Charlotte vs Style

Charlotte, sitting atop the bed “Indian Style”, looked about the room and thought that maybe she was being a little unfair to Clive. Every square inch of the decoration had been left to her and, as with most things left to her, it had wound up covered in Strawberry Shortcake paraphernalia – amongst other popular franchises from her childhood.

Gem and the Holograms posters (Ebay) covered the west wall while a mixture of Ms. Shortcake (Mostly Ebay, some from a car boot sale) and She-Ra (Presents from Clive) posters covered the East. The South wall had the dresser and the closet, both of which had an assortment of lunchboxes, action figures and the occasional, unusual artefact such as a My Little Pony Board Game or a Ninja Turtle. That last item often got used as evidence that not everything of Charlotte’s was explicitly feminine.

Picking her feet up with her hands, she swirled around on her bum to face the north wall. That held the only decoration that was contentious between Charlotte and Clive, a large oil painting of them making love. It had taken a good deal of marijuana to relax Clive enough to actually pose for the reference photo that her friend had used, but he’d been rather taken by the idea from the moment she’d proposed it. It was only once it actually hung on their wall that it occurred to Clive that visitors might wander in and see it. “Well the bedroom is our private space, they’ve no place to judge anything we have in here” she’d said to him “Besides, I’m sure their eyes will only be drawn to your winning smile”.

Since then, whenever Clive had talked about getting a lock on their bedroom door or maybe putting the painting away “just for a little while”, she would tease him and threatened to hang it up in the living room. “That’s where it is!” Charlotte yelled to an empty apartment. “I left the stupid thing in the living room…” she mumbled on her way down the hall and into a space which she’d let Clive define, for the most part. On the glass coffee table lay what she’d been seeking, a copy of Vogue which Devon had left behind the last time she’d been over. Clive was out with her now, no doubt making snide remarks between each other about everyone they saw over the rim of their martini glasses.

Charlotte knew Devon still hadn’t entirely approved of her being Clive’s girlfriend. Back when Clive had first introduced them to each other, Charlotte could see from the way Devon’s eyes moved up and down her body that every inch of her was being judged. Then again, the angle may have made Devon’s look seem worse than it was – Devon standing at a willowy 6’3 and Charlotte reaching 5’4 if she wore her thick soled sneakers with the Japanese cartoons along the side. The right side of the left shoe had a little boy being toilet trained, proclaiming that he wanted to be a “Pants Man!”.

Charlotte also knew that Devon had a habit of writing comments, notes and doodling along the margins of everything she read. This was her chance to see if there was anything past the mundane to discover in this “marginalia”, as Devon insisted on referring to it as. Twenty minutes later, Charlotte felt that she had only really gained a reminder of why she didn’t bother reading Vogue. Like most women, she didn’t have a frame that was suited to the latest fashions of New York, Milan and the other cities which she felt had become institutions simply by saying so enough times that everyone believed them.

The notes were mostly just catty remarks about various celebrities and models, with the occasional circling of something that Devon must have wanted to find an affordable knock off of. Some young Bulgarian woman in an ad for Clairol was dubbed “Horse Features”. A list of people Devon apparently needed to email was written in flat, robotic handwriting along the hem of a dress designed by a French man who seemed to have trouble buttoning up his shirt. Charlotte lay the magazine back on the table and sat back in the dark purple, suede beanbag chair she’d negotiated.

It was hard not to giggle a little at herself, thinking of what Clive would say about her looking for clues – though he’d probably refer to them as plot devices. It was such a gimmick with him, integrating storytelling into real life. Shrugging, Charlotte decided that she didn’t care what Devon thought anyways. If Devon was really Clive’s best friend then she’d not do anything to sabotage their relationships and, really, she’d try to get over her little prejudices.

Lost in thought as she had been, Charlotte’s shoulders tightened when she could hear the tell tale sounds of Clive scrabbling with the keys and Devon’s laughter, snorts and all. “In you go madam” Clive remarked as he held the door for his tall friend. As her long legs passed through the doorway, Charlotte crossed her arms to cover the Care Bear Cousin which adorned her lime green t-shirt.