Whatever he’s looking at, it’s messing with him something rotten.

I peg the picture of Charles next to the rest. No playing, this is just about the weirdest job I’ve ever had. And for sure, Charlie boy is into some freaky stuff.

But looking at the pictures I took, I know that I nailed the brief.

Doing good work and getting praise for it, that’s gold right there.

I would bathe in praise if I could – fill a big bath full of the stuff, splash around in it like a happy little hippo.

For sure, I’ll shoot whatever Charles wants me to shoot. I’ll shoot him naked, spread out on a tiger skin rug in front of a roaring log fire, if he wants me to.

My phone chimes. A text from Mia, sitting under a stack of three other messages she’s sent in the last few days:

Are you OK? Where are you? Haven’t heard from you in a week now. Please let me know x

One kiss instead of the usual three. I half-think about replying. What I do instead though, is I bin the message.

While I’m at it, I delete her number from my contacts.

The pictures on the line now dry, I take them down, flip the lights off, and step out the 24-hour darkroom.

Walking down the street, I’m thinking I’m going to have some wild sex with Akemi when I get back to the hotel.

Maybe I’ll get her to kneel down and throat my monkey first. Then get her to go on the bed on all fours while I plug her from behind. Maybe I’ll finish on her stomach after a little while in missionary.

Through the front entrance of the hotel and into the lobby, I look for Akemi.

There she is, standing at the front desk, doing the night shift. Her hair’s not in the usual bun. She has her blazer off, slight curves under a tight-fitting blouse, and for real, Little Sean is pretty much already at full hardness.

Hey, I say, approaching the desk.

She looks up at me for a second, before going back to the computer.

Hi, she says.

What are you doing? I say, leaning on the desk.

Working, she says.

I say, Fancy a little break? Maybe come up to my room for a bit?

She stops typing and looks up at me.

No, she says. I have work, she says.

And then she goes back to her stupid computer and the stupid click and clack of her stupid keyboard.

Back in my room, there’s the smell of stale beer, teriyaki seasoning and sweat.

I kick the rubbish out the way to make the path of least resistance to the bed, and flop down, face first. So much for a ride with Akemi. What’s with that girl, anyway?

I flip over onto my back and take my phone out my pocket. Let’s see. I scroll through pictures of Mia.

Mia grinning outside the art gallery.

Mia making pancakes in her PJs.

Mia building some flat-pack furniture in our flat.

Nope. Good old internet porn it is. Maybe a hotel office scene featuring a hot concierge who seduces an unsuspecting guest.

I scrabble around for some tissues.

T

EN

Picture a glass tank with glass so thick it’s thicker than the wall of a house.

And in this tank, there’s a perfect specimen of a tiger shark. Jaws hinged open bigger than your face, gums and teeth sticking out so far they look like they’re going to slip out of its mouth.

Suspended, like it’s floating in the air.

Black eyes staring right at you like any minute now it’s going to come back to life, bust itself out of that tank, and when it does, it’s going to eat you up like the tasty little treat you are.

And then just a few metres away from this crazy shark tank, close to the big white wall of the cavernous space, picture a wooden box with a double mattress on it.

There’s a duvet and pillows on it, and the duvet’s all crumpled up. The bedsheets are all coming untucked at the sides in big ruffles, and on the bedsheets there’s brown sweat rings and old tights and dirty discarded pants.

Then on the floor next to this bed, picture a deep blue rug and a bedside table, littered with wrinkled tissues and condoms and cigarette butts and period-stained clothes and lube and pregnancy tests and empty vodka bottles and a stack of Polaroid pictures with a woman in shades smiling and, no playing, a little stuffed white dog.

This is the place Mia took me to our first time hanging out together – an art gallery.

You couldn’t look at that bed and say that the artist had insane technical talent. Or even admire the dedication and hard work they’d put into becoming the best fucked-up bed maker in the world, better than all the other fucked-up bed makers out there.

But in a world where you had to be perfect, and clever, and tall, and handsome, and sporty, and musical, and excel at everything you did, all the time – here, well here were objects that were either ugly, or scary, or disgusting, or just straight up dead.

And behind these objects, there were people. People who took the messed-up things in their lives, and shamelessly turned them into art.

Huge, ugly, beautiful pieces of art that sold for millions of pounds.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, that confidence, that honesty – lying here on this hotel bed, in the dark, with the lightning bolt clarity you get after you shoot your load – I can for sure look back and say that’s what had eighteen-year-old Sean hooked there in that art gallery.

And Mia? Mia was the one who opened up my eyes to all of that.

E