Adam Thirlwell - Politics

It was a lustful situation — being spoonfed sugar-crunchy mouthfuls of lukewarm absinthe by the girl of Moshe’s dreams.

Nana said, ‘You, you, staring, what are, ystaring.’ And Moshe replied with something weird, not a word, just a sound like ‘Uuohoohyr’, and then smiled. It made her happy. She was happy that Moshe was happy. And because she was happy, as a treat, Nana took off her bra.

It was a treat, no doubt about it.

Her nipples were dimples, inside out. Moshe kneeled over, wobbling on his arms, and embellished one nipple, her left nipple, with his mouth. It coned out, roughened, redder, tough. It looked like a strawberry Jellytot. Whereas her areolae were pale like skin. They faded from round her nipples.

Moshe stared at her.

He asked if she liked him looking. And Nana’s reply was a smile that exposed her upper gum. It was not a satisfactory reply, she could see that, she saw that, slowly. So she curled her arm round Moshe and made him kiss her. Her mouth, wet with absinthe, stung Moshe’s mouth. And this was how they both constructed a sex scene. Carefully, they looked after each other. They carefully calmed each other. They concentrated.

They were trying to have a sex life. They really were. But there was a complication.

3

Naively, many people think that sex is simple. They think it is animal passion and feral cries. But there are lots of reasons why a sex life might be complicated.

There is something I have not told you. There was something Nana had not told Moshe.

Nana was not a girl who had ever adored sex. Well no, that is not quite accurate. She always enjoyed it in a way. She just never quite understood it. This might explain, or be explained by, another fact. Moshe did not need to be told about this fact.

Nana had never come.

She had come on her own, yes yes. Lying on her right- hand side, pressing her thighs together round her squashed and repetitive right hand, it was easy for Nana to come. But with anyone else, orgasms were a problem. They were non-existent.

There was no obvious reason why this might be. It was true that Nana was a late starter. Nana first had a boyfriend, a small Turkish boy called Can, when she was eighteen. The first time she masturbated was when she was fifteen. She did this thirty-four minutes after finding a copy of Emmanuelle 2 , the novel, underneath Papa’s bed. She stole it. Papa, of course, never mentioned this theft. You can’t ask your daughter to give back your porn. And Nana, of course, never mentioned it. She wanted Emmanuelle 2 all to herself. Emmanuelle 2 turned Nana on. It formed her masturbatory position. Nana masturbated on her side because that way she could read the book easily, spread out beside her on the pillow.

This, of course, did not explain why Nana could not come with other people. It did not follow that, being a shy late starter, who needed novels to come, Nana would not be able to come in company. But there it was.

I think this might explain Nana and Moshe’s sexual nervousness. I think this might explain why they were concentrating. In her twenty-three previous sexual encounters with Moshe, let alone in her previous sexual encounters with four different men, Nana had never come.

I suppose this might especially explain Moshe’s nervousness. He used to think that he was quite a talented lover, Moshe.

He did not think, not now, that he was a talented lover.

Instead, drunk on absinthe, Moshe was dozy and anxious. He was dozily anxious.

Let me give you an example of this dozy anxiety.

As Nana and Moshe kissed, Moshe was remembering that he had not moved his hands. This might not seem so bad. But lovers, Moshe thought, were meant to move their hands. So Moshe looked down to see what his hands were up to. They were crushed beneath Nana’s ribs. He dragged them out from under her and stroked her. But lifting off his hands made Moshe heavy on top of Nana, his right hip in her stomach. So Nana shifted herself, she wriggled a little.

This made Moshe stop stroking.

In his effort to believe that he was still a talented lover, Moshe was not being entirely successful. He was experiencing yet another extra problem. This was the problem of simultaneity. As he stroked Nana lovingly, Moshe was simultaneously listening to Nana’s question — ‘You know I do think you’re so pretty?’ It was a phrase he had often returned to. That ‘do’ worried him. The whole question worried him.

The reason Nana’s question worried him was this. It implied that Moshe’s prettiness was in doubt. Because, just to ask the question, Nana must have assumed he was insecure about his prettiness. And naturally this assumption made Moshe insecure about his prettiness.

Perhaps this reaction does not seem very natural. Moshe was being quite precious, I understand that. Nana’s question would not have made me insecure. I would not have brooded on it while I kissed my topless girlfriend. But then, I am not Moshe. This is not my psychology.

He let his left hand drift down, past her breasts towards her skirt. Then he hooked the reinforced satin pad of her gusset round his third finger and pushed down his second finger, on to and into her cunt. This rearrangement of Nana’s knickers was not innocently passionate either. There was a sad reason too. This is the chapter of sad reasons. Moshe was cunningly gauging whether Nana was wet. He was rearranging Nana’s underwear so that he could see how desirable he was.

Unfortunately, Moshe was not desirable. Nana was dry. There was sweat but Nana was not on heat, oh no. And Moshe thought to himself that this was surely the cruellest game, deciphering enjoyment. It was cruel because there was Moshe’s enjoyment to think of too, pleaded Moshe to himself.

While he guessed and second-guessed, Moshe had been comfortably uncomfortable, erect. He wondered if and when Nana would get totally naked. He was an expert on his drunk penis, Moshe. He knew its ins and outs.

5

But Nana was enjoying herself! She felt, it is true, kind of drugged and melancholy. The absinthe made her feel melancholy. But melancholy, for now, felt sexy. She imagined she was almost dying. And she enjoyed that. She liked her vision of dying.

Everyone would be sorry, so so so so sorry, at the funeral.

She knew that her vision was not perfect. If this were perfect, thought Nana the methodical fantasist, then Nana should be dressed in a silk white negligee with scalloped lace trim. She should not be seen naked for the shame of it. So the fantasy was not perfect. Topless was not perfect.

But the essential detail was that she must not exert herself. And so Nana was happily passive. She was there to be touched. Her pleasure was being still, succumbing to the man’s dreadful enjoyment. It was a new amusement.

And this way Nana was happy not coming. Coming was no longer an objective that evening. And that was a relief.

However, in this bedroom farce, Nana never thought that Moshe did not know her fantasy. She just assumed that he did. She looked at Moshe, looking in her face, and he seemed worried. He obviously knew she was dying. But of course Moshe did not know that Nana was dying, in the nineteenth century, of TB. How could he? How could Moshe know that Nana was a devastated lover, eking out her last tubercular pleasures?

Because of Nana’s illness she may be touched but never entered. So she decided to devise a new pleasure. In sympathy for Moshe’s sympathy for her distress, our heroine was pitiful.

‘Ahwonyu to come on my face,’ she said.

This was yet another complication.

She was not even wet and now she was trying to end it all, thought Moshe. She wanted him to schpritz her and end the palaver. So Moshe had been right all along. This flustered him. This sad realisation flustered him.