Found My Brand.
I'm buying some perfume for Susan in the airport. The woman in front of me in the Duty Free queue is attempting to purchase a baffling collection of Teddy Bears and Toblerones, and they spill out over the counter in front of her like finger food sliding off a paper plate at a wedding reception. One of the bears is dressed as a Guardsman. So he's a bear in a bearskin, I muse.
Its very early.
I've often wondered who bought this appalling airport tat - a Swatch watch and a big pencil are among her treasures - and clearly it is this woman. I am preparing to judge her when the person behind the till clocks me and in a moment of finer feeling practically unknown at airports alerts her colleague to the fact that I'm going to be clutching a bottle of "Black Opium" forever while she deals with the physical manifestation of this customer's mental illness.
"Jan. Could you take this gentleman into the Cigarette Room and deal with him in there?"
The Cigarette Room!
Jan appears. She is compact and has a posh cockney accent. She takes my boarding pass: "John? I'm Jan - lets go to the Cigarette Room."
The Cigarette Room is a brightly lit grotto and you can see why they've hidden it away from public view. Its like Goya's "The Horrors of War" in wipe-clean laminate, like the world's most obscene take-away menu. Every where in the room is a picture of human disfigurement: charcoal lungs, ragged pink punctures, festering gums, spindle teeth buttery with neglect. Jan hates it in here.
"I hate it in here," says Jan.
"This is amazing," I say.
"Amazingly horrible," says Jan, "if you still smoke after looking at all this lot then good luck to you, you're an idiot."
Jan and I have an instant rapport. We have become friends in the time it has taken me to slip into a small room decorated with diseased human meat.
"You'd have to be pretty committed to smoking to look at that," I point at a gruesome shot of some char-grilled innards - "and think "Ah, I'll get some lovely fags - what's the worst could happen?"
"That's the one that bothers me," she says. "I mean, you have to look twice." It is a picture of a shiny pink tracheotomy scar set in a fleshy, gizzardy neck. The hole is slightly puckered and it does look astoundingly like an anus, which is clearly what Jan is getting at.
"Are you transferring your flight?" she says, and I'm momentarily thrown. We're finally doing the transaction - the tour of the vault of horrors is over.
"No."
"And are you moving on from..." she looks at the boarding pass. "Belfast?"
"No. No. I live there."
"Is it alright?" she says.
"Er. Yeah." I don't mention Translink.
"Well that's good." she runs the perfume through the till. I spot a particularly vivid image on the wall. It is back-lit, all of the images are back-lit. Why would they need to be back-lit? This picture is less literal than many of the other ones. Its an anti-impotency picture where a man's groin has been completely torn out of the photo. In this environment it is almost subtle.
"That's a particularly fine one." I say.
"Do you smoke?" says Jan.
"No," I say.
"Good. I expect the person you're buying the perfume for is pleased." It hangs in the air for a second and I try and change the subject.
"The humidor is the only safe place in this room. Its like a lovely little cigar fridge."
"Yes it is," says Jan. The transaction is complete and we leave the Cigarette Room.
"Its like Horrors of the Black Museum in there," I say.
"I don't know why anyone smokes," says Jan, "all that rotting flesh all over the walls. I get the shivers every time I go in there."
What I don't tell Jan is it reminds me of a sex shop I went into in Amsterdam thirty years ago: the strip-lights, the cleanness, the pragmatic cheerfulness of the staff, the contorted flesh, so bright and so much of it. Mounds of flesh twisted into peculiar shapes and photographed from unusual angles.
It was my mate's idea to go in and he thought it was hilarious. Or he did at the start. Eventually the sheer relentlessness of it wore him down too. All those physical ruptures, the breakdown of the human body into consumption or waste, the rupture of the internal made external. The occult nature of our bodies, our hidden shame and horror when they break down, when they go wrong. When they fail.
That is the horror of the Cigarette Room.
 |
| Pretty sure that's not true, guys. They've done some tests or something... |
Its very early.
I've often wondered who bought this appalling airport tat - a Swatch watch and a big pencil are among her treasures - and clearly it is this woman. I am preparing to judge her when the person behind the till clocks me and in a moment of finer feeling practically unknown at airports alerts her colleague to the fact that I'm going to be clutching a bottle of "Black Opium" forever while she deals with the physical manifestation of this customer's mental illness.
"Jan. Could you take this gentleman into the Cigarette Room and deal with him in there?"
The Cigarette Room!
Jan appears. She is compact and has a posh cockney accent. She takes my boarding pass: "John? I'm Jan - lets go to the Cigarette Room."
The Cigarette Room is a brightly lit grotto and you can see why they've hidden it away from public view. Its like Goya's "The Horrors of War" in wipe-clean laminate, like the world's most obscene take-away menu. Every where in the room is a picture of human disfigurement: charcoal lungs, ragged pink punctures, festering gums, spindle teeth buttery with neglect. Jan hates it in here.
"I hate it in here," says Jan.
"This is amazing," I say.
"Amazingly horrible," says Jan, "if you still smoke after looking at all this lot then good luck to you, you're an idiot."
Jan and I have an instant rapport. We have become friends in the time it has taken me to slip into a small room decorated with diseased human meat.
"You'd have to be pretty committed to smoking to look at that," I point at a gruesome shot of some char-grilled innards - "and think "Ah, I'll get some lovely fags - what's the worst could happen?"
"That's the one that bothers me," she says. "I mean, you have to look twice." It is a picture of a shiny pink tracheotomy scar set in a fleshy, gizzardy neck. The hole is slightly puckered and it does look astoundingly like an anus, which is clearly what Jan is getting at.
"Are you transferring your flight?" she says, and I'm momentarily thrown. We're finally doing the transaction - the tour of the vault of horrors is over.
"No."
"And are you moving on from..." she looks at the boarding pass. "Belfast?"
"No. No. I live there."
"Is it alright?" she says.
"Er. Yeah." I don't mention Translink.
"Well that's good." she runs the perfume through the till. I spot a particularly vivid image on the wall. It is back-lit, all of the images are back-lit. Why would they need to be back-lit? This picture is less literal than many of the other ones. Its an anti-impotency picture where a man's groin has been completely torn out of the photo. In this environment it is almost subtle.
"That's a particularly fine one." I say.
"Do you smoke?" says Jan.
"No," I say.
"Good. I expect the person you're buying the perfume for is pleased." It hangs in the air for a second and I try and change the subject.
"The humidor is the only safe place in this room. Its like a lovely little cigar fridge."
"Yes it is," says Jan. The transaction is complete and we leave the Cigarette Room.
"Its like Horrors of the Black Museum in there," I say.
"I don't know why anyone smokes," says Jan, "all that rotting flesh all over the walls. I get the shivers every time I go in there."
What I don't tell Jan is it reminds me of a sex shop I went into in Amsterdam thirty years ago: the strip-lights, the cleanness, the pragmatic cheerfulness of the staff, the contorted flesh, so bright and so much of it. Mounds of flesh twisted into peculiar shapes and photographed from unusual angles.
It was my mate's idea to go in and he thought it was hilarious. Or he did at the start. Eventually the sheer relentlessness of it wore him down too. All those physical ruptures, the breakdown of the human body into consumption or waste, the rupture of the internal made external. The occult nature of our bodies, our hidden shame and horror when they break down, when they go wrong. When they fail.
That is the horror of the Cigarette Room.
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