House Arrest

I haven’t left the house in four days. I feel trapped, but in a good way. I’m still staying at Mavi’s. I keep planning to leave, but have yet to muster up the courage to actually do so. Outside is too cold, too dismal, too filled with obligation. Penned up in this house, it feels bizarrely like time has stopped.

Mavi lives in a converted ballroom in east London. The house consists of one bedroom, a kitchen, a large bathroom containing an oversized, antique bathtub (big enough to happy hold three people—we’ve tried), and the ballroom, which is complete with high ceilings, a crystal chandelier and floor-to-ceiling windows which allow for picturesque streams of light to gracefully fill the entirety of the space. It really is the most beautiful house; once inside one finds little reason to leave. Suitably, for the past four days, Mavi, myself and an Austrian girl named Julia have made the house our voluntary prison. Visitors come and go on occasion, but we’ve yet to see the light of day.

Surprisingly, our time in the house has been really fun. We fill the empty hours of our days reclining in Mavi’s emperor sized bed, making elaborate soups, doing each other’s makeup and taking group baths in which we have in-depth discussions about boys we want to fuck. For Mavi this in an entirely new and exciting topic of conversation. For the past two years she’s been a self-proclaimed asexual. “I just didn’t fancy anyone,” she explains, matter-of-factly, “the idea of sex just grossed me out.” I find this element of Mavi’s character extremely intriguing, as I can’t—even for one second—relate to it on any level. However, Mavi’s sex drive has recently reappeared, and now all she wants to do is talk about hot boys.

Pics @ Ryan McGinley

“What have I been doing for the past two years?!” shouts Mavi from the opposite side of the bathtub. “London is full of so many mayj boys! How did I not notice them until now?”

“Well,” replies Julia, rinsing her hair of shampoo, “maybe it’s because you only ever go to gay clubs. Not the best place to find a boyfriend…”

“Obvs,” says Mavi, taking a drag of her cigarette, “but that wasn’t the problem. I was just sexually retarded for a while. But like, now all I can think about is young, beautiful boys. Young people just have something so amazing about them, right? They’re so innocent and soft and… new.” Well said. “It might sound shallow,” she continues, “but I only want to be around people who look amazing.”

We hesitate, then all nod in agreement. The conversation has left us horny, and as we emerge from the bathtub, wrinkly-skinned, the three of us make a pact to leave the house within the next twenty-four hours. I’ll be surprised if it actually happens.

It’s probably unhealthy to be boxed up like this, feeding off our own delusions, but Mavi’s lifestyle is just so elegant, so indulgent, so unapologetically frivolous—it’s too easy to get sucked in.

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