Ultra Currency
Neven
30 May - 6 July 2024
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It’s not the activity, nor the schedule, nor the regimen, though it’s all well-documented, filmed and tabulated. It’s the scale of disappearance, when I move from one girl into every girl, into that girl, becoming her so thoroughly that when I walk through the world, I’m comforted when I see another version of her, gazing back at me. Sometimes, the gaze is hostile. I feel assessed, weighed up for competition. Could I take this bitch, my inner voice seethes. Could she match me in agility and power—all those days sliding back and forth on the Reformer machine, pumping away on a Peloton, finally switched into action? Breathe. Get to zero. When I lose my temper, when I feel competitive, when I feel jilted or rejected or ignored, I feel too much like myself. I can feel every hormone surging through the bloody lattice under my skin. The adrenaline, the oestrogen, the cortisol that tightens my chest and does damage to my face, drawing in wrinkles and inducing acne to erupt. I’ve read the papers. Scientifically speaking, stress can disfigure the body. It encourages fat to accumulate around your midsection, fucks your perfect posture, ruins your poise. That’s why I prefer to live as soft as possible, as smooth, massaged and marinated as the cow that has been disarticulated into wagyu beef, the thin raw slices that I slip into my mouth. AAAA-grade, cool from the refrigerated stone they appear on, laid down on the bar with the gentlest touch. I enjoy the feeling of cold beef reaching body temperature on my tongue, as I chew and swallow, meshing flesh with flesh.
Who is she? What is she doing here? Who does she think she is? I hate the voice, the way it invades my project, spiking through my desire to be a better girl, a friend to all women, songbirds on my shoulder, too sweet to compete. In the spin studio, I practise gazing at the leaderboard, my name several slots below Number One. I meditate on these girls’ names, the girls who are better than me, the letters mingled with the reflection of my sweat-kissed face. Each girl is as beautiful and worthy as I am. I am as beautiful and worthy as they are. Sometimes, I let myself fantasise about what it would be like to eat one of them. In these fantasies, I’m watching her being prepared at the sushi counter, the chef’s sharp santoku knife dividing her flank into squares of bouncy flesh. I just know it would taste so good, because I know I would taste so good. The good accumulating in the tissue, like heavy metals in deep-sea tuna. Eating her would help me live forever, I just know it. I would like to offer my spin class rival my body in return. Reclining side-by-side on the butchering table, we would eat each other. We would close the loop.
I try very hard to love my friends and my rivals. My aim is to get closer, close enough to become one. When we go gym, dinner, drinks together we move in unison like a gentle herd, our camera settings dialled to low so that all our photos convey a shifting, phantom quality where our bodies blur and the city’s hard surfaces emerge. When people say they can’t tell us apart: that’s happiness, that’s bliss. It’s not the envy, it’s the attention. It’s not the attention, it’s the egalitarian glow that touches us all. Our clique could include the whole world, if the world allowed it. Instead, we attract haters, as if hating us were a hobby. Negativity oozes from their nostrils, coagulates their blood, contaminates their spit, gives them frown-lines that Botox couldn’t fix. Negativity stands between them and us. If I catch a stranger’s glare of disapproval in the dining room or on the street, I direct the voice towards them like a benediction: Only ugly people hate. And nobody wants to be ugly, we can all agree.
It’s not that I prefer to walk, it’s that I crave immersion. It’s that I want to disappear into the crowd, how it becomes a fractured mirror. The scattered gleam of my face among other faces, spotting the sloped nose-bridge, the tautened eyes and lip-flip in the churn channelled between the buildings. I see her and then I lose her again. She comes together and apart, like a murmuration of starlings disperses and coheres in the sky. The shortest and the longest distance to infinity is between my sister and my rival, my rival and me. Do I want her, or do I want to be her? says the voice. She is beloved. She is divinely protected. She is untouchable, nourished by sunlight and summer tomatoes, vodka and olive brine. One night—after the matcha and the martinis, the appointments and the exercise, the city swarming thick under a chartreuse summer sundown—I decide to take the face home with me. I pluck her pieces from their temporary holding places, soundtracked by a chorus of screams. She assembles easily into a mask, and I carry her with the delicacy appropriate for such a rare artefact. Like a pond catching moonlight, she pools in my hands. Up the glassed elevator, down the chequered hallway, into the air- conditioned zone of reception, living room, plush bedroom of cushioned chrome. Into the marbled bathroom, the lighting dimmed to heaven. I clear my perfumes from a silver platter, oblivious to the noxious crash of bottles, and lay her down there. She gazes back, loving and distorted. Who do you think you are, I say to the face. I feel her eyes on me as I turn the taps to fill the bath. I know she is assessing me, rating the prettiness of every gesture.
Negative thoughts are always harder to stop by the time the day ends. They come hard and fast, tangled up with a mental checklist, thorning through tomorrow’s rituals. I try to overwrite them as I remove a piece of jade from my refrigerator and swipe it across my own inflamed face. Smooth, numb, and beautiful, I repeat to myself, dragging the stone upwards between my jaw and cheekbone. Beautiful, smooth and numb. I’ve been reading about reality shifting, courting the possibility of piercing through this world and into my ‘desired reality’ through powerful acts of visualisation. I haven’t yet figured out how to repattern the mind with the care I apply to diet, workouts, relationships. I have violent dreams that take place in worlds the colour of mud. Inside them, I can never fully use my limbs—I’m dragging my body along with my hands, I’m standing straight taking hits as my arms dangle useless beside me. Into the tub, I scatter rose-petals from a crystal jar, squeeze in a packet of beneficial acids and several cups of marine collagen. As I swirl it all with my foot, I notice how easily I balance through the movement, looking down at the muscular arch suspending my whittled ankle. I used to be a cheerleader. I was once a dancer.
I was a gymnast. I competitively skied, lancing down the parabolic jump with diamanté crystals of snow kicking up behind me. But I’ve never broken a bone. My friends like to say I have a titanium skeleton, recounting my past as if to scaffold charisma around my generic beauty. I think they’re right. In my visualisation exercises, as I prepare to shift, I picture this invulnerable chassis, deeper than my flesh but above my soul. It’s not the body, and it’s not the mind. The body is fallible, the mind unruly. The world is hostile, even when I am trying my best. It’s comforting to think about something embedded inside me, the part of me that is unbreakable, the part of me after which I model everything else.
I gather the face to me, holding the tray of torn flesh beneath my chin like a solidified reflection. When I sink into the decorated water, my skin shocks then adjusts to the heat. The face goes adrift from its heavy receptacle, eyes and nose and lips floating between the dismembered roses. Blood turns bathwater into pink champagne.
I wonder what would happen if I drink—if I do more than drink, if I inhale the fluid, let my beauty potion flood my oesophagus and lungs. I try it, just a little, dipping my chin below the surface. Algae, blood and bubbles bloom on my tongue. I try again, breathing deeper now, as the collagen begins to set. I gaze with adoration upon my perfect interior. I take another breath, feel a sudden pain somewhere between my sinuses and sternum. The jelly thickens inside the cavities of my body. I focus on my indestructible skeleton. I visualise its dark shine.
Neven
30 May - 6 July 2024
COPYCAT by Alex Quicho
It’s not the pose, it’s the tension. It’s not the tension, it’s the zero. Inside the zero, I can find myself. Clean and empty, still and true. It’s not the mantra, it’s the voice. It’s not the voice, it’s the many. It’s all of us, speaking one at the time, gazing into our own eyes through the front-facing camera—though I like looking at myself best when I tap it dead, eyes lips cheeks caught in the viscous portal.It’s not the activity, nor the schedule, nor the regimen, though it’s all well-documented, filmed and tabulated. It’s the scale of disappearance, when I move from one girl into every girl, into that girl, becoming her so thoroughly that when I walk through the world, I’m comforted when I see another version of her, gazing back at me. Sometimes, the gaze is hostile. I feel assessed, weighed up for competition. Could I take this bitch, my inner voice seethes. Could she match me in agility and power—all those days sliding back and forth on the Reformer machine, pumping away on a Peloton, finally switched into action? Breathe. Get to zero. When I lose my temper, when I feel competitive, when I feel jilted or rejected or ignored, I feel too much like myself. I can feel every hormone surging through the bloody lattice under my skin. The adrenaline, the oestrogen, the cortisol that tightens my chest and does damage to my face, drawing in wrinkles and inducing acne to erupt. I’ve read the papers. Scientifically speaking, stress can disfigure the body. It encourages fat to accumulate around your midsection, fucks your perfect posture, ruins your poise. That’s why I prefer to live as soft as possible, as smooth, massaged and marinated as the cow that has been disarticulated into wagyu beef, the thin raw slices that I slip into my mouth. AAAA-grade, cool from the refrigerated stone they appear on, laid down on the bar with the gentlest touch. I enjoy the feeling of cold beef reaching body temperature on my tongue, as I chew and swallow, meshing flesh with flesh.
Who is she? What is she doing here? Who does she think she is? I hate the voice, the way it invades my project, spiking through my desire to be a better girl, a friend to all women, songbirds on my shoulder, too sweet to compete. In the spin studio, I practise gazing at the leaderboard, my name several slots below Number One. I meditate on these girls’ names, the girls who are better than me, the letters mingled with the reflection of my sweat-kissed face. Each girl is as beautiful and worthy as I am. I am as beautiful and worthy as they are. Sometimes, I let myself fantasise about what it would be like to eat one of them. In these fantasies, I’m watching her being prepared at the sushi counter, the chef’s sharp santoku knife dividing her flank into squares of bouncy flesh. I just know it would taste so good, because I know I would taste so good. The good accumulating in the tissue, like heavy metals in deep-sea tuna. Eating her would help me live forever, I just know it. I would like to offer my spin class rival my body in return. Reclining side-by-side on the butchering table, we would eat each other. We would close the loop.
