Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi

Author:Hanif Kureishi [Hanif Kureishi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571268061
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

How Nina tantalizes. She is aloof, feline, graceful. Everything she does has grace; some call it style. Others will say she knows who she is, and likes being herself. Her doubts don’t undermine her, but they do make her inaccessible at times. I must be in love with her. I have yet to find out why.

So?

When did the realization really happen? When did it occur to me to leave? I can remember passing the critical point during one of my meandering conversations with Victor in the bar we go to. I thought, looking at all the free people ordering drinks, what’s to stop me getting out and never coming back? But the idea was too cruel and subversive. Immediately I was filled with self-disgust, and saw myself from the back, running, a picture of all the other cowardly men who had fled.

That was eight or nine months ago. Nina and I would meet hurriedly before I had to be home with Susan. If there’s nothing more likely to make you feel abandoned, desolate and left out than sexual betrayal, perhaps the only way not to feel it, is to feel nothing for the woman. It seemed a kind of freedom to encourage Nina to see other men, to have her tell me about them and for me to laugh at them.

‘How many have you seen this week? And what did the last one do to you?’

‘He kissed me.’

‘And you let him?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then he puts his hands on you. And you, no doubt, put these hands that I’m kissing now on him. And –’

The more she told me, the more beautiful she looked. The more I removed myself, the more I hoped she would pursue me. Yes, I wanted her to follow me as I turned away, but I was also afraid of her feeling discouraged.

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