Hanif Kureishi: Collected Stories

I guess Fiona and I were a desirable couple then, both of us good-looking. She’d briefly been a model, and we were bright, keen on the latest clothes and with a touching ignorance of what effect our vanity and self-assurance might have on others, of how it might infuriate them.

With me Fiona had become bored and stifled, and had made up her mind to become daring. She went to bars and stayed out all night. Once, while I waited at home — and no one envies another their masturbation — she slept with two men at the same time. In a hurry, and more under the influence of Joe Orton than I would be again, I decided Phillip could touch me a little.

If it gave him pleasure, and it seemed to when I offered myself to him, he could kiss my hands, shoulders, neck. Then he would caress my head and back, and play with my arse. Several times he sucked me, while I rested on the sofa, somewhat awkwardly I suspect, like a child being felt, as he messed with me until he came. He didn’t excite me; I had no desire to touch him and never did. I just liked being desirable, and fancied the idea, for a time, of being in what I considered to be the ‘feminine’ position. It was the first time I’d had such power over anyone, the ability to make them crazy.

When Fiona was with us Phillip and I didn’t do this. Nor was she informed, though I considered her to have been the touch paper since, being more alert than I to subterranean feeling, she’d said one night, ‘Which of us do you think Phillip wants? Or could it be both of us? Would anyone have the balls to be that greedy?’

The next time we went round, both of us sat on Phillip’s knees giggling. She winked at me and said, ‘Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice .’

He was fun to tease, but I respected Phillip. Not that he always respected himself. I’d sat in on some of his school classes, being invited to speak to his pupils about ‘my career’, where I saw he was capable of arousing enthusiasm in the young, of explaining why a certain figure or period should be paid attention to. As I myself had learned from him, I couldn’t grasp why his profession would make him feel inadequate or ashamed of himself.

My blithe view infuriated him. He began to say he was wasted at the school. He needed me to know he was more talented than most people were able to see. He said he needed to ‘shut himself away’. It turned out that rather than working on his thesis at the weekend, he had been producing plays and stories. It must have occurred to him that if I could do it, so could he. When he gave them to me to read I was kind, merely pointing out there were more pages than necessary.

Now, at least, I have understood that the longer you know a person, far from getting to know them, as you close in on their unconscious the unsettling delirium and violence of the human system will appear bewildering. So, while I returned Phillip’s literary efforts somewhat casually, their general effect didn’t quickly dissipate. Though of no aesthetic value, the work could only be a depiction of his mind, and the state he appeared to inhabit I recognised from my alarming but exhilarating experiences smoking dope. His inner self, unlike his outer, was disconnected, incoherent and peopled by many policemen, merchants of attempted order, presumably. Inside, I was shocked to learn, he was not at all like me. The nearly mad are among us everywhere, many of them disguised. Like blondes, they appear to have more fun, as well as more misery. But who, as an artist of some kind, would not welcome the weird as the truth? And who ever gets a straight look at the world?

Since my success I had begun to be invited to numerous openings, closings and publication parties, which appeared to go on most nights of most weeks of the year. We went to places where, outside, there were groups of photographers waiting for film stars and famous writers. I hadn’t bought a drink in two years, and if you wanted to pick up strangers and meet bores, you were made. Soho was still rough but money and glamour, eventually to ruin it, was on its way. The Groucho Club had opened and in those days you could blag your way in.

I liked to take Phillip out with me. Being more committed to his pleasure than I — and convinced he could make an instant connection with people — he was always more successful. I was a dedicated cheerleader and witness, but one night, in a pub after a party, he flew into a rage, suddenly grabbed me by the throat and shook me. ‘For fuck’s fucking fuck sake, stop telling people all the time that I’m a teacher!’

‘Should I say you captain submarines?’

‘These supercilious, overprivileged people want to hear I’m an actor. I’m a model. I’m a hooker. I’m a movie director. “Teacher” makes them struggle with the death instinct. I can see their eyes trying to contact someone — anyone — across the room.’

Then a girl said to me, another time, ‘Will your wonderful play become a film?’

‘But yes,’ I said. ‘It is about to be made.’

‘What do you mean?’ Phillip asked.

‘Looks like I’ve been lucky again,’ I said.

Within a few weeks of my delivering the script, the movie had gone into pre-production. As the director wanted the actors to spend time together before shooting, it was cast early, with a group of attractive young potential stars.

Phillip and I went to a Soho restaurant to meet ‘the supernatural two’, the boy and girl playing the leads, both of whom had recently appeared in hit feature films, as the stream of ecstatic strangers who approached them attested. The next day, the four of us went to a movie together.

After, I walked Phillip back to his flat. He’d been sullen for a while but now began to berate me. I lacked principle and inner strength; I was a liar, doing or saying anything to gain an advantage. I was losing contact with the actual — working people, money and its absence. In fact I was a total pretence. ‘How do you justify your life!’ he shouted.

‘At least I’ve made something of myself,’ I said.

He grabbed me around the neck. Why would he want to have one of our mock fights now? He was only a little taller than me at around five feet eleven, but at university he’d been a keen rower. His arms were thick and capable; his stomach was hard.

He pulled me backwards until I was on the ground looking up at him as he kicked me in the side. I wanted to get to my feet and lash out at him with schoolkid punches. But not only did this feel unnatural and stupid, I’d get hurt, and I would forfeit our friendship at the moment of my greatest fear.

‘That’s shown you,’ he said.

‘Shown me what?’ I asked, brushing myself down.

Now I phoned Phillip again, late at night.

‘My dear, good evening,’ he said sleepily. ‘What a treat to hear from you. Have you been drinking?’

‘It’s worse. I have reached the age when I’ve begun to survey my wretched life, doing the addiction — sorry, I mean addition, and subtraction.’

Why did I say ‘wretched’? Did I really see it like that? Was there justification? Perhaps tonight. My four children were home for the holidays. They were kicking away from us. Soon they would be gone for good, returning only with complaints. I was beginning to wonder that if I wasn’t a father, what in fact was I?

Earlier that evening I’d been to an AA meeting. Back at home I’d held out as long as possible before pulling out the vodka bottle I kept behind my study sofa and taking a couple of long swigs.

Phillip said, ‘That does happen at your age, my dear boy.’

‘Do you remember much about our friendship?’

‘Enough of it to say it is characteristic of you to ask such a direct question. As I can hardly sit here and consider the future, since we last spoke more of our shared past has come back, providing considerable amusement.’ He went on, ‘You were one of my best friends. I still think of you that way.’