Adam Thirlwell - Politics

Moshe was too nice for a menage a trois.

4

However, you can think two things at once. He felt uneasy, and that feeling is important. But Moshe was only human. In addition to feeling uneasy, he could also acknowledge the obvious perks of having two girlfriends.

For instance, in the Oasis Pool, the menage was normally domestic. It was normally a series of invigorating lengths up and down the pool. But on this particular Saturday swim, it was naughty. Anjali’s bikini top was flopping undone. That was why Anjali and Nana were late. They emerged from the changing room, giggling, with Anjali’s arms crossed over her chest. The catch, she explained, was broken. And it was true. As she breasted the waters, her breasts appeared. It was, she told Moshe, a new bikini. She had bought it last week in Topshop. She had worn it once, said wide-eyed Anjali, without any problems. It was just that now it was useless.

They were a naughty threesome and they improvised. As you may remember, I like it when people improvise. Artfully concealed by orange water wings, Anjali’s arms were kept close to her chest. This did for a bikini top. But it did not solve the dilemma of the decorous morning swim. The three of them stood in the shallow end, by the water filter, confused.

I am ashamed to admit it, but the odd feeling of abandon caused by her naked breasts had just given Anjali an idea. Even though she is one of my heroines, she did not want a decorous swim. She suddenly wanted a louche swim. She wanted to make Moshe come in the water. So with Nana standing behind him, Anjali stooped lowish in the water and gathered Moshe’s penis inside his Adidas trunks. Even with the weight of a swimming pool on it, his penis grew. It grew and grew. And considerate Anjali promised Moshe that nothing would get spilled. At the critical moment, she would lean down and Nana would raise him up enough for his penis to break the water and meet her mouth. So everything was fine.

Moshe’s eyes looked frightened. They expressed fear of police. As Anjali explained that in an emergency the water filter would eliminate all other traces of evidence, Moshe stood rigid and was scared. This does not seem to me unreasonable. They were tightly wedged into the corner of a public swimming pool, one of them apparently dressed only in a pair of water wings. It was not, reasoned Moshe, unsuspicious. It would probably not go unnoticed by the lifeguard.

It did not go unnoticed by the lifeguard. He was strolling over to assist this group of non-swimmers in the shallow end, one of whom needed water wings. The lifeguard was a tall and gorgeous man. All six abdominal muscles were clearly visible. He was very beautiful. He was starkly handsome. He made Moshe feel undernourished. And sadly, Anjali Moshe and Nana never found out his name. But I will tell you this lifeguard’s name. His name was Ade.

Ade said, ‘Hi.’ Moshe replied brightly, ‘Hi.’ He was wondering what Ade could see. Ade could see enough. Ade said, ‘You okay with those?’ He was talking about the water wings. ‘Yes yes yes we’re fine,’ said Moshe, wondering what his relatives would say when the Jewish Chronicle picked the story up. Anjali smiled at Ade. Nana looked away, abashed. And Ade smiled.

You see, even a lifeguard was charmed by a threesome. Even a lifeguard saw a threesome as the essence of edgy cool. Ade winked. He walked away.

Perhaps Anjali’s behaviour seems unusually exhibitionist. I can see that it might need explaining. The thing is, Anjali and Moshe were not particularly relaxed being sexual together. In the course of the menage, they always remained friends who, inexplicably, also had sex. They had sex because they were meant to have sex. They were, after all, two-thirds of a menage a trois. But dutiful sex is, well, dutiful. Dutiful sex is boring.

I think that this was a pity. In many ways a threesome is the ultimate sexual unit. It is the socialist utopia of sex. One advantage of a threesome is that sexual responsibilities can be shared out equally. Sexual positions can be redistributed. Anjali, for example, had always felt unhappy asking a girl to use a dildo on her. With girls, Anjali coyly felt that begging for a dildo seemed to indicate an excessive interest in penetration. But obviously, in the menage, she felt no such inhibition asking Moshe to use his penis on her. And Moshe was pleased to use his penis on her. The one position that Nana disliked was the girl on all fours, fucked from behind. She said Moshe hurt her when he did that. She could feel him almost in her stomach and it hurt her. Whereas Anjali was happy to crouch there.

Redistribution worked. It worked sexually. Anjali loved it when Moshe pushed into her, deeply. She came.

As for Moshe, one regret he felt when thinking about his sexual repertoire with Nana was the difficulty of the sexual position ‘69’. This position is simultaneous oral sex. It rarely featured in Nana and Moshe’s sex life because Nana was six foot. And Moshe was not. In order for the position to be truly successful, Moshe’s penis would have had to extend inversely, backwards. Instead, in real life, either Nana’s back was painfully arched, or her mouth could only suckle on his inner thigh, close to his knee. Or Moshe could lick Nana’s tummy button. Whereas Anjali, Anjali was smaller than Moshe. Her mouth was in just the right place. Everything was in the right place.

So why, if it was sexual utopia, was a threesome not perfect? I am going to explain with an illustration. Well, an imaginary illustration. You will have to imagine a sketch. This sketch shows Anjali on all fours, and Moshe kneeling behind her. If you want, you can imagine a small jutting prong veering from Moshe’s waist. Anyway, the interest of this sketch is not the prong. It is the thought balloons.

You know what they are feeling. They are feeling enjoy- ably fucked. It is what they are thinking that is the problem. You already know what would be written inside Moshe’s thought balloon. ‘Nana,’ he would be moaning in this sketch, ‘darling Nana.’ His thought balloon was soppy and romantic. Anjali’s thought balloon was different. It was soppy and romantic, that is true. But it was lesbianly romantic. It was full of lesbian memories. ‘Zosia,’ she was thinking, ‘Zosia.’ She was remembering her ex. And even, oh no no no, she was occasionally thinking ‘Nana’. She was occasionally remembering more recent lesbian moments, like the time that Nana had made her come in Camden Library on the Euston Road, in the Ordnance Survey area, leaning against Wales and Northern Ireland.

You see, as I have mentioned before, Anjali was more bisexual than most. And she was a proficient bisexual girl. She had a gift for every sexual permutation. She had a talent. But in the end she was not really that into boys. Not as much as she was into girls.

Anjali did girls. She fell for girls.

6

So, as you can see, this menage a trois was ambiguous. It was less bohemian than it looked. You know that Moshe was not that happy. And it does not seem that Anjali was very happy either. A menage, you see, is not pre-Nazi decadence. Not at all.

Even the sleeping arrangements were difficult.

Ordinary couples often develop particular sides of the bed. In the doomed relationship of Stacey and Henderson, for example, Stacey always slept on the left. But in a threesome, sleeping positions are more complex. They are not neutral. They are symbolic.

For instance, to celebrate the close of Peacekeeping Force’s triumphant run at the Tricycle, Nana and Moshe and Anjali went to Le Caprice for lunch. Nana and Moshe and Anjali did not, however, remember much of their expensive lunch. They were not gourmets. They drank. They got noisily drunk and talked about themselves. They got drunk and tetchy.