Plastic Jane

In my efforts to clean up my flat, I'm trying to look over, clean, dust and de-junk one section of the flat at a time. today, it's the top of my small book case, on which there is a number of candles, candle holders, incense burnersm, the modum and a lot of pens, there is a small framed article sitting on a stand. It's one of my most prized possessions. 

It's Plastic Jane. 

Plastic Jane was purchased at the Melbourne Writer's Festival in the early noughties. A poet published 50 poems, in separate frames, and these were put up for auction. The poems were all in different frames, different calibres. Plastic Jane is in an ornate plastic frame. It looks kind of classy, even if it isn't. The poem is written in a small Times New Roman Font, justified across the page. 

She fascinated me as soon as I saw her. I had to have her. I think, in the end, I paid about $50 for her. As I was volunteering at the Writer's Festival that year, driving around the great unwashed luminaries between The Malthouse and The Hyatt Hotel, I wanted to commemorate meeting some of my literary heroes. I got stuck in traffic with people like David Malouf, Graeme Blundell, Elliot Perlman and Andrew O'Hagan (who was texting Zadie Smith as we drove to to the Malthouse - such is my six degrees of separation)

But I digress. I remember reading Plastic Jane in her frame, in The Malthouse foyer and I fell in love. I loved the sensuality of the writing. I love the twist in her tail. I love the unexpected nature of Plastic Jane.

She's sat on my little bookshelf for many years, now next to the photos of my niece, some five years passed later this month (Oh my, she would have turned 21 on the 20th, fucking leukaemia). 

I like that you have to really look at her to appreciate her. 

She is one of my favourite objects.

I just wish I could tell you the name of the poet. I've searched the internet but I've had no luck. 

Plastic Jane

MY INTEREST IN PLASTIC JANE IS PURELY SEXUAL. Should that go without saying? Those who know her will wax romantical about her ability to mold herself into various forms and shapes, appendages and orifices, aliens and lovers. This mutability combines with the immutable smoothness of her being, and its coolness to the touch, forming the etymology of her name. I have never pursued a relationship with her, I've simply gone to the circus every day for 10 years and watched her contort herself to the bewilderment of crowd after crowd. The first time I met her, I touched her before I actually saw her. She was making her way to the stage, I was stretching, yawning. The back of my hand hit her elbow. It did not knock my hand  out of the way, bur rather swallowed it. For an instant, my fingers went inside her. Her flesh (if it can be called that) formed three little mouths, each around one of my fingers. As my fingers slid out of her, the mouths in her arm made wet sucking/kissing sounds. I felt the moist tingling travel from my fingers to the rest of me and I shuddered with delight. I sat stunned as she went through her routine. Look, I am a missile she said, as her upper torso stretched to the top if the tent. Her fingers finned out, her nipples pointed upward as her breast bloated into bolster rockets. The crowd whooped and hollered. We counted down, and at zero she exploded and pieces of her flew in all directions. I wrestled a little piece from the kid next to me. Then, on cue, all the little pieces transformed into miniature representations of Plastic Jane - living dolls. They blew kisses to whoever was holding them. Then, the puckers of her lips grew. They got bigger and bigger as the rest of her got smaller and smaller. Finally, she was nothin but mouth/s. Her mouths jumped up and planted firm kisses on the lips of all the lucky audience members. They flew off, the lips swelling and the space between them filling, until flapping though the bigtop were hundreds of tiny butterfly-like buttocks. They fluttered back to the centre ring and re-congealed into the complete Plastic Jane. I haven't missed a show since. I suppose her true talent is her substance. Her body is so anonymous, so impersonal. The possibilities scramble my sensibilities. She is plastic. She is my favourite utensil. 

Today's Song: