Nudes

I STILL CAN’T wash at home because the water is not safe.

‘It never bothered you before,’ says Stephen, as I pour a bottle of mineral water into the sink and splash myself—a lick and a promise, that leaves a trail of bubbles dying on my arm. It bothers me now. Smells sit on my new skin like turds on a kitchen floor. Yet every time I clean myself, I become too clean; my arms more languorous, my knuckles more dimpled, my flesh so soft I am afraid it might tear.

So I take a towel into work and shower at the station, though I don’t trust the water there either. I read the names on the dressing-room doors and pick someone who will not be in until the afternoon, a newsreader. I could become a very clean pervert, I could sneak people in for a fee—Shower With The Famous. Terry Wogan’s bottom slapped against that wall. The stall is indefinably public, an empty archive full of all the flesh that was never shown on screen. It is discreet, blind, a television turned inside out. When you twist the knob you expect a voice to spill out instead of water.

‘A crisis in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism,’ says the showerhead. ‘Minister of Agriculture moves on animal drug abuse’, as I soap between the perfection of my toes and back to the soft handful of my heel.

‘Bishop says no to Aids test.’ There is no hair on my shin anymore. I soap the white swell of my thigh. It is not a modern body, wherever I got it from. And now it has no pubic hair.

‘Ceasefire in Belfast,’ says the water. I have no pubic hair.

I step out of the shower still itchy with soap. The dressing-room is a pornographic booth. The mirror is unembarrassed, wiped blind of all the faces, known and forgotten, who have talked into it as though half the country was watching on the other side; have stood there naked, looked into their own eyes and said ‘Hello, and you’re very welcome.’

The body that looks back at me is nine years old, or fourteen mixed with nine, or my own, mixed with all the bodies I used to have. I wonder if I am a virgin again. I should ask Marcus. He seems to know what it means.

It is while I am there, as the hammering starts on the door, with one of the nation’s most trusted voices speaking to me in tones that would shock the nation, that I become resolved.

‘What the fuck are you doing in my dressing-room?’

‘Thinking,’ I say. I think that I will stop washing and dress in the dark. I think I will cover my body like the memory it is and just sweat it out. I think I will get my own back. When I come back from Brittany I will bring Stephen in for his audition.