*

I refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. The woman I am obsessed with usually posts around this time. I’m half-watching Gilmore Girls on my laptop. I refresh again and suddenly on the ninth refresh, the squares shuffle to the right, go white, quickly blink back into colour and there’s a new post—a selection of the products she sells from a webshop she owns called Terroir. It may or may not make a profit but regardless of this minor inconvenience, it seems that being a founder of an independent webshop is the new rich kid thing to do. All her friends have variations of this curated online presence where they push a skincare line or expensive household furniture, or cookware—objects which have been taken outside of their cultural contexts to be placed artfully in your home to make you appear more interesting. I’ve learnt about mid-century furniture this way. I think of my parents’ generic in-built wardrobes in fake wood that I’m sure is veneered plastic which they proudly picked out of the company magazine from a wholesaler warehouse in Sudbury.

I know the woman I am obsessed with has many of these tastemaker friends, where the acquisition of beauty seems to fuel them as much as food. One of these friends posts notable artists’ interiors like she does. I know this as I stalk him too in case he posts photos of her because I like to know what she wears every day, which makes me feel shit but then makes me feel like I’ve achieved something when I know but really, I lose a tiny part of myself every time I screenshot a photo of her or her new studio flat in Marfa now she’s single or her previous flat she shared with her ex-boyfriend or her father’s house where I try to map the geography of the rooms. I save these screenshots to the Album in my phone which, when I scroll through, looks deceptively like I have a very good friend whose life I celebrate, as if I want to treasure her memories alongside my own. I don’t have any opinions about furniture. If I was to ever have a home I’m not sure what I would fill it with. I don’t own anything which would tell other people how much of a tastemaker I am, how much of a grown-up. I fit into spaces which already exist and contort myself to fit a shape which has been allocated for me. I don’t own anything. The thought of antique shopping for each individual item is exhausting and exhilarating and expensive. I click through to the shops the woman I am obsessed with tags in her posts, who she thanks, the painters she recommends on her stories, helpfully including a link to buy one for yourself. I look up the price of a painting she angles into the sun, on top of her brightly coloured mantlepiece with the hashtags of the architect who built it and the painter who painted the painting. I google the artist’s name and ‘price’ and he’s dead and his work costs between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars and my jaw swings open andIwanttoownittoobuthowandwheredoyougotobuy paintings? Or perhaps what I want is the disposable cash to be able to buy a painting but actually what I want is something much harder to attain which is to know what paintings are worth buying in the first place combined with the innate belief I deserve to be in surroundings which need paintings on the walls before I am able to feel at home. I read the caption on the new post and it says, meet us at our pop-up at a friend‘s house in Notting Hill, dm for details. The post is a graphic amalgamation of the items Terroir sells, the objects hung disembodied on a white background. The uniqueness of her business is that she is a daughter of someone who is famous for being aesthetically rigorous and if you part with a minimum of $500 you might be able to buy into this upbringing too. I think—this is my chance.

I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel (Rough Trade Books, £14.99) is out now.

Book of the week: read an extract from I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel