Ménage (27 page)

She slid off me slowly and let me go and I slid from the chair, my eyes tight closed again, pinching my cock head, so as to delay. My pants, still round one foot, had thrown me a little and I soon kicked them off and found my way round her solid thighs to her buttocks. Eyes closed, I followed her sounds and smells. Above my head in the dark I could hear sounds of her frantic movements and smelled her musky sex. Suddenly a finger touched my chin. In my mind I saw her hands between her legs, vigorously fingering her cunt. She pulled my chin closer. I raised my tongue into her taste and followed the salt mucous trail of her engorged clit. I smothered my face in her, soaking from eyes to chin as her juices flowed. Her pelvis bucked and she whimpered. She ground her pelvis into my cheekbones, her cunt quivering. Then all sounds were lost as her thighs gripped my cheeks and the first orgasm spasmed through her.

I tried to form an image of our positions in the room. But all sense of space had gone, and as a hand touched my cheek and shoulder I could not sense if it was his or hers. There was a movement, something fell and the fingers had left me. I had to see.

Through half-shut eyes, I glimpsed a sight unberable in its perfection. The light had fallen to the side and cast a thin sliver down one side of her perfectly shadowed form. She was on her knees, her buttocks in the air, her sex hidden in darkness. As she arched her back the light caught the rise
of
her spine, causing a perfect white line to rise from her anus up through her waist along the widening of the ribs, between the dark arcs of her shoulder blades to the curve of her neck, to disappear, finally, into the darkness of her head. This white line then seemed to continue, disembodied as the hard shaft of Saul’s cock. I looked down and there too was my cock, a line of light.

She moved, groaning, onto me then, and I vanished into her wetness. I looked up and Saul’s cock was once again revealed. In that state of delirium it seemed as if our sexes were the continuation of her spine. As she pulled back from him, she sucked me in deeper; as she moved away from me, so she took him in. I looked to Saul but his eyes were on her. Her pelvis was bucking, her juices wet on my leg. I was close to coming so made my body still and tried to control my muscles. But her cunt gripped me tight and Saul’s slow thrusts rippled through her spine and I could hear them both gasping and could no longer bear it. With a scream she threw herself onto her back, reaching for our cocks, as her body bucked and howled. His eyes shot to mine, eye to eye, cocks in her hands, his jism sprayed high over her neck and breasts and I poured over her stomach and we fell into her open arms.

As we slowly found our breath we stared into each other. Eyes wide open.

fn1
. The work was made at around the same time, February 1993, as the Operation Spanner trial in the UK, a legal first in which a group of homosexual masochists were charged with aiding and abetting violence against themselves. This so-called ‘victimless crime’ raised an outcry among civil liberties groups until a tape was leaked demonstrating the extent of the acts, at which point such groups found it hard or embarrassing to be legally defending men who nailed each other’s penises to planks of wood.

fn2
. Report on the legal battle over the inclusion of
Trust
in the annual art fair, Basel, Germany,
Guardian
, 12 October 2003.

fn3
. The surrealists, situationists and various non-art-based anarchist communes and left-wing revolutionary groups attempted to live beyond the narrow confines of the given culture, trying to decondion on themselves, whether it be through rules on communal sexual sharing of partners, or rotas for eating, washing, childcare, etc. Or, in the case of the surrealists, by rejecting ethics in favour of rules determined by aesthetics, such as committing ‘daily acts of absurdity’. The many ‘escape attempts’ by radical groups have resulted in terrible inversions. Communes in Germany and Holland in the seventies and eighties conducted interrogations of members who questioned the free-sex-sharing rotas, resulting in rape, the victims being largely women and children (many cases of child sex abuse have followed). Men, and usually one dominant male,
asserted
the rules that regulated the subservient behaviour of the entire alternative community. Similarly, the surrealists were notorious for bullying, humiliating and banishing their own members for matters as apparently trivial as choice of clothes or music. While the leaders of such anti-groups may have felt powerless in the dominant culture, their isolated world ruled by aesthetic taste became more tyrannical than the conventional bourgeois order it opposed. The idea that ‘we cannot change the world so we must transform ourselves’ led to many desperate, immoral acts. See Georges Bataille’s plans for a surrealist murder, 1912, in which a real victim was picked for ritualistic slaughter in an act intended as a communal rite of passage.

