Chapter 4 The exhibition

Forbidden sex-people

In my teens I became aware there were the one's they called Iconi. I also became aware of the fact they were forbidden fruit. My perfectly ordinary parents threw a garden party in the summer, there were neighbours and some closely-, and some loosely-connected business partners of my father, accompanied by their wives. One of them was Harry Pratnitt, a rather infamous man with a variety of business in his possession, in town. He was vulgar (so was his wife, they fit together perfectly, my father used to say, but invited them anyway) and definitely the loudest person on the party. He could very well be heard from the upper floor, where my sisters and I were supposed to be sleeping. It was a warm summer night, the windows were open and bursts of hilarity drifted up towards us. I had taken post by the windowsill, to not miss a thing. "a whore comes at the doctor's office." those kinds of jokes I never heard anywhere! I do not remember the ones about iconi, I remember registering the word...iconi, whores, transvestites... forbidden sex-people. Later, of course, I gained more, and on some occasions even intimate, knowledge about the other two categories, iconi remained a mystery. The world of sex-people was, as far I as could tell, a sad world. Addiction was round the corner and very few of them were able to escape their life of sex. Some did though, they became models or pop stars. Iconi were hard to find, neither in the limelight nor in the gutter. They seemed to be efficient protectors of their privacy, or miss the exhibitionistic tendencies of the others. I do remember a picture going from hand to hand, in a shadowy corner of the bike shed, after school. I was still allowed to hang around with the boys. The picture was a naked iconi, a beautiful girlish figure, sitting on her hand and knees, wearing nothing apart from a few leather straps around her waist, running in spirals down her legs to her ankles and High heeled black shoes. Her long black hair fell over her back and her head was tilted upwards. She had a look of utter pleasure on her face and was biting in a juicy peach. Her/his body was unbelievable; both tits and penis were hanging down from her beautiful shape, she looked very real. We all thought so. My friends were freaked out and reacted revolted, although every one wanted to look at the picture once more and hold it, have it, it was quite a tussle. I was sure the boys were not really saying what they thought. She was hot, no doubt about it. It was the double gender which confused and revolted them. Later in my life I moved from my perfectly ordinary, provincial town to more liberal scenes in the big city. One-gender couples were around and nobody seemed to make a big deal out of it. Iconi were still not around, but, frankly, I stopped looking for them. I started dating girls and enjoyed the new people I met. I started living the life I had dreamed of, far from my parents' disappointed eyes. Not everywhere I found people open-minded, Not within the police academy, or the police force. Police world is still quite a conservative one, you might find the odd gay man on reception, and lesbian street cop, but that is about it. I became 'the dike', of course. I was ignored when seen with a man, don't rock these people's boats! The lesbian scene, where I picked up my girlfriends, was more tight-knit and conventional than she liked to believe, I found that my occasional boyfriend was not encouraged. It was regarded as a phase, a temporary set back to old life, not a lasting tendency and by no means a set preference. I was regarded suspiciously. Now that I come to think of it, wherever I went, I seemed to have had to choose sides, do you want to belong to us, or to them... Even when my sympathy for the weirdo's and the misfits drove me into the arms of more dubious members of society, I still never met iconi. Two sexes in one person is perhaps nowhere an accepted state, being both, or neither is difficult for everyone. Iconi blur all the barriers between us and them

