They are both looking at me. So are You. Except You can’t decide which You want. As for me, I think Bromide can keep his fucking fake tits and cheeks, but unbranded LipService – I want that.
I haven’t answered yet, but Stillwell apparently lacks any sense of social timing and has started to present the results of the transcranial simulation trials to Dr Bromide.
His voice is low but clear: ‘Preliminary results of facial coding and galvanic skin response track self-reported intensity levels of the gustatory hallucination, correlating with a strong emotional association… and possibly individuation.’
‘Not now!’ snaps the doctor, waving him away. Before scuttling off, Stillwell gazes at me with the eyes of a man inside an iron lung, reminding me of the nettling electrodes, the fear and claustrophobia. They make me think he wasn’t talking to Dr Bromide at all. After having tapped my calls between touch and taste, he is offering advice. The message is in the word ‘individuation’. Tastures are the language of my memories and desires. Who would I be if they were simply more tradeables to be pawed over? And what does he care? Is he trying to convince me to surrender myself to medical science? Then why he would do it all seditious-surreptitious? In one way, he’s right. In trading tastures for free speech, I’m selling a kidney to get a liver transplant.
‘Time to be quick and choose,’ says Wordini.
‘I’ve taken the recommended dosage of research. I’ve swallowed all your pills. There can be no deficiencies.’ The verbocharge has worn off and all that is left is the relentless product-plug of Multipill LipService.
‘Is she having an allergic reaction to our offers?’ asks Dr Bromide.
‘Oh ho, she’s a copyrioter. But she’ll be back – with fewer options. You’ll see,’ smirks Wordini and walks out.
I’m not waiting for Dr Bromide to think of a way to keep me here. I snatch up my things and rush out, singing the Multipill greeting as casually as I can, ‘Fuel your cells and say goodbye to run-down batteries.’
9
‘It was a boobie trap, sweetheart, and we both fell into it bosoms first.’
‘Don’t try to soft-soap me Mother. You’ve never showed the slightest static cling.’
The ridiculousness of the Mollycuddle fabric softener LipService knocks the wind out of my self-righteousness. But I won’t stop. Even if my anger slips in the silly suds, I won’t let Mother blow bubbles in my face. She will tell me why she never did anything to make me feel less alone, to help me understand the tastures.
‘I have my figure flaws but I always encouraged you to keep abreast with padded corporate support for a deeper identity cleavage. But you insisted on a natural silhouette.’
‘And I suppose now that you’ve been through the brand’s many launderings, you’re stainless.’
‘I’ve tried to show you how to use fashion tape so you don’t expose yourself.’
‘I don’t want my creases ironed out!’
It’s as if a horrid man in a trench coat has just flashed her. I look away from her distaste but she quickly wipes her face of expression.
‘Oh but you do,’ You interrupt in house-proud tones, ‘you want clothes that are meadow-fresh wearable hugs.’
It seems that You have become more insistently loud-mouthed lately, and it’s harder to hear myself think. Sometimes I stray into your goods diction and find my thoughts boxed up in product puffery for ease of delivery. I have to unlearn the limp of LipService. I wonder whether Mother has her version of You – the materialist voice of more – whose bedroom purr promises life as a lingerie shoot. Or perhaps she has believed for a long time that You are her.
Her voice is tired as she says, ‘At the time it was part of the sensual hanky-panky of Frisson Froufrou that sold me on the brand, but it’s a dreadful body-con.’
For a moment, she actually feels like my mother rather than an exotic dancer who burst out of a giant cake sent to the wrong address and then stayed. She chose FF because she could gorge on satin and silk, lace and ribbons. That could be me. Maybe Mother was like me. The difference is just time – time spent with You. Are You slowly forcing me into the servant’s quarters with responsibility for little more than manual labour, the moving of limbs?
The memory of the Demoiselles de FF dressing-up game comes back to me through a Vaseline-smeared lens. Yes, it was an exercise in building brand affiliation, but it was also a gluttony of sesame, alfalfa and walnuts that she wanted to share with me. I feel my fabric soften towards Mother, as You say with no hint of irony, ‘Home is tender-loving wear – washed with Mollycuddle.’
‘The doctor says the corporate wringing and scrubbing has worn away your sensitivity. Will you show me the food stains you still hand treat?’ I ask.
I thought she would refuse, make it clear that she rejects the ‘body-con’ of tastures completely.
She stands very still for a while before saying, ‘I’m only revealing this wardrobe malfunction once.’
I wonder whether the revolt of Frisson Froufrou You feels to Mother like a digit desperately scrabbling in the throat for the gag reflex. I think about telling her that the copywriter and doctor were finger-licking over my tastures so she knows she doesn’t have to try and purge them. What’s good enough for the omnipatchpotents, Mother will surely admit is good enough for her. But then I would also have to tell her how I turned up my nose at their frozen carrots and potato sticks.
Working quickly, she collects a couple of items from the laundry basket and lays them on the kitchen counter. Then she begins to collect items from the fridge and pantry and place them next to the different textiles. But instead of sesame suggestively encircled by a satin camisole, she has a jar of quince jelly, and the alfalfa sprouts that should be married to the chiffon negligée have been cuckolded by a sweet lap cheong sausage.
‘But Mother, these aren’t the fresh aromas that impregnate fabric fibres.’
‘Don’t you think I could find a pair of edible underwear blindfolded?’ She gathers up the laundry and drops it back in the basket.
Stupid, stupid to question her tastures. It’s just that I’m surprised – I thought this would at last be something on which we are in perfect agreement, like satin and sesame. Trying to think of a way to get her to drop her brandface again, I stare at the packet of bulgar wheat, the dandelion greens and tamarind pulp – the strange pantry fellows of the quince jelly and lap cheong sausage. Mother is always looking for new flavours.
Even when I was young, a chef prepared dinner in our kitchen three nights a week. On his off nights, Mother insisted the family dine out at experimental restaurants and roll kohlrabi, dukkah, hyssop and blachan introspectively around the drums of our mouths. Conversation was kept to a minimum. And all of this was made possible by Mother’s income and affiliation to Frisson Froufrou. She may not have done it intentionally but she trained my palate. I hadn’t thought about it before but without her, I probably wouldn’t be able to lickname my tastures. I owed her that as well.
‘Is your shrinking experience a relief?’
‘We aren’t all proud of our kinky tastes, dear.’
She won’t admit it, even to herself, but I bet the tasteless world seems like a nightclub visited by day – where all the intensity is lost, and everything feels drained and tacky.
You avert your eyes at any sign of my touch-taste hook-ups – they aren’t standardised applications compatible with everyone’s operating system. Even if a doctor and a copywriter think tastures are great R&D material, it doesn’t mean that they’ve entered your coding – the commonsumer consciousness. Besides, Wordini and Bromide don’t even agree on what my tastures are good for.