THE WORK COMPRISES
video footage three hours and forty-two minutes in duration. The image is of two almost naked young men asleep on the same bed. It starts in near darkness, and then grows lighter as ambient early-morning light starts to fill the room. The men go through a series of different sleeping positions: at first with an empty space between them, then facing each other but apart, then with backs to each other, then gradually moving closer till ultimately they are holding each other. The sequence abruptly ends when in full daylight, one of the men wakes and tries to cover the lens, violently.

The footage seems almost anthropological in its unyielding gaze. As such it evokes the earlier structuralist works of Warhol, such as
Sleep
(1963) and
Eat
(1961), which documented ‘real’ events in real time. The significant difference, though, is that whereas the Warhol footage was filmed with the use of a tripod (and in many instances the camera was left unattended, without an operator) Shears’s work is hand-held, betraying the constant and subtly shifting presence of the camera operator.

The audio is in real time, the sounds of the men, moving in their sleep, snoring, one of them mumbles to himself. Also, the sound of the camera/operator/artist breathing is audible throughout and on two brief occasions whispers can be heard, although no words are discernible.

Viewers are often touched by the ‘vulnerability’ of the sleeping men. Others have been moved by the subtle humour in the negotiation for space on the bed, and possession of the quilt. Others still talk about the beauty of watching man, ‘the sleeping animal’.

The irony is that the one thing that is not represented in the image, i.e. the artist, is the presence that is often felt the greatest. Some viewers have been disturbed by the presence behind the camera. The viewer is never far from being reminded that there is an unseen person (a woman) in the room recording the sleepers. For some, this presence has been described as ‘gentle’, ‘a compassionate gaze’, an act ‘of devotion or love’, the title ‘Watch Over Me’ implying romantic associations, or care and perhaps even maternal responsibility – to watch one’s children/friends as they sleep. The fact that the camera had been held in the artist’s hand throughout the three hours and forty-two minutes implies an act of endurance and hence commitment, if not to the people within the frame, then at least to the act of watching. Others find it disturbing to be placed in the position of silent watcher.

The duration, too, is unsettling, forcing many to ask the question: what could possibly be the mental state of someone who watches two men sleeping for nearly four hours? The lack of ‘anything happening’ on-screen has led some viewers to run out, not from boredom, but with a ‘dreadful sense of foreboding’, of ‘something terrible about to happen’. The constant sound of the artist’s breath has been described as ‘terrifying’.
^fn1

The title also raises serious questions. As the filmed subjects are plural, the ‘me’ of the title cannot have originated from the ‘them’ (or if only from one of them then this would imply that consent had been given only by the one). The ‘watch over me’ seems, by inversion, to be a request from the watcher/artist. But why would she ask two sleeping men to watch over her? This provokes many further issues. One such is that, perhaps, in cultural terms, it is a question the artist could not ask of the men when they were awake. A woman asking two men to care for her could be seen as weak, as conventionally stereotyped feminine behaviour, so she utters it quietly to herself, almost in shame. The work
triggers
many such conflicting interpretations, questions and, indeed, emotions.

Gertrude Wellbeck
^fn2
claims that Shears has deliberately turned the tables on gender, rendering the men portrayed as ‘castrated’, passive objects, and that the filming is a violent act of ‘reclamation’, ‘a secret, subversive act of control’. Thus raising serious questions about consent and trust.

One incident on the footage that some have found contentious is as follows. When the first man wakes he tries to stop the filming, covering the lens with his hand. The sudden abrupt movement and violence of the action is in stark contrast to the preceding three hours and forty-one minutes of restful peace. This aggression seems to imply that a violation of consent has taken place. Other feminist readings of the work have found Shears’s blurring of boundaries around gender and interpersonal consent highly problematic – as ‘violation’, ‘an inverted rape fantasy’.
^fn3

It has been noted that numbers of viewers watch the footage for in excess of fifteen minutes.
^fn4
As with other duration-based artworks there is considerable debate as to whether the piece must be viewed in its entirety for complete appreciation of the work to be possible.
^fn5

A point of interest is that this footage was shot in 1993 but not exhibited till 1997. Over the issue of consent, this could only be addressed if the men in the footage had been identified. To date, the sleeping men have not come forward or raised objection to their portrayal.

