Adam Thirlwell - Politics

1

As moshe tried, gently, to tighten the pink fluffy handcuffs surrounding his girlfriend’s wrists, he noticed a tiny frown.

I think you are going to like Moshe. His girlfriend’s name was Nana. I think you will like her too.

‘Pussy!’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

He was crouching by her neck. She was lying on her stomach. Her arms were stretched, like a diver, above her head.

This is what was wrong. Nana’s hands were too slender for the handcuffs. That was why she was frowning. There was a logistical problem. And Nana was a girl who cared about logistics. She took her sex seriously. But it was difficult to take sex seriously when, if she wriggled, her hands nearly slipped out. It was not, she explained, ideal. Wriggling was the charm of it.

As Nana glanced up, she saw Moshe’s dejected face. ‘Kitten!’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

Unfussed, Nana explained that she would just have to act it out. She would have to stay still and mockstruggle. She was sweet to him. It was true, she said wistfully, talking into the duvet, that there had been another plan. She knew she was meant to be trapped, defenceless, while Moshe the tyrant gleefully mimed the loss of both sets of keys to the handcuffs, the real ones and the spares. But the fun was improvisation.

I like this couple. They are a do-it-yourself couple, and I like that.

Nana had imagined it. She had sketched out a synopsis. Nana would be tied up and then sodomised, ruthlessly. She wanted her powerful man to prove his potency. And — because they were a couple who tried to be mutual — Moshe had responded by suggesting a little trip to Sh! Hoxton’s sex boutique with a door policy.

A door policy? Yes yes. Men without women were banned.

Nervously, in Sh ! Moshe and Nana browsed for four minutes. Sh! smelled of incense. Moshe decided they should leave. Then he reconsidered. If they left, thought Moshe, then it might look like they were not comfortable with sex toys. It would look like they were afraid of sex.

I am not sure why Moshe was so worried by this. It was true. Moshe was afraid. He was afraid of sex toys. He was particularly afraid of a twelve-inch dildo, with an extra veined prong for the anus. But he did not want to look scared. He wanted to look indifferent.

They bought a petite and smooth leopardskin-print dildo, for him or her, that was now peeping from beneath the bed in its cardboard packet. They bought some rope. Gesturing towards bondage, they bought a black leather bra for Nana. It was three sizes too small. It was like a leather training bra. It flattened her breasts. Doing her best at the role of the submissive, Nana had the breasts of a thirteen-year-old. As for Moshe, his domain was control. So Moshe was the purchaser and practitioner of pink fluffy handcuffs — or at least he would have been if the catches, the teeth, the locks, whatever, were not too loose for Nana’s delicate frame.

They were too loose. She had to act it out.

Abandoning the handcuffs, Moshe scooped up the length of thin pink bondage rope. He wrapped it in a figure of eight round her quasi-handcuffed hands, then knotted the rope on to the bed frame. He arranged her wrists in a floppy fluorescent cross.

In a painful way Nana was comfortable. Which was perfect, she thought. It was just the right feeling. She wanted to make pain a pleasure.

Then Moshe spread her buttocks apart.

Nana’s first reaction was embarrassment. This was quickly followed, however, by glee. Moshe was snuffling in her crack. It had an allure. Doggedly Moshe licked, he lapped at Nana’s arsehole. He dabbed his tongue into the darker puckered pock.

Maybe I should be more specific here. Nana was a blonde. She was an all-over blonde. I do not want ‘darker’ to imply dark. No, Nana had a very pale arsehole. It was an albino arsehole.

Moshe began to enjoy himself, elongating her pink arsehole as he stretched her buttocks with his hands. It was — Nana thought, self-conscious, being used — a new sensation. This, she thought, was Rimming. It was not quite a turn-on but rimming was interesting. It gave her a new shiver.

And Nana said, ‘Talk to me.’ More precisely, in homage to pornography, she drawled, ‘Tor tme.’

2

There are many attitudes to talk during sex. There are many varieties of talk during sex. Some individuals like to shout out commands. They will say, ‘Suck my cock.’ Commands can get quite paradoxical. For instance, sometimes a boy will say, ‘Ask if you can suck me ’ — which is a command for a request. Or a girl or a boy will say, ‘Tell me to suck your cock’ — which is a command for a command. This almost turns the command into a request. Other people want their partner to do the talking. They want to hear guttural and lavish obscenities. This is especially exciting when a person suspects that his or her partner is repressed. On the other hand, there are people for whom talk is just reassuring. In fact, sometimes they do not even need talk to get the reassurance they want. Noise is quite enough. For these people, noise during sex is a version of talk. The other extreme, I suppose, involves some degree of reality shift or role play. A lot of people like to be someone else during sex. A lot of people like to imagine that someone else is someone else during sex.

And Nana, today, was a fantasist. She wanted a narrative. She wanted a role play.

Normally, however, Nana disdained all talk during sex. Even a whisper annoyed her. But just now, in a flat in the scuzzier part of Finsbury, slightly distracted by the leather gear of the woman on the dildo packet, and the black wire from the Habitat bedside lamp, Nana was pro talking. A fantasy, she thought, would be a treat for Moshe. It would make the evening flow.

She was being solicitous. She was thinking about being calm. But Nana’s request did not make Moshe calmer. If anything, it made him more nervous. Moshe was a bundle of nerves.

Why is it never enough simply being dirty? That was what Moshe was thinking. But he did not get downcast, not yet. He mused. He planned a plot. He thought to himself, and he was right, that Nana wanted a performance. She wanted a detailed fantasy. She wanted imagination.

Moshe imagined an anti-Semitic fantasy. I know that this might come as a surprise, but that was the fantasy Moshe came up with.

In between his laps and licks Moshe taunted his suburban girl, the only daughter of a rich goy man, with tales concerning the riches of Moshe’s Jewish ancestry. This was the triumph of the underdog. Or rather, Nana might have thought he was the underdog but Moshe had power and breeding. Moshe’s father was on board the SS Shalom on its maiden voyage in 1964. The Shalom was the pride of Israel — a model of razzmatazz, down to the padded modernism of each cabin’s Eames leather chair. It even had its own private synagogue.

Her lover had powerful provenance. Moshe’s greatgrandfather, for instance, was an East End hero. He was a prizefighter. He had taken the name of Yussel the Muscle. While Nana was just Papa’s princess. Unlike Moshe, she was cosseted, unmetropolitan. She lived in the suburbs. She lived, said Moshe with disgust, in Edgware.

And it was true. This was not a fantasy. She was suburban. Nana had grown up in Edgware with her father. Edgware is in the suburbs of North London.

At this point in his narrative, Moshe decided that a disciplinary gesture was appropriate. He had run out of material. So he spanked her, lightly. Nana moaned and twisted her neck up, then settled it down. He spanked her again, harder, except because Moshe was excitable his hand sort of slipped and fell and he spanked her dappily, on the fleshy meeting place of buttock and upper thigh.