I
Her story doesn’t begin without the formula of every good little counterculture fable. Another vision of the 20th century. Former fashion model mother voted ‘most likely to succeed’ at the Kim Kardashian Finishing School for Girls, Father Knos Best buried in deskwork and secretary snatch in a kind of discreet, Hugh Hefner and Betty Crocker-mandated marriage that seems to be forever breaking down into a boozy aerosol of cocktail parties and arguments that leave all else an afterthought. Shy, chubby-cheeked little girl included. When they aren’t playing her against each other to the tune of a smashed plate, she might as well not exist unless she’s winning at something. Which isn’t very often.
A shy and chubby-cheeked little girl will usually grow into a shy and awkward adolescent. One struggling to hide her BO and baby fat. Stringy yellow hair no matter how much she’ll wash it. All Margot Gotty wants to do is kick and scream like a pig towards slaughter against anything and everything as she cries into her pillow or masturbates to Jim Morrison’s face in the dark. War paint on her fingers. Anything she can find on the kind of people she would give her life to be as she chews on her bologna sandwich like cud at that one spot of the cafeteria table with the sniffling introverts and fat girls who smell like cheese, some guitar-playing bitch in Social Studies telling her to check her privilege over ‘Nam. Sure, I’m the retard, and you’re the one who thinks a song about daisies will stop babies from getting burnt alive in their mother’s arms Margot wants to spit. With an inkling that that same girl will be voting for Reagan a decade from now. Probably. In college she starts really pounding at her bubble, the air within cramped and stagnant and crafted from the same plastic as the Jerry’s Kids gumball machine in the co-op where she works. Days of beetroot and wheatgerm, hippie suburbanites with their screaming toddlers. At night she is equally indistinguishable from the other gauzy bucket-eyed maidens leaping till their feet are crushing berries into wine. Let it flow among the creamed corn and melted ice cream threatening to cement into wasted youth. O Middle America.
-
Her first introduction to English soil is the tiled crypt of a Heathrow stall, wretching out as many nerves and jet lag as she possibly can into the porcelain bowl underneath. As if whatever happens next has just popped her quivering little culture shock cherry.
-
London in the 70s walks around choking on the centuries, crosseyed and aimless, gorging itself on bubblegum grey and radio as balm. Trafalgar Square. The baroque epilepsy of Piccadilly Circus, but it’s covered in limestone and bird shit. She’s got her shoulders pressed to her sides, lest anyone sees the holes fraying at the armpits of her kimono dress while she meanders through the off-campus party a friend invites her to, In the domestic chintz and orange carpet belonging to someone’s parents on holiday. Margot feels brave enough to join a group of students who aren’t totally indifferent to her presence while they sip at their Babychams, right as Georgie comes stumbling right into her orbit. It would be a comical contrast to the comparatively sober air of his entrepreneur boyfriend were it not for the pokey, needle-sharp abruptness popping into her psyche like a balloon. “Hal McLauren might not give a toss about Rag Week,” he gestures to a glue-complexioned ginger standing at his side. “But he knows the guts of our fair city like an expert proctologist.”
“Oh, don’t look so pissy, Mars. Mars Bar. Marzipan.” Georgie loiters over to a small table of food next to her, persistent. Margot puts her beer down and shoots him an annoyed squint.
(normies, potential friends, what could have been, some cutie to shatter open the gates of her virginity for good, it doesn’t matter. A lost opportunity she can feel like the saltwater genesis of a tear in her eye. All she wants is to not feel so alone)
“For all those wanderlust Yankee Doodle-fuck-you exchange student types,” she can hear Hal’s already condescending air turning into a burst of laughter at the display. “You’re positively glowing with farmer’s daughter energy. Or Peggy Lee when the phone doesn’t ring.”
“He’s taking the piss.” Georgie munches on a cracker and cranes himself closer over to her in that blatantly conspiratorial tone typical of a whisper in secret. Which, given his state, fails miserably. “Guy may be a child of the New Left but he’s got those regal moments in him anyway.”