IT WAS THEIR
first attempt at shopping together. Molly was sitting in the trolley baby chair, even though all had acknowledged that she was too ‘grown up’ for that now. Owen was pushing the trolley as Dot marched on ahead and Saul followed behind. Owen stared down at the almost empty trolley – so far, after many squabbles over brand names and whether they should be shopping organic or free range and exactly what it was they should be buying for dinner for four, all they had managed to buy was a bunch of bananas. The idea, which Owen was growing tired of, was that collectively they could decide on a meal together. Dot was fed up with the bickering and left them to it.

‘Something big, to feed us all,’ she said. ‘I’m off to find some nuts.’

Owen pushed Molly to the poultry aisle with Saul in tow. An elderly woman with a basket of leeks had stared at them passing, perhaps, Owen thought, assuming they were a gay couple. Stupid bitch, he thought. Yes, he was a bit tetchy, since Saul was round every day now, and sleeping over twice a week.

A large chicken was thrust in his face. ‘You think this’ll do?’ asked Saul.

Molly giggled. ‘Tofu!’ she said.

Owen turned to her. ‘Sorry, Mummy wants a big thing.’

‘Tofu.’

‘You know you need more meat, don’t you,’ Saul said, ‘if you’re going to grow up big and strong? Chicken tastes just like tofu anyway.’

This week Saul had convinced Dot that her largely
vegetarian
diet was not suitable for a growing child. In subtle ways Saul, Owen thought, was starting to be his old controlling self.

‘Oops. This one’s not organic,’ said Saul. And rummaged around getting another. Owen saw the price.

‘No way, fourteen pounds for a bloody chicken.’

‘Bloody chicken. Bloody chicken,’ Molly repeated.

‘Shh,’ Owen hissed.

‘Don’t talk to her like that,’ Saul said.

Enough, thought Owen as he grabbed another chicken. Already Saul was shaking his head.

‘Uh-uh, full of chemicals, hormones, all kinds of shit. Dot’ll never agree to it.’

Really, how would you know what she’d agree to, you dole-scrounging scum? Owen thought.

Owen put his chosen chicken in the trolley. Saul picked it back out again and got the first one back.

‘I’m not paying for that!’ Owen said. ‘You can buy it for yourself if you want.’ A low blow, he knew, since Saul was after all in the pay of Dot.

‘Tofu!’ shouted Molly.

Saul walked off. ‘Where you going?’ Owen called after him.

‘To get some bloody tofu.’

‘Bloody tofu, bloody tofu,’ Molly sang.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t cook chicken and tofu.’

‘Why not, since we can’t agree? Molly can have tofu, you can have cheapo chicken and me and Dot’ll have the organic one.’

That was it. That made him mad.

‘That would require three ovens!’

Owen pushed Molly at speed towards Saul in the tofu aisle.

‘That’s just typical of you, why don’t we all eat in separate rooms too, for that matter, in different houses?!’

Molly had reached into the trolley and yanked a banana off the bunch. She pointed it at Saul’s face, making peeooow peeooow gun noises, then at Owen’s. He grabbed it from her.

‘OK, OK,’ Saul said. ‘Tofurkey!’

‘What?’

‘Tofurkey, tofurkey.’ Molly repeated.

‘What are you talking about?’

Saul held the package up to his face.

Tofurkey. Turkey-flavoured tofu in breast-like strips.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Owen shouted. A teenager with her mother scuttled past, embarrassed.

‘Look, it’s my money, we’re eating in my house so I’m choosing, OK?!’

‘Tofurkey, tofurkey,’ yelled Molly.

‘Fine, abandon democracy then, it’s always easier to have a dictator.’

‘Tofurkey! Tofurkey!’

‘Are you attacking my fucking politics now?’

‘I’m going to hold my breath!’ Molly shouted.

Oh, Jesus. She took a deep breath and held it. Saul stared at her, perplexed.

‘We have to get her to stop, she faints. Dot’ll kill us!’

‘Ridiculous,’ Saul said.

The kid was turning bright red, eyes tight shut.

‘Fine,’ Saul declared. ‘I’m going to hold my breath too, till she starts behaving!’

Saul took a very audible deep breath and crossed his arms. All around in the aisles, shoppers were staring. This was madness. Molly was turning purple and Saul competing in a bloated crimson.

