Do You Mind if I Put My Hand on it?: Journeys into the Worlds of the Weird. Mark Dolan
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‘Will that make you the holder of the title, the number one biggest implants in the world?’
‘Yeah, if I fill 5,500 each one that will make me the large implants in the world.’
‘Really? Number one?’
‘Number one of the whole entire world,’ she says, like a wide-eyed contestant in a beauty pageant. Her English is pretty good, but not perfect and has some idiosyncrasies, including making her sound quite childlike.
‘And how would that make you feel to be number one?’
‘Yeah I always wanna be remembered so every time the people remember about breast implants, they got to remember of me.’
‘Is that important to you, that you go down in history, that you will have a legacy?’
‘Yeah. I did this for my ego, to be happy, to be remember, so that in only a little bit more time, I will be ready to stop. But I wanna keep my size for at least a year or two, because I want to have fun with that, I wanna have a lot of fun with my breasts,’ she declares bouncily.
I’m not sure what it means exactly. But it’s illustrative of the fact that Sheyla comes across as implicitly comical, and speaks, I think unintentionally, in comical sound-bites. At regular intervals, she refers to her adoration of Dolly Parton, which seems appropriate, as there is obviously something quite bouncy, comical and not entirely real about our Dolly either. But because of her heavy Brazilian accent she tends to chop the ends off quite a few words, and regularly announces, often with a tear in her eye, ‘I just love Dolly Part. I want to be Dolly Part. Dolly Part is so beautiful and I want to be her.’
‘So you are going to be a world record breaker for a year or two, make a bit of money?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’
This is an unconvincing response. She is clearly not lacking business nous but something tells me fame is the bigger prize. Though somewhat manufactured, her airport arrival felt like the kind of thing she lives for. Already I have the sense that while Minka’s large breasts were solely about making money and indulging her husband sexually, Sheyla’s breasts seem to be about her, and the persona she’s constructed. We move upstairs for the long-promised barbeque. We eat on the top floor which has a roof and a floor, but no outer walls. Quite a feat of engineering, though not intentional I think. It looks like a part of the house which hubby hasn’t had enough bank holidays to complete, much to his wife’s chagrin. Every man has a bit of his home he hasn’t finished. It’s worn by all of us as a badge of pride. This man’s unfinished bit is an entire storey of the building – more power to his elbow.
The open nature of this top floor provides a vantage point over the whole city, which is bigger from on high that it looks in the back of a Fiat Punto taxi. The barbeque delivers. It’s decidedly un-British – not a burnt Taste The Difference sausage in sight. Just soft, sumptuous meat that would have the most ardent vegetarians reconsidering their position. A variety of just bloody enough lamb and beef, alongside some freshly broiled ham expertly grilled by a family friend. He has the air of someone who is inexplicably always there, even though there isn’t really a reason for him to be there, rather like a badly written sitcom character. There were a flurry of Seventies sitcoms that seemed to feature a policeman sitting at the table, drinking tea. For no apparent reason. But this particular gentleman at Sheyla’s sister’s place is a bone fide alpha male and he strikes me as someone it would be nice to have around, in any house, at any time. A man who understands how to cook dead animal, who knows how to hang a hook that will stay up and how to recalibrate the engine on a Mark 4 Volkswagon Golf. A proper, actual, man man. Now you’re talking.
As we delve into this protein fest, Sheyla noticeably strains with her back.
‘Do you ever get a bad back?’ I ask.
‘Yeah my back pain. The pain is a lot. Before never hurt, but now they hurt. So when I go to a restaurant like now I just rest my boobs on the table.’
I pull a face of surprise. ‘Really?’
At which point there plays out one of those moments that I will take to my grave. Like shaking hands with the smallest man on Earth, or hugging someone called Dennis who has turned himself into a cat, it’s pretty amazing. I am watching a woman rest her breasts on the table in order to rest her back. It’s an utterly bizarre act of comedy, and practicality. And it raises the key themes so far in my encounter with Sheyla – hilarity, and a sense of – what the hell are you doing to yourself? There was a hardiness about Minka, a resolve that made her look like a pro when it came to carrying her accessories around. It’s just business. With Sheyla, the whole enterprise feels more impulsive and emotional and I’m not sure that she, or her back, will take the strain for long.
After eating almost an entire farmyard’s worth of barbequed animal, it is time to hit the mall, and time for part two of the Sheyla show. She insists on bringing her make-up artist and close friend, a detail which indicates what this visit will entail, and she doesn’t disappoint. At the entrance to the mall a small crowd gather, taking pics and staring. After many minutes, we enter the shopping centre itself and Sheyla tends to her fame the way you are supposed to tend to a log fire – enjoy the heat when it’s roaring, and stoke it up a bit when it goes down. In those brief moments when nobody is taking an interest, Sheyla shrieks, giggles and if all that fails, wiggles her breasts.
Let’s be clear about this – there’s no irony being deployed. No Babs Windsor tongue firmly in cheek, with a wink to the knowing audience. Sheyla is just simply wiggling her breasts so people will look at her. End of, as an indigenous Londoner would say. Look at me, I’m wiggling my breasts. Look! Wiggle wiggle wiggle! It goes without saying, it’s unedifying, but I guess this is what you do if you have no discernible skill and if fame is the game. Sheyla has made herself unique in a way nature failed to do. Paul McCartney was born with the power of melody, Picasso the power of the paintbrush and Shakespeare was good at plays. With no such obvious gifts, or the education or opportunities to realise any talents lying dormant in her, what’s a girl who wants to be a star to do?
Amid the mostly positive public reaction to Sheyla’s arrival, there is a black sheep in the adoring family. A middle-aged woman utters some remark about her being ugly. This woman is in a group of one saying it, but isn’t there a silent majority, even the people snapping Sheyla on their mobiles, who also think that what she has become is ugly? Because let’s be honest – it is – isn’t it? The passing party-pooper is surely just the less deceived in this whole affair, and the more honest of her fellow shoppers. Sheyla’s reaction to the heckle is characteristically ebullient.
‘What do you think about that?’ I say. ‘She called you ugly. That’s not very nice is it?’
‘She is old, she is old, she is unfashionable.’ I’m chuckling at Sheyla’s brass. It’s a great line. Even if it doesn’t actually answer the question. I push the issue.
‘It’s got to hurt a little bit, hasn’t it?’
She pushes her head back haughtily. ‘Just make me laugh,’ she says. Reaching for another, more on-message passer-by, she says, ‘Look, she say I am beautiful.’
‘Oh well, that’s better isn’t it,’ I say. ‘You love this, don’t you, you know, you are running after people and helping them with the camera and showing yourself off.’
‘Yes, you know, because I like the attention, it’s good for me.’
Is attention really good for anyone? I personally think you’re damned if you don’t get it, but double damned if you do. This is a problem Sheyla seems to desperately want. She suddenly grabs my arm and frogmarches me to our next photo opportunity, at a swimwear shop. I’m beginning to eel somewhat compromised at this point. My interviewee is driving this whole thing. Should I be a bit worried, um, you know, journalistically? I have travelled many thousands of miles, I have a limited amount of time with my subject, and I need to understand why she has made these choices in her life. But this seems unlikely to happen because when I turn my