Free Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi

her, I caught a glimpse of myself. My body was thick and hairy, my stomach round, as if I’d swallowed a ball; my little prick stuck out merrily. I could have tied a pinkbow on it. In celebration of Wimbledon, I had prepared a handful of strawberries beside the bed, which I intended to slot between her buttocks and guzzle with cream. I watched myself lean over, pick up a bottle of cold champagne and press it against my balls, before swigging from the bottle. She came into the room in high heels, a suspender belt, my mac, and the pearl earrings I’d bought her. I waved at myself in the mirror! How happy I looked, as if all my epiphanies had come at once!
    I can’t say I wasn’t happy at that time. I liked to compliment myself on having everything in balance. I was also adapting a book for an American studio. I knew they would have the script rewritten, just so they would know they had been thorough. I was used to that and reckoned they’d try a couple more writers on it, before coming back to me. I had a tolerable partner and delightful children, as well as the perfect mistress who, when she became pouty and sulky, I could dismiss. I may have a hypocrite heart, but my vanity was satisfied. As satisfactions go, that is ample.
    One day she said, ‘If you want me, here I am, you can have me.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I said and added, some time later, notwanting to take yes for answer, ‘Do you mean it?’
    She seemed surprised and reminded me that the third time I met her, when she enquired after ‘my situation’ I had said to her, ‘You can do whatever you want with me. I am at your disposal.’ And, apparently, I added, ‘Don’t think that I don’t love you, because I do.’
    I do.

Could I have done more with Susan?
    Could I have done more with Susan? I mean, can I do more?
    How little, when you think about it, can you will into being. Of what my parents and teachers tried to force on me as a child, little remains except a memory of abhorrence. I was never one of those kids who’d do things because they were compelled. All of me, along with the age, stood against compulsion. Such individualism has got me into trouble. You can, of course, will things for a while, but if you are alive you will rebel. You can protect and encourage the most delicate gifts – love, affection, creativity, sexual desire, inspiration – but you cannot requisition them. You cannot will love, but only ask why you have put it aside for the time being.

Susan and I cannot make one another happy
    *
    Susan and I cannot make one another happy. But the failure scars one, until it seems inevitable that such failure will attend all one’s endeavours – if it is indeed happiness that one wants, rather than success, say, or sanctuary. My robust instinct, therefore, wasn’t to give up but to persevere.
    Susan had obviously been discussing our troubles with a friend. Therapy was recommended, as it always is to the minutely distressed. It saves friends the bother of attending to you. I refused to go. I imagined I needed my turmoil. I knew, too, that I didn’t want to love Susan, but for some reason didn’t want the clarity of that fact to devastate us both.
    She made the appointment as briskly as always, giving the unexceptionable excuse that it was for the sake of the children.
    I sat in the car feeling like a child being taken to the doctor by an impatient mother.

A few weeks before this 
    A few weeks before this, Susan and I visited a couple who had been married nearly a year. On the way I expounded my cheerful theory that people marry when they’re at their most desperate, that the needfor a certificate is a sure sign of an attenuated affection.
    That night I noticed that the husband made a particular, loose-wristed gesture, using both hands when explaining something. I noticed this because it was obvious the wife detested the movement. She even said, while we were there, ‘Can’t you stop doing that?’ In the car on the way