‘Please, both of you, stop it. Everyone’s looking. Mummy will be here soon.’

Just then he saw Molly open one eye and peer at Saul. Saul was turning light blue, his cheeks like balloons. Molly took a deep breath and reached to shake Saul.

‘MUMMA! MUMMA, HELP!’

Owen turned and there was Dot standing before them with armfuls of food. ‘My God, what’s wrong?’

Saul finally gasped for breath and started wheezing. Molly hugged him.

Sheepishly, Owen tried to explain, but Molly interrupted.

‘He went all like a balloon and zombie, Mumma, scary.’ She promised she would never ever hold her breath again. ‘Ever ever ever.’

‘Good, well, I’m glad we’ve achieved something here,’ Dot said. ‘But I see you still haven’t decided what we’re eating tonight.’

‘Chicken,’ Owen said.

‘Turkey,’ Saul.

‘Tofurkey,’ Molly.

That was it. Owen started laughing and Saul did the same. They had to hold each other to stop themselves from falling back into the substitute meats section as Dot pushed Molly away, shaking her head.

‘Boys.’

Owen had to admit that there were basic material improvements, what with Saul taking Molly to nursery each morning, then picking her up at three and taking her to the park and then feeding her. Which all gave Dot an extra three hours in her studio each day to prepare for Zurich and extra time to resume her apartment search.

And yes, Saul could cook. To Owen’s great surprise Mister Pot Noodle had become the new Jamie Oliver. In the last week they’d eaten ratatouille, fricasseed chicken with plum sauce, Thai green curry, and Moroccan bean stew with a ‘harissa sauce’ that Saul and Molly had ground from the unused spices in the rack that had for years been little more than decoration.

And Saul had a way with the child. He talked to Molly
in
a quiet voice, slow and clear, sometimes so quiet that she had to come closer to hear. In only two weeks the holding of breath and the tantrums had vanished completely.

It had been lunchtime and Owen could hear them next door in the kitchen.

‘If you have ice cream and want to bounce on your trampoline at the same time then what would happen if you bounce too high?’

‘I’ll drop my ice cream.’

‘And it would be all over the trampoline, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And would you want to bounce on a trampoline covered in ice cream?’

‘Yuck!’

‘So we do one thing at a time,’ Saul told her. ‘We sit down and eat the ice cream and it tastes so much better because we’re concentrating on every mouthful, and when we go on the trampoline it’s better, isn’t it, not with the ice cream?’

‘Of course!’

‘Do we see a man riding a bike and eating pizza at the same time?’

‘No.’

‘Do we see an elephant making paintings and jumping at the same time?’

‘No, that’s silly.’

‘And why’s that?

‘Cos if you do two things at the same time it always gets into a mess.’

‘So clever, did you work that all out for yourself?’

And the old man was quiet, non-intrusive. He had not drunk a drop of alcohol since he’d arrived. Owen had even started to feel guilty about checking the bottle every day after Saul had been there.

And Saul’s gentleness was not that of a scheming interlocutor. He seemed to really be a man who walked about as
if
any passing accidental thing might shatter his whole self. He was gentle with Molly because he needed to be gentle with himself. Saul now found cars and music too loud, and light too bright and avoided the television and seemed almost threatened when Dot talked about the daily news. So strange, Dot had even started trying to make up questions for him just to get him to speak. And the man’s silent smile. How he seemed to listen, to take his time to process what had been said, then smile as if it would take longer still. They had almost joked about it – how they almost missed the old Saul.

On the nights when the adults stayed up late talking, it was agreed that it would be easier if Saul just slept over. Owen did not object and so prepared the sofa bed in his study.

Owen came in with the bedding. Saul stood there, looking sheepish, holding his child psychology book.

‘You sure this is OK? I could get a taxi back.’

‘No, it’s fine, really.’

‘Sorry to be any . . .’

It was a thing that Owen did not want to admit, but since Saul’s arrival, the intimacy between him and Dot had grown. They made love now with a careful attention to nuance in mood and sense and touch. Dot said it was because she was getting another two hours of sleep each night, as Saul put Molly to bed, but he sensed it was also something to do with Saul’s proximity.

In their bed, as she reached for his cock beneath the duvet and laughed and whispered, ‘Shh, we’ll be quiet,’ Owen found himself replying to a question she had not even asked.

