Things I love about the National Gallery:
On the day of the gallery excursion, me, Lo and Mira had met early at HQ, the disused junior school toilet block. Escape from school and our backwater suburb, no matter how brief, required prep work. We passed around our artillery: cigarettes, mascara and hot mocha lip tint, all the while teeming with the prospect of the city. We were late for the bus, but that was to be expected. As we walked up, with our arms linked and attitudes on full beam I thought, ‘Moments like these are the best.’ Me, Lo and Mira were like the good things that came in threes: wishes, kings, back-up singers. But we could be bad too. We climbed aboard the bus. Bliss Dartford - miss priss popularity - sang out “Here come the frrrreaks!” and the sucker peers stirred and snickered but this just confirmed what we already knew: We were cool, unique, original. Everybody else was barcode.
At the gallery, we checked our bags and dragged along with the group, past Greek urns, Dutch masters and Royal turds, into the moderns. Our gender-trauma art teacher Barry ‘Boobs’ Polson had us all camp before a painting with our notebooks open.
“Think about what you see,” he instructed. “Write it down.”
The painting was completely and utterly black. It made me think of night time. I wondered if there was anything underneath its shiny surface. Things impressionable young girls shouldn’t be looking at. I wrote in my notebook: Surface and Underneath.
I felt my face. Beneath the frizz and lippy I looked like a normal seventeen-year-old. Brown eyes, brown hair, combination skin. I was meant for bigger things. My mother, Bev, named me after her favourite feminist, Germaine Greer. My namesake was brave and audacious, a sexual libertine and an authority on Shakespeare. Um … much to live up to? If she was an icon I was a clod. I could be boastful and call myself an authority on film, but there was no getting around my virginity. Bev insists that all smart girls have an inner Greer. I pictured mine asleep under a rock, or a kidney stone. She wasn’t likely to crawl out any time soon.
I wrote in my notebook: Everything and Nothing.
I looked up. A couple of nerdburgers had their heads down, scribbling away but the rest of the class were passing notes or looking around the room, distracted. Boobs saw none of this. He was staring into the black, transfixed. He didn’t even notice when Lo stuck me in the ribs and whispered, “Let’s go.”
Minutes later, the three of us were sitting on the grass in the sculpture garden, half hidden by a Henry Moore, sharing cigarettes and cashews, and dreaming aloud.
Mira took her shoes and socks off. She stretched her legs out and inspected them. There was a line on her upper thigh where she’d stopped shaving. “God,” she said. “Check me out.”
“You’re European,” I stated. “If we lived there we could spend our summer sleeping on the Riviera beaches. You wouldn’t even have to shave.”
Lo said, “Get thee to a depilatory.”
“We could burn up Florence with scooter boys,” I continued. “After dark we could dance barefoot in nightclubs, wearing only sheer green shifts with gold jewellery.”
“Ha!” Mira smiled.
But Lo had had enough of my reverie. She nabbed my cigarette and took a drag. “I’m bored.”
“You’re always bored,” I said.
Lo played the sullen blonde from her purple toenails to her cig-smoky halo. Lo had talents. She was quick and merciless and she had perfected the art of looking put-upon. This made people take her seriously.
She settled back on her elbows. “Summer lies before us like a …” She snapped her fingers, searching.
“Blank canvas?” I supplied.
“Exactly. We need a project.”
“Well, it’s that time of year,” I said. “Are we still going to have a theme?”
“Of course.” Lo snapped. “And goals and guides. But whatever the theme is, it has to be significant.”
“Significant how?” Mira asked.
Mira’s secretary specs make her look bookish but her mouth always gives her away. Her lips have a life of their own. They remind me of that famous painting – Man Ray’s kiss floating in the clouds. They can be floppy, foolish, soft or sultry; it depends on what she’s saying. Now she was pouting, “I thought this summer was going to be about boys.”
“Boys, sure,” Lo didn’t blink. “Boho boys. Dangerous boys. Boys-without-barcodes.”
“Do they exist?” I asked.
90 percent of the male population are barcode boys. They are like mass market items, straight off the production line. Barcode boys are irrefutably blah. Definitely not wish-list candidates. The only thing they’re good for is practice.
“Forget about the boys!” Lo snapped again. “Think about the theme. God. How did you two ever manage without me?”
Mira and I shared a quick grin. We shrugged, and said in unison, “We didn’t.”
Flashback to year seven:
Most of the class had bonded at the local primary school. Not me. Not Mira. When it came to cliquing up, we were like the bad chocolates left in the box. Marzipan and Turkish Delight. Only for the weak-willed and desperate. I can blame Bev for my handmade clothes and hippie taint but where do you cut the cord? I was arty and shy. I felt like I’d been given a different textbook to everyone else, one that didn’t even have diagrams. Meanwhile, Mira was gauche-girl. Too enthusiastic by half. Always walking in on the end of jokes and laughing like she got them. The jokes were usually about her. She was fatter back then and had adenoidal issues. She sounded like a dirty phone call.
Mira and I drifted together, united in our quest for acceptance. We knew that cracking Bliss Dartford was the key. Every school has a Bliss - rich bitch, even tan, perfect orthodontics. Mira and I tried hard to impress her but it wasn’t happening. Then, in year eight, Mira’s Dad got promoted to corporate bigwig, and a whole new social strata opened up for her. I was left surfing the scummy edges.
How shallow is high school? Mira dropped a few pounds, started wearing labels and her stock skyrocketed. When her mother started playing tennis with Bliss’s mother, I knew it wouldn’t be long before Bliss came around. I also knew that their ‘besties’ status was temporary. Boys took care of that. Bliss may have been prettier but Mira gave up the goods without even blinking. All year nine I watched them tango. Things were about to change. I could feel it.
Lo transferred three weeks into first term of year ten. She was so slight and quiet we hardly noticed her at first. Or maybe our receptors were blocked. By May she was coming in loud and clear. Was it the essay she read out comparing Kurt Cobain’s suicide note with Hamlet’s third soliloquy? Or was it her negative care factor? Lo wore ankle socks to everyone else’s knee socks, she didn’t bother to comb her hair, she had cigarettes in her blazer pocket and seemed to pick and choose her hours. Once, on the bus, I saw her skirt ride up. She had little nicks on her upper thigh. I remember pointing them out to Mira. She shrugged, “Freaks and geeks”, but to me they hinted at a great dark past and made Lo fascinating. It took six months for Lo to rumble Bliss Dartford, rescue me and recruit Mira. But this saving business works both ways. Lo said the cuts were just her way of marking time, keeping herself company. She doesn’t do it anymore, not now she has us.
Lo reminds me of this sweet/silly film I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! Peter Sellers plays a lawyer who drops out during the Summer of Love. Everything is groovy until all the pot and posturing start to go to his head. “I’m so hip it hurts,” he whines to Leigh Taylor-Young, his chesty squeeze. She tells him, “It’s very unhip to say that you are hip.” Anyway, Lo’s like that. She doesn’t have to talk about being cool - she just is.
© Simmone Howell