He is looking at her. At her body. A hand-me-down. Carelessly.
She empties herself and dedicates herself to an amount of money.
Money always stands between her and food. Her and a roof over her head.
And he reads that she gets wrecked, ripped, destroyed, and it arouses him.
What he sees is that they all parade her around, he trusts the system she works in.
She is eighteen. Are maturity and complete awareness linked to a number? He
Forgets that she is not just a moving image in the present, she has a past and a future too.
The act demands that she cries and it comes all too easily to her. The tears.
The truth they entail. She stares at her skin and feels them all there. Their
Unholy traces and commands. Her contract. The voice only speaks to her in solitude.
It asks all these questions. And she starts shaking. Money is always the answer.
The reason dominating everything even her. Her craft is pretence and to keep herself
Together she does it to herself, her best work, deluding what cannot be fooled.
She knows herself best, but she avoids the voice, the caretaker within and they love it.
“Yellow-skinned Woman with a Cleavage” by József Rippl-Rónai (1861-1927)
Croque-Melpomene 