‘It’s OK, he can stay as many nights as you like . . . well, I mean, till things are sorted out.’

On the video he and Saul lay fast asleep. Saul wrapped his toes round Owen’s and Owen reached back and held him. Dawn light was seeping in. Dot’s breath could be heard from behind the camera.

It was midday and Owen was sitting alone before the PC and the VCR. The entire tape lasted nearly four hours and he had watched nearly all of it, transfixed.

The text he had written read: ‘
the sleeping men have not come forward or raised objection to their portrayal
.’ It was a lie and it had him stumped. How could he write the names ‘Saul’ and ‘myself’ in the essay? If he did then he’d have to rewrite the whole damn thing, reveal that the ‘faces’ had names from the very first artwork to the last. The whole thing would have to be a memoir and the tabloids would get it and it would damage Dot’s career irreparably. But how could he erase himself and Saul from Dot’s history?

He had to get out and walk.

The walk led him three times round the block, past a screaming car alarm and nowhere but round his mind in circles.

He was guilty of a thing or two. He had been doing all he could to postpone Dot’s finding of a new apartment, and he’d been postponing the end of the essay. So what was it that he feared in reaching conclusions? Maybe this weird life with Saul and her and her child could not face itself, could not face a conclusion; maybe this happiness was just a postponement of reality.

‘
The sleeping men have not come forward
.’

Maybe an awakening was coming as violent as the one on the video.

He walked for hours, postponing home.

On opening the door there was laughter. And a chain of paper people that hung from the ceiling, festooned all the way to the kitchen. Saul, Dot and Molly were at the table all with scissors, absorbed in their work. It took a second then more for them to register his presence at all.

‘Hiya, we’re making people,’ Dot called out.

‘A community,’ Saul added, face not turning from the cutting of paper.

‘It’s so great. Saul and Molly found a whole bunch of
posters
at the Sainsbury’s paper-recycling thingie and we’re making people.’

He pulled off his jacket.

‘We’re going to cover the world!’ Molly said earnestly, folding paper and aiming her scissors with the precision of a scientist. Saul, interrupting, telling her not that way, not too far or they’d all come out separate, just up a bit.

Dot passed him the scissors. ‘My hands are tired, must be RSI from typing – you take over.’

So then Molly was in charge. She traced the human outline on the folded pages and was so bossy when she taught him how to fold the paper and cut the outlines, don’t cut there cos that’s the hands. He did as she said. And when done, opened it, to screams of laughter from all. Chains of paper people holding hands.

‘All the faces are different!’ Molly protested.

‘So they should be,’ Saul said. ‘It’d be boring if they were all the same.’

Molly had for some reason reached to hug Owen then, and her sudden movement had made him cut through the hands. He knew it had gone wrong but she asked to see.

He held up the paper chain and it hung together, as long as an arm’s breadth, but then fell apart, all the paper people falling into twos.

‘It’s OK,’ Molly announced. ‘We have Sellotape.’

As she went off to find it and Saul went to help her, Dot’s hand was on his.

‘You OK? How was your day?’

He wanted to tell her that today he’d almost been afraid to come home again, but the failure of the paper chain made him reach for her open hands. Molly came back though with the Sellotape, and it was an unwritten rule not to let Molly see too much adult emotion so Dot’s arms peeled back from his neck, as Molly, enthusiastically, held up the tape, but then couldn’t find the end, and was so quickly screaming
in
frustration. Saul quietly took it from her and said that many things in life were like that, all it took was patience. Saul found the end and pulled out a length.

‘LET ME, LET ME!’ screeched Molly and Saul was laughing. Saul let Molly bite the Sellotape all by herself to make the tear. Beaming with pride, she passed it to Owen. Slowly he applied it to the broken hands and then the two were four. He held up the four, Dot squeezed his hand, but Molly was pointing at the pile of paper people on the table.

‘MORE SELLOTAPE!’

He wanted to tell Dot then of how unbearable such happy moments were for him. She smiled as if to say ‘I know’ and squeezed his hand. Molly offered him the Sellotape, face beaming.

‘Why you sad?’ Molly asked. Her face so close to his.

‘Am I? I’m not really – see, I’m smiling.’

Saul’s hand was on his shoulder as if he knew too. Squeezing hard.