Zadie Smith - White Teeth

Initially this neither bothered Millat nor felt unusual to him. His school was full of girls who fitted the general description. By the law of averages – as he was the only guy worth shagging in Glenard Oak – he was going to end up shagging a large proportion of them. And with Karina Cain, the present amour, things were really quite pleasant. He was only cheating on her with three other women (Alexandra Andrusier, Polly Houghton, Rosie Dew), and this was a personal record. Besides which, Karina Cain was different. It wasn’t just sex with Karina Cain. He liked her and she liked him, and she had a great sense of humour, which felt like a miracle, and she looked after him when he was down and he looked after her too, in his own way, bringing her flowers and stuff. It was both the law of averages, and a lucky, random thing that had made him happier than he usually was. So that was that.

Except KEVIN didn’t see it that way. One evening, after Karina had dropped him off at a KEVIN meeting in her mother’s Renault, Brother Hifan and Brother Tyrone crossed Kilburn town hall like two man-mountains, determined to deliver themselves at the feet of Muhammed. They loomed large.

‘Hey, Hifan, my speed, Tyrone, my man, why the long faces?’

But brothers Hifan and Tyrone wouldn’t tell him why the long faces. Instead they gave him a leaflet. It was called: Who is truly free? The Sisters of KEVIN or the Sisters of Soho ? Millat thanked them cordially for it. Then he stuffed it in the bottom of his bag.

How was that? they asked him the following week. Was it a good read, Brother Millat? Truth was, Brother Millat hadn’t got round to reading it (and to be honest, he preferred leaflets called things like The Big American Devil: How the United States Mafia Rules the World or Science versus the Creator: No Contest ), but he could see it seemed to matter to Brother Tyrone and Brother Hifan, so he said he had. They looked pleased and gave him another one. This one was called: Lycra Liberation? Rape and the Western World .

‘Is light broaching your darkness, Brother Millat?’ asked Brother Tyrone eagerly, at the following Wednesday’s meeting. ‘Are things becoming clearer?’

‘Clearer’ didn’t seem to Millat to be exactly the right adjective. Earlier in the week he had set aside some time, read both leaflets and felt peculiar ever since. In three short days Karina Cain, a darling of a girl, a real good sort who never really irritated him (on the contrary, who made him feel happy! Chuffed!), had irritated him more than she had managed in the whole year they’d been shagging. And no ordinary irritation. A deep unsettleable unsolvable irritation, like an itch on a phantom limb. And it was not clear to him why.

‘Yeah, man, Tyrone,’ said Millat with a nod and a wide grin. ‘Crystal, mate, crystal.’

Brother Tyrone nodded back. Millat was pleased to see he looked pleased. It was like being in the real life Mafia or a Bond movie or something. Them both in their black and white suits, nodding at each other. I understand we understand each other .

‘This is Sister Aeyisha,’ said Brother Tyrone, straightening Millat’s green bow-tie and pushing him towards a tiny, beautiful black girl, with almond eyes and high cheekbones. ‘She’s an African goddess.’

‘Really?’ said Millat, impressed. ‘Whereabouts you from?’

‘Clapham North,’ said Sister Aeyisha, with a shy smile.

Millat clapped his hands together and stamped his foot. ‘Oh, man, you must know the Redback Café?’

Sister Aeyisha the African goddess lit up. ‘ Yeah , man, that was my place from way back when! You go there?’

‘All the time! Wicked place. Well, maybe I’ll see you round them gates sometime. It was nice to meet you, sister. Brother Tyrone, I’ve got to chip, man, my gal’s waiting for me.’

Brother Tyrone looked disappointed. Just before Millat left, he pressed another leaflet into his hand and continued holding his hand until the paper got damp between their two palms.

‘You could be a great leader of men, Millat,’ said Brother Tyrone (why did everybody keep telling him that?), looking first at him, then at Karina Cain, the curve of her breasts peeping over the car door, beeping her car horn in the street. ‘But at the moment you are half the man. We need the whole man.’

‘Yeah, wicked, thanks, you too Brother,’ said Millat, looking briefly at the leaflet, and pushing open the doors. ‘Laters.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Karina Cain, reaching over to open the passenger door and spotting the slightly soggy paper in his hand.

Instinctively, Millat put the leaflet straight in his pocket. Which was weird. He usually showed Karina everything. Now just her asking him grated somehow. And what was she wearing? Same belly top she always wore. Except wasn’t it shorter? Weren’t the nipples clearer, more deliberate?

He said, ‘Nothing.’ Grumpily. But it wasn’t nothing. It was the final leaflet in the KEVIN series on Western women. The Right to Bare: The Naked Truth about Western Sexuality .

Now, while we’re on the subject of nakedness, Karina Cain had a nice little body. All creamy chub and slender extremities. And come the weekend she liked to wear something to show it off. First time Millat noticed her was at some local party when he saw a flash of silver pants, a silver boob-tube, and a bare mound of slightly protruding belly rising up between the two with another bit of silver in the navel. There was something welcoming about Karina Cain’s little belly. She hated it, but Millat loved it. He loved it when she wore things that revealed it. But now the leaflets were making things clearer . He started noticing what she wore and the way other men looked at her. And when he mentioned it she said, ‘Oh, I hate that. All those leery old men.’ But it seemed to Millat that she was encouraging it; that she positively wanted men to look at her, that she was – as The Right to Bare suggested – ‘prostituting herself to the male gaze’. Particularly white males. Because that’s how it worked between Western men and Western women, wasn’t it? They liked to do it all in public. The more he thought about it, the more it pissed him off. Why couldn’t she cover up? Who was she trying to impress? African goddesses from Clapham North respected themselves, why couldn’t Karina Cain? ‘I can’t respect you,’ explained Millat carefully, making sure he repeated the words just as he had read them, ‘until you respect yourself.’ Karina Cain said she did respect herself, but Millat couldn’t believe her. Which was odd, because he’d never known Karina Cain to lie, she wasn’t the type.

When they got ready to go out somewhere, he said, ‘You’re not dressing for me, you’re dressing for everybody!’ Karina said she didn’t dress for him or anybody, she dressed for herself. When she sang ‘Sexual Healing’ at the pub karaoke, he said, ‘Sex is a private thing, between you and me, it’s not for everybody!’ Karina said she was singing , not having sex in front of the Rat and Carrot regulars. When they made love, he said, ‘Don’t do that… don’t offer it to me like a whore. Haven’t you heard of unnatural acts? Besides, I’ll take it if I want it – and why can’t you be a lady, don’t make all that noise!’ Karina Cain slapped him and cried a lot. She said she didn’t know what was happening to him. Problem is, thought Millat, as he slammed the door off its hinges, neither do I . And after that row they didn’t talk for a while.

About two weeks later, he was doing a shift in the Palace for a little extra money, and he brought the matter up with Shiva, a newish convert to KEVIN and a rising star within the organization. ‘Don’t talk to me about white women,’ groaned Shiva, wondering how many generations of Iqbals he’d have to give the same advice to. ‘It’s got to the point in the West where the women are men! I mean, they’ve got the same desires and urges as men – they want it all the fucking time . And they dress like they want everyone to know they want it. Now is that right? Is it?’