditionally eaten in countries all over the world, from Spain to Lebanon. They bake a little figurine of a king – more precisely, a baby Jesus – in a cake and then slice it up and eat it on the sixth of January. That happens to be my birthday. Whoever finds the figurine in their slice is lucky but also runs the risk of breaking a tooth. It's also known as the Epiphany Cake, and sometimes, the thing in the cake is a bean, not a Jesus.'

The second image showed a carving knife looming towards Gabriella from the left.

‘Go on,' said Steph.

‘So I just took that idea and ran with it,' said Gabriella. ‘
I
was the cake. There was a thing – like a little figurine, a king, a father – inside of me and I wanted to find it.'

‘So you … swallowed a figurine?' I said.

‘No. The figurine was a metaphor, only. It was The Unrepresentable. Trauma. It was ephemeral, impossible to pin down. That's why I wanted to pin it down. To persecute it. I pinned myself down in the process, since it was a part of me. I didn't know where it was inside of me exactly, but I wanted to cut it out. I was prepared to cut my whole self to pieces trying to get it out.'

‘That's abreaction,' said Steph.

‘Possibly,' said Gabriella.

She showed me a third image: her, bleeding, in a bathtub. There was a gaping wound in her stomach. Her face was mournful.

‘That's not fake,' said Steph.

‘The thing inside of me, I would later learn, was The Thing called It that Žižek refers to.
Das Ding
in German. Slavoj has become a personal friend of mine.' Gabriella smiled. ‘We met when I was invited to give a lecture on the King Cake project at the European Graduate School.'

‘Slavoj is a charlatan,' said Steph.

‘He knows what I'm talking about,' said Gabriella.

The fourth image showed Gabriella in a hospital bed.

‘I did some serious internal damage in the course of the project,' she said. ‘I accidentally gave myself a hysterectomy. I couldn't have children after that. I was only twenty-three at the time.'

Steph looked at me. ‘Your age,' she said.

‘I had killed all my future foetuses for the sake of my art,' said Gabriella. ‘Which seemed appropriate. Art is like giving birth, again and again. And putting your baby in an art gallery. Or a biennale.' She held up the last image, which showed her looking pale and wan and much thinner in a wheelchair. ‘I never did find The Thing I was looking for,' she said. ‘I'm still looking.'

‘Gabriella's interest in surgery became multifarious from then on,' said Steph.

‘The point is.' Gabriella looked at me. ‘I don't
want
to find It. If I found It, I would have no reason to make art any more.' She got up and gripped her lower back. She produced another folder from the cabinet. ‘More recently, this is for the Venice show. It's called
Clamshell
something. It's going to have
clamshell
in the title.'

These images showed the various stages of a labiaplasty. First the distended asymmetrical labia minora was marked in purple ink. Then it was injected. Then it was cut off.

‘That's when the cauterising kicks in,' said Gabriella. She lit another cigarette. ‘Well, it's very nice to meet you, Annie-Marie.'

I didn't bother to correct her.

‘Those labials are just the crash-test dummy if you will,' Gabriella went on. ‘One of my interns, very eager.'

‘You know it's remarkable,' said Steph. ‘Gabriella, you don't need me to tell you that Orlan did this in the '70s. She was cutting herself open way before plastic surgery became de rigueur. She was like a tribal woman, creating her own body. Still is, I should say. It was a beautiful moment when Orlan's interventions chimed like music with Haraway's
Cyborg Manifesto
. But you—'

‘Are you trying to tell me I'm derivative, Mum?' Gabriella laughed.

There was silence.

Finally Steph said: ‘I just think you could cite her.'

‘Was Orlan looking for
Das Ding
though?' said Gabriella. ‘Did Orlan write as
well
? Was she a
writer
? Was Orlan looking for The Real, the bad part that must be exorcised from the living body in order for that body to go on living
at all
? Did Orlan know that unsaid words contaminate you from the inside
out
?'

‘No,' said Steph. ‘All of that you learnt from me.'

‘Maybe I learnt it from you.' Gabriella stood up. ‘But you only theorised that shit, Mum. You are a theorist. I
did
that shit. I did it to
myself
. The gravest acts of violence. The most pure – stitching my cunt up to make it look like a Barbie. That's what I'm doing in the spring.'

‘Do you have to be so childishly provocative?' said Steph.

‘You see.' Gabriella looked me. ‘I'm just gonna sew that shit up to make absolutely certain that nothing else can come out or get back in.'

‘Gabriella is from Brixton,' said Steph, as though that explained everything.

An hour later, we were sitting in a corridor at the BBC, drinking coffee.

Francesca the researcher said that, due to the presence of a webcam in the studio, would I mind wearing a black bag over my head to protect my anonymity? No, scratch that. Would I mind wearing a white bag over my head to colour co-ordinate with the blank page that had appeared so strikingly pure on the blog post?

‘That's fine,' Stephanie answered for me.

When Francesca had gone, Steph said: ‘You want to be famous, don't you? Don't all you little girls these days want to be famous?'

‘But how can I be famous if I've got a bag over my head?'

Stephanie stared at the framed portrait of Bruce Forsyth hanging on the wall. ‘God, Gabriella can be so recalcitrant,' she said. ‘She might not even come to my ceremony. You know when I met her, she was just a little life model—'

‘I heard you. At William's.'

