Picture This

The props sat on a long worktable on the other side of the studio, while the three Asian female extras sat waiting on stools at the edge of the set, all in full costume and make-up, their hair (as was Susie’s own) oiled, tied back and slicked down, ready for the Minnie Mouse headgear to be placed over their scalps. The male extra, a porn star Alfie had cast, stood furtively smoking in a corner of the studio in costume as Alfie, his feet clad in dust bags, moved across the set making last-minute adjustments.

The make-up artist finished, having narrowed Susie’s lips and applied black eyeliner to make her look Chinese. Susie studied her transformed face in the mirror. Satisfied, she slipped a bathrobe on and slowly moved across the set, checking each detail and pausing to smooth out a crease in the floor cover. Finally she examined the meticulously polished bonnet of the car.

‘Alfie, the bonnet’s going to reflect the lights. Make sure we get an angle that doesn’t bounce too much white. Also we’ll have to move fast as my body paint is going to muck up the bonnet pretty quickly if I wriggle about.’

‘He only needs to be entering you, right?’ Alfie lowered his voice discreetly, indicating the male extra.

‘Right, no need for full penetration. As long as he can hold the pose, we should be able to get plenty of photographs.’ Susie cast a critical eye over the extra, a tall dark-haired Caucasian in his late thirties. He had nothing in common with the character in the erotic etching except for his impressive member and his black pubic hair, but with a face mask and traditional wig covering his features it would be almost a perfect match. Susie turned to Alfie. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Roberto. Handsome but high-maintenance. He was the only one I could find who had the goods, though. Like, all nine inches of it.’

‘Roberto!’ Susie yelled out across the studio floor. The male extra swung around. ‘A pleasure to meet you. You should be entering me in about ten minutes, if that’s okay with you?’ she yelled cheerfully, as Muriel and Alfie broke out into grins.

‘Okay? You kiddin’? I’m honoured. I’m kind of a huge fan of your work. Alfie probably told you, I’m kind of an artist myself—’

‘Fantastic.’ She cut him short, scared he was about to go into a long monologue about his own amateur painting. ‘And you were okay with signing the confidentiality clause?’

‘Totally got it. Respect to the guru.’ Roberto gave a mock salute.

Susie turned back to Alfie. ‘Good casting, Alfie – reliable as ever.’

‘Yeah, I’m a wizard. With the amount of time you gave me I deserve a medal. Seriously, I had to pull on every contact I had in town and haggle the fee on big boy over there. He wanted a credit – apparently he’s famous in his world, this is slumming it for him. But he finally settled for a signed catalogue from the show. You like the girls?’

The three women – two in their twenties and one in her forties, all Chinese – now stood in a row. They were a perfect physical match for the three servants in the painting. Susie nodded her approval.

Muriel was busy at the props table. The Minnie Mouse headgear was lined up on wig stands, alongside the silk fans, which had been beautifully reproduced and embroidered with an emblem of TWA.

The prop-maker, bent over the table, was carefully placing the last painted face mask on the table. Susie had gone to great lengths modelling the faces in clay while constantly referencing the original artwork, then casting the clay masks in polyester resin, then painting them with the exact same expressions, each forehead marked with a small circular dot of colour as she’d originally decided. They now sat on the prop table to one side of the studio where the three women, clad in their silk robes, were having the final touches applied by a make-up artist. The first one, the youngest servant, dressed in a pink silk robe identical to the one in the original painting, stood still as Muriel slipped on the wig. The effect was uncanny: the Minnie Mouse ears made of human hair mimicked the traditional hairstyles exactly and yet it was possible to make the direct connection to the Disney character.

‘Unbelievable, Muriel! You really worked your magic on this: a total collision of the two cultures, which is exactly what I’m looking for,’ Susie told her, then turned back to the set. Making a square with her fingers, she walked backwards and forwards, framing it. This was the time she loved, when her visual imagination overrode her intellect and she was functioning in the moment, in instinct. She found the right position, then moved the camera. ‘When you’re ready, can I have everyone in position except myself, please?’ she announced.

