Day 16

Pila

It's raining again. It hasn't stopped since I got back from Farlan Street that day. As if I don't stay indoors enough, it seems the weather wants me out of trouble altogether. My shower this morning was the first in two weeks, and all the better as a result. Flushing the grease out of my hair and replacing it with jojoba and NutriVite molecules (so the bottle informed me) was another pleasure to add to the list. The list that is weakening significantly in effectiveness with each day that passes.

If I feel I have been irresponsible or foolish or selfish at any point throughout my day, I punish myself by unwrapping and spending long periods analyzing my reflection. It's a perfect picture of timeless movie star elegance, and I say that objectively as an aesthete. My stomach always churns at the discarding of the first scarf. It is all but unbearable to look at, but I force myself.

The contours of my face swoop like swallows in all the right places. My skin is a cream china canvas, soft and springy and out of bounds to blemishes or scars. Full lips hint at my age being around twenty-two, a well-kept mid-twenties at most. High breasts and a pert bottom confirm this. My hair is full, long and dark, curling around my ears and chin in tiny brunette serifs. That's me summed up physically in full, chocolate-box detail, so you may as well stop asking what's behind the veil.

I'd be as sexy as anything, but I don't have sex and don't want it either. It's a shame in many respects. Sexy and/or beautiful people do find it easier to do even the simplest of tasks: hailing taxis, attracting the help of shop assistants. They are also excused more mistakes. If that pinstriped punter had seen my face he wouldn't have bawled at me. He might have gasped. At a stretch, I think he might have made some lascivious comment, but in my experience, people are generally too amazed by my face to speak.

It sounds like a textbook example of narcissism: the subject who thinks they are beautiful and mitigates her self-adoration with the delusory excuse of self-flagellation. Body dymorphia of some description. Or in plain English, someone who won't admit their crippling vanity. But I assure you that is not the case. I genuinely feel sick looking at myself. The only reason I know the structure of my face comes under the category of Beautiful is through the reactions of other people and comparisons with magazine pictures. When I feel the gauze graze my neat nose in the morning, as the first layer goes on, it is a balm. It is like cucumber on the eyes, frozen peas on a burn, steak on a bruise.

When a stranger knocks at your door, unless you are wise or paranoid, you will open it. When a stranger called at mine, I was not wise, and that is why I am in this situation. They were good at talking and they chose their words well. The travelling salesman is a tough tick to tweeze off once they have begun their patter. This one, knowing the affluence of the area, had chosen his pitch well. It was back when a travelling salesman could survive and even prosper on commission alone, and this guy, in Willy Loman terms, must have been well liked, because he was good. He had also chosen a time at which my career was flourishing.

Yes. You sound surprised, but I had a very promising career. In fact, it promised and it delivered. I was quite amazingly successful as an actor. Sadly the profession made me a) dissatisfied with what most people would term a very comfortable and satisfactory situation and b) overly romantic. This sharp-suited ambassador became a fairy godmother, his briefcase, that pop-up book of dreams, a magic wand.

The deal was like a joke or a legend, with an introductory beta tester offer. You just had to waive responsibility for anything that happened as a result and you could have what scientists, beauticians, knights and spacemen had been searching for since Adam and Eve noticed their first frown lines. A free subscription for life thrown in. The Fountain of Youth on tap.

I don't know what I was looking for. I only know that this seemed like it for well over twenty years. After that, however, when "early nights and green tea became ludicrous as an excuse and people started noticing, I began to notice my own body. It was like a stress ball ' you could punch it and squeeze it, stretch it and burn it, and it would bounce back, as beautiful as before. I was like the wicked queen in Snow White, enraged by the mirror's answer, infuriated by the beauty still remaining despite my best efforts. Yeah, nothing changing, that was the worst. The knowledge that nothing would change, that I was stuck in this wrinkle-free sarcophagus for as long as my life span would play out, watching the people around me fall to pieces, organ by organ, cell by cell.

I can admit now that I made a mistake and then, a part-second before it occurred to me that I had done so, I made the same mistake, and that, like the original, became irreversible. Perhaps I will make the mistake again, if I am permitted to. I find it hard to believe any more that I am in control of my own errors, but that may just be laziness, or a stab, if this is found, at claiming diminished responsibility when I am called to account for the awful things I have done, am doing and will still do.

As I sit here, the weak acid droplets squeaking down the pane, I stroke with revulsion my peace lily cheek and firm hips, before winding the cocoon of muslin and mesh around my head once more.

I'm sixty this year, and guess what, Mr Careers Counsellor? I have absolutely no idea what to do with my life.

* * *

Insa

I'm going the fuck out. Cadderine is watching back-to-back Gilligan movies for the seventh time this week and Mum is standing by the kettle, boiling it dry. I don't care if it's raining. I don't care if I have a curfew. Frankly I don't care if Mum does have the coronary she has promised to have if I do leave her. I doubt it's because I'm such an invaluable crutch to her. More likely it's just that she's sick of watching "The Dream Garden and listening to Cadderine repeat every line.

I'm going out and by God, I'm going to give mum something to worry about. I should be getting tanked on cheaply imported Slavic spirits, falling out of my top at some dive bar, catching a different STD for every letter of the alphabet. I should at least have HAD sex in these past few months. I realised this when I found myself masturbating in a communal area and realised I had no idea how long my hand had been in my pants. Besides, I know it's a bad sign to look at every vaguely appropriate shape and consider its ease of insertion. Deodorant bottle ' 8.5/10, broom handle ' 6 (angle troublesome, risk of splinters), rolling pin (bookmark on that one. Easy in, easy out.). It's a clear indicator that I should get out more.

I don't say goodbye. Instead I walk outside, nay, nearly catch myself swaggering outside. I'm a cowboy, a duellist. I'm going out and no nutty mother can stop me. And I am not going to see any fucking film. As I crunch down the gravel, I know without looking that Mum is standing, Bates-like, in the window on the first floor. I don't stop. It feels as though I am waking up from a deep drunken, unsatisfactory sleep. Why have I actually stayed indoors for so long? I'm halfway through my twenties and fully functional mentally and physically. I panic, much as a hypnotist's subject panics, at realising they may have been onstage, chicken-walking and talking to lampshades at someone else's fingersnap, deaf to the laughter ringing through the auditorium. What have I actually been doing these past few weeks?

I walk past a poster for a Gilligan release. A lipsticked face beams out at me, holding a plant pot with a comically drooping plant inside. The caption reads "She meant so well. The title I forget. Dead eyes follow me like surveillance cameras. Damn you Cadderine.