Sharp
By Harry Whitehead
Sharp.doc
Clitoral piercing – the details . . .
2nd place – Virago publishing short fiction for women competition 2007 ‘Hags Harlots and Heroines’
This entry was posted on March 1, 2007 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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March 2, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I enjoyed Harry’s story ‘Sharp’. I found it more interesting then ‘Ringtone’ which had loosely drawn characters in an archetypal moment that did not culminate in any insight on the part of the characters. I like to feel elated when I leave the theater. It helps me digest the butter popcorn. ‘Sharp’ took me into the world of the main character Talia. I felt satisfied to be introduced to her perspectives and motivations. In ‘Ringtone’ I felt parched for embellishment and ‘Big Picture’ images, which I made up for in my commentary. But here, in the world of ‘Sharp’ we have many tastes and images to savor.
The use of accents the characters used in conversing brought an immediacy to the story. I have been told that there is not a ‘British accent’, that Americans speak English with an accent. I once visited a college cafeteria in Northern England. Whatever it was they were speaking, I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.
I love the subject of body alteration and am a big fan of tattoos and piercings. I like the idea of reinventing the body. It is as old as we are a species. Tongue studs are a wonderfully shameless exhibition of the love of oral sex. I guess clit rings are for pocket rockets. Nicolas Cage was asked once what the first thing he would do if he could be a female. He replied, “masturbate”. I think Harry has a porn novel hidden deep in his brain pan waiting to come out. I am sure it would be a very graphic , twisted tale, void of cleverness for cleverness sake. A contemporary ‘Story of O’ with soul perhaps. Such novels have lost their appeal as a genre. I believe Harry could breath life back into the ‘forbidden’ novel genre.
William Burroughs said after visiting a Gay porn theater that the film he saw made his novels into “an extinct commentary on the forbidden”. ‘Sharp’ wants to take us back to the taboo we can all partake in for the price of a needle and a skilled puncture master. The young life of a teenage girl ends up with her on her back, legs in the air, in a dingy back room, waiting for her genitals to be pierced. This is not a circumcision ritual or is it? Harry puts a fly in the ointment by Talia wishing for it to be sharp, painful. Some people require pain to attain an orgasm. One wonders more about Harry’s motivation then Talia’s. Is he secretly The Beard character?
There was a time when some women were ashamed of their genitals, considering them ugly. These days the popularity of adorning them with tattoos and piercings is on the raise.It is a good topic to write about and Harry has taken the needle in hand to wet our appetites for more screaming, splitting exposures of human extremity. Well done.
March 5, 2007 at 6:09 pm
I agree with a lot with the previous comments – Harry does indeed have an urgent novel waiting to come out, except I think the erotic genre only covers some of his bigger themes. This story in particular – a delicious tale of voyearism with Talia’s desires spread-eagled before the readers; demonstrates not only the beauty of his prose but Harry’s ease with the Big questions that literary fiction wrestles with.
Sharp is wrapped up in the contemporary wrapper of youth, tattoos and genital piercings, but the main protag in this coming of age tale struggles with issues of sexual identity and emancipation that many of us can identify with – even without the ink work and studs to prove it. This pulls it out of the genre of porn and the world of specialised eroticism and fetishes, and propels it into a wider space. With all that being said, it wouldn’t be Harry without the wit, the fliration and fun, danger and contemprary edginess; his whole keyhole approach of telling a story, which makes it all feel just a bit naughty.