Lifestyles: GIRL's ROOM

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UNIVERSE • Laura Coope It smells like cherries. As sweet and sickly as blood, the dense, thick air clings to my lips. Cherry tobacco and nail varnish. The aromas paint my picture as I approach her door. Her door; my lips curl at the image, battered, dented oak smeared with damson lipstick, spattered with greying blue tack, acrylic brainstorms interrupted with the stickers you find on apples.

I glow at what lures me inside her space. This is her universe, an explosion of the deepest inner beauty, a scene that steals my breath and stores it under her pillowcase. Hundreds of khaki, three inch plastic soldiers are planted on the ceiling, their shadows stretching and leaning towards the window. The window strewn with cigarette papers and week old orange juice gleaming with heavy sunlight. She laughs at the potential vitamins and sucks on liquorice laces whilst scribbling on her mirror. The looking glass is adorned with feather like finger prints, it seems to return my smile.

My foot tears over a ragged zip, the pinnacle of a mountain of climbing clothes, my heel breaks our glorious silence as it meets the drum kit. I land awkwardly on what could be a sofa, the sheets of paper hiding its designed form.

The walls talk to me here, they are riddled with her.

Lyrics, poetry, paintings and cuttings. The combination always amuse me, Andy Warhol alongside Cher and The Cure. Modern abstract artists share their wall space with tattered playing cards, torn strips of lace and a poem I wrote in eyeliner.

Grubby hand prints juxtapose the delicate sketches and sculptures her hands created. I stare at the walls for some time, of course I’ve seen them before, but they appear to have layers, exposing fresh material as my eyes begin to tire.

She informs that four broken glasses lie somewhere in her room, and that last time she attempted to spring clean she cried as it felt like hovering her heart.

We sit. My foot dangles and swings over her bed, grazing the army of coffee mugs and toast crumbs. I watch ash from her cigarette fall like acid rain on her duvet cover. We glance at the distant television, semi visible and hidden by art books with folded corners, we watch late night repeats of ‘Trisha’ and ‘Bargain Hunt’ in mute, relying on the sign language translator to keep us updated. The volume only turns on to accompany the adverts.

Her jeans are dirty, but the washing pile has blended with the clean pile so it seems safer to stay in the dirty jeans. We print out film scripts on her flea market typewriter on to faded silk she hides under her bed, we safety pin our prints to our tee-shirts.

The bedroom seems satisfied by this; the ceilings heave and sigh with cherry scented smoke. We lie on her bed and peacefully enjoy our roles as emperors of our perfect universe.

© Laura Coope November 2003
Laura is a first year Creative Arts student at Portsmouth University
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