Adam Thirlwell - Politics

I am going to describe this milk-buying. It was a significant habit.

Lloyds Son ~Dairy Farmers~First Class Dairy Products was painted in slanting gilt italics on the shop front. Lloyds Son~Dairy Farmers~First Class Dairy Products was always full of wives. It was also full of fathers. This made Nana giggle. It made her giggle because she could imagine what the fathers and wives were thinking when they looked at Nana and Anjali. The fathers and wives were confused, thought Nana, by two girls coming into the shop, hand in hand. And what Nana really liked was that, although she and Anjali were apparently avant-garde, although they were apparently bohemian, they were bohemian by accident. Nana felt just as wifely as the wives in the Amwell Dairy. She felt totally like a married woman. It was just that she had a wife as well as a husband. That was the only difference.

Obviously, Anjali felt differently about husbands and wives. She was much more interested in the wife.

The decor of the dairy was a delight. There were ochre pots of Colman’s mustard arranged in a pyramid, like circus acrobats. There was a poster from the fifties of a pretty, happy woman with her favourite Jersey milk. Her hair curled round her perfect curled ears. Nana liked this old-time charm. Beside the doorstep, an untipped cigar of dogshit had been carefully brushed to one side. Nana patted the fake green grass on the inside edge of the window display, waiting in the queue. She liked the prickly softness. She liked the fakeness.

As for Anjali, Anjali gossiped. She said, ‘Do you know why they split up? I know. And they seemed such a happy couple. I mean only last week did you read it that interview that one in Heat where she said. I know. That’s so true.’ Or, ‘And apparently he didn’t even look Palestinian. He looked,

I mean he was dressed in a suit.’ And Anjali asked for the milk, then she tried to find some money. ‘I need a quid,’ said Anjali, ‘have you got a quid, I need a quid?’ Then they left, slaloming and grinning past the toddlers and the shopping bags.

That was the routine. Anjali and Nana walked back on to Lloyd Baker Street off Amwell Street. Nana loved looking up at the windows with net curtains and yuccas, a peeling ‘I love Washington’ sticker, a plastic moulded Noddy. And sometimes she imagined a girl stretching one leg on top of the duvet, in a Bhs nightie with an awkward scratchy label. Or another time she would see a woman standing next to a girl with pigtails, in a black velvet dress, whose hands pressed down on to an invisible piano.

Houses made Nana think about babies. They made her think about families. And families, in the end, for Nana, were heterosexual families. I feel I should make that clear.

Meanwhile, at about this point in the journey to get milk on a Sunday morning, Anjali would say, ‘I love you so much.’

That is why milk was significant.

It is important to remember that there is more than one way of saying ‘I love you’. There is the ‘I love you’ of engorged and ravishing love. But there is also the ‘I love you’ of casual happy friendship. And Anjali was using the phrase in this second way. Well, no, she started by using the phrase in this way. It was just that gradually this phrase was becoming more and more serious. In case you hadn’t guessed, Anjali was becoming rather fond of Nana. Her use of the phrase ‘I love you’ was more and more becoming an example of engorged and ravishing love.

And maybe there was another reason too. Anjali was not really sure that this arrangement was going to work out for her. She was still feeling left out of the central couple. The threesome was always uncertain. So maybe her ‘I love you’, on her own with Nana, was an example of insecurity too. She was asking Nana to reassure her.

Because after all, thought Anjali, she was the one who was going to get hurt here. If anyone was going to be left out and devastated, that person would be Anjali.

No one falls in love immediately. It takes time. It develops, sometimes, because of delicate, unnoticed reasons. From early October to mid-November, Anjali developed a milk routine with Nana and simultaneously fell in love.

But Nana did not know this. She thought that Anjali’s ‘I love you’ was just a phrase of casual happy friendship. On this occasion, in November, distractedly Nana looked at a girl with a buggy, chatting to a girl with a buggy. One of them was saying, ‘Cos I’m a nigger, black, proud. You know like Michael Jackson when he was young when he had that afro?’ The two fat babies slouched and watched the plastic creased sky. And Nana nodded and kissed her, she kissed Anjali in public. It was Sunday morning. They went shopping for milk. It was domestic.

Nana was happy. She was thinking about happy families.

9

One night in 1936, the film actress Renee Muller was alone in the German Chancellery with the German Chancellor. At that time the Chancellor was Adolf Hitler. Because it was late, and they were alone, Renee was sure that Adolf wanted to have sex. And it seemed that she was right. He started to undress her. But just as they were about to get into bed, Adolf fell on the floor and begged Renee Muller to kick him.

Initially, Renee demurred. It was quite embarrassing, having the naked Chancellor on all fours, begging to be kicked. But Adolf pleaded. He said he was unworthy, just a worm, a simpleton, a brute who deserved no better treatment than a dog, a bad little boy who needed punishment.

Adolf grovelled. Sexually, he grovelled at Renee.

It is a funny thing about being embarrassed that in the end you prefer to do the thing that has been embarrassing you all along, rather than continue to be embarrassed. You get it over with. In the end, Renee Muller kicked Adolf. She kicked him quite gently, but she still kicked him. And this turned Adolf on. He begged for more. He begged and begged for more. ‘You worm,’ said Renee, ‘you degenerate rat.’ Adolf was really enjoying himself. He told Renee how generous she was being, how much more he was receiving than he deserved, that really she should not reward him with the benefits of so much discipline. He was not even worthy to be in the same room as her, said Adolf.

The amusing thing was that by this point Renee was also enjoying herself. She had never been a dominatrix before, but this was fun. Far from being embarrassed, the film actress Renee Muller had just discovered the abiding sexual fascination of her life. She kicked him very hard. She started to beat Adolf up.

How few sexual permutations there are. Poor Adolf, wanting to be kicked. Poor thing, coming out with lines like: ‘I am not worthy to be in the same room as you.’ I rather warm to Adolf. And poor Renee, entranced so quickly by the role of the dominatrix. In their innocence, neither Adolf nor Renee made their sex life specific. There were no minute orders from Adolf, concerning the exact order and strength of Renee’s kicks. There was just a general wish. There was just a general kicking.

Adolf and Renee had just encountered a central human predicament. It is this. Sex is not specific. It is not original. You might think your perversions are all your own, but no. Perversion is general. Perversions are universal. You have to make them specific.

10

Anjali was on the Internet. She was having a look at free porn, sitting on her own in Moshe’s living room, one morning. She was roaming around a thumbnail gallery offered by eroticamateurz.com. In case you have never heard of a thumbnail gallery, a thumbnail is a picture. It is a pornographic picture, no bigger than a thumbnail. It expands, however, if you click on it.

This is crucial to the narrative. Honestly.

Anjali was masturbating.

A girl dressed in a jet necklace and black fishnets was pushing her hand into her vagina, so that all her fingers were submerged. Or, alternatively, set against what looked like a Jackson Pollock drip painting, executed in black and purple, she was on all fours leaning over a quartered maroon and navy cushion. A man’s arm was also in this picture. His hand was not. This was because it was in a white surgical glove and his fingers were submerged. Anjali could not tell exactly where they were submerged. It seemed likely they were submerged in the girl’s anus. It was difficult to tell.