Hal flicks up the collar of his trenchcoat dismissively. “It’s called stoicism, my significantly significant other.” The fingers of his free hand wiggle over the food indecisively before giving up and poking a finger directly into the dip. “Big difference between that and some mincing little hairdresser.”
“Being an asshole isn’t a stereotype.” For a moment, Georgie looks at Margot like the wind has got knocked out of his sails.
She prattles back in Hal’s direction with fresh venom, suddenly undeterred. “Well? What do you do besides act like a jerk and collect unemployment?”
“I stand in line for loans, not the dole. An ideal venue, to be accurate.”
“So you’re a failed businessman.” Margot rolls her eyes and gives him a snide, fluid smile that makes her feel like she’s been possessed by Cleopatra’s third cousin. “I’m really sorry your dad stopped hugging you.” It wasn’t meant to be too much of a dig, but she’s glad it is as she watches Hal step back with a sudden wince. Then her mouth falls open as he explains: no need for a father’s embrace when his own died of cancer. “It got me my inheritance,” he divulges. “And a predisposition to a love for excess smoke inhalation.”
Margot is apologetic almost immediately, shaking her head and gesturing around herself ruefully before Hal shakes his head at her. “Life’s full of surprises,” she can hear him say in good humor. “Much like Miss America possessing a sharper set of claws than I.”
-
It’s a rosy weekday afternoon. One year to the day, perhaps. Stained-glass gleam contrasting sharply against the pub’s usual clientele of grey old men in tweed. Pints clatter and dribble, bringing a fresh varnish of condensation to the crowded wooden tabletops. “And with that,” Hal hands Georgie a stack of paper at one pewlike table. “We are free to make Studio 54 piss their pants across the pond.” Margot takes a quick look at the paperwork herself before reciting the lyrics to KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘Get Down Tonight’ aloud to the table with pretentious beatnik enthusiasm, her cadence as hammy and sporadic as any William Shatner track.
“What?” she pauses up to the faces with a grin. “Too much?”
“You could have chosen the genius of Diana Ross at least.” The lantern-jawed lady-in-waiting whistles out the first few bars of ‘Love Hangover’ before crossing himself. “While we’re pouring over every strain of basic bitch American pop culture, you can always bake us an apple pie in the kitchen back there like our good lord intended.”
“Hoooo. Good one, Poofy Shit McGee.”
Hal huffs endearingly. “You’ll never get into show business with that language, young lady.”
“Depends on what kind, anyway.” A Marc Bolan wannabe she’s been seeing with smudgy black swans for eyeliner rests his chin on the knuckles of one hand with a languid grin. Stevie isn’t wrong; at this juncture she’s completed her ballet studies more or less an expat and can get any freelance gig when she’s not hopping from one titty bar to the next. To cobble something out of these Saturday Night Feverdreams spent sauntering and cackling down a SoHo alleyway with her friends, more than any of them combined. Mime-faced queens and artsy-fartsy misfits in the pale blue light. Little dizzying granules of autonomy, glowing between the water bills like radium.
(Were she to come face to face with the version of herself from when she first arrived, all she’d want to do is play the sadist. Sneer and ask what a mousy little stank-ass cunt like her is gawking at. Make herself cry.)
Stevie tries and fails to suppress a faint but muddy-sounding burp into his jacketed shoulder and gives a boyish, toothy grin before pulling back to wrap an arm around her. The two paw at each other briefly. “Fuck’s sake, love…” she can hear him murmur to into her ear as Margot gives him a wicked smile in turn. Pheromones worn like makeup and makeup worn like pheromones.
“Trousers,” Georgie eyes Margot down narrowly. “Pants. GiGi Eastman’s pants. Hal’s lovely fashion designer friend, remember?” Gestures his head over to the man with her for emphasis. “Great Value Bolan here can steal her wares all he likes but this is the only pair, and—“ Georgie gestures back over to Margot “—don’t you dare ruin them.”
“My hand was on his thigh and it was for about two seconds.” Margot’s hands rush straight up with a degree of playfulness more facetious than sexual. “Not my fault you’re judging a fully generic PDA by its cover. Or the female ego.”
Stevie gives an annoyed huff in his recovery: “Beware the Industrial Virgin-Whore Complex.”
