When my parents split I was 18 years old, and it came down to me as the eldest child to sort through the attic full of books they had accumulated over their 25-year marriage. Not only did they want rid of all the books they’d owned together, but they weren’t concerned about the books they had brought to the marital home from their single lives. Anything I wanted was mine; everything else was gone. But how could I throw these books away? I recognized spines, titles and cover art from my childhood, when I would spend hours pawing through the floor-to-ceiling shelves in my father’s study. I didn’t read a Stephen King novel until I was 16, but I could have recited the titles from the age of seven. When I was nine I spent three weeks ‘reading’ George Orwell’s 1984, though all I could remember was the rats and the sex; the paperback still had greasy marks on pages 45-70 where I dropped a piece of buttered toast. Many of the books were inscribed with my mother’s maiden name and schoolgirl marginalia. You don’t just throw those things away.

I took Leonard Cohen’s Poems 1956-1968 for the sole reason that it had my father’s name written on the inside cover. For the next eight years I dragged it from four years of student digs to my mother’s new flat (because English Lit degrees do not lead to rent payments) to my first flat with my girlfriend, and I never read it. Sometimes I would pull it off the shelf and flip through it, scanning for my father’s handwriting in the margins. josephine – medicine 1971-72. anne without the e, 1974. susan brown, my love, jan 75. I didn’t know who these women were, but I knew they weren’t my mother. These insights into my father’s past were enough; I put the book back on the shelf and forgot all about it.

Six months ago, I developed a predilection for reading poetry in the bath, accompanied by a glass of red wine and enough candles to burn down the flat if they got too near the shower curtain. I’d always been a bit scared of poetry so all I had were my university course books – Palgrave and Norton, Yeats and Blake – and a few books salvaged from my parents’ house. Not surprisingly, I was soon bored by Songs of Innocence and Of Experience; call me a yob, but I’m not inspired by lines like “Little lamb, God bless thee!”. The only poetry that didn’t seem to concern itself with wars or flowers was Leonard Cohen’s Poems 1956-1968, so it accompanied me to my next bath.

And then I had a revelation. When I read Leonard Cohen, I was not me; a tattooed, queer, broke 26-year-old writer with two useless arts degrees and a waitressing job. I read the poems as I imagined my father read them. I read them as the boy he was: a sombre rugby player, a heartbreaking poet, a middle child in a strict and silent family. I read them as the man he would become: an overeducated, soft-voiced, manic-depressive, shake-handed man who always knows the answers. Just for a few grasping seconds, I understood him.

But at times I think that maybe I just don’t like Leonard Cohen at all. I don’t like that his poems can be conceited and unromantic, such as ‘These Heroics’:

If I had a shining head
and people turned to stare at me
in the streetcars
…
do you think that I would remain in this room,
reciting poems to you,
and making outrageous dreams
with the smallest movements of your mouth?

Maybe I’m a romantic or maybe I just have blinkers on, but I think that poetry is all about making outrageous dreams from the smallest movements. I also don’t like that Leonard Cohen’s women are just for fucking or writing poetry about – usually both. I don’t like that he takes himself too seriously, or not seriously enough, depending on your reading:

I want your warm body to disappear
politely and leave me alone in the bath
because I want to consider my destiny

But then I wonder: did my father lust after the powerful and damaged Queen Victoria, as Leonard Cohen lusted after her “skin slightly musty with petticoats”? Did he wish he could demand elopement with the bus driver, like in ‘The Bus’? Did he see himself in the tongue-tied man searching for words outside poetry, as in ‘Gift’? And then I remember why I love my imperfect-perfect father, and why I love this book.

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This is what I mean, he says in a Czech accent. I must airbrush this now! You must start jogging more.

Right, I say, and I tilt my head down so that he won’t see the spot on my chin, inexpertly concealed with powder. He takes a few more shots, asking me to straddle a chair then look dreamily into the rafters then smile as if I’ve just heard a good joke.

The studio is the size of a school classroom and smells of dust. Even the floor reminds me of school – scuffed beige lino, the same as the gym room.

Later, I have to lie flat on my back while the photographer uses the macro lens on my pubic hair, nipples, jaw-line, and eyes. I pass the time by revising words for my English exam. Acquiesce, I think. Viscera. Obsequious.

Afterwards I step out into another rainy Glasgow night, the spotlights burning my eyes. That was the last, I think.

***

It begins with SuicideGirls, a website of nude girls with tattoos, piercings, and dyed hair. Like most teenagers I have low self-esteem and body image issues – but also a tattoo, several piercings, and dyed black hair. SuicideGirls claims to get a million hits per week.

I gather my two best friends and a bottle of vodka. Sophie the tomboy styles, Alexander the in-the-closet homosexual photographs. We drink until it all seems like a great adventure, then I climb into the empty bath while Alexander watches me on the tiny screen of my digital camera. I peel off my black bra and pink mesh hot-pants and Halloween cat ears. I press my feet against the taps, arching my back and blurring my eyes like the girls in the magazines.

We like these, says SuicideGirls, send the rest. I hadn’t thought that I would need more. Capturing my nakedness has already pushed the limits of my friendships. I take the photos and list myself on several modeling portfolio websites. Photographers email, offering an hourly rate for me to take my clothes off.

***

A middle-class girl with a job in a bookshop, good exam results and a place at university, I don’t need the money. I need a spotlight trained only on me. I am so pretty, so classy, that people pay to immortalize me as a work of art. I am no porn star, no topless model; I am Bettie Page. I fill myself up with other people’s desire for me. I feel the same emptiness as all teenagers, a black pit to be filled by experiences, opinions, original thoughts. In time, I know I will become a well-rounded person. But I have never been good at patience.

***

I bring my boyfriend to the first shoot at a man’s house in a Glasgow suburb. In preparation, I paint my toenails purple and borrow my mother’s Clinique eyeliner. My bra is printed with rainbow-coloured skulls. The man’s bedroom has bare walls and a view of someone else’s window.

Open your legs, he says, and though it’s not what I think Bettie Page would do, I do it. I think about my boyfriend on the man’s couch, fiddling with the TV remote and listening to the clicking of the camera.

On the train home I can’t decide whether I’m a third-wave feminist or just a victim.

***

On one shoot, a man brings along a pair of knickers he wants me to wear. He asks in a nice way, apologetic. I refuse. I don’t think it’s hygienic, I say.

All the photographers are men. Most are twice my age, though one looks barely legal. He says he is an art student. He spends a lot of time arranging the lights.

Each photographer has an odd request that they state as if it is common sense. One does not want me to have any body hair whatsoever. One wants me to show all my teeth when I smile. One does not want me to smile at all. One will only use special lenses that have to be put into the camera under a black cloth. I smile, and wait, and think of Bettie Page. In Art class I make a heart-shaped papier-mâché box to store my earnings. I am saving up for a laptop so I can sit in coffee-shops and write a novel about these experiences.

I imagine myself on the cover of pulp fiction novels, twisted around snakes, holding a whip. I imagine myself in Bizarre magazine and late-night MTV videos and photography journals. I imagine myself on the front page of SuicideGirls, but I never email them back.

***

Six months after those first photos, in a studio that smells like dust, a Czech photographer tells me I have cellulite. I am 18 years old, weigh 112 pounds, and have a 26-inch waist. I am tired of spreading my legs. I go home and open the papier-mâché box.

***

See also:

The Rumpus Sex Blog.

Antonia Crane’s Recessions Sex Workers series.

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