The exhibition

Strange how these things go, so one lives under the assumption that iconi are extinct, so one meets them almost weekly. I saw Aias again almost two weeks later in a pretentious gallery. I went with an artist friend to the always spectacular opening of the new Lula Wang exhibition. I loathed her work and had called it very close-up pornography, in one of the many heated discussions we had had about it. Neil admired her and called it Surrealism. We thought it would probably be fun to go together. It was ridiculously expensive to get in, and sold-out within two minutes, according to Neil, but he managed to get tickets anyway. Every new show of her opened with some excitement, she had strip-dancers one year, she made people grope around in the dark for half an hour another year. This year, we, the ticket holders, the lucky few, had to enter through some sorts curtain/shower of gooey, jelly stuff. We were uncomfortably sticky when we entered the museum.
"Everybody sufficiently lubricated." I mumbled in Neil's ear, he snickered,
"I wish she'd stuck to dancers." he mumbled back as we stepped into the first chamber. The room was softly lit and warm and moist. I peered around for a steam machine, but I spotted none. I did spot Aias. I felt a thrill, like an electric current run down my body instantly. He was standing, slender and straight, together with a small, rather bizarre group of people. Two tall, skinny girls, exactly alike, both very black and wearing only hot-pants and bra's. A big tattooed guy with an impressive beard, two artistic looking hipsters in their thirties and the Artist herself, with one slender arm around... my iconi!
(That was wrong! I know now; my icone would be correct.)
She was a small fantastic looking Japanese on very high heels, she wore a complicated fuchsia red dress with lots of wavy layers of cloth, her hair, shiny and black was wrapped in an also complicated looking bun on top of her head. Her age was impossible to guess. Aias was a boy this time, he wore a suit and his blond hair was tied back in a ponytail in his neck. He spotted me, his eyes lingered on me for a bit, and he smiled a tiny smile that could mean anything. The show consisted of us, around thirty people, following Lula and her entourage through the damp and suggestively lit rooms. She told us about the paintings, she was not particularly witty or funny. The paintings were still very close-up porn, but I was interested now, scanning the pictures for clues, for things I might recognize. I was sure it was people, she painted, preferably their most intimate parts... had she been hanging over his naked body with her dirty little paintbrushes? I couldn't tell, I had not been paying attention when I had Aias into my bed, eager as I was to devour him. I had no idea what to look for, how to recognize his body, if it were not for the obvious things. While Lula talked and pointed at particular parts of her painting, he stood there with the rest of the group, serene, not contributing to the conversation but laughing at the acquired moment. 'Oh Aias, you think you master the art of blending in, but you could never stop standing out, at least, to me,' I thought. There was mumbling and clapping, she pulled Aias to her side and moved on, we moved after her. Her hand slid down his buttocks, he was wearing a suit, therefore the pants did not have any back-pockets, but I was sure, if it had, she would have slid her fingers into it. I felt hot with jealousy, for some unfathomable reason, I had decided, post-one-fuck, that Aias was mine. I laughed a little at myself, shaking my head.
"Had enough, yet?" Neil whispered behind me, I had almost forgotten he was there!
"No, no, I think it is very interesting." I did not even lie, to mock him but I knew he thought I did.
"Hang on 'till the bar, drinks are free." I grinned at him, because he was cool and it was a funny little reminder of me, never turning down a free drink. I had no intention to drink though, iconi were here, I needed myself sober and obedient to rationality. In the next room I searched for the hand and the buttocks, but Aias had already taken up his formation, as a loose group around Lula Wang. She stood next to a gigantic painting of a nipple, or some piece of over-ripe fruit, or a rather fleshy volcano. She blabbered on about coagulated emotive energy.
'Hmm' I though, 'volcano wasn't bad, then, nipple wasn't bad either.' she stroked the nipple while talking more and more excitedly about catharsis.
' You bet, catharsis! With him in your bed!' I thought grimly amused.
Then I glance up and meet your eye, your face gives nothing away, but your eyes twinkle with irony. You want to laugh, you think she's hilarious, stroking that big brown nipple. I see you, and we understand. You might have been feeling it for a while, I am thankful you searched me to share it with. That crazy sergeant detective will get it, you thought and I get it. I grin and your expression becomes a tad more exasperated, you up-dose the comic effect. I grin wider and I love you...
The exhibition truly became fun. In every new room Aias glanced at me quickly, with every time a new expression, subtle but distinct, of boredom, exasperation, irritation. Only once during every painting-talk. I had to pay attention, I had to look as if I was listening, not look at Aias too conspicuously, but still catch his eye at the right time and look straight back. Neil was somewhere in the back of my mind, I was again, not paying attention to him, it was not his eye I wanted to catch. Hopefully he would mistake my fascination for being captivated by Lula Wang and her artwork. Fine by me, I was enormously entertained, I became very good in not looking in Aias' direction, but still catching his look when he put it on me. I threw in a difficulty level by turning up in a different place in the small crowd, every time we moved, but his accuracy matched mine. He caught me without wavering, every time...would his spidey-sense be tingling?

