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Authors: Simon Doonan
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now official: I was an idiot. What was the difference between an idiot and a lunatic? Not a lot.
It was hard to feel bubbly and jazzed about my future. I would probably stay at the idiot school until I turned sixteen. After that, if I had not already gone bonkers, I would get a job at the Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory. I would work there until I fell into some heavy machinery or went mad or both.
I would wish away the remainder of my days staring at people’s foreheads with nothing to look forward to except the occasional deluge of cat vomit.
* * *
Salvation appeared in an unexpected form.
One day, while crawling round the floor of my parents’ incredibly untidy bedroom in search of Hawo, I happened upon the very meaning of Life, or so I thought at the time.
Next to my mother’s bed I found a copy of a swanky magazine called Nova. On the cover was a picture of a ravishingly brittle, glamorous Italian socialite.
“Principessa Pignatelli plucks each hair off her legs with tweezers,” read the cheeky headline. “With that dedication and £5,348 a year to spare, you too might make ninth on the best-dressed lists.”
I took the magazine to my room. Snuggling excitedly onto my bed, I began to read and reread the intoxicating editorial about Principessa Pignatelli. A vain fashion junkie, Luciana Pignatelli crisscrossed the globe, traveling with a vast wardrobe of Valentino couture, ankle weights, and eight or nine hairpieces. She resided in a glamorous, floor-pillow-strewn Roman palazzo. She was one of the Beautiful People.
Oblivious to the viciously sardonic tone of the editorial, I instantly developed an infatuated identification with the jetsettingLuciana. I was particularly impressed by her beauty tips: “She splashes the insides of her thighs with cold water and never puts her breasts in hot water because it makes them sag.” The regimental order and glamour of her life contrasted sharply with the tawdriness and unpredictability of my own. I became obsessed.
I could not imagine any Uncle Kens daring to vomit into her sink while she was doing her dishes. If she got up to pee in the night, I was sure nobody leapt into the corridor, as my grandmother Narg frequently did, and accused her of being a streetwalker.
She was the anti-Narg and the un-Ken.
On first reading, the principessa’s world seemed depressingly remote.
Italy seemed such a long way away. The only place we ever traveled to was strife-torn Belfast to check in on my belligerent grandpa.
As I splashed the insides of my thighs with cold water, I thought about the Beautiful People. I did not care how far away they were, I would find them and befriend them.
And soon, very soon, they would like me enough to pretend that I was one of them.
CHAPTER 5
EYEBALLS
I once took my blind aunt Phyllis out for a walk and fractured her skull.
She wasn’t really my aunt. Phyllis was one of a gaggle of women, friends of Betty and Terry, whom we referred to as aunt.
There was Auntie Iris with the tunnel curls, whose attractive Polish husband had lost both legs in the war to frostbite. And heavily perfumed Aunt Toni with the gravelly voice. She wore loud charm bracelets, tempestuous gypsy blouses, and tiereddirndl skirts with petticoats underneath. Like Uncle Ken, Aunt Toni rolled her own cigarettes, except she used a little machine. Hers were much tidier. She walked with a glamorous limp and a fancy cane because of a motorcycle accident.
And let’s not forget Betty’s favorite, Auntie Muriel, her childhood pal. She worked as a street cop in Northern Ireland. Auntie Muriel was living proof that you can wear red lipstick with a uniform and still be intimidating.
By contrast, there was gushy Aunt Sheila. She was more femmy and helpless than Aunt Muriel, as evidenced by the fact that she once broke her finger putting on her girdle.
Of all these ladies, Aunt Phyllis was my favorite. Paradoxically, she was the only one whose skull I
It was hard to feel bubbly and jazzed about my future. I would probably stay at the idiot school until I turned sixteen. After that, if I had not already gone bonkers, I would get a job at the Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory. I would work there until I fell into some heavy machinery or went mad or both.
I would wish away the remainder of my days staring at people’s foreheads with nothing to look forward to except the occasional deluge of cat vomit.
* * *
Salvation appeared in an unexpected form.
One day, while crawling round the floor of my parents’ incredibly untidy bedroom in search of Hawo, I happened upon the very meaning of Life, or so I thought at the time.
Next to my mother’s bed I found a copy of a swanky magazine called Nova. On the cover was a picture of a ravishingly brittle, glamorous Italian socialite.
“Principessa Pignatelli plucks each hair off her legs with tweezers,” read the cheeky headline. “With that dedication and £5,348 a year to spare, you too might make ninth on the best-dressed lists.”
I took the magazine to my room. Snuggling excitedly onto my bed, I began to read and reread the intoxicating editorial about Principessa Pignatelli. A vain fashion junkie, Luciana Pignatelli crisscrossed the globe, traveling with a vast wardrobe of Valentino couture, ankle weights, and eight or nine hairpieces. She resided in a glamorous, floor-pillow-strewn Roman palazzo. She was one of the Beautiful People.
Oblivious to the viciously sardonic tone of the editorial, I instantly developed an infatuated identification with the jetsettingLuciana. I was particularly impressed by her beauty tips: “She splashes the insides of her thighs with cold water and never puts her breasts in hot water because it makes them sag.” The regimental order and glamour of her life contrasted sharply with the tawdriness and unpredictability of my own. I became obsessed.
I could not imagine any Uncle Kens daring to vomit into her sink while she was doing her dishes. If she got up to pee in the night, I was sure nobody leapt into the corridor, as my grandmother Narg frequently did, and accused her of being a streetwalker.
She was the anti-Narg and the un-Ken.
On first reading, the principessa’s world seemed depressingly remote.
Italy seemed such a long way away. The only place we ever traveled to was strife-torn Belfast to check in on my belligerent grandpa.
As I splashed the insides of my thighs with cold water, I thought about the Beautiful People. I did not care how far away they were, I would find them and befriend them.
And soon, very soon, they would like me enough to pretend that I was one of them.
CHAPTER 5
EYEBALLS
I once took my blind aunt Phyllis out for a walk and fractured her skull.
She wasn’t really my aunt. Phyllis was one of a gaggle of women, friends of Betty and Terry, whom we referred to as aunt.
There was Auntie Iris with the tunnel curls, whose attractive Polish husband had lost both legs in the war to frostbite. And heavily perfumed Aunt Toni with the gravelly voice. She wore loud charm bracelets, tempestuous gypsy blouses, and tiereddirndl skirts with petticoats underneath. Like Uncle Ken, Aunt Toni rolled her own cigarettes, except she used a little machine. Hers were much tidier. She walked with a glamorous limp and a fancy cane because of a motorcycle accident.
And let’s not forget Betty’s favorite, Auntie Muriel, her childhood pal. She worked as a street cop in Northern Ireland. Auntie Muriel was living proof that you can wear red lipstick with a uniform and still be intimidating.
By contrast, there was gushy Aunt Sheila. She was more femmy and helpless than Aunt Muriel, as evidenced by the fact that she once broke her finger putting on her girdle.
Of all these ladies, Aunt Phyllis was my favorite. Paradoxically, she was the only one whose skull I
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