Ten minutes later the three women were grouped carefully around the car bonnet with the golden backdrop in position, their fans held exactly in place, face masks and wigs on, eyes (elongated and fringed with black eyeliner) gleaming through the narrow eyeholes, the folds of their robes pinned to mirror their painted counterparts precisely. All the jewellery in the painting had been replicated: Susie wore a red coral earring in her left earlobe, the only one visible in the painting, a coral bracelet on her left wrist and black ties around her ankles, as well as a red rose in her hair. Every single detail was identical to the original painting except for those elements that had been replaced with American icons.

Roberto, now in his wig and face mask, his pale blue robe painstakingly tied behind his back, the complicated knot and fold mirroring the robe in the painting, his feet clad in Hilton-branded slippers instead of the black half-slippers of the original painting, stood in profile, his erect penis poised over the car bonnet.

Susie gazed through the camera lens, checking that the framing and proportions of the grouping matched the original. The camera was a little close, so she moved it back a couple of feet and adjusted the image to the correct mid-shot so it seemed to float against the golden-yellow backdrop and floor covering, capturing the ambience of the painting.

‘Alfie, I think we have it. I’m going to step in, call out any adjustments as per usual. Got it?’

Alfie, now over at the easel with the original print placed on it, checked the image himself. ‘You’re right, the trick is going to be getting your feet in exactly the same position.’

‘I’ve thought about that. Look for the spatial relationship between my feet, the fan held by the servant standing behind the bonnet and the point where the man is holding my ankles. Use those as the reference points and we should get it right.’

Just before Susie stepped up to the set, Muriel painted the dot on her forehead. It was like a ritual, the last gesture in a sacred ceremony, and it immediately helped her to get into character. Even now, dozens of staged photographs later, she felt the thrill of her own identity falling away as she stepped into the tableau. She didn’t need a mask; the costume and the sense of being in character in a staged image were enough to make all the shame and disappointments that had been her earlier life, the crushing smallness of her childhood, evaporate without trace.

She’d had her feet reddened to mirror the bound feet of the Chinese woman visible in the frame – only she’d deliberately kept her feet large, free and Western, with black nail polish on the toenails. Using both hands and careful not to tear the fine very pale blue silk robe, she hoisted herself onto the car bonnet, the metal cool and slippery under her

bottom. Roberto, the male extra, lifted her ankles, and despite the clinical atmosphere of the studio and the objective professionalism of the re-enactment, Susie couldn’t help responding; the feel of his hands gripping her ankles high over her, parting her and exposing her in such a manner, was intensely arousing.

Muriel, printout of the original painting in hand for reference, fussed around the set, adjusting the folds of the falling robe, then repositioned Susie’s left hand, which propped her weight up against the bonnet.

‘How’s it looking?’ Susie asked as she tried to plot the mise en scène with her mind’s eye; she’d memorised the placement of the figures within the original painting but now she dared not move her head. From what she could see, the three other women appeared to be at the right proximity to both the two central figures of herself and the man, and the car bonnet.

It was an extraordinary sensation, as if they had all been transported back to Qing-dynasty 18th-century China, the smell of incense burning, the silk-draped walls of the wealthy merchant’s house muffling the silence, the soft shuffle of slippered maidservants, and her own expectant eroticism at being prepared for lovemaking in such a ritualised manner. Susie always loved this role of playing director, as if she had the power to change events through crystallising a moment in history. Even as a fictionalised event, it was intensely affirming.

‘Pretty close.’ Muriel’s voice broke unceremoniously into Susie’s reverie. ‘I have the folds spot on.’

‘Let me know when you’re ready,’ Roberto growled from behind his mask. ‘I can hold this for about ten minutes, unless you want me to pop Viagra.’