TURBINE | KAPOHAU

Tracy Emin won prizes for her bed, exhibiting it in the Tate. A filthy snapshot into her post-break up depression, bed unmade, pile of tissues and cigarettes by the wayside, and a bottle of vodka. I always thought it looked unremarkable, like every girl’s room when they come home after a night out. Now I wanted my bed to be in the Tate with me still in it, a part of the exhibit. Voyeurs could pay an entrance fee to watch, stand behind a line while a man strode up to me, slipped his manhood out of his unzipped denim vagina, and I’d lay, spread-eagled, in wait on the sheets. They’d all turn away or watch on with sick fascination as I was dominated, like a dog shoving its head in a bunny cage and ripping it apart. This is where I rest and this is where I’m broken in, this is where I’m opened.  

After all, my bed was worse; roused from depression Tracy had enough privilege and enough people who cared about her nasty bed to get it hauled into a museum. I, however, had to clean it up.  

Visitors to the Tate only had to bear witness to Erim’s slightly greyed sheets and pile of tissues; they’d have to be given hazmats to see mine or the FDA would had intervened. You could’ve made a baby out of all the DNA on just the headboard. Blood, sweat, spit, cum and tears. Pick out a bead of uterine blood and a dribble out of a latex wrinkle and combine to create another unlovable sociopathic beast.  

Like Christ’s slab, the bed was simply a surface to fall upon after trying to rise up into some kind of rebirth. Rub off enough skin to emerge holy and untouchable. But I didn’t. I ran out of Euphoria episodes to watch. I went to a party and did meth. I was already committed and holding a fifty-dollar note straw over the line when the supplier gave me a Cheshire Cat grin and told me what the substance was. They could’ve told me it was anything — powdered glass, kitty-litter, cane sugar — and I would’ve inhaled it regardless. Then I was on my back and rolling, feeling my heart knock on my ribs, waiting to be let out. I was at the helm of my own body as it raged, rag-dolled, leaned against hallway walls, and sipped on abandoned half-empty cups of murky liquid. I danced like Kat Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You, on top of a table, jumping and body-rolling, knowing I wouldn’t fall because the scene didn’t call for that. Trusting that no matter how high I jumped or how far I tilted backwards, I’d remain upright. My body felt full of warm, honey-like blood, sticking my limbs together, stretching out loose and liquid to stroke a door handle, and then solid to turn it. I cried to a lamp thinking it was the moon. In my Uber, I watched the world outside whip past, blurring, a Monet painting of grey and black. 

When I arrived home, bruised and mad with delirium, I got down on my knees and cleaned. The smell of my room had contorted into something unbearable. I could smell the hair in my drain, the ash along the windowsill. I tore off the sheets and shoved the stained white bundles into the washing machine, doused them in stain remover, scent beads and fabric softener. The dust in the room was so thick it was sticky. After wiping a wet wipe over the surfaces of my furniture the dust remained in clumped, slick black patches. I cleaned naked, scrubbed and slid inside the shower. At the bottom of my small toilet-side bin was an untied condom from when the Guitarist came over; it writhed as baby roaches ate away at the cum that remained.   

I scrubbed myself from the inside out, gulped down a litre of water and waited for it to pass through me, aching to feel the water flush out every toxin, every lump in my throat. Make me clean. I was the mother screaming, sweating and hefting out a new baby. And I was the baby, skin scrubbed pink, eyes watery, lungs clear and ready to scream again.