‘She was nothing but an ingénue – at Chelsea.'

‘I thought you said you discovered her at the Slade?'

‘It was I who urged her to pursue installation,' said Stephanie. ‘It was I who urged her to go to Goldsmiths, right at the time when Michael Craig-Martin was tearing down every disciplinary membrane known to man – or woman. Gabriella had the drive because she was crazy. Her father raped her when she was a child, did you know that?'

I shook my head.

‘So you didn't read her cuttings?'

‘No.'

‘Have you read my cuttings?'

‘What do you mean – cuttings?'

‘Have you googled me?'

‘No. I'm very busy, Stephanie.' I paused. ‘Why does Gabriella want to stitch up her cunt so that nothing else comes out if she's already had a hysterectomy?'

Stephanie was silent.

Finally she said: ‘She's paranoid.' She turned to me. ‘You're going to have to think of something good. Something real good. Because
I was just tired out from singing so I couldn't think of anything
isn't gonna cut it. That's not what's gonna get the hits. And don't tell them about the singing part.' She had lipstick on her teeth. ‘If I were you, I'd dig deep.'

Francesca led us into a studio. Once again, I was shut inside a glass box. This one was more spacious. A white felt bag was handed to me; it smelt of shoes. L. K. Bennett was printed on the side. I put the bag over my head.

‘We're gonna use your real voice, OK?' said Francesca.

‘OK,' came my muffled voice.

I saw a black object come closer; it was the microphone. Soon a woman with mellow tones was telling her listeners to contact their local leisure centres for more information on zumba classes. Then Stephanie was introduced. She must have been sitting in another box because I couldn't smell Florida Water. She was explaining that while the hypersexualisation of society had been commented upon at length in the media—

‘What do you mean?' said the mellow presenter.

‘I mean porn,' said Steph. ‘It's everywhere. What I'm talking about are the parallels between the mass-produced
product
called love and sadomasochistic pornography. Because all mainstream porn is sadomasochistic to a greater or lesser extent. Right.'

‘Can you give us an example?'

‘Like the erotic classic,
Story of O
,' said Steph. ‘The main girl, O, is a successful fashion photographer. She's got her own gig. But she's in love with this guy, René. So René invites her to come to a secluded château at Roissy.'

‘We're going off-piste!' said the presenter.

The lights of the studio burned through the bag.

‘If you'll just wait.' Stephanie was irritated. ‘So O goes to the château but it's not like a romantic weekend away. Oh no. It's a sexual slavery camp, Sadeian style.'

‘Sadeian?'

‘The Marquis de Sade. The eclipse of religion by science at the end of the eighteenth century threw the whole world, or at least the whole of Europe into doubt … basically. Look, Sade figured that any and all pleasure was up for grabs – bestiality, torture, you name it. It was pleasure without conscience. Unbridled jouissance.'

‘Yeah I know about jouissance,' I said. But my voice wasn't amplified.

There was silence; maybe Steph and the presenter were looking at me.

‘Sade's encyclopaedia of perversions is mechanical,' said Steph. ‘Dry as a bone. It is love as hate. Sex without respect for the other.'

‘I'm sorry, Stephanie.' The presenter chortled. ‘I thought we were talking about
Story of O
. Wasn't that written in the '30s?'

‘1954,' said Steph. ‘By a woman. No one knew her identity until the '90s. But the point is that René puts O in this hellish situation. There are strict rules governing her every move. She must be 100 per cent available to her so-called masters every minute of the day and night, she must open every orifice to them, she must never look them in the eye, she must never speak unless spoken to.'

‘That's shocking,' said the presenter. ‘I'm sure that still goes on in some parts of the developing world. Maybe even the developed world. It's terrible when women are taken against their will—'

‘But that's the point.' I heard a thud; Steph must have banged her fist on the table. ‘O isn't taken against her will. O consents. She consents because she loves René. She is a slave to love.'

‘She must have self-esteem issues,' said the presenter.

‘No,' said Steph. ‘My argument in
Falling Out of Fate
by Stephanie Haight, published by Penguin, £18.99 hardback available in all good book stores and on Amazon and in a Kindle edition, is that O is an archetype. She is an archetype of normal femininity.'

‘Excuse me,' said the presenter. ‘At no point have I consented to sexual slavery in the name of love.'

‘What about mental slavery?' said Steph. ‘Why do you think
Fifty Shades
did so goddamn well? Because women found a mirror.'

‘That book is pure fantasy. It's wish-fulfilment.'

‘Exactly.' I heard Steph sit back, satisfied.

‘I want to hear what some of our listeners who've been calling in think about your argument. Here's Jean from Vauxhall.'

‘Hi Jean,' said Steph. ‘Wait – isn't this show pre-recorded?'

‘Jean's been waiting on the line,' said the presenter.

‘Hi,' said Jean. ‘I don't understand what you're talking about. You're talking about things that only make sense to a tiny per cent of the population.'

‘You tell me, Jean,' said Steph. ‘Haven't you ever waited for a man? Haven't you ever paced the room, wondering what he's thinking, what he's doing, where he is, who he's with, whether he loves you enough or at all?'

‘Men wait too,' said Jean. ‘When Chris and I started seeing each other—'