I try very hard to love my friends and my rivals. My aim is to get closer, close enough to become one. When we go gym, dinner, drinks together we move in unison like a gentle herd, our camera settings dialled to low so that all our photos convey a shifting, phantom quality where our bodies blur and the city’s hard surfaces emerge. When people say they can’t tell us apart: that’s happiness, that’s bliss. It’s not the envy, it’s the attention. It’s not the attention, it’s the egalitarian glow that touches us all. Our clique could include the whole world, if the world allowed it. Instead, we attract haters, as if hating us were a hobby. Negativity oozes from their nostrils, coagulates their blood, contaminates their spit, gives them frown-lines that Botox couldn’t fix. Negativity stands between them and us. If I catch a stranger’s glare of disapproval in the dining room or on the street, I direct the voice towards them like a benediction: Only ugly people hate. And nobody wants to be ugly, we can all agree.
It’s not that I prefer to walk, it’s that I crave immersion. It’s that I want to disappear into the crowd, how it becomes a fractured mirror. The scattered gleam of my face among other faces, spotting the sloped nose-bridge, the tautened eyes and lip-flip in the churn channelled between the buildings. I see her and then I lose her again. She comes together and apart, like a murmuration of starlings disperses and coheres in the sky. The shortest and the longest distance to infinity is between my sister and my rival, my rival and me. Do I want her, or do I want to be her? says the voice. She is beloved. She is divinely protected. She is untouchable, nourished by sunlight and summer tomatoes, vodka and olive brine. One night—after the matcha and the martinis, the appointments and the exercise, the city swarming thick under a chartreuse summer sundown—I decide to take the face home with me. I pluck her pieces from their temporary holding places, soundtracked by a chorus of screams. She assembles easily into a mask, and I carry her with the delicacy appropriate for such a rare artefact. Like a pond catching moonlight, she pools in my hands. Up the glassed elevator, down the chequered hallway, into the air- conditioned zone of reception, living room, plush bedroom of cushioned chrome. Into the marbled bathroom, the lighting dimmed to heaven. I clear my perfumes from a silver platter, oblivious to the noxious crash of bottles, and lay her down there. She gazes back, loving and distorted. Who do you think you are, I say to the face. I feel her eyes on me as I turn the taps to fill the bath. I know she is assessing me, rating the prettiness of every gesture.
Negative thoughts are always harder to stop by the time the day ends. They come hard and fast, tangled up with a mental checklist, thorning through tomorrow’s rituals. I try to overwrite them as I remove a piece of jade from my refrigerator and swipe it across my own inflamed face. Smooth, numb, and beautiful, I repeat to myself, dragging the stone upwards between my jaw and cheekbone. Beautiful, smooth and numb. I’ve been reading about reality shifting, courting the possibility of piercing through this world and into my ‘desired reality’ through powerful acts of visualisation. I haven’t yet figured out how to repattern the mind with the care I apply to diet, workouts, relationships. I have violent dreams that take place in worlds the colour of mud. Inside them, I can never fully use my limbs—I’m dragging my body along with my hands, I’m standing straight taking hits as my arms dangle useless beside me. Into the tub, I scatter rose-petals from a crystal jar, squeeze in a packet of beneficial acids and several cups of marine collagen. As I swirl it all with my foot, I notice how easily I balance through the movement, looking down at the muscular arch suspending my whittled ankle. I used to be a cheerleader. I was once a dancer.
I was a gymnast. I competitively skied, lancing down the parabolic jump with diamanté crystals of snow kicking up behind me. But I’ve never broken a bone. My friends like to say I have a titanium skeleton, recounting my past as if to scaffold charisma around my generic beauty. I think they’re right. In my visualisation exercises, as I prepare to shift, I picture this invulnerable chassis, deeper than my flesh but above my soul. It’s not the body, and it’s not the mind. The body is fallible, the mind unruly. The world is hostile, even when I am trying my best. It’s comforting to think about something embedded inside me, the part of me that is unbreakable, the part of me after which I model everything else.
I gather the face to me, holding the tray of torn flesh beneath my chin like a solidified reflection. When I sink into the decorated water, my skin shocks then adjusts to the heat. The face goes adrift from its heavy receptacle, eyes and nose and lips floating between the dismembered roses. Blood turns bathwater into pink champagne.
I wonder what would happen if I drink—if I do more than drink, if I inhale the fluid, let my beauty potion flood my oesophagus and lungs. I try it, just a little, dipping my chin below the surface. Algae, blood and bubbles bloom on my tongue. I try again, breathing deeper now, as the collagen begins to set. I gaze with adoration upon my perfect interior. I take another breath, feel a sudden pain somewhere between my sinuses and sternum. The jelly thickens inside the cavities of my body. I focus on my indestructible skeleton. I visualise its dark shine.
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