Boy Parts

‘You don’t need to feel embarrassed, Sturges. Like, honestly, it confounds me how much working-class talent goes to waste. Like, if me or the David Frenches of this world have a bit of a breakdown, it’s like… we spring back because Daddy always knows someone. It’s just not fair that your career gets completely fucking derailed because of your mental health, you know?’

I’m glad she’s still quantifying how much she wants to do stuff by how many dicks she’d suck to do it. I have a very clear memory of her grabbing my face in Heaven and complaining about the fact we were in a gay club with no ‘viable targets’. I’d suck twenty dicks to suck a dick right now, Irina.

He catches me looking at him, and I smile. He smiles back, though it’s awkward, and he walks away when we break eye contact. I’m in an aquarium – if you tap on the glass the fish swim away

with honey than with vinegar. And Eddie from Tesco is a fly, but he’s got a taste for vinegar. It’s like vinegar is all he’s ever had from people, and now he doesn’t even know what honey tastes like

‘Ah, well,’ he says. ‘You always used to say you only went out with me ’cause you felt sorry for me, didn’t you, Yvonne?’ says Dad. Mam grunts. ‘I remember asking her out at the disco. Have we told you this story, love?’

‘No,’ I say, as Mam says she’s heard it a thousand times. I have; it just winds her up. I think it’s the equivalent of someone who had a terrible car accident being told the story of how they nearly turned left, but turned right instead, and drove straight into a truck

thigh (fingers still strapped up, it’s a close-up crotch shot); a photo of a man I
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don’t remember feeding me a shot (angle’s awkward, I must have taken this without a tripod). There’s one of me taking what I assume is cocaine off a very big man’s chest, and then a photo of him choking me.

Honestly, I reckon if I’d dumped the cutting photo, I wouldn’t have had any faff. It’s a bit OTT, on reflection, a bit self-consciously edgy.

I only half-remember my presentation – when you do a crit, you have to explain your work to your group – because I was on this massive comedown, and I was just shaking, sweating, explaining each photo, and I snapped at the tutor, ‘You wanted me to level the fucking playing field, so here you go: it’s level!’

David French was the first person to say anything. Are you okay, Irina? And then I think someone said it was brave for me to be so candid about my mental health issues, and then the tutor sent everyone to get a cuppa, and held me back, telling me he had to inform someone.

Like nipples and swastikas are chill, but a bit of GHB and self-harm and it’s all ooo, u ok hun?

I pull out the one where I’m pissing, the blue vomit, the cut thigh and the bruisey-GHB face for the book.

I find a photo that doesn’t fit with the others. One I was fairly certain I’d burned. It’s me, somewhere green. Me by a dead old tree with a great hollow mouth. My arms are folded, and my hair is bobbed to my chin, face blank. Bobbed hair means it’s MA. And the tree means I should have burned this. I rip the photo in half, and into quarters, then eighths. I throw all the scraps in the bin, but eat the chunk with my face on it.

I do a sicky burp, so I call it a night

It is during this period of my life that I’m advised to level the playing field. And I think I did level it. I got the idea to build a self-portrait out of a bunch of self-portraits. Like a snapshot of Irina, at this moment in time, warts and all.

It didn’t go down well with the tutors. My work got pulled from the show, and I got referred to the uni’s counselling services.

First picture from this set, I have a bruised cheek, a bruised neck and a burnt mouth. It’s a portrait from the shoulders up. I’m not wearing a shirt, my hair is pulled back, and I’m wearing no makeup. No makeup, but some no-makeup tricks: the telltale glisten of Vaseline on my lips, eyelids and cheekbones, my lashes artificially tinted and extended and my eyebrows tinted. My skin is milk-white, the bruises on my neck are purple, the one on my cheek is yellowing. The burns are red and angry.

The next, a photograph of my hip, moments before cutting it; after a moment; then a while: with the blood messy, claggy on my thigh. My fingers are strapped up in these, and my knuckles are black.

I’d set up my camera on a tripod next to my toilet, go for a night out, drink myself sick, and get Flo to take pictures of me instead of holding my hair back like she usually did. And she just did it, too, no questions asked. There are a few of me in the same position, different outfits, throwing up – in one picture I’m throwing up blue, and I honestly have no idea what I’d been drinking. There’s one of me pissing in the street, looking wistfully into the distance (I assume Flo took this); a photo of me in my underwear digging an ingrown hair out of the inside of my

You do anything enough, and you can get sick of it – particularly when you’re doing stuff to self-destruct, not because you actually like it.

I don’t go away after I’ve had my photo taken. I have to look at myself every day, so a collection of selfies, for me, is less of an exercise in narcissism, more a record of my own gradual decay

I didn’t turn heads, or get cat-called at all, and that put me in a foul mood. It’s annoying when it happens, but when you get used to it and it doesn’t happen – that feels worse.