Adam Thirlwell - Politics

He got them water. They drank the alcohol.

They sat there by the window. Nana was next to Anjali, who was next to Verity. Moshe was on the end. He was squashing one tense buttock on to the edge of the seat, trying not to touch Verity. He did not want to seem seedy.

In Moshe’s opinion, the world had become far too touchyfeely. And once again, Moshe was right.

Nana and Anjali were melting, they were softening, into a girly couple. Nana’s head was angling on to Anjali’s face. And Nana was feeling small and warm and drugged. The world was the safest place.

Anjali was the prettiest, thought ecstatic Nana, because she was holding her. Anjali was stroking her bare stiff stomach. This movement made Nana shivery. All her feelings were soft. Anjali was making her soft. So everything was natural when she nuzzled and nibbled and kissed, and Moshe was there, he was watching, content, he was chatting about Friern Barnet. So Nana and her best friend Anjali could kiss, they just kissed. Because kissing was softest.

5

Has Nana just become a lesbian?

Of course not.

It was just a kiss. One girlongirl kiss does not make a girl a lesbian. There were reasons for Nana kissing Anjali, but they were not lesbian reasons.

The main explanation was this. As I have said before, Nana was not a girl for whom sex came easily.

But why should that make a girl a lesbian?

Hush hush. She was not a lesbian. But because Nana did not have a particular sexual obsession, she was always interested in other people’s sexual obsessions. She was always interested in the way other people had sex. She wondered what it might feel like.

Nana was not hoping, really, for a new frisson when she kissed Anjali. No. She was curious. It was an unsexual interest in sex. You see, I am aware that at this point Nana might seem a little self-engrossed. And that would really be very unfair. The conclusion that Nana was selfish would be the conclusion of a sexual being. And a lot of my readers are sexual beings, I understand that. But Nana was not a sexual being. She was innocent.

That was the important reason.

There were also two extra reasons why Nana was feeling morally unworried. She was happy on Ecstasy. This limited her sense of naughtiness. The other explanation was this. Moshe was there, he was sitting beside them and chatting away. So Moshe was happy too. If Moshe had not been happy, none of this could have happened. Because then it would have been unfaithfulness. But it could not be unfaithfulness if he was watching.

So Nana kissed Anjali. Anjali was soft. It was softer than kissing Moshe.

But what was Anjali thinking? Was Anjali not thinking malicious and triumphant thoughts?

Of course not.

So Anjali was innocent too? Well kind of. Anjali was not innocent in the way that Nana was innocent. Anjali was ordinarily sexual. But Anjali was also thinking things through. She was not being selfish either. She was thinking about Nana and Moshe. She was happy on Ecstasy. She was thinking, if she was thinking at all, that this kiss showed how much Nana and Moshe loved each other. They were the most loving couple. They were not a couple wracked by jealousy.

For instance, to reassure you, compare Anjali with me. One of my bad traits is this. I can be very selfish. I know this might seem unbelievable, but it is true. This means that, a lot of the time, I want things just because other people want them. I am often a little worried that I might be missing out.

But Anjali was not thinking in this selfish way. It is a way that I could obviously understand, but it was not how Anjali was thinking. She was not motivated by acquisitive envy. She was just feeling happy. She was happy that her friends were happy. She was pleased they were in love. And it was true. Everything Nana and Moshe did was a loving gesture.

For example, just when Moshe was beginning to look a little glum and restless, Nana squeezed past Anjali. She kissed Moshe. She kissed him apologetically, kindly. It was more fun kissing Moshe. Then she stopped kissing him and looked into his big brown labrador eyes.

6

I am going to make this absolutely clear.

Anjali and Nana have kissed, but they have not done anything else that is sexual. But they will have sex in the end. I promise you that they will. And when they do, I will tell you! You are just going to have to wait. In the meantime, you can assume that they are getting more and more intimate. All three of them are becoming inseparable.

You will probably want to know the specific living arrangements of Nana and Moshe and Anjali. The living arrangements might start to seem important. So I will tell you now.

The three of them are not living together. I will tell you when they do.

7

To start with, let us look at Moshe’s angle. I am going to investigate Moshe for a moment. The next part of this story, and it is an important part, was not an event. It was a series of micro-events. Often, the micro-event was not even a micro-event. It was just a feeling. The next part of this story is just smallness.

Moshe would wake up from his personal brand of tiring sleep and lie there. And while he lay there, he used to chat to himself about politics, sex, philosophy, art. Mostly sex. He abandoned his mind to each one of its libertine urges. He let it sniff at the first stupid or brilliant idea that came up, just as delinquent kids on the Cally Road dog some girl with laceless Nike trainers and dead eyes, a retrousse nose.

Had anyone behaved badly? Not at all. It was not infidelity, reasoned Moshe. And if it was not infidelity, then Moshe was not jealous. After all, he had been there when they kissed each other. If anything, it was sexy. He had to admit, he quite liked it. It was every boyfriend’s dream.

He was an ethical thinker, Moshe.

But what was causing these philosophical thoughts? Why was a boy from Friern Barnet, whose adoring mother was called Gloria, pondering on the nature of goodness?

Sometimes Nana and Moshe and Anjali sat on the futon together under a duvet, with Anjali in the middle, watching videos and eating pizza delivered by the Go-Go Pizza Company. The Go-Go Pizza Company did a deal of a 14- inch Supreme pizza of your choice with two portions of garlic bread and a tub of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, all for Ј9.99 if ordered before 5.30. Five o’clock was, they all conceded, sometimes too early for pizza.

Or Anjali would come home with them after they had gone to the now discontinued Dub Club in Finsbury Park and stay the night because Nana and Moshe did not want her to schlep back to Kentish Town. And occasionally Anjali would wander back from her position on the futon into Nana and Moshe’s room, after they had said goodnight, and carry on chatting. She curled up on the bed while Moshe worried that — hunched like this under the duvet — his breasts looked like breasts.

These were not really events, you see. They were not really remarkable. But they were why Moshe had turned philosophical.

About a month later, after an all-day visit to the Embassy Bar on the Essex Road, they were standing at a bus stop. Nana was keeping her hands warm in Moshe’s trouser pockets. And when Anjali coyly objected to this naked fondling, Nana responded by pushing Anjali’s hand into Moshe’s pocket. Anjali naughtily located his penis. She held it, slightly too tightly, thought excited and burgeoning Moshe.

Then the bus came.

There were minor moments of momentary kissing. Occasionally, Anjali and Nana kissed. But Moshe was always kissed too. It always became mutual kissing.

Anjali and Nana were not — let me repeat — a couple.

Moshe, poor thing, was happy.

8

Because he was happy, Moshe had taken to listing the various habits of Nana and Moshe. If he woke up on his own he remembered her wake-up games. He remembered how Nana snuggled and wouldn’t talk. Nana would only mime hello, waving her hand, with her lips shut.