The after-party

Then it was over, there was a loud applause. I felt disorientated, I looked for Aias, but Lula had shot off towards the bar taking her entourage with her even before the applause had completely died out. The party dispersed quickly. I spotted Neil, he hovered around the bulk of people that now surrounded the bar and tried to get to Lula. I pulled his sleeve,
"Let's do a little round, it's too crowded there" I nodded in the direction of the bar.
"Let's get a drink first." Everywhere appeared waitresses with trays full of glasses balancing on their hands. Neil plucked two glasses off a passing tray, I wavered... I was feeling good, one glass of champagne wouldn't spiral me into a drunken haze... We entered the last room we'd just gone out of, against the current, that's how I liked it.
"Penis and beginning of left ball." I said, I pointed at the large painting, dominating the room. Neil huffed,
"Cheers!" he said and stretched out his glass to me, we clinked, we drank.
"But seriously, "I said animatedly, I put my glass down on the floor.
"Here is the soft arc of the shaft... the head would be about... here. I took a pass back and stroked the imaginary penis-head. He laughed out loudly now.
"And here" I went on, "here, it grows softer, do you see? It changes into the skin of the ball-sack... which would be, would it continue... about here." I stepped into the other direction and stroked the gigantic imaginary ball-sack. Neil was in a fit of laughter. I picked up my champagne, grinning at him. I was goofing around, channelling my inner exhilaration, I guess. But I had to give it to him, I did like the artwork better, now that I had been forced to look at each painting for a long time. I still did see intimate body-parts on display, but if I tried to look behind what was for me the obvious, something started to shift. It was a little spooky even, some desolate landscape hid under the flesh. Apocalyptic, almost. We talked about these things for a while. Neil told me the artwork always reminded him of dolphins. As a teenager he had swum with dolphins several times, with his nephew who was dying of cancer. I saw nothing dolphinish in the paintings at all but the animals, or the cancer, had made a lasting impression on young Neil.
"Their texture, soft and hard, their skin, smooth but not slippery... I don't know, I always think these paintings should feel like dolphins.
"Did he die? In the end?" a girl swooped by and exchanged our empty glasses for full ones.
"Yes. He lasted another year after our last dolphin-ride. They ran out of things he wanted to do."
"Jesus, that is so sad! Did he not think of new things?"
"He was pretty ill, the doable things had more or less ran out." We wandered through several more rooms when I noticed the apocalyptic magic had worn off, and I was fed up with Lula Wang's art and with the pretentious remarks that I heard other people make about it. Neil was not hard to convince to return to the bar to see if they served anything other than champagne. He, of course, wanted to see if the number of people surrounding Lula would have gone down, I, of course, would look for Aias. But they weren't there, neither of them. Apparently Lula had abandoned her court to smoke a cigarette, but was taking her time. Her entourage, except for Aias had stuck around to entertain the remaining fans. Some people were waiting for their return, others were no longer concerned and mingled joyously.

The toilets

'Cigarettes... huh?' I was suspicious at once, I left Neil at the bar and walked through the hall to the backdoor. They might be in the garden. An angry dragon was awakening in my stomach.

'Cigarettes. That fucking whore! Which one of the two?' my mind interrupted its self. I was very hot and angry, I could just imagine how she'd towed him off to somewhere, under the assumption of needing a smoke, and was getting her dirty little paintbrushes all over him.

'and so what?' my mind asked again, ' what's that to you?' Nothing of course, Aias was a man with a job to do, and he did also, voluntarily spend a night with me. That was all there was to it. And if she was doing what I thought she was doing on her premier exhibition-night, I could only admire her for it, really.

'Don't kid yourself Janet, it would be exactly the kind of thing you would have loved to get away with!'

I took a quick look through the back yard, which was just a small gravel pit, really. Why is it that often very fancy buildings have such pitiful gardens? I went back in, scanning for an extra room, storeroom, kitchenette... I passed a toilet and went in. It was tiny. Small sink in the middle, two doors on either side. One of the toilets was occupied. I went into the other and locked the door. I put the toilet lid down and sat on it, listening to whatever sound would come out of the neighbouring toilet. I heard a snicker and a 'shhh' I heard some moving around. The 'shh' would probably have been Aias, but there was not enough voice in the sound to be sure. My self reprimand had not worked, I was very wound up, for some reason I felt betrayed. Even though Aias had made no secret of the fact that he was paid to provide pleasure, he had not been when he visited me, in my motel room. It had felt... well, special. And there was my special boy, fucking a pretentious Japanese painter in a toilet! She was definitely groaning..oh my god, this was so bold! They were really doing it! I did not know what to do or to feel. In my wilder days I might have banged their door and made a scene, instead I just flushed the toilet. I realised that was my cue to leave, of course. I washed my hands in the little sink, it was dead quiet next door. I could just open and close the door, stay and hear what happened next, but I decided I did not want to hear how things proceeded and left the toilet. I still heard it, though, I didn't leave completely. I retreated to a dark corner of the corridor, where I sat down in a chair and heard her muffled joyous cries. Not many minutes later she came out, a huge grin on her face and a new wave of jealousy hit me. She looked quite tidy, her hair still in that bun, she was even wearing lipstick! Some women were unbelievable. She strolled back to her waiting fans, (Neil would be happy) she didn't notice me at all. Aias did. He came out several minutes after her.

I knew it, I knew it! God if I would have gotten a penny for each time I thought that I would be a rich girl now. One day it will be carved into my grave stone: Here lies Jane Mc'Caully, she bloody knew it!

Aias lingered in the doorway in a beam of light, coming out of the toilet, he turned to my shadowy corner and said:

"Hello sergeant detective." He really did have a spidey-sense! I felt a bit like I was caught, listening in on my parents, or something.

"Who would have thought an exhibition would be such a ball?" I said rather sharply, Aias was coming towards me, he was now in the shadow too, I couldn't see his expression.

"Have you been hitting the bar?" he asked, with a slight mock in his voice that sparked my anger,

"have you been fucking in a toilet?" I shot back, to my irritation sounding more hurt than I wanted to.

"I am sorry." Aias said, without elaborating, he was in front of me now, I felt at a disadvantage, I never should have sat down, I should have prepared for something to say... as if he'd read my mind, he squatted down in front of my chair, and we were on an equal footing. I looked at him, a handsome young gentleman, with a slick suit and a ponytail, despite myself and my jealousy, I was entertained. He looked at me, thoughtful and curious,

"are you jealous?" Hmpf, what an impertinent question! I wanted to snap but then I realised a second ago I was really entertained...easy Janet, I told myself.

"Well, yes," I heard myself say instead, "I want her to get lost and I want you all for myself." Quite a confession, for me, but Aias didn't really react, he was brooding. He looked me in the eyes and leaned towards me, ever so slowly, coming closer.

"Where do you stay?" he was so close now, I could smell him. Hmm, delicious!

"I live here, two blocks away... will you come over?" There was no hiding the need in my voice, "later, when the party's finished?"

"It might take a while.." he whispered to my cheek, I turned my face and put my mouth on his, his lips were cool and tasted of peppermint. I was aware of feeling my heartbeat all over my body. God, I wanted him badly. I released his mouth and whispered:

"come anyway" and slipped my address card, that I had gotten out of my back-pocket, in his hand.

Your family

Did I tell you I hate your family? I probably did, or you know it anyway. They hate me as well, I know it, although no one has ever said any such thing to me. I can't stand their eery perfection and politeness. If you enter the family home, (one of them at least, you have a large family, with a lot of homes) you wouldn't say you struggle to survive, or to pay all the bills, at least, and most of you are still working in the sex-industry, regardless of the new law, to get by. You live like upper-class. You dress and talk like a peculiar upper-class clan. When I saw you amongst your kind some things fell into place, I could distinguish the trades you had inherited and cultivated and the ones you had quite of your own. I had noticed a certain detached melancholy, but seeing your family I realised you were all detached. You didn't really belong to the world and you knew it. The melancholy was entirely of your own. The rest just didn't care enough. I had underestimated the loyalty of a group, so close, so apart from everyone else around it.

I hate the way they drift almost soundlessly through the dark house, popping up like elegant white ghosts, at most unexpected times. And the erotic current, ever present, running through your household...yes, it is me saying this, many would not believe it; your family is too sexy to take. In your house the atmosphere seems charged, like the air before a thunderstorm. Everyone seems always on the verge of something, like exploding in a string of sexual acts, no glance, no touch seems free of it. Nothing is innocent, even when you have a short talk with your mother, of all people (or should I say; the person who's vagina you came out of?) it seems ever so likely you will soon be engaging into a moist and sweaty shag.

Or is it just me? Is being surrounded by all that beauty and elegance just too stimulating for me?